Books: The Midnight Queen

M >> May Agnes Fleming >> The Midnight Queen

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Tying his horse to a stake in the crumbling wall, he paused for a
moment to look at it in the pale, wan light of the midnight moon.
He had looked at it many a time before, but never with the same
interest as now; and the ruined battlements, the fallen roof, the
broken windows, and mouldering sides, had all a new and weird
interest for him. No one was visible far or near; and feeling
that his horse was secure in the shadow of the wall, he entered,
and walked lightly and rapidly along in the direction of the
spiral staircase. With more haste, but the same precaution, he
descended, and passed through the vaults to where he knew the
loose flag-stone was. It was well he did know; for there was
neither strain of music nor ray of light to guide him now; and
his heart sank to zero as he thought he might raise the stone and
discover nothing. His hand positively trembled with eagerness as
he lifted it; and with unbounded delight, not to be described,
looked down on the same titled assembly he had watched before.
But there had been a change since - half the lights were
extinguished, and the great vaulted room was comparatively in
shadow - the music had entirely died away and all was solemnly
silent. But what puzzled Sir Norman most of all was, the fact
that there seemed to be a trial of acme sort going on.

A long table, covered with green velvet, and looking not unlike a
modern billiard table, stood at the right of the queen's crimson
throne; and behind it, perched in a high chair, and wearing a
long, solemn, black robe, sat a small, thick personage, whose
skin Sir Norman would have known on a bush. He glanced at the
lower throne and found it as he expected, empty; and he saw at
once that his little highness was not only prince consort, but
also supreme judge in the kingdom. Two or three similar
black-robed gentry, among whom was recognizable the noble duke
who so narrowly escaped with his life under the swords of Sir
Norman and Count L'Estrange. Before this solemn conclave stood a
man who was evidently the prisoner under trial, and who wore the
whitest and most frightened face Sir Norman thought he had ever
beheld. The queen was lounging negligently back on her throne,
paying very little attention to the solemn rites, occasionally
gossiping with some of the snow-white sylphs beside her, and
often yawning behind her pretty finger-tips, and evidently very
much bored by it all.

The rest of the company were decorously seated in the crimson and
gilded arm-chairs, some listening with interest to what was going
on, others holding whispered tete-a-tetes, and all very still and
respectful.

Sir Norman's interest was aroused to the highest pitch; he
imprudently leaned forward too far, in order to bear and see, and
lost his balance. He felt he was going, and tried to stop
himself, but in vain; and seeing there was no help for it, he
made a sudden spring, and landed right in the midst of the
assembly.

CHAPTER XI.

THE EXECUTION.

In an instant all was confusion. Everybody sprang to their feet
- ladies shrieked in chorus, gentlemen swore and drew their
swords, and looked to see if they might not expect a whole army
to drop from the sky upon them, as they stood. No other
battalion, however, followed this forlorn hope; and seeing it,
the gentlemen took heart of grace and closed around the
unceremonious intruder. The queen had sprung from her royal
seat, and stood with her bright lips parted, and her brighter
eyes dilating in speechless wonder. The bench, with the judge at
their head, had followed her example, and stood staring with all
their might, looking, truth to tell, as much startled by the
sudden apparition as the fair sex. The said fair sex were still
firing off little volleys of screams in chorus, and clinging
desperately to their cavaliers; and everything, in a word, was in
most admired disorder.

Tam O'Shanter's cry, "Weel done, Cutty sark!" could not have
produced half such a commotion among his "hellish legion" as the
emphatic debut of Sir Norman Kingsley among these human revelers.
The only one who seemed rather to enjoy it than otherwise was the
prisoner, who was quietly and quickly making off, when the
malevolent and irrepressible dwarf espied him, and the one shock
acting as a counter-irritant to the other, he bounced fleetly
over the table, and grabbed him in his crab-like claws.

This brisk and laudable instance of self-command had a wonderful
and inspiriting effect on the rest; and as he replaced the pale
and palsied prisoner in his former position, giving him a
vindictive shake and vicious kick with his royal boots as he did
so, everybody began to feel themselves again. The ladies stopped
screaming, the gentlemen ceased swearing, and more than one
exclamation of astonishment followed the cries of terror.

"Sir Norman Kingsley! Sir Norman Kingsley!" rang from lip to lip
of those who recognized him; and all drew closer, and looked at
him as if they really could not make up their mind to believe
their eyes. As for Sir Norman himself, that gentleman was
destined literally, if not metaphorically, to fall on his legs
that night, and had alighted on the crimson velvet-carpet,
cat-like, on his feet. In reference to his feelings - his first
was one of frantic disapproval of going down; his second, one of
intense astonishment of finding himself there with unbroken
bones; his third, a disagreeable conviction that he had about put
his foot in it, and was in an excessively bad fix; and last, but
not least, a firm and rooted determination to make the beet of a
bad bargain, and never say die.

His first act was to take off his plumed hat, and make a profound
obeisance to her majesty the queen, who was altogether too much
surprised to make the return politeness demanded, and merely
stared at him with her great, beautiful, brilliant eyes, as if
she would never have done.

"Ladies and gentlemen!" said Sir Norman, turning gracefully to
the company; "I beg ten thousand pardons for this unwarrantable
intrusion, and promise you, upon my honor, never to do it again.
I beg to assure you that my coming here was altogether
involuntary on my part, and forced by circumstances over which I
had no control; and I entreat you will not mind me in the least,
but go on with the proceeding, just as you did before. Should
you feel my presence here any restraint, I am quite ready and
willing to take my departure at any moment; and as I before
insinuated, will promise, on the honor of a gentleman and a
knight, never again to take the liberty of tumbling through the
ceiling down on your heads."

This reference to the ceiling seemed to explain the whole
mystery; and everybody looked up at the corner whence he came
from, and saw the flag that had been removed. As to his speech,
everybody had listened to it with the greatest of attention; and
sundry of the ladies, convinced by this time that he was flesh
and blood, and no ghost, favored the handsome young knight with
divers glances, not at all displeased or unadmiring. The queen
sank back into her seat, keeping him still transfixed with her
darkly-splendid eyes; and whether she admired or otherwise, no
one could tell from her still, calm face. The prince consort's
feelings - for such there could be no doubt he was - were
involved in no such mystery; and he broke out into a hyena-like
scream of laughter, as he recognized, upon a second look, his
young friend of the Golden Crown.

"So you have come, have you?" he cried, thrusting his unlovely
visage over the table, till it almost touched sir Norman's. "You
have come, have you, after all I said?"

"Yes, sir I have come!" said Sir Norman, with a polite bow.

"Perhaps you don't know me, my dear young sir - your little
friend, you know, of the Golden Crown."

"Oh, I perfectly recognize you! My little friend," said Sir
Norman, with bland suavity, and unconsciously quoting Leoline,
"once seen in not easy to be-forgotten."

Upon this, his highness net up such another screech of mirth that
it quite woke an echo through the room; and all Sir Norman's
friends looked grave; for when his highness laughed, it was a
very bad sign.

"My little friend will hurt himself," remarked Sir Norman, with
an air of solicitude, "if he indulges in his exuberant and
gleeful spirits to such an extent. Let me recommend you, as a
well-wisher, to sit down and compose yourself."

Instead of complying, however, the prince, who seemed blessed
with a lively sense of the ludicrous, wan so struck with the
extreme funniness of the young man's speech, that he relaxed into
another paroxysm of levity, shriller and more unearthly, if
possible, than any preceding one, and which left him so
exhausted, that he was forced to sink into his chair and into
silence through sheer fatigue. Seizing this, the first
opportunity, Miranda, with a glance of displeased dignity st
Caliban, immediately struck in:

"Who are you, sir, and by what right do you dare to come here?"

Her tone was neither very sweet nor suave; but it was much
pleasanter to be cross-examined by the owner of such a pretty
face than by the ugly little monster, for the moment gasping and
extinguished; and Sir Norman turned to her with alacrity, and a
bow.

"Madame, I am Sir Norman Kingsley, very much at your service; and
I beg to assure you I did not come here, but fell here, through
that hole, if you perceive, and very much against my will."

"Equivocation will not serve you in this case, sir," said the
queen, with an austere dignity. "And, allow me to observe, it is
just probable you would not have fallen through that hole in our
royal ceiling if you had kept away from it. You raised that flag
yourself - did you not?"

"Madam, I fear I must say yes!"

"And why did you do so?" demanded her majesty, with far more
sharp asperity than Sir Norman dreamed could ever come from such
beautiful lips.

"The rumor of Queen Miranda's charms has gone forth; and I fear I
must own that rumor drew me hither," responded Sir Norman,
inventing a polite little work of fiction for the occasion; "and,
let me add, that I came to find that rumor had under-rated
instead of exaggerated her majesty's said charms."

Here Sir Norman, whose spine seemed in danger of becoming the
shape of a rainbow, in excess of good breeding, made another
genuflection before the queen, with his hand over the region of
his heart. Miranda tried to look grave, and wear that expression
of severe solemnity I am told queens and rich people always do;
but, in spite of herself, a little pleased smile rippled over her
face; and, noticing it, and the bow and speech, the prince
suddenly and sharply set up such another screech of laughter as
no steamboat or locomotive, in the present age of steam, could
begin to equal in ghastliness.

"Will your highness have the goodness to hold your tongue?"
inquired the queen, with much the air and look of Mrs. Caudle,
"and allow me to ask this stranger a few questions uninterrupted?
Sir Norman Kingsley, how long have you been above there,
listening and looking on?"

"Madame, I was not there five minutes when I suddenly, and to my
great surprise, found myself here."

"A lie! - a lie!" exclaimed the dwarf, furiously. "It is over
two hours since I met you at the bar of the Golden Crown."

"My dear little friend," said Sir Norman, drawing his sword, and
flourishing it within an inch of the royal nose, "just make that
remark again, and my sword will cleave your pretty head, as the
cimetar of Saladin clove the cushion of down! I earnestly assure
you, madame, that I had but just knelt down to look, when I
discovered to my dismay, that I was no longer there, but in your
charming presence."

"In that case, my lords and gentlemen," said the queen, glancing
blandly round the apartment, "he has witnessed nothing, and,
therefore, merits but slight punishment."

"Permit me, your majesty," said the duke, who had read the roll
of death, and who had been eyeing Sir Norman sharply for some
time, "permit me one moment! This is the very individual who
slew the Earl of Ashley, while his companion was doing for my
Lord Craven. Sir Norman Kingsley," said his grace, turning, with
awful impressiveness to that young person, "do you know me?"

"Quite as well as I wish to," answered Sir Norman, with a cool
and rather contemptuous glance in his direction. "You look
extremely like a certain highwayman, with a most villainous
countenance, I encountered a few hours back, and whom I would
have made mince most of if he lead not been coward enough to fly.
Probably you may be the name; you look fit for that, or anything
else."

"Cut him down!" "Dash his brains out!" "Run him through!" "Shoot
him!" were a few of the mild and pleasant insinuations that went
off on every side of him, like a fierce volley of pop-guns; and a
score of bright blades flashed blue and threatening on every
side; while the prince broke out into another shriek of laughter,
that rang high over all.

Sir Norman drew his own sword, and stood on the defence, breathed
one thought to Leoline, gave himself up for lost; but before
quite doing so - to use a phrase not altogether as original as it
might be - "determined to sell his life as dearly as possible."
Angry eyes and fierce faces were on every hand, and his dreams of
matrimony and Leoline seemed about to terminate then and there,
when luck came to his side, in the shape of her most gracious
majesty the queen. Springing to her feet, she waved her sceptre,
while her black eyes flashed as fiercely as the best of them, and
her voice rang out like a trumpet-tone.

"Sheathe your swords, my lords, and back every man of you! Not
one hair of his head shall fall without my permission; and the
first who lays hands on him until that consent is given, shall
die, if I have to shoot him myself! Sir Norman Kingsley, stand
near, and fear not. At his peril, let one of them touch you!"

Sir Norman bent on one knee, and raised the gracious hand to his
lips. At the fierce, ringing, imperious tone, all involuntarily
fell back, as if they were accustomed to obey it; and the prince,
who seemed to-night in an uncommonly facetious mood, laughed
again, long and shrill.

"What are your majesty's commands?" asked the discomfited duke,
rather sulkily. "Is this insulting interloper to go free?"

"That is no affair of yours, my lord duke!" answered the spirited
voice of the queen. "Be good enough to finish Lord Gloucester's
trial; and until then I will be responsible for the safekeeping
of Sir Norman Kingsley."

"And after that, he is to go free eh, your majesty?" said the
dwarf, laughing to that extent that he ran the risk of rupturing
an artery.

"After that, it shall be precisely as I please!" replied the
ringing voice; while the black eyes flashed anything but loving
glances upon him. "While I am queen here, I shall be obeyed;
when I am queen no longer, you may do as you please! My lords"
(turning her passionate, beautiful face to the hushed audience),
am I or am I not sovereign here!"

"Madame, you alone are our sovereign lady and queen!"

"Then, when I condescend to command, you shall obey! Do you,
your highness, and you, lord duke, go on with the Earl of
Gloucester's trial, and I will be the stranger's jailer."

"She is right," said the dwarf, his fierce little eyes gleaming
with a malignant light; "let us do one thing before another; and
after we have settled Gloucester here, we will attend to this
man's case. Guards keep a sharp eye on your new prisoner.
Ladies and gentlemen, be good enough to resume your seats. Now,
your grace, continue the trial."

"Where did we leave off?" inquired his grace, looking rather at a
loss, and scowling vengeance dire at the handsome queen and her
handsome protege, as he sank back in his chair of state.

"The earl was confessing his guilt, or about to do so. Pray, my
lord," said the dwarf, glaring upon the pallid prisoner, "were
you not saying you had betrayed us to the king?"

A breathless silence followed the question - everybody seemed to
hold his very breath to listen. Even the queen leaned forward
and awaited the answer eagerly, and the many eyes that had been
riveted on Sir Norman since his entrance, left him now for the
first time and settled on the prisoner. A piteous spectacle that
prisoner was - his face whiter than the snowy nymphs behind the
throne, and so distorted with fear, fury, and guilt, that it
looked scarcely human. Twice he opened his eyes to reply, and
twice all sounds died away in a choking gasp.

"Do you hear his highness?" sharply inquired the lord high
chancellor, reaching over the great seal, and giving the unhappy
Earl of Gloucester a rap on the head with it, "Why do you not
answer?"

"Pardon! Pardon!" exclaimed the earl, in a husky whisper. "Do
not believe the tales they tell you of me. For Heaven's sake,
spare my life!"

"Confess!" thundered the dwarf, striking the table with his
clinched fist, until all the papers thereon jumped spasmodically
into the air-"confess at once, or I shall run you through where
you stand!"

The earl, with a perfect screech of terror, flung himself flat
upon his face and hands before the queen, with such force, that
Sir Norman expected to see his countenance make a hole in the
floor.

"O madame! spare me! spare me! spare me! Have mercy on me as you
hope for mercy yourself!"

She recoiled, and drew back her very garments from his touch, as
if that touch was pollution, eyeing him the while with a glance
frigid and pitiless as death.

"There is no mercy for traitors!" she coldly said. "Confess your
guilt, and expect no pardon from me!"

"Lift him up!" shouted the dwarf, clawing the air with his hands,
as if he could have clawed the heart out of his victim's body;
"back with him to his place, guards, and see that he does not
leave it again!"

Squirming, and writhing, and twisting himself in their grasp, in
very uncomfortable and eel-like fashion, the earl was dragged
back to his place, and forcibly held there by two of the guards,
while his face grew so ghastly and convulsed that Sir Norman
turned away his head, and could not bear to look at it.

"Confess!" once more yelled the dwarf in a terrible voice, while
his still more terrible eyes flashed sparks of fire - "confess,
or by all that's sacred it shall be tortured out of you. Guards,
bring me the thumb-screws, and let us see if they will not
exercise the dumb devil by which our ghastly friend is
possessed!"

"No, no, no!" shrieked the earl, while the foam flew from his
lips. "I confess! I confess! I confess!"

"Good! And what do you confess?" said the duke blandly, leaning
forward, while the dwarf fell back with a yell of laughter at the
success of his ruse.

"I confess all - everything - anything! only spare my life!"

"Do you confess to having told Charles, King of England, the
secrets of our kingdom and this place?" said the duke, sternly
rapping down the petition with a roll of parchment.

The earl grew, if possible, a more ghastly white. "I do - I
must! but oh! for the love of - "

"Never mind love," cut in the inexorable duke, "it is a subject
that has nothing whatever to do with the present case. Did you
or did you not receive for the aforesaid information a large sum
of money?"

"I did; but my lord, my lord, spare - "

"Which sum of money you have concealed," continued the duke, with
another frown and a sharp rap. "Now the question is, where have
you concealed it?"

"I will tell you, with all my heart, only spare my life!"

"Tell us first, and we will think about your life afterward. Let
me advise you as a friend, my lord, to tell at once, and
truthfully," said the duke, toying negligently with the
thumb-screws.

"It is buried at the north corner of the old wall at the head of
Bradshaw's grave. You shall have that and a thousandfold more if
you'll only pardon - "

"Enough!" broke in the dwarf, with the look and tone of an
exultant demon. "That is all we want! My lord duke, give me the
death-warrant, and while her majesty signs it, I will pronounce
his doom!"

The duke handed him a roll of parchment, which he glanced
critically over, and handed to the queen for her autograph. That
royal lady spread the vellum on her knee, took the pen and
affixed her signature as coolly as if she were inditing a sonnet
in an album. Then his highness, with a face that fairly
scintillated with demoniac delight, stood up and fixed his eyes
on the ghastly prisoner, and spoke in a voice that reverberated
like the tolling of a death-bell through the room.

"My Lord of Gloucester, you have been tried by a council of your
fellow-peers, presided over by her royal self, and found guilty
of high treason. Your sentence is that you be taken hence,
immediately, to the block, and there be beheaded, in punishment
of your crime."

His highness wound up this somewhat solemn speech, rather
inconsistently, bursting out into one of his shrillest peals of
laughter; and the miserable Earl of Gloucester, with a gasping,
unearthly cry, fell back in the arms of the attendants. Dead and
oppressive silence reigned; and Sir Norman, who half believed all
along the whole thing was a farce, began to feel an uncomfortable
sense of chill creeping over him, and to think that, though
practical jokes were excellent things in their way, there was yet
a possibility of carrying them a little too far. The
disagreeable silence was first broken by the dwarf, who, after
gloating for a moment over his victim's convulsive spasms, sprang
nimbly from his chair of dignity and held out his arm for the
queen. The queen arose, which seemed to be a sign for everybody
else to do the same, and all began forming themselves in a sort
of line of march.

"Whist is to be done with this other prisoner, your highness?"
inquired the duke, making a poke with his forefinger at Sir
Norman. "Is he to stay here, or is he to accompany us?"

His highness turned round, and putting his face close up to Sir
Norman's favored him with a malignant grin.

"You'd like to come, wouldn't you, my dear young friend?"

"Really," said Sir Norman, drawing back and returning the dwarf's
stare with compound interest, "that depends altogether on the
nature of the entertainment; but, at the same time, I'm much
obliged to you for consulting my inclinations."

This reply nearly overset his highness's gravity once more, but
he checked his mirth after the first irresistible squeal; and
finding the company were all arranged in the order of going, and
awaiting his sovereign pleasure, he turned.

"Let him come," he said, with his countenance still distorted by
inward merriment; "It will do him good to see how we punish
offenders here, and teach him what he is to expect himself. Is
your majesty ready?"

"My majesty has been ready and waiting for the last five
minutes," replied the lady, over-looking his proffered hand with
grand disdain, and stepping lightly down from her throne.

Her rising was the signal for the unseen band to strike up a
grand triumphant "Io paean," though, had the "Rogue's March" been
a popular melody in those times, it would have suited the
procession much more admirably. The queen and the dwarf went
first, and a vivid contrast they were - she so young, so
beautiful, so proud, so disdainfully cold; he so ugly, so
stunted, so deformed, so fiendish. After them went the band of
sylphs in white, then the chancellor, archbishop, and
embassadors; next the whole court of ladies and gentlemen; and
after them Sir Norman, in the custody of two of the soldiers.
The condemned earl came last, or rather allowed himself to be
dragged by his four guards; for he seemed to have become
perfectly palsied and dumb with fear. Keeping time to the
triumphant march, and preserving dismal silence, the procession
wound its way along the room and through a great archway
heretofore hidden by the tapestry now lifted lightly by the
nymphs. A long stone passage, carpeted with crimson and gold,
and brilliantly illuminated like the grand saloon they had left,
was thus revealed, and three similar archways appeared at the
extremity, one to the right and left, and one directly before
them. The procession passed through the one to the left, and Sir
Norman started in dismay to find himself in the most gloomy
apartment he had ever beheld in his life. It was all covered
with black - walls, ceiling, and floor were draped in black, and
reminded him forcibly of La Masque's chamber of horrors, only
this was more repellant. It was lighted, or rather the gloom was
troubled, by a few spectral tapers of black wax in ebony
candlesticks, that seemed absolutely to turn black, and make the
horrible place more horrible. There was no furniture - neither
couch, chair, nor table nothing but a sort of stage at the upper
end of the room, with something that looked like a seat upon it,
and both were shrouded with the same dismal drapery. But it was
no seat; for everybody stood, arranging themselves silently and
noiselessly around the walls, with the queen and the dwarf at
their head, and near this elevation stood a tall, black statue,
wearing a mask, and leaning on a bright, dreadful, glittering
axe. The music changed to an unearthly dirge, so weird and
blood-curdling, that Sir Norman could have put his hands over his
ear-drums to shut out the ghastly sound. The dismal room, the
voiceless spectators, tho black spectre with the glittering axe,
the fearful music, struck a chill to his inmost heart.

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