against his clenched hands, making the narrow cell all alive with his
shriek--
“Spare; oh spare me--_this_!”
As he bowed low on the floor, a singular sound--most singular in such a
place--met his ear. It was but a low sound, yet it was a fearful one.
_He heard the deep breathing of a living creature._
It might be the echo of his own broken gasps, the thought flashed over
the mind of Adrian, and for a moment he held his breath, and listened
with all his soul absorbed in the result. Again the deep breathing of a
human creature met his ear--
“Is it man or devil?” thus ran the thoughts of Adrian--“Mayhap he may
give me water to quench my thirst, or mayhap he will--ha, ha,--take my
accursed life. Could I but speak--for my voice does nought but
murmur--I’d even ask him to plunge his poignard in my heart.”
A whizzing sound disturbed the air, and at the very instant the blow of
a sword descended on the left arm of Adrian Di Albarone, while a heavy
body fell to the floor, within two paces of the spot where he knelt.
“The blood flows from the wound,” the glad thought darted over the mind
of the Buried-Alive, “Would I had strength to tear the doublet-sleeve
from the arm, then I might drink my own blood. Yet hold--the blood oozes
through the gash in the sleeve, and, and Great * * *! I may drink my own
blood!”
He raised the wounded arm to his mouth and greedily drank the blood.
In a moment he felt the influence of the draught.
His veins seemed fired with new life, his brain became for the moment
calm and clear, his heart regained its vigor, and gifted with temporary
strength he arose on his feet, grasping the sword of the unknown in his
good right hand.
Another moment passed, and with his right hand he wound a bandage of
linen, torn from his bosom, around the wounded arm, securing it by a
knot tied with the teeth and hand.
Meanwhile he heard the sound of panting breath, not two paces distant
from the spot where he stood, and as he listened a deep-muttered groan
broke on his ear.
Calling all his powers of mental and physical vigor to his aid he spoke
in a faint yet determined voice--
“Who art thou?” he exclaimed.
“Thy murderer!” was the gasping response.
“How long hast thou been in this place of death?”
“Long--enough--to starve! Hell and devils! I burn--thirst--starve!”
“What wouldst thou have?”
“Bread, bread! Water--I’d sell my soul for water!”
“Wherefore didst thou strike me?”
“I thought ye a spirit--and--and--I wanted to test your quality. Kill
me, an’ thou art a man of flesh and blood--kill me, kill me!”
“Thy voice is strange and hollow, yet methinks I remember your tones.
Thy name is--Balvardo!”
“‘Twas I that swore thy life away, ’twas I that brought thee to these
vaults to bury thy corse beneath the earth--kill me, kill me!”
“Is there no opening to this vault?”
“A secret door--a passage--the spring, that opens on the other side--the
spring that shuts--on this side. I--ha, ha, may hell seize my soul, I
buried myself alive--and kill me!”
Adrian shuddered--and grew cold. He could hear the gasping of the poor
wretch as he struggled for breath, he could hear the groans of his
unseen assassin; well he knew that long absence from nourishment from
food alone could lay the sworder helpless as an infant along the floor.
And as his mind struggled with the mighty horrors that gathered round
him, his attention was arrested by a singular circumstance.
While the hushed and whispered conversation had been in progress between
Adrian and Balvardo, the room had been gradually growing warmer and
warmer, and at last the walls became heated, the ceiling emitting a
warmth almost insupportable, while the confined air of the cell grew
like the atmosphere of a furnace.
“What new horror is this!” faltered Adrian. “Tell me, how hast thou
existed thus long in this vault of death, without air?”
“A well,” gasped the wretch, “centre of the stone-room--current of air
from under the earth.”
Impressed by these incoherent words, Adrian advanced slowly along the
floor, avoiding the prostrate body, and in a moment stood near the
centre of the room.
He extended his foot--it touched a substance that gave back a slight
sound; it was his coffin.
Another extension of his foot, and a whizzing sound assailed his ears,
ploughing the air far, far below his feet, then the rebound of wood
splinttered to pieces on a pointed rock came welling up from
earth-hidden depths and echoed around the room.
He listened with hushed breath for a long and weary moment.
The sound of a pebble falling in water, far, far below, came dimly and
faintly to his ear, like the pattering of the water-drop upon the
age-worn rock.
“Ha! A well, deep as the fathomless abyss, sinks down from the centre of
the room. Let me measure its width--two good paces. The coffin has
whirled down into its bottomless depths--I hear the splintered pieces
falling in the water far, far below. A slight current of air issues from
the well--and the heat of this vault of death grows fiercer every
moment--”
“Kill me, and then thank God thou hast strength left to hurl thee down
the dark abyss---- I burn, oh, fiend of hell, with thirst and flame I
burn!”
Adrian sate him down on the edge of the well, with his feet dangling in
the abyss, and gave his very soul to one long and painful effort of
thought.
Death clutched him with a thousand arms, death was in the heated air,
death came gibbering and laughing in the form of famine, and from the
very depths of the abyss the doomed lord could fancy he beheld the form
of the Skeleton-God, with arms outstretched to grasp his victim as he
fell.
There was no hope.
He must die. He must die afar from the voice of friend, afar from the
sight of earth, or the vision of the blue sky, he must die by the slow
gnawings of famine, the gradual withering of fire, or by one sudden
plunge into the abyss below.
He sate him down to die--his arms were folded, and yet with an eager
gesture he held his face over the darkness of the abyss in the nervous
effort to inhale each breath of air.
He strove to compose his mind to prayer, but the gasping of the wretch
lying near his side diverted his attention from thoughts of God and the
better world.
“Why didst thou hate me?” he slowly asked.
“I was afraid--thou--wouldst--live to do me wrong. Thou art revenged--I
die by inches!”
The wretch groaned in very agony, and Adrian could hear his fingers
clutching convulsively along the floor of stone.
“My God, my God,” cried the doomed lord, as his very soul was wrung by
the woe of the forsaken wretch; “would I had one cup of water to cool
his burning tongue--”
“Ha--ha--ha! He mocks me with the name of water! Tell me, thou fiend, is
_he_ not revenged?”
“The heat grows fiercer--the air of this vault is turning to fire! He
gasps for breath. Man give me thy hand. Let me drag thee near the
well--the freshening air may cool the fire in thy heart and veins.”
And extending his hands through the darkness, with his body inclined to
a level with the pavement, he sought the form of the famine stricken
sworder.
He grasped the hands of the wretch; the fingers were thin and wasted,
resembling the bones of a skeleton rather than the hands of a living
man.
Slowly and with a careful motion Adrian dragged the dying man along the
pavement, he laid his head on his knee, as he sat on the verge of the
well, and passed his hand over the massive brow of his assassin.
He shuddered in the very act. Clear and distinct, the harsh outline of
the withered brow, pressed against his hand, and he could feel the eye
sunken far in its socket, and the cheeks hollowed by the touch of
famine. It was more like a skull than the face of a living man.
“I feel the fresh air on my brow,” gasped Balvardo; “my feet are
withering with heat, and mine hands burn! Oh fiend of hell--I see a
fountain, a cool and showery fountain--the clear waters are streaming
over pebbled stones, and the green moss is wet with the sparkling drops.
Hist! I will crawl to the fountain side, I will bury my face in the
waters--ha, ha, ha, I will drink, I will drink! Fiend, fiend--curses on
thee, thou hast changed the waters to _blood_!”
He uttered a wild yell of horror, and the vault of the dead gave back
the echo--“Blood, blood!” while Adrian passed his hands over the
beetle-brow of the murderer, and parting the matted hair aside, held the
famine-eaten face in the full current of the subterranean air.
All was dark as chaos ere the fiat of God spoke worlds into being, yet
here was a spectacle that the angels of His throne, veiling their awful
faces before the Presence, might gaze upon even through the darkness,
and gaze with tears of joy. Here was the assassin, the sworder, the
false-witness, and the sworn foe, resting in the arms of the man whose
body his oath had given to the doomsman and the wheel; whose footsteps
he had tracked like the bloodhound snuffing the footprints of his
victim, fierce, unrelenting, and hungering after blood; here was the
wretch who had borne him to this vault, placed his body in the house of
death, consigned him to the famine and the fire, the nameless horror and
the agony that the cheek grows livid to name; here was the man who had
buried him alive, and yet he held him in his arms, fanned his withered
face, and brought the fresh air to his parched lips and burning brow.
It was as the sworder had gaspingly uttered a fierce revenge, and yet
such vengeance as the Man of the Cross, the God shrined in flesh, would
have taken on his most blood-thirsty foe.
The end drew nigh.
The moments, those moments of horror, which seemed lengthened to years,
dragged on with steps of lead, and the room grew like a furnace, the
walls gave forth an intolerable heat. The ceiling rapidly became a
canopy of invisible fire, as the air itself changed to unseen fire,
began to burn into the flesh of Adrian, as the wretch in his arms
writhed and writhed in helpless agony.
“Water--water--water!” gasped the Sworder.
A thought flashed over the mind of Adrian.
“There may be water in this well--a fountain may spring bubbling from
its depths, while we perish on the brink! The way is deep and dark--a
single misplaced grasp or foothold, and my body goes whirling to the
abyss below; yet I am urged on by a power I cannot name--I will descend
the well!”
A moment and the head of Balvardo lay on the pavement of the stone-room,
while the body of Adrian hung swinging in the abyss, as, with his hands
grasping the projecting stones, he began that fearful descent.
“I go to bring thee water!” he shouted in the ear of the famished
wretch--“I go to bring thee water for thy burning tongue and brow.”
“Then, take this--_this_--” was the gasping response, and Adrian felt a
substance of metal pressed against his brow by an extended hand; “‘twill
hold the--the water, or, ha, ha,--the blood!”
Hanging over the abyss by the grasp of one trembling hand, Adrian seized
the metal substance with the other.
It was a goblet, a goblet of gold, embossed with strangely shapen
flowers, and heraldic insignia, and as Adrian placed the vessel within
the confines of his doublet, a shudder of horror caused his frame to
quiver over the unknown void.
It was the goblet of the Red Chamber.
First grasping a pointed stone with one hand, then inserting his foot in
a crevice of the masonry, then clutching another stone with the other
hand, while his remaining foot rested in another crevice, he slowly
began the fearful descent of the well.
“This then is the foul den of torture, built by the tyrants of Florence,
long, long ago!” The thought crossed his brain. “The well hath been
fashioned by the tools of the mason, yet the damp has worn deep hollows
between the rugged stones. Hark!” he uttered the involuntary
exclamation, “a stone has fallen from my grasp--I hear no sound--none,
none! The abyss may be without bottom or depth. Hist! a hollow murmur
breaks the silence of the air, far, far, below--the stone has sounded
the depth of the well!”
“Water, water--men or devils, give me water!” the shrieking tones of the
wretch in the stone-room came faintly to his ear. “Ha, ha! Thanks,
thanks--they hand me a cup, a cup of good, clear water, and I drink--oh,
horror, horror,--it turns to blood!”
With every nerve quivering, his hand trembling as he grasped the
stones, his foot shaking with a nervous tremor as it sought the crevice
which might give it momentary support, Adrian continued his terrible
descent, until some twenty yards of the subterranean well rose above his
head, while the low moans, the piercing shrieks, and the hollow laughter
of the Sworder came fainter, and yet more faint to his ear.
Extending his foot in search of a crevice, he was astonished to find it
resting on a solid rock, that hung jutting over the abyss, at a point
where the well, diverging from its perpendicular course, made a slight
inclination to the opposite side.
Grasping the rugged stones with the eager clutch of his trembling hands,
Adrian hung swinging over the abyss, as with extended feet, he examined
the formation of the well at this particular point, and tested the
extent of the jutting rock.
He looked over his shoulder, and a wild thrill of surprise ran over his
frame.
“Mine eyes burn with famine,” he slowly murmured; “they deceive me!
Great God they mock me with a wild dream--I fancy the well grows lighter
and lighter--but ’tis a dream, a mocking dream!”
As he spoke, a cold substance pressed against the palm of his right hand
as it grasped the stone--it moved and writhed, while a hissing sound
broke on the ear. Two points of flame, like minute yet intensely
brilliant fire coals, glared before the very eyes of Adrian, and as the
hissing grew louder, he found that a vile serpent wriggled between the
fingers of his right hand.
With a sensation of unutterable disgust, he suspended his body by the
left hand, and dashed the monster down the abyss with one quick motion
of his hand.
The impulse with which he flung the serpent from his grasp, caused his
body to quiver and tremble over the abyss, while the sinews of the left
hand seemed bursting from the skin, as with the nervous grasp of
despair, the doomed lord strove to recover the stone lately clutched by
the other hand.
With one wild sweep he regained his grasp, springing heavily on the
jutting rock in the action, while a deep rumbling sound disturbed the
silence of the well. Another moment passed. Well was it for Adrian that
he had refrained from trusting to the rock for support. The massive
stone slowly swung to and fro, trembling over the depths of the well,
and then with a crash like thunder, went whizzing down the abyss.
Up, up, from the fathomless depths, thundering and shrieking, arose the
deafening echoes, yelling like spirit-voices in the ear of the trembling
man, as he swayed to and fro over the blackness of the void.
It was a moment ere Adrian might recall his wandering thoughts.
He looked over his shoulder, he gazed upon the opposite side of the
well. God of Mercy, was it a dream, a phantasmal creation of fancy, a
mocking delusion of his crazed brain? There, before his very eyes,
gilding the opposite side of the wall, a golden space, large as the
human hand, shone in his very face.
“It is the light of day!” muttered Adrian, as his heart rose to his very
throat; “it is, it is the light of day!”
“Ha, ha, ha! water!” the shriek came yelling from the room far, far, far
above--“water, water!”
Grasping the stones below, Adrian descended another yard, when a ray of
light shone on his face from a crevice in the wall to which he hung,
trembling with a new joy, quivering in every nerve with a new life.
He thrust his right hand into the hollow of the crevice, and as a large
flat stone fell echoing before him, a gush of light streamed through the
wide aperture into the darkness of the abyss.
“I stand within a rock-bound passage!” exclaimed Adrian, “‘tis narrow as
the grave, narrow as a coffin, yet twenty yards beyond I see the light
of day! Great God give me strength; do not, do not fail me now!
Strength, a little strength, and I may yet be saved!”
Prostrate upon the floor of the narrow passage, which the falling stone
had disclosed, he turned his body, and, thrusting his face into the
gloom of the well, once more gazed far, far above.
“Murderer that he is, I will not desert him!” he cried; “he has been my
comrade in the living tomb--he shall be my comrade in the light of God’s
own day!”
No sooner did the words pass his lips, than a shriek of intense horror,
came pealing down the abyss, a mass of red fire crowned the summit of
the well, and hot cinders, and burning coals swept through the darkness
of the void, hissing by the very face of Adrian, and marking their
flight with long lines of streaming flame.
Adrian withdrew his head from the well and listened.
A low moan, a choking groan, and then a succession of yells, resounded
through the void. Then the crackling of flames, then the falling of
age-cemented masonry; then a wild shriek, and then a voice of horror--
“I burn, I burn! oh fiend of hell, I burn!”
The air was cloven by the rushing of a falling body, and thundering down
the well, with arms outspread, with his face all crushed and blackened,
stamped with a look of agony that might never be forgotten, Balvardo was
for a moment disclosed by the light shining through the aperture, before
the very eye of Adrian, and then there was a hissing noise, followed by
a sullen rebound, and then all was still.
The soul of Balvardo, the Sworder, stood beside the soul of his master
in the judgment halls of the Unknown.
“Away, away!” shouted Adrian, maddened by the memory of that
despair-stricken face; “away from this earth-hidden hell! Strength, my
God, oh give me strength, and I may yet be saved!”
Creeping on hands and knees, he advanced along the subterranean passage,
the light growing brighter at every step, and at last the twenty paces
were left behind, he crawled from the rock, he stood in the open air.
His voice failed him, he gazed around.
Far, far above him, ascended the gray steep on which the Convent was
reared, far, far above him, he beheld the blue sky, tinted with the glow
of the dying day, he beheld the platform rock and the frowning tower,
wrapt in clouds of lurid smoke, while tongues of forked flame, swept up
to the very azure, turning the glow of the setting sun to bloody red.
He stood on the side of a ravine, with the darkness of the abyss yawning
beneath him, while the rugged ascent of rocks on the opposite side rose
towering before his eye, veiling the mountain lake from his sight, and
giving a faint glimpse of the eastern sky.
Dark and dreary, tangled with gnarled shrubs, rough with rifted rocks, a
score of fathoms down, sunk the wild abyss, with the hills, or rather
the overhanging cliff gathering around its blackness, like the sides of
one vast death-bowl of ebony.
In truth it looked like the crater of an extinct volcano.
With a glance Adrian beheld the smoke and flame, the Convent and the
blue sky above, the glimpse of the eastern horizon, the rocks ascending
on the opposite side of the ravine, and the blackness of the abyss
below, and then his soul was riveted to a spectacle of horror extended
at his very feet.
There before his very eyes, a mangled carcass was thrown along the
surface of a rugged rock, the trunk, the limbs, the arms, the garments
and draperies of gold, all mingled in one foul mass of corruption, while
the face was buried amid a cluster of stunted shrubs of laurel.
Adrian reached forth his hand, he raised the face, he beheld the blue
tint of corruption, the eyes lolling from their sockets, the blackened
tongue hanging from the mouth!--
“The Duke,” he shrieked, “the Duke of Florence!”
He turned from the sight with intolerable disgust, and as he turned, he
beheld appearing from amid the shrubs, on the other side of the small
platform of sand on which he stood, a bared arm laid along the earth
grasping a keen and slender-bladed dagger, with a grasp that death and
corruption could not unclose.
Adrian sprang forward, he unwound the dagger from the grasp of the hand,
he beheld a parchment scroll secured around the haft of the glittering
steel. He tore the scroll from the dagger, he flung it open to the
light, and beheld these words written in a fair unwavering hand--
“Brothers of the Invisible! When this hand that writes these words is
cold in death, the scroll of Albertine the Monk, will tell the story of
his vengeance on the Tyrant-Duke.
“The midnight hour is now past--I go to plunge the dagger of the Holy
Steel in the Heart of the Doomed. Ask ye for the Heir of Albarone! Three
hours ago, ere the Duke arrived in the valley, I bade him farewell
forever. Midnight came, and I learned that the Son of Lord Julian was
about to meet his death in the vaults of the Convent.
“One way of rescue alone remained. Protected by my supposed love for the
Duke, I blinded the eyes of the assassin, and offered to do his work of
death. Then mingling a potion, which would minister sleep,--not
death,--I gave it to Lord Adrian--even now his bride gathers his
slumbering form to her embrace in the vaults of the Convent--even now
the assassin waits to bear the body to the grave.
“One hour from this ye will arrive in the valley, and your eyes will
behold the slumbering form of your Prince--the lifeless corse of the
Tyrant! I go to finish--”
The scroll broke off abruptly, yet there was enough written to fill the
heart of Adrian with an emotion of joy he had never felt before.
He sprang among the bushes, he dashed the laurel leaves aside, he turned
the blackening face of the mangled corse to the light. He clasped his
hands on high in silent prayer, while his burning tears fell streaming
over the face of Albertine the Monk.
Meanwhile gathered along the green sward of a level meadow, extending
from the Convent gates, to the south of the mountain lake, a band of
gallant warriors, reined their war-steeds upon the turf, their upraised
spears marking their numbers by long lines of glittering light.
A thousand banners waved in the sunset air, and the peal of bugle, and
the stirring notes of the trumpet went echoing upward among the old
convent walls wrapt in smoke, lighted by giant-pillars of blood red
flame.
In front of the band of warriors, a group of noble lords and high-born
dames, plumed cavaliers and gay-robed damsels,--all mounted on prancing
steeds, swept circling around the figure of a fair and beautiful Ladye,
whose jet-black barb, with its watchful groom, stood reined in their
midst.
Every tongue was silent, and every eye was fixed upon the death-like
paleness of the maiden’s countenance, contrasting strangely with the
gorgeous robes of purple and gold that drooped round her young and
lovely form.
Her head bowed slowly on the neck of her steed, and the tears of a
never-dying grief came gushing between the fair and delicate fingers
that strove to veil her face.
She wept, the fair Ladye Annabel, whose steed was about to spring
forward in the triumphal procession, that would soon give Florence its
lovely queen; the coronet was on her brow, the swords of a thousand
warriors were at her beck, and yet she wept.
Suddenly a wild murmur ran through the warrior-throng.
Uprising in the light of the burning Convent--that dark haunt of blood
and awe, now toppling to its foundation, a gray rock, its base concealed
by stunted shrubs, while its brow was turned to the flame-beams,
attracted the gaze of every eye, as a strange spectacle hushed the
whispers of every voice.
A hand, white as marble, was thrust from behind the rock, lifting a
goblet of gold in the light of the setting sun.
Deep muttered whispers broke along the warrior-throng, every voice spoke
of some new omen crowning the horrors of the convent during the last
hour of its existence, and the murmurs of the lords and ladies
clustering at her side, attracted the attention of the Ladye Annabel.
She slowly turned, she gazed upon the uplifted hand with the goblet of
gold rising above the verge of the gray rock--not more than twenty paces
from her side--she gazed in wonder and in awe.
And as she gazed, a wan and haggard face appeared above the rock, and a
wasted and trembling form, clad in garments of price all soiled and
torn, stood on the verge of the massive stone, flinging the goblet
wildly aloft, as a peal of maniac laughter came thrilling to the
maiden’s ear.
It was a solemn and impressive scene!