tongue protruding from the mouth, appeared above the side of the cavity,
at the very feet of Aldarin, and a muscular hand convulsively clutched
the oaken plank, while the body of the stout Yeoman, was seen through
the darkness of the pit, as he clung with the grasp of despair, to the
floor of the room.
“Devil--” shouted the desperate soldier, as he made a convulsive effort
to lighten the grasp of his hand on the smooth plank. “I’ll foil thee
yet. ’Tis not the fate of an honest man to die thus! My doom--”
“Is DEATH!” shrieked the scholar, and drawing the glittering dagger from
his robe, he smote the fingers of the Yeoman, with its unerring steel.
The joints of the hand were severed.
The grasp of the soldier failed, he gave one dying look, and then far,
far down in the pit, a whizzing noise like the sound of a falling body
was heard, and as it grew fainter and fainter did Aldarin stand in
attitude of listening, gazing down into the shadow void, his arms
outstretched, his eyes wildly glaring, his lips apart, and every
lineament of his face expressive of triumph, mingled with hate and
scorn.
A wild, maniac laugh came from the murder’s lips:
“Ha--ha--ha! caitiff and slave! Thou hast met thy fate. The scholar hath
enemies, but--ha--ha!--they all _disappear_!”
Again he cast his eyes into the well. All was still as death. A single
look into the dark cavity, and, with his bitter smile, Aldarin pictured
the mangled corse of the yeoman, lying in bloody fragments, strewn over
the vaults of the castle, amid the corses of the unburied dead.
He stamped his foot on the floor, and the red slab, bearing the empty
stool, slowly arose on its hinges, and was again fixed in the oaken
planks.
“Silent forever, prying fool! My secret is safe. Thou shalt no more
prate of a certain _warm_ embrace. Nay, nay; now for my schemes. I must
send on to Florence fresh proofs of Adrian’s guilt: witnesses, and so
on, and so on. That matter arranged, then comes the marriage of Annabel
and the Duke. Ha--ha! Let me think.”
Here he fell into a musing fit, and having newly fed the beechen flame
upon the altar of marble, he approached a point of the Round Room, where
a small knob of iron projected from the oaken floor.
Stamping upon the knob, a division of the shelving receded, and a
portion of the wall, leaving an open space, while a passage was
disclosed into a secret chamber, beyond the Round Room.
A door of dark and solid wood, painted in imitation of the walls of the
Round Room, had been made in an aperture of the wall, with shelving
placed on its panels, and every sign or mark of the existence of such a
door, carefully and effectually erased. It bore a complete resemblance
to the other parts of the walls, and no one, save Aldarin, could have
dreamed of its existence. The small knob in the oaken floor,
communicated with a spring, and the secret door rolled into the
adjoining room on grooves fixed in the floor.
Aldarin stepped through the secret passage, the door rolled back, and
the Round Room was left to the silent flame and the grinning skull.
CHAPTER THE FIFTH.
THE CHAMBER OF MYSTERIES.
FEAR * * * AND GIVE GLORY TO HIM, FOR THE HOUR OF HIS JUDGMENT IS
COME--THE SMOKE OF THEIR TORMENT ASCENDETH UP FOR EVER AND
EVER.--_The Book._
A chamber with a low, dark ceiling, supported by massive rafters of oak;
floor and wall of dark stone, unrelieved by wainscot or plaster--bare,
rugged and destitute--in form, an oblong square, narrow in width, and
extensive in length, with the impression of a coffin-like gloom and
confinement, resting upon each dark stone and rugged rafter, while the
air was insupportable with the scent of decaying mortality.
In the centre arose a rough table of massive oak, with a smoking light,
burning in a vessel of iron, placed at each corner, flinging a dreary
radiance through the darkness of the chamber.
The light threw its red and murky beams over the fearful burden of the
table. It was piled with the unsightly forms of the dead. There were
lifeless trunks, all hewn and hacked; there were discolored faces, green
with decay; with the eyes scooped from the sockets, the livid skin
dropping from the forehead, the jaw torn from its socket, and the brain,
once the resting place of the mighty soul, protruding in all its
discoloration and corruption over the bared brow; there were arms and
limbs torn from the body, some yet wearing the hue of life, others
rendered hideous and disgusting by the revel of the worm; there, in that
lone room were piled up all these ghastly remains of humanity, these
fearful mockeries of life, there rotting relics of what had once
enthroned the GIANT SOUL.
The form of a muscular man, with chest of iron, and arms of brass, lay
on the centre of the table, side by side with the figure of a fragile
woman. The scanty locks of gray hair surmounted the half peeled forehead
of the warrior, while the copious tresses of the woman drooped over the
white cheek, the alabaster neck, and fell twining over the bosom, yet
untainted by decay.
“Here,” cried Aldarin, with dilating eye--“Here, for twenty-one long
years have I toiled. The sun shone over the beauty of spring, the luxury
of summer, and yet I beheld him not. Autumn came with its decay, and
winter with its cold, and yet Aldarin went not forth. Toil, toil, toil,
while youth died in my veins, and age came wrinkling over my brow; toil,
toil, toil, unceasing and eternal toil.
“Julian went to war, his plume waved over the ranks of battle. Aldarin
toiled on, over the carcasses of the dead. Others have made friends
among the living, and won honor from the great--it was mine to build a
home amid the corses of the unburied dead, and to wring knowledge, wild
and terrible, it is true, yet mighty knowledge, from the grasp of death.
Toil, toil, toil, but not forever. It will come at last--the glorious
secret.
“A few more weary days, a few more dreary nights, and the corse will
speak, the alembic will give fort was! h the secret. The future speaks
two words that fill my heart with fire--_unbounded wealth_--IMMORTAL
LIFE!”
He looked around with a blazing eye and extended arm--“They rise before
me, the host of victims--ghastly with the dead hue, gory with blood they
rise, they raise their hands, and shriek my name? And yet, it was to be,
it was to be, and _it was_! And _he_, the last, the most dread and
fearful sacrifice--oh, FIEND, wring not my heart with throes of
intolerable torture nor point to yon wan and pallid form! I tell thee
when the last secret shall have been wrung from the lips of Death, then,
then, _he_, aye, _he_ may, may----”
He paused, he drooped his head low on his breast, a scarcely audible
murmur broke from his lips. Two phrases of doubtful purport might alone
be heard----
“Live again--” and then the murmur--“mighty secret----from _his_
body--”
Aldarin turned from his dread and mystic reveries, he seized the
scalpel, he commenced the work of knowledge, among the carcasses of the
dead. Long he labored, and eagerly he toiled, but at last, as the solemn
hours of the night wore on, he slept and dreamed a dream. Prostrate
among the bodies of the dead, his arms flung carelessly on either side
over the torn and mangled faces, Aldarin slept and dreamed.
And this was the DREAM OF ALDARIN THE FRATRICIDE.
CHAPTER THE SIXTH.
THE DREAM OF THE DAMNED.
He stood upon a lonely isle. His feet were tortured by the sensation of
burning, he looked beneath in wonder, and discovered that he stood upon
a rock of fire.
He looked around--he beheld an ocean of fire; as far as eye could see,
nothing met his vision but the waves of crimson flame, undulating to and
fro, with a gentle, yet solemn motion.
Had the waves arisen around him, in giant billows, or swept above in
mountains of liquid flame, the dreamer would have rejoiced, his spirit
would have joined in the tumult, his soul become the incarnation of the
storm.
But that strange calmness of the waves, that quiet undulation, awed him,
chilled him to the heart. He looked again over the shoreless sea, and
saw with straining eyes a sight of woe--unutterable woe.
From the surface of every wave, from the waves breaking in spiral flames
at his feet--afar and near, on every side--from the surface of every
wave was thrust a discolored face, with burning eyes, that gleamed with
a strange life, while the lips were colorless, the cheeks livid, and the
brow green with decay. As the Dreamer looked, low, faint murmurs,
unutterable sighs and sobs, broke on the air, and a hollow whisper, more
like the echo of a thought than a sound, came to his ear--THESE ARE THE
FACES OF THE DAMNED--every face you see, is the face of a
_Lost-soul_--THESE ARE THE FACES OF THE DAMNED.
Aldarin turned from side to side with a horror he had never felt before.
All around seemed turning to fire, fire in every shape and form, fire
intangible and fire incarnate. Above, no sky with Sun of Glory gave
light to that ocean of flame, with the faces of the damned, thrust from
every billow. A roof of brass, vast and awful, and magnificent, arched
over the waves of fire; it was heated to a burning heat, and the eye of
Aldarin seemed turning to flame, as he looked upon the brazen sky.
The horizon of this fearful sky, was concealed by great clouds, rolling
slowly on, and on, and on, over the waves of fire, far, far, from the
isle where stood Aldarin.
And while the hollow murmur broke over the scene, and the whispering of
subdued voices, and the sobs of soft voiced women, shrieking that
unutterable wail, Aldarin felt the very air burn into his flesh hotter,
and more torturing than the air of the simoon, he felt the rock beneath
him turning molted fire, his feet were crumbling into fragments, while
agony and intense pain, quivered along his veins, and the flame lapped
up his blood. He burned, and yet--he burned not.
The air penetrated into his flesh, entered the pores, burning along his
veins; he felt the fire at his very heart; he drank in the flame with
every breath, and yet--he burned not.
No sooner did his feet crumble with the agonizing influence of the fire,
than another portion of his frame, seemed renewing its life, his heart
became young, and his brain flowed with healthy blood.
Again his feet renewed their flesh, and then, with a hollow voice, he
shrieked, mingling in that unutterable wail of the damned, “I burn, I
burn, my heart is on fire, my brain is turned to flame, and yet I am not
consumed.”
A sudden change in the shape of the islet on which he stood, attracted
his attention. At first wide and extensive in form, it was now narrow
and contracted. Every moment it grew smaller, and yet smaller, and the
waves of fire came rolling wave after wave over its surface. Aldarin
started with a new and strange horror. Terrible it was to stand on the
rock of fire, his feet consuming, his brain on fire, his heart a flame;
air, sky and ocean, all burning into his very soul, terrible, most
terrible, but those hollow murmurs, those fearful whispers of the damned
came breaking on his ear, speaking of mysteries, yet more terrible, in
the VAST BEYOND.
The wretched man clung to the rock. Oh! God, how fearful was the first
touch of the waves of molten flame; how the liquid fire ate into his
flesh and corrupted his blood, as the spiral flames cresting, each wave
came hissing and curling round his limbs!
The waves rose higher and higher; the bodies of the lost, offensive with
decay, the loathsome, and worm-eaten came floating around Aldarin. He
raised his hands, he pushed the ghastly carcasses aside, but still they
came floating on, and on, throwing their crumbling arms around his neck
and fixing their livid lips upon his burning cheek, in the kiss of the
damned.
They hailed him--brother--with a hollow welcome, and as innumerable
voices whispered forth the sound of awful welcome, Aldarin missed his
footing on the rock, he felt his form changing with decay, he raised his
hands in the effort to keep on the surface of the waves, and saw his
fingers with the flesh dropping from the bones; he floated on the
surface of the boundless sea, he became one of the damned.
Forever and forever lost.
They were floating on and on, the boundless legion of the lost, and with
them floated Aldarin.
A strange distant sound burst on the ear, he heard it grow louder and
louder, now it was like the roaring of a mighty ocean, now it was like
the hissing of a thousand furnaces.
Floating on the waves of fire, crowded by legion of the lost, Aldarin
turned with a feeling of intense awe, and murmured the question--“What
means yon sound of terror--yon murmur of fear?”
“We are floating on and on, toward the Cataract of Hell--” was the
hoarse murmur of the living corse floating by his side, and a million
tongues, speaking from livid lips returned the echo--“On and on toward
the Cataract of Hell!”
Aldarin was carried on without the power of resistance, with no object
to stay his career, on and on, every moment nearing the fearful
Cataract, whose omnipresent thunder now deafened his ears, and fell upon
his very brain, like the awful echo of an unrelenting Judgment.
Then came a pause of strange unconsciousness, from which Aldarin
presently awoke; and opening his eyes, gazed around.
He hung on the verge of a rock, a rock of melting bitumen, that burned
his hands to masses of crisped and blackened flesh as he hung. The rock
flung its projecting form over a gulf, to which the cataracts of earth
might compare, as the rivulet to the vast ocean.
It seemed to Aldarin as though the universe, with all the boundless
fields of space, was comprised in the sweep of that awful cataract with
its rocks of bitumen and red-hot ore extending for miles and miles
innumerable, on either side, with the waves of fire--each wave bearing
its awful burden of a damned soul--surging and foaming over the edge of
the precipice, while a hissing and crackling sound, like the noise of
ten thousand forests, ravaged by flame, startled the very air of hell,
and mingled with the shrieks of the ******.
Aldarin looked below.
God of Heaven, what a sight! A gulf, like the space occupied by a
thousand worlds--deep, vast, immense, and yet perceptible to the
eye--sunk beneath him, with its surface of fiery waves, all convulsed
and foaming with innumerable whirlpools, all crimsoned by bubbles of
flame, each whirlpool swallowing the millions of the lost, each bubble
bearing on its surface the face of a soul, damned and damned forever.
Forever and forever.
And as the lost were borne on by the waves and swallowed by the
whirlpools, they raised their hands and cast their burning eyes to the
brazen sky, and shrieked, with low and muttering voices, the eternal
death-wail of the lost.
Over the cataract, shrieking and wailing, were precipitated the millions
and ten thousand millions of living-dead; each one swelling that
unutterable murmur as he fell, each soul yelling with a more intense
horror as it sank into night and all around, innumerable echoes bursting
from the rocks or bitumen and melting ore breaking from the very air
gave back the shriek, the wail and murmur of the lost. Forever and
forever lost.
And over this scene, awful and vast, towered a figure of ebony
darkness; his blackened brow concealed in the clouds, his extended arms
grasping the infinitude of the cataract, while his feet rested upon
islands of bitumen far in the gulf below.
The eyes of the figure were fixed upon Aldarin, as he clung with the
nervous grasp of despair, to the rock of melting bitumen, and their gaze
curdled his heated blood.
Every moment he was losing his grasp, sliding and sliding from the rock,
now his feet were loosened and hung dangling over the gulf.
There was no hope for him, he must fall--fall, and fall forever.
At this moment, when his burning hands clung to the rock, when his feet
were dangling in the air, when his blood-shot eyes, protruding from
their sockets, glared ghastily above, a new wonder attracted the gaze of
Aldarin.
A stairway, built of white marble, wide, roomy, and secure, seemed to
spring from the very rock to which he clung, and winding up from the
cataract, encircled by white and rainbow-hued clouds, was lost in the
distance, far, far above.
Aldarin beheld two figures slowly descending the stairway from the
distance--the figure of a warrior and the form of a dark-eyed woman.
As they drew near and nearer, he felt a strange feeling of awe gathering
round his heart.
He knew the figures, he knew them well.
Her face of beauty wore a smile, her dark eyes were brilliant as ever,
brilliant as when first he wooed and won her in the wilds of Palestine.
Yet there was blood upon her vestments near the heart; and _his_ lip was
spotted with one drop of thick red blood.
It was most fearful to see them thus calmly approach; it was most
terrible to recognize every line of their features, every part of their
vestments.
“This,” muttered Aldarin, “this indeed, is Hell.--And yet he must call
for aid, and call to the warrior and the woman. How the thought writhed
like a serpent round his very heart!”
He was sliding from the rock, slowly, yet certainly sliding. Another
moment and he would plunge below. There was but one hope. He might, by a
desperate effort, drag his carcass along the pointed rock: by a single
extension of his arm, his hand would grasp the lowest step of the
stairway.
He prepared himself for the effort, his feet hung dangling below, it is
true, and his body was gradually slipping, but he gathered all the
strength of his living corse for that single effort.
Slowly he passed his hand along the rock of bitumen, clutching the
red-hot masses of ore in the action, and with his heart all aflame, he
supported his trembling carcass with the other hand, and passed the
extended hand yet farther along the rock.
It wanted but a single inch, a little inch, and his hand would grasp the
marble of the stairway. And, yet that inch he could not compass with the
hand so nervously outstretched, all his strength had been expended in
the effort, and there he hung trembling on the verge of the abyss, when
had he but the additional vigor of a mere child, he might grasp the
stairway--he might be saved.
Another and a desperate effort! His fingers touched the carved
marble-work of the stair-way, but his strength was gone--he could not
hold it in his grasp.
With an eye of horrible intensity he looked above him, ere he made the
last effort. The figures stood before him on the second step of the
stairway. The woman, beautiful and bright-eyed, smiled, and the stern
warrior shared her smile.
“Thou, thou wilt save me Ilmerine--my wife, my love, thou
wilt--drag--drag--my hand to thee, and I can reach the staircase.”
She stooped, the beautiful woman, she reached forth a fair and lily
hand, she grasped the blackened fingers of Aldarin.
“Thanks, beautiful Ilmerine. I have wronged thee, but--the SECRET--a
little nearer--drag--drag my hand--a moment--and I will grasp the
staircase--I will be saved.”
She placed his fingers round a projecting ornament of the staircase, his
grasp was tight and desperate.
“Ascend!” she cried in a sweet and soft-toned voice.
“Julian--oh, Julian--grasp this hand--aid me, oh Julian my brother!”
The figure of the Warrior slowly stooped and seized the other hand, and
drawing it towards the staircase, wound the fingers round another piece
of the carved work of the staircase.
“Ascend, Aldarin, brother of mine, ascend!” cried his deep toned and
awful voice.
“Ascend, brother of mine, I would, but my strength fails--seize me, by
the body, and drag me from this rock of terror--oh, seize me.”
The Warrior seized Aldarin by the shoulder, and dragged him slowly along
the rock, but the flesh he clenched, crumbled in his grasp. Aldarin
again trembled over the verge of the abyss--the blow of a single straw,
might suffice to hurl him into the world below.
“Julian my brother. Ilmerine my wife, save me--oh, save me!”
The woman, dark-haired and beautiful, stooped, she slowly unwound the
fingers of Aldarin from the ornament of the staircase. And as she
unwound finger after finger, she looked upon his horror-stricken face
and smiled, and pointed to the red-wound near her heart. He returned her
smile with a ghastly grimace, he looked to the Warrior, and tightened
the grasp of his other hand.
“Thou Julian, wilt save me--thou wilt not unwind my fingers, thou wilt
hurl this beautiful demon aside.”
“Aldarin my brother!” said the Figure in a voice of awe, as kneeling on
the lowest step of the staircase, he cast the glance of his full and
burning eyes upon the livid visage of Aldarin, while for a
moment he wound the folds of his robe yet closer around his
warrior-form.--“Aldarin, my brother, I will save thee.”
He smiled--Aldarin returned his smile.
“Reach me thy hand, Julian, thy hand, or I perish.”
The Warrior slowly reached forth his hand, from beneath the folds of his
cloak, he held it before the face of Aldarin, and the eyes of the doomed
man saw that the fingers clenched a Goblet of Gold, that shone and
glimmered thro’ the air, like a beacon-fire of hell.
“Oh--FIEND--THE DEATH-BOWL!”
As these words shrieked from Aldarin’s livid lips, he drew back from the
maddening sight, with horror, he missed his hold, he slid from the
rock--HE FELL.
* * * * *
A thousand fires burned before his eyes, ten thousand horrid sounds fell
on his very brain, serpents loathsome and noxious crawled thro’ his
hair, all around, above and beneath was fire, waves of flame eating into
his soul, sky of brass, burning his eyes from their sockets, all was
fire and horror and death, and--still he fell.
And a hoarse hollow voice, rising above the murmurs of the damned, spoke
forth the words--“_Forever and Forever_--” and all hell gave back the
echo--“EVER, EVER, EVER!”
Still he fell! The whirlpool sucked him within its circles of flame,
around and around he dashed, with the bodies of the living dead floating
over him, with ghastly faces, upturned to his vision, with foul arms,
clenching him in a loathsome embrace, around and around he dashed,
joining in the low, deep murmur of the damned, and his heart gave back
the murmur. This, This, is hell!
* * * * *
Suddenly all was dark. Aldarin heard no sound, no murmur of the lost.
All was dark, all was still. He touched his brow, and was amazed to find
it untortured by flame. Yet big beaded drops of sweat stood from his
forehead, his frame was chilled, a feeling of unutterable AWE was upon
him, he feared to stir. He had been dreaming. His dream was past, his
consciousness gradually returned, he found himself reclining among the
foul remnants of decay, amid the carcasses of the dead.
He drooped his head low on his bosom, his face rested on his knees, his
arms were folded across his eyes, and there in that lone chamber, while
the silent hours of the night wore on, with his own weird soul, communed
ALDARIN THE FRATRICIDE.
CHAPTER THE SEVENTH.
THE CELL OF THE DOOMED.
THE DOOMSMAN.
“He dies at daybreak--ha, ha, ha--he dies by the wheel.”
And as he laughed, the man-at-arms, Hugo, let fall the end of his pike
upon the dark pavement, and the sound echoed along the gloom of the
gallery, like thunder, every arch repeating the echo, and every nook and
corner of the obscure passage taking up the sound, until, an indistinct
murmur swelled from all sides, and the voices of the Invisible seemed
whispering from the old and blood-stained walls.
“He dies at daybreak! Right, Hugo--the Goblet and the Ring, sent him to
the doomsman!”
“And I--I--the Doomsman will have his blood! How looked he, good
Balvardo, when the sentence of the Duke rang thro’ the hall--“Death,
Death to the Parricide?” Quailed he or begged for mercy!”
“Quail? ‘Slife I’ve seen the eye of the dying war-horse, when the
poisoned arrow was in his heart, and the death-cry of his master in his
ears, but the mad glare of his eye never thrilled me, like the deep
glance of this--murderer! Blood of the Turk, his eye burned like a
coal!”
“Tell me, tell me, how was the murder fixed upon him? Who laid it to his
hands?”