Part 4

There was something so strange and solemn in the entire aspect of the place--the light blue flame arising in tongues of fire from the vessel of gold on the snow-white altar, burning for ever beneath the hanging alembic, the chains and rods of gold, the pure and undimmed white of the marble, varied by no sculpturing or ornament, combined with the utter stillness and solitude of the room--that Robin felt awed, he scarce knew why; and dark forebodings crept like shadows over his brain.

The scholar seated himself upon a small stool placed near the other, and pointing to another, in a mild voice, desired Robin to follow his example. The yeoman hesitated.

“It is not meet for a poor yeoman o’ th’ Guard to rest himself in the presence of so great a scholar.”

“Nay, nay, good Robin, rest thyself. I was angered with thee a moment hence, but now it is all past. Seat thyself, brave yeoman.”

The soldier complied, and rested his stout person upon a stool of oak, placed some six feet from the spot where sat the Signior Aldarin. Robin had but time to note a singular circumstance, ere the scholar spoke. _The stool upon which the stout yeoman sat, was firmly jointed in a large slab of red stone, which, spreading before him for the space of some six feet, was curiously fixed in the planks of the oaken floor._

With a mild and smiling look, the scholar spoke:--

“Robin, thou hast been a true and faithful vassal to my late brother. Thou didst right carefully attend Lord Julian, when forced by the incurable wound of a poisoned arrow, some three months since, he returned from Palestine, leaving Sir Geoffrey o’ th’ Long-sword, at the head of his men-at-arms. Robin, I have long designed to testify the good opinion in which I hold thee by some substantial gift--thou shall be Seneschal of this mighty castle of Albarone!”

“Marry, good Signior--”

“How, sir!--dost thou address _me_ as Signior? Vassal, I am the Lord of Albarone!”

“But Adrian--”

“What sayest thou of Adrian? A murderer--a parricide--his death is certain. The Duke of Florence hath sworn it.”

“Well, my Lord Count, then, an’ it pleases you better, I was about to say that if I had my choice I would sooner be made an esquire.”

“This thou shalt be:--first promise to serve me faithfully in all that I shall command.”

“Well, as far as an honest man may, so far do I promise.”

The scholar Aldarin mused a moment and then said carelessly--“Was it not an exceeding wicked deed, this murder of my good brother?”

“Aye, marry was it,” replied Robin, looking fixedly at Aldarin--“and the fiend of hell, himself, could not have done a more damned, or a more accursed thing.”

“True good Robin,--’twas a horrid murder. What could have prompted Adrian to raise his hand against his father, eh? good Robin?”

The Yeoman did not reply. He cast his eyes to the floor and confusedly fingered his cap.

The Count Aldarin--so must I style him--reached a folded parchment from a writing desk and then asked--

“Why dost thou not speak, good Robin? What art thinking of?”

“Why, heaven save your _lordship_,” said Robin, speaking in a whisper, and gazing full in Aldarin’s face, “_I was just wondering whether the murderer embraced the Count ere he strangled him?_”

Aldarin started aside--his features were writhen into a fearful contortion, and his whole frame shook like a leaf of the aspen tree. Again he turned his visage, it was calm, as the face of innocence, and a smile was on his pinched lip.

“Receive thy warrant as Seneschal of the Castle of Albarone,” said Aldarin, as he held forth the parchment--“nay, kneel not, good Robin; keep thy seat.”

Robin held forth his hand to reach the parchment--his fingers touched it, when Aldarin stamped his foot upon the floor, and the slab of red stone fell quick as lightning beneath the yeoman. A deep and dark well was discovered. In an instant the stool affixed to the stone was empty, and far below, in the depths of the pit the echo of the falling slab, sunk with a sound like the rushing of the winter wind through the corridors of a deserted mansion.

A face, with eyes rolling ghastly, with the lower jaw sunken and the 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.”