Part 25

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!

There swept the knightly host along the green meadow, their spears gleaming on high, there darkened the smoke and lightened the blaze of the burning convent, there the calm lake extending ripples along its mountain-shores, gave its still bosom to the crimson glare of the flame, and there standing erect upon the brow of the gray rock, his slender form boldly and clearly relieved by the background of the convent walls, the light of the flame, the beams of the setting sun; Adrian Di Albarone, crazed by famine, and maddened with new-born joy, shook wildly aloft the Goblet of Gold, while his maniac laugh broke echoing on the evening air.

CHAPTER THE LAST.

THE CATHEDRAL OF FLORENCE.

THE TASK OF THE WEIRD SPIRIT IS DONE--THE CURTAIN OF FATE FALLS OVER THE TRAGEDY OF THE HOUSE OF ALBARONE.

Joy to Florence now, oh joy to the fair city in her streets and through her lordly halls, joy to the prince of the palace and the peasant of the cot, joy to the mountain and the dell, joy to the hill and the valley, joy to the silvery river, joy to the homes of men, joy to the shrines of God, joy, joy, forever joy!

The Duke, the people’s Duke is come to reign! Baptized by trial, chosen by the People, crowned by the Invisible, anointed by God, he comes to reign!

--So, after many pages of varied and peculiar interest writes the Chronicle of the Ancient MSS. in his extravagant way.

There are light voices filling the air, there are soft steps tripping through the lordly halls, there are costly draperies sweeping over marble floors, there are strains of music awaking the echoes of ancient domes, there are processions thronging the streets in all the pomp of crucifix and banner, gallant knights ride to and fro, shaking the glitter of their snowy plumes aloft, the poor creep from their dens of want, the mighty pour from their homes of pride, the sordid miser forgets his money bags, the merchant his wares of cost, the scholar his musty book, the bravo his knife, the children of misery their care, and all, aye all, come thronging to the high Cathedral of Florence, when the solemn priest will, ere an hour, amid the glad shouts of thousands, anoint Adrian Di Albarone, Lord Duke of Florence, and crown his fair bride, the Ladye Annabel, with the coronet for which Aldarin gave his soul.

It is morning, glad and joyous morning, the calm azure arches over the fair city, gorgeous with temple-dome and palace tower, while the gay people hasten to the grand Cathedral, anxious to behold the Duke and his fair bride.

THE POSTILLION AND THE BUXOM DAMSELS.

And there tripping merrily along were three peasant damsels, arrayed in their holiday attire, and with them a bow-legged youth attired as a postillion, strutted on his way with extended stride and lofty air, which seemed to say, that all this parade and show, was made for his sole benefit and especial amusement.

“Sancta Maria! How he trips it along!” thus spoke the tallest of the damsels “beshrew, but Sir Francisco is wondrous proud, since he was knighted by the Duke!”

“How! knighted?” cried the damsel of the merry black eye.

“What mean you?” cried the red-haired maiden, and the bow-legged postillion looked over his shoulder with a vacant stare.

“Was he not honored with the collar, the hempen collar?” cried the tall maiden. “Did not that rough soldier of the Count Di Albarone that was, the Duke of Florence that is now, did not Rough Robin knight Sir Francisco with his own hands? How dull you are!”

“Ugh!” exclaimed the postillion shrugging his shoulders. “What unpleasant things you do remember! And yet the Duke said something very flattering, when he directed the rope to be taken from my neck. He said, says he, he said, I tell you--that I--

“Was a little impertinent, insignificant, busy-body,” exclaimed Theresa, laughing. “But Francisco what mean you to do with the reward, you received from the Duke that was murdered, eh? Francisco?”

“Yes, yes, what are you going to do with all that gold?” cried Dollabella, and the three gathered around the youth with evident interest, expressed in each face in the glittering eyes and the parted lips.

“Why Theresa, Dollabella, and Loretta,” answered the postillion, looking slowly round, with an expression of the deepest solemnity, “I mean to--that is, I intend--by’r Ladye the Cathedral bell is ringing. Come along, girls!”

“Ha, ha, ha! ’Tis a fair day and a bright,” laughed a shrill voice at the elbow of Francisco, “Florence is full of joy and e’en I, I am glad.”

A tremor of fear ran round the group as they beheld the form of the speaker, the distorted face, the wide mouth, the large rolling eyes, and the deformed figure with the unsightly hump on the shoulders, giving a half-brutal appearance to the stranger, while from lip to lip, ran the whisper--

“The Doomsman, the Doomsman!”

“Aye, aye, the Doomsman! And why not pray? Dare not the Doomsman laugh? Ha, ha, ha! What a fine neck thou hast for the axe, good youth; or now that I think o’t it would stretch a rope passing well. ’Tis a fine day, good folk, and I’m hastening to the Cathedral, to behold the crowning of one of my children, that is Children of the Axe.”

“Thy children?” echoed Francisco, aghast with fear. “Can a shadow like thee, have children?”

“Children o’ th’ axe, boy. I’ faith if all the world had their own, I’d have thy neck--a merry jest, nothing more boy, ho, ho, ho! Do’st see these fingers.”

“Vulture’s talons rather!”

“These, these were round his royal throat, while the lead, the seething lead waited for his princely body, and the wheel of torture was arrayed for his lordly repose. Ha, ha, ha! I would see him crowned, by the fiend would I! But come boy, thou knowest somewhat of city gossip, tell me, does this Sir Geoffrey O’ Th’ Longsword, stabbed by his own son, a good boy, he, he, he, does he yet live?”

“Have not prayers been offered in all the Cathedrals for the miracle?”

“The miracle? Enlighten me, good youth!”

“Hast thou not heard, how the force of the blow was swayed aside, by a piece of the true wood o’ th’ cross, which the old soldier had worn over his heart for years? A miracle, old shadow, a miracle!”

“Nay, nay, call me not shadow, I’ll never darken thy way to the gallows. But tell me, fair sir, did not the dagger pierce the old man’s heart?”

“It grazed the heart, but did not pierce it. Any city gossip might tell thee this, old thunder cloud!”

“And so the old man lives?”

“He doth! Thou art wondrous sorry that he still breathes the air, I warrant me?”

“Nay, nay, good youth. I bear Sir Geoffrey no harm, but dost see--the wheel, the axe and the boiling lead, all were ready for the boy Guiseppo, and, and, but ’tis the will of heaven! I can bear disappointment, he, he, he, in all matters, save in one. Thy neck boy, ha, ha, ha, the Doomsman’s fingers itch for thy neck!”