Books: The Midnight Queen
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May Agnes Fleming >> The Midnight Queen
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He had just come to this conclusion, and was applying the flame
of the candle to the nose of an inquisitive beetle, when it
struck him he heard voices in altercation outside his door. One,
clear, ringing, and imperious, yet withal feminine, was certainly
not heard for the first time; and the subdued and respectful
voices that answered, were those of his guards.
After a moment, he heard the sound of the withdrawing bolts, and
his heart beat fast. Surely, his half-hour had not already
expired; and if it had, would she be the person to conduct him to
death? The door opened; a puff of wind extinguished his candle,
but not until he had caught the glimmer of jewels, the shining of
gold, and the flutter of long, black hair; and then some one came
in. The door was closed; the bolts shot back! - and he was alone
with Miranda, the queen.
There was no trouble about recognising her, for she carried in
her hand a small lamp, which she held up between them, that its
rays might fall directly on both faces. Each was rather white,
perhaps, and one heart was going faster than it had ever gone
before, and that one was decidedly not the queen's. She was
dressed exactly as he had seen her, in purple and ermine, in
jewels and gold; and strangely out of place she looked there, in
her splendid dress and splendid beauty, among the black beetles
and rats. Her face might have been a dead, blank wall, or cut
out of cold, white stone, for all it expressed; and as she
lightly held up her rich robes in one hand, and in the other bore
the light, the dark, shining eyes were fixed on his face, and
were as barren of interest, eagerness, compassion, tenderness, or
any other feeling, as the shining, black glass ones of a wax
doll. So they stood looking at each other for some ten seconds
or so, and then, still looking full at him, Miranda spoke, and
her voice was as clear and emotionless as her eyes
"Well, Sir Norman Kingsley, I have come to see you before you
die."
"Madame," he stammered, scarcely knowing what he said, "you are
kind."
"Am I? Perhaps you forget I signed your death-warrant."
"Probably it would have been at the risk of your own life to
refuse?"
"Nothing of the kind! Not one of them would hurt a hair of my
head if I refused to sign fifty death-warrants! Now, am I kind?"
"Very likely it would have amounted to the same thing in the end
- they would kill me whether you signed it or not; so what does
it matter?"
"You are mistaken! They would not kill you; at least, not
tonight, if I had not signed it. They would have let you live
until their next meeting, which will be this night week; and I
would have incurred neither risk nor danger by refusing."
Sir Norman glanced round the dungeon and shrugged his shoulders.
"I do not know that that prospect is much more inviting than the
present one. Even death is preferable to a week's imprisonment
in a place like this."
"But in the meantime you might have escaped."
"Madame, look at this stone floor, that stone roof, these solid
walls, that barred and massive door; reflect that I am some forty
feet under ground - cannot perform impossibilities, and then ask
yourself how?"
"Sir Norman, have you ever heard of good fairies visiting brave
knights and setting them free?"
Sir Norman smiled.
"I am afraid the good fairies and brave knights went the way of
all flesh with King Arthur's round table; and even if they were
in existence, none of them would take the trouble to limp down so
far to save such an unlucky dog as I."
"Then you forgive me for what I have done?"
"Your majesty, I have nothing to forgive."
"Bah!" she said, scornfully. "Do not mock me here. My majesty,
forsooth! you have but fifteen minutes to live in this world, Sir
Norman; and if you have no better way of spending them, I will
tell you a strange story - my own, and all about this place."
"Madame, there is nothing in the world I would like so much to
hear."
"You shall hear it, then, and it may beguile the last slow
moments of time before you go out into eternity."
She set her lamp down on the floor among the rats and beetles,
and stood watching the small, red flame a moment with a gloomy,
downcast eye; and Sir Norman, gazing on the beautiful darkening
face, so like and yet so unlike Leoline, stood eagerly awaiting
what was to come.
________________
Meantime, the half-hour sped. In the crimson court the last
trial was over, and Lady Castlemaine, a slender little beauty of
eighteen stood condemned to die.
"Now for our other prisoner!" exclaimed the dwarf with sprightly
animation; "and while I go to the cell, you, fair ladies, and you
my lord, will seek the black chamber and await our coming there."
Ordering one of his attendants to precede him with a light, the
dwarf skipped jauntily away, to gloat over his victim. He
reached the dungeon door, which the guards, with some trepidation
in their countenance, as they thought of what his highness would
say when he found her majesty locked in with the prisoner, threw
open.
"Come forth, Sir Norman Kingsley!" shouted the dwarf, rushing in.
"Come forth and meet your doom!"
But no Sir Norman Kingsley obeyed the pleasant invitation, and a
dull echo from the darkness alone answered him. There was a lamp
burning on the floor, and near it lay a form, shining and specked
with white in the gloom. He made for it between fear and fury,
but there was something red and slippery on the ground, in which
his foot slipped, and he fell. Simultaneously there was a wild
cry from the two guards and the attendant, that was echoed by a
perfect screech of rage from the dwarf, as on looking down he
beheld Queen Miranda lying on the floor in the pool of blood, and
apparently quite dead, and Sir Norman Kingsley gone.
CHAPTER, XIV.
IN THE DUNGEON.
The interim between Miranda setting down her lamp on the dungeon
floor among the rats and the beetles, and the dwarf's finding her
bleeding and senseless, was not more than twenty minutes, but a
great deal may be done in twenty minutes judiciously expended,
and most decidedly it was so in the present case. Both rats and
beetles paused to contemplate the flickering lamp, and Miranda
paused to contemplate them, and Sir Norman paused to contemplate
her, for an instant or so in silence. Her marvelous resemblance
to Leoline, in all but one thing, struck him more and more -
there was the same beautiful transparent colorless complexion,
the same light, straight, graceful figure, the same small oval
delicate features; the same profuse waves of shining dark hair,
the same large, dark, brilliant eyes; the same, little, rosy
pretty mouth, like one of Correggio's smiling angels. The one
thing wanting was expression - in Leoline's face there was a kind
of childlike simplicity; a look half shy, half fearless, half
solemn in her wonderful eyes; but in this, her prototype, there
was nothing shy or solemn; all was cold, hard, and glittering,
and the brooding eyes were full of a dull, dusky fire. She
looked as hard and cold and bitter, as she was beautiful; and Sir
Norman began to perplex himself inwardly as to what had brought
her here. Surely not sympathy, for nothing wearing that face of
stone, could even know the meaning of such a word. While he
looked at her, half wonderingly, half pityingly, half tenderly -
a queer word that last, but the feeling was caused by her
resemblance to Leoline - she had been moodily watching an old
gray rat, the patriarch of his tribe, who was making toward her
in short runs, stopping between each one to stare at her, out of
his unpleasantly bright eyes. Suddenly, Miranda shut her teeth,
clenched her hands, and with a sort of fierce suppressed
ejaculation, lifted her shining foot and planted it full on the
rat's head. So sudden, so fierce, and so strong, was the stamp,
that the rat was crushed flat, and uttered a sharp and indignant
squeal of expostulation, while Sir Norman looked at her, thinking
she had lost her wits. Still she ground it down with a fiercer
and stronger force every second; and with her eyes still fixed
upon it, and blazing with reddish black flame, she said, in a
sort of fiery hiss:
"Look at it! The ugly, loathsome thing! Did you ever see
anything look more like him?"
There must have been some mysterious rapport between them, for he
understood at once to whom the solitary personal pronoun
referred.
"Certainly, in the general expression of countenance there is
rather a marked resemblance, especially in the region of the
teeth and eyes."
"Except that the rat's eyes are a thousand times handsomer," she
broke in, with a derisive laugh.
"But as to shape," resumed Sir Norman, eyeing the excited and
astonished little animal, still shrilly squealing, with the
glance of a connoisseur, "I confess I do not see it! The rat is
straight and shapely - which his highness, with all reverence be
it said - is not, but rather the reverse, if you will not be
offended at me for saying so."
She broke into a short laugh that had a hard, metallic ring, and
then her face darkened, blackened, and she ground the foot that
crushed the rat fiercer, and with a sort of passionate
vindictiveness, as if she had the head of the dwarf under her
heel.
"I hate him! I hate him!" she said, through her clenched teeth and
though her tone was scarcely above a whisper, it was so terrible in
its fiery earnestness that Sir Norman thrilled with repulsion. "Yes,
I hate him with all my heart and soul, and I wish to heaven I had
him here, like this rat, to trample to death under my feet!"
Not knowing very well what reply to make to this strong and
heartfelt speech, which rather shocked his notions of female
propriety, Sir Norman stood silent, and looked reflectively after
the rat, which, when she permitted it at last to go free, limped
away with an ineffably sneaking and crest-fallen expression on
his hitherto animated features. She watched it, too, with a
gloomy eye, and when it crawled into the darkness and was gone,
she looked up with a face so dark and moody that it was almost
sullen.
"Yes, I hate him!" she repeated, with a fierce moodiness that was
quite dreadful, "yes, I hate him! and I would kill him, like
that rat, if I could! He has been the curse of my whole life; he
has made life cursed to me; and his heart's blood shall be shed
for it some day yet, I swear!"
With all her beauty there was something so horrible in the look
she wore, that Sir Norman involuntarily recoiled from her. Her
sharp eyes noticed it, and both grew red and fiery as two
devouring flames.
"Ah! you, too, shrink from me, would you? You, too, recoil in
horror! Ingrate! And I have come to save your life!"
"Madame, I recoil not from you, but from that which is tempting
you to utter words like these. I have no reason to love him of
whom you speak - you, perhaps, have even less; but I would not
have his blood, shed in murder, on my head, for ten thousand
worlds! Pardon me, but you do not mean what you say."
"Do I not? That remains to be seen! I would not call it murder
plunging a knife into the heart of a demon incarnate like that,
and I would have done it long ago and he knows it, too, if I had
the chance!"
"What has he done to you to make you do bitter against him?"
"Bitter! Oh, that word is poor and pitiful to express what I
feel when his name is mentioned. Loathing and hatred come a
little nearer the mark, but even they are weak to express the
utter - the - " She stopped in a sort of white passion that
choked her very words.
"They told me he was your husband," insinuated Sir Norman,
unutterably repelled.
"Did they?" she said, with a cold sneer, "he is, too - at least
as far as church and state can make him; but I am no more his
wife at heart than I am Satan's. Truly of the two I should
prefer the latter, for then I should be wedded to something grand
- a fallen angel; as it is, I have the honor to be wife to a
devil who never was an angel?"
At this shocking statement Sir Norman looked helplessly round, as
if for relief; and Miranda, after a moment's silence, broke into
another mirthless laugh.
"Of all the pictures of ugliness you ever saw or heard of, Sir
Norman Kingsley, do tell me if there ever was one of them half so
repulsive or disgusting as that thing?"
"Really," said Sir Norman, in a subdued tone, "he is not the most
prepossessing little man in the world; but, madame, you do look
and speak in a manner quite dreadful. Do let me prevail on you
to calm yourself, and tell me your story, as you promised."
"Calm myself!" repeated the gentle lady, in a tone half snappish,
half harsh, "do you think I am made of iron, to tell you my story
and be calm? I hate him! I hate him! I would kill him if I
could: and if you, Sir Norman, are half the man I take you to be,
you will rid the world of the horrible monster before morning
dawns!"
"My dear lady, you seem to forget that the case is reversed, and
that he is going to rid the world of me,", said Sir Norman, with
a sigh.
"No, not if you do as I tell you; and when I have told you how
much cause I have to abhor him, you will agree with me that
killing him will be no murder! Oh, if there is One above who
rules this world, and will judge us all, why, why does He permit
such monsters to live?"
"Because He is more merciful than his creatures," replied Sir
Norman, with calm reverence, - though His avenging hand is heavy
on this doomed city. But, madame, time is on the wing, and the
headsman will be here before your story is told."
"Ah, that story! How am I to tell it, I wonder, two words will
comprise it all - sin and misery - misery and sin! For, buried
alive here, as I am - buried alive, as I've always been - I know
what both words mean; they have been branded on heart and brain
in letters of fire. And that horrible monstrosity is the cause
of all - that loathsome, misshapen, hideous abortion has banned
and cursed my whole life! He is my first recollection. As far
back as I can look through the dim eye of childhood's years, that
horrible face, that gnarled and twisted trunk, those devilish
eyes glare at me like the eyes and face of a wild beast. As
memory grows stronger and more vivid, I can see that same face
still - the dwarf! the dwarf! the dwarf! - Satan's true
representative on earth, darkening and blighting ever passing
year. I do not know where we lived, but I imagine it to have
been one of the vilest and lowest dens in London, though the
rooms I occupied were, for that matter, decent and orderly
enough. Those rooms the daylight never entered, the windows were
boarded up within, and fastened by shutters without, so that of
the world beyond I was as ignorant as a child of two hours old.
I saw but two human faces, his" - she seemed to hate him too much
even to pronounce his name - "and his housekeeper's, a creature
almost as vile as himself, and who is now a servant here; and
with this precious pair to guard me I grew up to be fifteen years
old. My outer life consisted of eating, sleeping, reading - for
the wretch taught me to read - playing with my dogs and birds,
and listening to old Margery's stories. But there was an inward
life, fierce and strong, as it was rank and morbid, lived and
brooded over alone, when Margery and her master fancied me
sleeping in idiotic content. How were they to know that the
creature they had reared and made ever had a thought of her own -
ever wondered who she was, where she came from, what she was
destined to be, and what lay in the great world beyond? The
crooked little monster made a great mistake in teaching me to
read, he should have known that books sow seed that grow up and
flourish tall and green, till they become giants in strength. I
knew enough to be certain there was a bright and glad world
without, from which they shut me in and debarred me; and I knew
enough to hate them both for it, with a strong and heartfelt
hatred, only second to what I feel now."
She stopped for a moment, and fixed her dark, gloomy eyes on the
swarming floor, and shook off, with out a shudder, the hideous
things that crawled over her rich dress. She had scarcely looked
at Sir Norman since she began to speak, but he had done enough
looking for them both, never once taking his eyes from the
handsome darkening face. He thought how strangely like her story
was to Leoline's - both shut in and isolated from the outer
world. Verily, destiny seemed to have woven the woof and warp of
their fates wonderfully together, for their lives were as much
the same as their faces. Miranda, having shook off her crawling
acquaintances, watched them glancing along the foul floor in the
darkness, and went moodily on.
"It was three years ago when I was fifteen years old, as I told
you, that a change took place in my life. Up to that time, that
miserable dwarf was what people would call my guardian, and did
not trouble me much with his heavenly company. He was a great
deal from our house, sometimes absent for weeks together; and I
remember I used to envy the freedom with which he came and went,
far more than I ever wondered where he spent his precious time.
I did not know then that he belonged to the honorable profession
of highwaymen, with variations of coining when travelers were few
and money scarce. He was then, and is still, at the head of a
formidable gang, over whom he wields most desperate authority -
as perhaps you have noticed during the brief and pleasant period
of your acquaintance."
"Really, madam, it struck me that your authority over them was
much more despotic than his," said Sir Norman, in all sincerity,
feeling called upon to give the - well, I'd rather not repeat the
word, which is generally spelled with a d and a dash - his due.
"No thanks to him for that! He would make me a slave now, as he
did then, if he dared, but he has found that, poor, trodden worm
as I was, I had life enough left to turn and sting."
"Which you do with a vengeance! Oh I you're a Tartar!" remarked
Sir Norman to himself. "The saints forefend that Leoline should
be like you in temper, as she is in history and face; for if she
is, my life promises to be a pleasant one."
"This rascally crew of cut-throats, whom his villainous highness
headed," said Miranda, "were an almost immense number then, being
divided in three bodies - London cut-purses, Hounslow Heath
highwaymen, and assistant-coiners, but all owning him for their
lord and master. He told me all this himself, one day when, in
an after-dinner and most gracious mood, he made a boasting
display of his wealth and greatness; told me I was growing up
very pretty indeed, and that I was shortly to be raised to the
honor and dignity, and bliss of being his wife.
"I fancy I must have had a very vague idea of what that one small
word meant, and was besides in an unusually contented and
peaceful state of mind, or I should, undoubtedly, have raised one
of his cut-glass decanters and smashed in his head with it. I
know how I should receive such an assertion from him now, but I
think I took it then with a resignation, he must have found
mighty edifying; and when he went on to tell me that all this
richness and greatness were to be shared by me when that
celestial time came, I think I rather liked the idea than
otherwise. The horrible creature seemed to have woke up that
day, for the first time, and all of a sudden, to a conviction
that I was in a fair way to become a woman, and rather a handsome
one, and that he had better make sure of me before any accident
interfered to take me from him. Full of this laudable notion, he
became a daily visitor of mine from thenceforth, and made the
discovery, simultaneously with myself, that the oftener he came
the less favor he found in my sight. I had, before, tacitly
disliked him, and shrank with a natural repulsion from his
dreadful ugliness ness; but now, from negative dislike, I grew to
positive hate. The utter loathing and abhorrence I have had for
him ever since, began then - I grew dimly and intuitively
conscious of what he would make me, and shrank from my fate with
a vague horror not to be told in words. I became strong in my
fearful dread of it. I told him I detested, abhorred, loathed,
hated him; that he might keep his riches, greatness, and ungainly
self for those who wanted him; they were temptations too weak to
move me.
"Of course, there was raving, and storming, threatening, terrible
looks and denunciations, and I quailed and shrank like a coward,
but was obstinate still. Then as a dernier resort, he tried
another bribe - the glorious one of liberty, the one he knew
would conquer me, and it did. He promised me freedom - if I
married him, I might go out into the great unknown world,
fetterless and free; and I, O! fool that I was! consented. Not
that my object was to stay with him one instant longer her my
prison doors were opened; no, I was not quite so besotted as that
- once out, and the little demon might look for me with last
year's partridges. Of course, those demoniac eyes read my heart
like an open book; and when I pronounced the fatal 'yes,' he
laughed in that delightful way of his own, which will probably be
the last thing you will hear when you lay your head under the
axe.
"I don't know who the clergyman who married us was; but he was a
clergyman: there can be no doubt about that. It was three days
after, and for the first time in my fifteen years of life, I
stood in sunshine, and daylight, and open air. We drove to the
cathedral - for it was in St. Paul's the sacrilege was committed.
I never could have walked there, I was so stunned, and giddy, and
bewildered. I never thought of the marriage - I could think of
nothing but the bright, crashing, sun-shiny world without, till I
was led up before the clergyman, with much the air, I suppose, of
one walking in her sleep. He was a very young man, I remember,
and looked from the dwarf to me, and from me to the dwarf, in a
great state of fear and uncertainty, but evidently not daring to
refuse. Margery and one of his gang were our only attendants,
and there, in God's temple, the deed was done, and I was made the
miserable thing I am to-day."
The suppressed passion, rising and throbbing like a white flame
in her face and eyes, made her stop for a moment, breathing hard.
Looking up she met Sir Norman's gaze, and as if there was
something in its quiet, pitying tenderness that mesmerized her
into calm, she steadily and rapidly went on.
"I awoke to a new life, after that; but not to one of freedom and
happiness. I was as closely, even more closely, guarded than
ever; and I found, when too late, that I had bartered myself,
soul and body, for an empty promise. The only difference was,
that I saw more new faces; for the dwarf began to bring his
confederates and subordinates to the house, and would have me
dressed up and displayed to them, with a demoniac pride that
revolted me beyond everything else, if I were a painted puppet or
an overgrown wax doll. Most of the precious crew of scoundrels
had wives of their own and these began to be brought with them of
an evening; and then, what with dancing, and music, and cards,
and feasting, we had quite a carnival of it till morning.
"I liked this part of the business excessively well at first, and
I was flattered and fooled to the top of my bent, and made from
the first, the reigning belle and queen. There was more policy
in that than admiration, I fancy; for the dwarf was all-powerful
among them and dreaded accordingly, and I was the dwarf's pet and
plaything, and all-powerful with him. The hideous creature had a
most hideous passion for me then, and I could wind him round my
finger as easily as Delilah and Samson; and by his command and
their universal consent, the mimicry of royalty was begun, and I
was made mistress and sovereign head, even over the dwarf
himself. It was a queer whim; but that crooked slug was always
taking such odd notions into his head, which nobody there dared
laugh at. The band were bound together by a terrible oath, women
and all; but they had to take another oath then, that of
allegiance to me.
"It quite turned my brain at first; and my eyes were so dazzled
by the pitiful glistening of the pageant, the sham splendor of
the sham court, and the half-mocking, half-serious homage paid
me, that I could see nothing beyond the shining surface, and the
blackness, and corruption, and horror within, were altogether
lost upon me. This feeling increased when, as months and months
went by, they were added to the mock peers of the Midnight Court,
real nobles from that of St. Charles. I did not know then that
they were ruined gamesters, vicious profligates, and desperate
broken-down roues, who would have gone to pandemonium itself,
nightly, for the mad license and lawless excesses they could
indulge in here to their heart's content. But I got tired of it
all, after a time: my eyes began slowly to open, and my heart -
at least, what little of that article I ever had - turned sick
with horror within me at what I had done. The awful things I
saw, the fearful deeds that were perpetrated, would curdle your
very blood with horror, were I to relate them. You have seen a
specimen yourself, in the cold-blooded murder of that wretch half
an hour ago; and his is not the only life crying for vengeance on
these men. The slightest violation of their oath was punished,
and the doom of traitors and informers was instant death, whether
male or female. The sham trials and executions always took place
in presence of the whole court, to strike a salutary terror into
them, and never occurred but once a week, when the whole band
regularly met. My power continued undiminished; for they knew
either the dwarf or I must be supreme; and though the queen was
bad, the prince was worse. The said prince would willingly have
pulled me down from my eminence, and have mounted it himself; but
that he was probably restrained by a feeling that law-makers
should not be law-breakers, and that, if he set the example,
there would be no end to the insubordination and rebellion that
would follow."
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