Adrian replied in a whisper, and then as they conversed in low murmurs,
the dame observed the form of her son agitated by a slight trembling
motion, while ever and anon he turned his head aside veiling his face in
his hands.
Nearer drew the dame, and looking over the heads of the students, a
tremor of surprise ran over her frame, her hands were involuntarily
raised, her thin lips parted, her gray eyes expanded, and her eyebrows
arose to the very roots of her hair. Silent she stood and motionless as
stone.
The evening being somewhat warm, the broach that fastened Florian’s
doublet at the neck, was unloosed, and the opening garment gave to view
a neck of the most surpassing whiteness, spreading into shoulders of
flowing outline, and budding into a bosom of virgin tracery of form, all
glowing with the warm blood of youth, and heaving with the pulsations of
passion.
CHAPTER THE SECOND.
THE CLOUD GATHERS AND THE SKY DARKENS.
The dame essayed to speak. Her voice died away in an unmeaning rattle of
the throat. One hand she extended, and seizing Leone by the shoulder,
with the other she tore the maiden from his embrace--
“Apostate!” she began in tones that trembled with rage, “is it thus thou
honorest the race whose name thou bearest. Away!--I will never look upon
thee more! Away!--and with thee take thy----, I will not speak the title
of shame;--Away!”
As she spoke she raised her hand to strike the shrinking maiden, who,
with head drooped on her bosom, and quick blushes coursing over her
face, strove hurriedly to fasten the broach of her doublet.
“Strike her not, mother!” cried Leone, throwing himself before the
damsel, “Assail her not with words of shame!”
He took the hand of the blushing maiden and continued--“Fear not, love,
there is none to harm thee. Mother, behold my bride!”
“Annabel!--Thy bride? Wherefore this concealment? Why this unmaidenly
disguise? How is’t, my son--how is’t?”
“As for the disguise it was assumed to aid her escape, and then,”--he
whispered into his mother’s ear--“and then I thought thou wouldst not
affect the niece of the--the--s’life, mother, I cannot speak the word of
any one connected with Annabel!”
“My son, my son! what hast thou done? Answer me--befits such doings with
thy profession? Art thou not intended for a minister of Heaven?”
While the dame spoke, the figure of a monk darkened the opened doorway,
advancing to Leone he threw back his cowl, and discovered the dark brow,
the wan face, the flashing eyes of Albertine, the monk.
“Lord Adrian,” whispered the Monk, “at the hour of sunset, when the dark
storm arose, howling its requiem over the remains of the Fratricide,
thou didst hasten from the castle of Albarone, bound for this lonely
valley. Thou hadst not gone an hour’s journey from the castle walls,
when I tracked thy footsteps, bearing news of fearful import. Thy haunt
hath been betrayed to the tyrant, by a traitor from the lonely valley.
Even now, the Duke spurs his steed toward the valley of the mountain
lake, attended by a band of minions; even now the voices of his bravoes
startle the air, shrieking for thy blood!”
“And the INVISIBLE?” whispered Adrian--“where is their dagger of
vengeance, while the tyrant rides abroad on his errands of wrong?”
“Listen, Lord Adrian! This very night, while the Duke is absent from the
walls of Florence, will Lord and Monk, Prince and Peasant, joined in the
solemn oath of the holy steel, arise in the might of men who have sworn
at the very Altar of God to be free, and ere the morrow’s sun, Florence
the Fair and Beautiful, will own another Sovereign! The Invisible work
in secret, as doth the earthquake--man alone beholds the bursting of the
storm!”
“Hark! I hear the sound of horses’ hoofs, mingled with the clatter of
arms!”
“God of Heaven! The Duke approaches!” shouted the Monk--“I must be
gone--all thought of escape for thee and thy bride is vain! Adrian,
Adrian, bear a firm heart through the perils of this night, and in the
morrow’s dawn will blaze the star of thy Mighty Fortune! Hath the Duke
any issue, or is he the last of his line?”
“He is the last of his race,” answered Adrian, “why dost thou ask?”
“Thou wilt learn anon!” exclaimed the Monk.
He turned and sought the door, but as if struck by a sudden thought, he
again approached Adrian, and whispered in tones that seemed to come from
his very soul--“Fare-thee-well, Adrian, fare-thee-well! I have loved
thee much, very much. There was a time when my heart was as young as
thine, my soul as pure. But now--Ha! _now_ I would have my revenge,
although the chasm of hell yawned beneath me--nay, although between me
and the object of my hate yawned the gulf of perdition, I would leap the
abyss and drag him down, down to the eternal flames that now hunger for
his accursed soul--Fare-thee-well, Adrian--I’ll never see thee more!”
The Monk was gone. The fearful look that fired his countenance, and the
awful tones in which he spoke, haunted Adrian Di Albarone until his
dying hour.
Scarcely had Albertine disappeared, when there was the sound of
trampling feet in the outer apartment, and presently the figure of his
Grace of Florence occupied the doorway, while the heads of his followers
were seen looking over his shoulders.
He looked around the apartment with a curious eye, as if he sought the
wanderers. At last his glance rested upon the form of the disguised
Annabel, and advancing toward the damsel, he flung himself at her feet,
exclaiming with all the grace of attitude and expression at his command.
“Fair Ladye, it is with joy beyond the power of words to tell, that I
hail thee by the title of the--Fair Ladye Annabel, Countess Di
Albarone!”
“How sayst thou?” exclaimed Annabel, forgetting her boyish disguise in
her eagerness, “How sayst thou? Ladye of Albarone?”
“Aye, fair Ladye. Thou art _now_ the Countess Di Albarone, soon shalt
thou be my own loved Annabel, Duchess of Florence.”
The Duke leaned earnestly forward, trying to look as much like a lover
as might be--his face wore an expression of deep solemnity, his
protruding eyes made an effort to sparkle, and his attempt to soften his
voice, gave one the idea of a magpie trying to sing.
Annabel cast an agonized look at the Duke--
“Sayst thou nought of my father?” she exclaimed. “Is he sick?--is he
ill?--Tell me that I may hurry to him!--For heaven’s sake tell me!--my
father is--”
“DEAD!” cried the Duke.
“Dead!” echoed the dame, starting with surprise.
Annabel heard no more.
“Coward and tyrant,” shouted Lord Adrian, as he caught the sinking
maiden in his arms, “away with thee from this humble tenement. Defile
not my bride with the pollution of thy touch--By the honor of my race! I
would give the brightest jewel in the coronet of Albarone, for one good
blow at the carcass of this craven hound!”
“Ho! art thou here my gay springald?--_Thy bride_, indeed?--Guards
advance, seize the miscreant!--I will teach him to raise his unholy hand
against his liege Lord!--away with him to the lowest dungeon of yon
convent. On the morrow he shall be carried to Florence, there to answer
for his treason!”
Unarmed and weaponless Adrian beheld himself at the mercy of the tyrant.
The soldiers advanced,--in vain was his defence--in an instant he found
himself in the hands of his foes, and as the minions bound his hands
behind his back, he heard the beetle-browed Balvardo--for he was among
the throng--whisper in the ear of the Duke--
“At what hour my Lord?”
“‘Slife canst not do it without my bidding?--When all in the convent is
still--at midnight let it be done!--See to’t!”
“Aye, aye, my Lord, at midnight it shall be done!”
“And the Bridal,” cried the Duke, turning to the Ladye Annabel, as she
rested in the arms of the Countess. “The hour after midnight shall
witness the joyous scene--the marriage of the Duke and his betrothed!”
CHAPTER THE THIRD.
THE DEATH BOWL.
THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE RAVISHER STARTLE THE SILENCE OF THE MAIDEN’S CELL,
WHILE ADRIAN PREPARES FOR HIS DOOM IN THE VAULTS BELOW.
It was in a lone chamber, where the dark walls, unrelieved by tapestry
or wainscotting, were rendered yet more sad and gloomy by the fitful
flashes of a taper, placed upon a small table of blackened oak.
The sable hangings of the couch standing in one corner, the floor of
stone, wearing the same dead and leaden hue, the massive furniture of
the room, and the grotesque carvings ornamenting the heavy pillars, all
were in unison with the grave-like silence of the air, which seemed
heavy with doom and burdened with death.
In the centre of the apartment, her white robes loosely flowing around
her peerless form, her fair and rounded arms upraised, her head slightly
inclined to one side, her cheek, now warm with hope, now pale with fear,
stood the Ladye Annabel. Her hair of sunshine luxuriance was swept back
over her neck and shoulders, while her bosom rose in the light, and her
breath came thick and fast, the convulsive gasps, breaking the
death-like silence of the apartment, with an echo of strange emphasis.
Sleep had fled from her eyelids. She arose and watched, she knew not
why, but still she watched and trembled as she listened to the slightest
sound.
“I listen, I tremble, and my heart is chilled with a nameless fear,”
murmured the Ladye Annabel, pacing the dark floor of the apartment with
indecisive and hurried steps. “The hour wears slowly on, the fatal hour
after midnight, when this unrelenting Duke will claim my hand, this hand
already given to another, by the minister of Heaven! Holy Mary! behold
the bridal--a lonely cell, hidden in the depths of this fearful
monastery, the altar of black, the dark-robed monk, the tyrant-Duke and
the victim; the time, the hour after the bell has tolled midnight, no
hope, no aid, afar from human consolation, or the voice of human
friend--such will be the second bridal of Annabel, wife of Adrian Di
Albarone!”
She paused with an involuntary thrill of fear, as the vivid details of
the picture rose before her mental vision, and then came another
thought of horror--_the bride must be widowed ere she weds a second
time_.
While dark and fearful imaginings haunted her soul, and well nigh crazed
her brain, the fair and gentle Ladye Annabel felt a strange and
deadening sleep stealing over her frame, and with a half-muttered prayer
to the Virgin, she sank slumbering on the couch, the hangings of sable
closing over her form, and concealing her from the sight.
All is silent within the cell. Low, suppressed sounds break from distant
parts of the monastery, half-heard shrieks, and deep-muttered groans.
For a dreary half hour, the cell is left to silence and solitude; when a
distant footstep is heard, then a strange echo runs along the corridors
of the Convent, and the small door of the lonely room, grating on its
hinges slowly opens, and a Figure, buried in the folds of a sweeping
robe of black, and bearing a small lamp of iron in an extended hand,
stalks cautiously along the floor of stone.
The Figure paused with a trembling and indecisive movement in the centre
of the floor, and then a face flushed by wine, and ruddy with
excitement, was thrust from the folds of the robe of black.
“All silent and still,” exclaimed a voice, indistinct with wine. “An
half hour of midnight--the sleeping potion has taken effect! It has, by
St. Antonia!”
He approached the bedside, and with the trembling hand of a coward,
flung back the sable hangings of the couch. The light of his lamp, fell
vividly upon the form of the sleeping maiden, as she reclined on the
sable furs covering the couch, while her flowing robes, white as the
undriven snow, gave a strange contrast to the ebony darkness of the bed.
“I’ faith she is beautiful--_eh, Aldarin?_ Faugh! _I forgot--the man is
dead!_ That bloom upon her cheek--’tis like the opening rose. How soft
that heave of the bosom as it rises from the folds of the white
robe--_torn to pieces by wild horses_--that arm, with the dress falling
softly around its outlines, the small hand, the tapering fingers--_a
most accursed fate_--and the attitude, the cheek reclining on the arm,
the form laid so carelessly along the couch, the feet, small,
delicate--_torn into a thousand fragments, an arm here, a leg there,
and_--By the Saints I must e’en crave a kiss of this sleeping beauty--”
And stooping slowly over the bed, with the lamp extended in one hand,
the Duke glanced nervously around the room, and then with a rude grasp
of the flaxen tresses, he wound the other around the maiden’s neck, his
unholy hands touched her virgin bosom, with its globes of beauty heaving
and throbbing as his fingers pressed the snow-white skin, while his
sensual lips, steaming with wine, were pressed upon her unstained cheek,
his grasp growing closer, and his eyes gloating over the Ladye’s face
and form, as that kiss of pollution rested on her cheek.
“Ha--ha!--the sleeping potion,--she is mine--she is mine. The braggart
Adrian hugs his death in the vaults below--I gather his bride to my arm
in the cell above. Ha--ha--the sleeping potion!”
No thought of mercy, no whispering of pity, no silent pleading of right,
for a moment restrained the purpose of the ravisher.
He gathered her form closer to that breast which had never been the home
of one ennobling thought, he wound his hand around her neck; again was
her bosom and cheek polluted by the plague-spot of his touch.
“She is mine!” chuckled the ravisher. “Mine, and none other than mine!”
The Ladye Annabel murmured in that fatal sleep, she tossed her rounded
arms wildly to and fro; the potion was in her veins, and around her
heart, and the nightmare on her soul.
Another start, and she awoke.
She slowly unclosed her large blue eyes, she fixed their glance upon the
flushed countenance of the ravisher, with a look that went to his very
soul, and caused the arm that encircled her form to tremble like a leaf
tossed to and fro by the wind.
“Murderer!”
The solitary word broke from her lips, and her look of wild gaze was
again fixed upon his face. He trembled before her glance--he quailed
like a whipped hound--he unloosed his hold.
“I am not,” he muttered, springing backward from the couch. “It was not
me. He is not dead; he lives--”
“Murderer!” she again murmured, in that low, deep-toned voice, while her
face of calm and dreamy beauty was stamped with a weird expression that
awed the ravisher to the very soul.
“Even now thy evil angel writes thee liar, in the book of thy misdeeds.
Even now thy victim writhes in the throes of death within the vaults
below; ay, ay, beneath thy very feet he dies. Why stand ye over the
corse? Doth not the pale face and the cold brow fright ye? On whom is
fixed the glare of those stony eyes--on whom? On thee, murderer, on
thee; on thee they glare with the accusing glance of death!”
“She is crazed! Save me, all good saints--she is crazed! She sweeps
toward me with a measured stride! Great God! she walks not--she glides
slowly on; she moves like a spirit--a thing of air!”
He shrunk back, cringing before the glance of those eyes from which all
reason had fled; he shrunk back step by step as she advanced, awed by
the upraised arms, with the robes of white waving slowly to and fro;
awed by the supernatural look visible in every line of the face of the
Ladye Annabel, and in a moment found himself leaning for support against
a dark stone pillar of the cell.
“Murderer!” she murmured, looking him full in the face. “I hear thy
victim groan, I hear him writhe. Look ye, good angels, he denies it, and
look, look how the red blood drops from his trembling hands!”
With that look which filled him with involuntary horror, she glided
backward step by step, she reached the small door of the cell, and flung
it open with her outspread hands.
“He denies it, he denies it; and the blood--ha, ha, ha!--hark how it
patters on the floor!”
With that low, muttered laugh which chilled his very blood, for it was
the laugh of madness, the Ladye Annabel again awed the Duke of
Florence--the ravisher in heart--with her gaze, and then springing
through the cell door, her form, with its waving robes of snow, was lost
to his sight.
He saw her form no more, but a low muttered laugh came whispering along
the galleries of the monastery, and half-formed words broke on his ear.
“Where is now the ravisher, flushed with wine and maddened with lust;
where is now the proud Duke, haughtily attired in robes of price, with
dishonor on his heart, and the foul purpose on his soul?”
Crouching against the wall, trembling in every limb, his eyes vacant
with terror, his whiskered jaw half dropped upon his heart, his hand
still nervously grasping the iron lamp, he listens to the low, muttered
laugh creeping to his ear from the far distant corridors; he listens and
shakes with fear, but says no word.
Along the dark galleries she flees, filling the old arches with echoes
of that low muttered laugh; through the midnight passages she winds,
stairways she ascends, and her delicate feet descend the dampened steps
of stone; alone, in darkness, and in nameless fear, she glides on her
flight of terror.
The cool air sweeps over her fevered brow, the dampness of the
atmosphere chills her bosom, and by slow degrees the flight of madness,
caused by the drugged potion, passed from her soul, and the Ladye
Annabel is restored to reason and to thought.
Oh! fearful reason, oh! terrible thought, to which madness were joy,
insanity, in its wildest flight, happiness the most intense.
“The bride must be widowed, ere she weds a second time!”
She rushed on, never heeding the darkness; she rushed on, never heeding
the cold. She might save him yet; oh! even yet she might save him.
And through the dark passages of that deserted part of the monastery she
wound, until her hands, extended on either side, touched the opposite
walls, wet with moisture, and crawling with vermin; when the echo of the
arches, succeeded by a dead, deafening murmur, told Annabel that she
strode along a confined corridor, far under ground, growing narrow and
yet narrower at every step.
A moment passed, and her extended hands were met by waving folds of
tapestry, that swept across her path, and terminated the narrow
corridor. Thrusting her hands eagerly among the hangings, she turned
them suddenly aside, and started back with surprise, as a broad belt of
light was thrown along the gloomy passage. With hushed breath and a
throbbing heart, she gazed beyond the hangings of dark leather, and
while her blue eyes dilated with wonder and fear, she beheld a strange
and startling scene.
Two figures were kneeling upon the floor of an apartment, narrow and
confined, as regards dimensions, and square in shape, hung with gorgeous
folds of embroidered tapestry, dark-green in hue, with matting of
strange pattern and curious device, brought from the far Eastern lands,
strewn over the pavement of the room. The only object that broke the
uniformity of the place, was a dark robe flung over some massive body in
an obscure corner.
* * * * *
The light, clear and brilliant in its flame, placed on the matting
between the kneeling men, threw its vivid beams on each face and form,
over every line of their features, over every point of their apparel.
The Ladye Annabel stifled an expression of surprise which rose to her
lips at the vision of this luxuriously furnished cell, in the midst of
gloom and damp, and then with a writhing heart took in the details of
this strange picture.
One of the kneeling figures was a soldier, the other was a monk.
The soldier, with his muscular hand laid on his bent knee, grasped a
massive sword; his beetle brow surmounted by stiff and matted hair,
giving a darker expression to his small and ferret-like eyes; while his
companion, robed in the dark attire of a monk, with a pale, solemn face,
lighted by the glare of an eye that seemed to dilate and burn, looked
upon the man-at-arms with a glance meant to read more than the rugged
visage--meant to read his very soul.
The Ladye Annabel listened to their low and muttered conversation with
her very heart mounting to her throat.
“Thou wilt do it--eh, Albertine? Thou knowest my orders, sir monk?”
“The steel or the bowl?”
“The same, by the fiend! The hour--when the clock of the tower strikes
twelve. He said so--thou knowest whom I mean. Why that dark and bitter
smile? Blood o’ th’ Turk, monk, that smile shows thy white teeth--I like
it not!”
“Nay, good Balvardo, be not angered with me. I was but painting a quiet
picture to my fancy. Our victim, his eyes rolling in the death-struggle,
his blue lips whitened with foam, his arms outstretched with the last
convulsive spasm, and then--ha, ha!--the music of the death rattle! ’Tis
excellent, i’faith, the picture--ha, ha, ha!”
“Look ye, monk or devil, whate’er ye be, I’m your man, when a good deed
of cut-and-thrust is to be done, and the wretch is despatched with a
blow. But as for this merry-making over the dead, I like it not. Blood
o’ Mahound, not a whit of it! I can wet my sword in a man’s blood as
nicely as your next man, but it likes me not to wet my tusks with the
vile puddle, and grin while the red drops fall from my lips. No more o’
your death grins, monk, or--’s death!--we quarrel!”
“Ho--ho--ho! so the humor suits ye not, _honest_ Balvardo. Dost know the
depth of the sea, or the number of the millions slain by old Death? Then
know the hate I bear _my_ victim; then count the lives I would crush in
my revenge, had he as many as the millions trampled under the feet of
Death! Is’t not cause for merriment, _good_ Balvardo?”
“Look ye, sir monk, thou hast ever been known as the prime tool of his
grace,--’s life! I should mention no names,--and therefore do I resign
my part in this night’s work to thy hands. When ’tis done, thou
knowest--”
“Where shall I place the body?”
“Here!” cried the hoarse voice of the soldier, and the Ladye Annabel saw
him rise; she beheld him striding across the matted floor, toward an
obscure corner of the apartment; she beheld him as he placed his rough
hand upon the dark robe flung over the rising object.
“Here let him rest,” he cried, raising the robe, “and rest forever!”
The Ladye Annabel beheld a sight that gathered the big drops of sweat
thick as the death dew on her forehead. Her heart was swelled to
bursting, and she turned away from the sight for a single moment, with
the impulse of overpowering horror.
When she looked again, the black cloth was again resting on that object
of terror, while Balvardo was advancing toward the monk with his usual
heavy and measured stride.
“Hast aught to hold the wine, _good_ Balvardo?”
“In yonder closet thou wilt find the wine. Here is--curse this cloak,
how its folds tangle about my body!--here is the goblet.”
The Ladye Annabel felt the death-like feeling of ice creeping around her
heart; and as she looked, she thought she beheld the monk Albertine grow
pale with horror, while his compressed lip seemed to tell a story of
fearful yet hushed emotion.
_The goblet held forth in the hand of the Sworder, was the goblet of
gold with which the poisoner of the Red Chamber had administered death
to the lips of Julian, Lord of Albarone._
“Man!” exclaimed Albertine, with a blazing eye and livid lip, “how came
this goblet--this death-bowl--in thy possession?”
“‘Slife! Dost not know the story? One of the witnesses who gave
testimony against that--that--I mean _he_ who sleeps in yonder
chamber--received this goblet as a mark of the accuser’s gratitude. I
was that witness. Blood o’ th’ Turk, there goes the clock--one, two,
three. Sir monk, to thy duty.”
“Father of mercy, he is false at last!”
And as the words broke from the Ladye Annabel’s lips, she beheld the
monk take the goblet in his hands; she beheld him empty a paper filled
with white powder into its depths.
She could look no more; a cold, icy feeling seemed to freeze the very
blood around her heart; her limbs refused their support; she sank slowly
down upon the damp floor, and yet the words spoken in the adjoining room
came to her ear like the echo of far-off shouts.
“Four, five, six. Monk, wilt delay all night? To thy victim!”
The monk strode across the cell, holding the goblet under his robe; he
approached a spot where the tapestried hangings, slightly swept aside,
disclosed the entrance into another room.