Chapter IV (2)

"At length she became a mother. _He_ was away at the time, at the head of a party of conspirators bound on an expedition of treason and bloodshed. On the third day afterward he returned. She heard the tramp of horses, and with hurried joy opening the lattice--for, notwithstanding his neglect, she loved him still--saw him riding rapidly towards the tower, followed only by a single rider, and leading by the rein a palfrey, on which was mounted a beautiful lady; she saw that her head drooped, that she appeared sick and faint, and that he supported her by passing one arm about her waist. A pang of jealousy, the first she had ever known, shot through her bosom. They reined up beneath the window: she saw him take her in his arms from the saddle, and bear her within the tower. Then, with surprise, she heard him, in a loud tone, give commands for all the defences of the castle to be put up, as if he expected to encounter a siege. She returned again to her couch faint and sick at heart, and waited his appearance. An hour elapsed ere he came, and painful were the thoughts that agitated her bosom. When at length she heard his footsteps, she rose to meet him with a smile of love, with her infant extended in her arms. His dress was disordered and bloody, as if he was just from conflict; and she at once saw, for affection is quick and suspicious ever, that his brow was dark and angry.

"'Ha!' he cried, scornfully, 'what have we here?'

"'The pledge of your former love,' she said, with gentle reproof, offering it to his arms.

"'By the head of St. Peter!' he exclaimed, pushing her rudely away, and fixing upon her a terrible look (which but one other living can give," said Elpsy, with peculiar emphasis, fixing her gaze upon Lester), "'I brought thee not hither to breed brats! Fling it from the window!'

"And, without deigning to cast a glance upon it, he strode across the chamber, while, with a cry of pain and mortal anguish, she sunk down upon the floor. He turned and looked back at her for a few seconds, and then said fiercely,

"'Rise, woman! I have brought a lady hither who will need thy services ere the dawn. Up, I say. Thou shalt be her servant if I bid thee. Such a station will best suit thy birth. Up, or I will tear thy brat from thee and cast it from the balcony.'

"She clung convulsively to her babe and rose from the ground. But was she not changed in that little while, Robert More? Was not her deep love turned into deep hate? Ay! as if by the wave of a wand her soul was changed, and she became a different being. 'Tis but a step from the deepest love to the deepest hate in woman's heart, when she feels that she is deliberately injured. Then lightning is not quicker than the change--hell not deeper than her hate! She rose from the floor another creature. He saw the alteration in her countenance, and, for a moment, his guilty spirit cowered. But Satan helped him to banish all feeling from his breast, and he waved her sternly away.

"'Whither?' she asked, meeting his fierce gaze with a cool glance of contempt.

"'To the chamber opening from the hall,' he said, in a tone of less authority, dropping his eyes before her steady look.

"As he went out he muttered to himself, but the mother's open ears caught the meaning of the words,

"'That child shall die!'

"She shuddered, but spoke not: clasping her child to her bosom after he had left her, she tottered from the room and descended to the hall. Entering the apartment designated, she there beheld the lady whom she had seen ride up to the tower. She was reclining on a couch, and appeared to be overpowered by fatigue and grief. She was very lovely, with fine dark eyes that were filled with tears, and raven hair that was spread dishevelled over her pillow. She turned her face as the door opened, and her countenance brightened with hope as she saw the approach of one of her own sex. The young mother advanced to the couch and offered her consolation. The lady glanced at the swaddled infant, and asked if she were the wife of 'Hurtel of the Red-Hand.'

"'No,' was the sad, yet stern, reply.

"The lady ceased to inquire further, and, being in her turn asked how she came there, said that she was a noble lady and a wife."

"A noble lady!" repeated Lester, with interest.

"Now that there is high blood spoken of, you can feel an interest in my story," she said, sarcastically. "Listen! She told how her lord had gone that morning at the head of a party of gentlemen to attack a strong position of the insurgents, when, anxious and impatient for intelligence, she rode out, accompanied by several servants, nearly a league from her castle, in hopes of meeting him or a messenger. She got no tidings of him, and was on her return, when one overtook her with a message from her lord, saying that he had gained a signal victory over the conspirators, who were totally routed with great slaughter, and that their chief, Hurtel of the Red-Hand, had barely escaped with his life."

"A battle with conspirators, and defeat of Hurtel of the Red-Hand. By Heaven! woman, my father once fought and conquered this same chief! Ha--your looks! what--speak--was it--was she--no--go on, it cannot be!"

The sorceress smiled mysteriously and continued,

"'I had hardly received this joyful news,' she said, 'when three horsemen, riding at full speed, came spurring behind us. They were passing us, when one of them, whom I recognised as Hurtel of the Red-Hand, turned in his saddle as he dashed by, and, looking at me earnestly, exclaimed,

"'The countess, by all that's fortunate! This will help redeem the day's reverses, and give me a chance for my head!"

"'As he spoke he threw himself, with his company, sword in hand, upon my servants, and, after a brief struggle, in which he lost one of his party, either slew or dispersed them; and then, ere I had time to collect my thoughts, he seized the rein of my palfrey and conveyed me hither. His object must be either ransom, or, more probably, the hope of being able, with me in his power, to make his own terms with the victorious party, of which my noble lord is captain. You, who have so recently become a mother, will sympathize with me at this crisis.'

"I will briefly pass over the events that followed," continued Elpsy. "Before dawn the Lady Lester was prematurely delivered of a male child; a fine, black-eyed boy, healthy and robust; but, through weakness and mental anxiety, she soon after became insensible, and neither caressed nor opened her eyes to look upon it. At sunrise the insurgent chief entered the chamber, and demanded which was the fisher's brat. There was an expression upon his face and a dark look in his eye that boded ill. With a convulsive shudder the mother shrunk from his gaze and flew to the bed, on the foot of which slept the two infants. She was just about to clasp her own to her heart, with the resolution to defend it with her life, when suddenly she checked the maternal impulse, and, turning to him, said, as if her conduct would depend upon his reply,

"'What would you do with it?'

"'Give it me!' he demanded, more fiercely, 'or I will slay both thee and thy young one.'

"And he approached her menacingly as he spoke.

"She once more bent over the babes! She dared not disobey: yet a mother's love called loudly at her heart. Her babe's life was all in all to her. It must be saved! She thought only of saving it!

"'I wait!' he said, sternly.

"Instinctively she caught up the babe of the noble lady and placed it in his arms.

"''Tis here! But spare, oh, spare it!' she cried, as he strode from the chamber with it in his rude grasp.

"Her heart smote her for what she had done. Leaving behind her her own babe, which she had saved by this maternal deception, she followed, clinging to him, and entreating him to spare the innocent. He heeded her not, but advanced rapidly to a balcony that overhung the water thirty feet above it, and, heedless of her cries, cast it over. She sprang forward, and saw that the swaddling robe in which it was wrapped had caught the point of a sharp rock, and that it hung suspended by it within a foot of the water. With a cry of joy she had nearly sprung off to save the babe, when, seeing that, by a bold leap from the balustrade, she could reach a projecting rock, from which she could clamber down to the water, she prepared to take it. But her exclamation caused him to turn back; and seeing the fall of the child had been so singularly arrested, and that she was about to attempt its rescue, he grew black with rage, and with a violent blow, as she was in the act of springing to the rock, struck her from the balcony into the sea. As she fell she caught by the edges of the cliff, and, in some degree, broke her fall, but, nevertheless, descended heavily into the water. It was not deep, and she recovered her feet, caught the babe in her arms, and, staggering to a sandy part of the shore, sunk down insensible. When she recovered her senses the sun was high in the heavens. She attempted to rise, but found she was deeply bruised, and that her spine was much injured by striking against the rock in her descent. She looked up to the balcony. It was closed, and all was silent. It was evident that the murderer, supposing the fall fatal, had not the courage to watch her descent, and had retired.

"She immediately resolved not to enter the castle again. With her soul turned to bitterness, burning with vengeance against the author of her wrongs, and suffering with pain, she prepared to seek, with the infant she held in her arms, her father's cot. For her own babe she had no fears. She knew that it would ever be regarded as that to which the lady had given birth. It was fifteen miles to her native hut; yet weary, suffering, ill, she dragged herself thither by the evening of the second day. Her father, who had long mourned her dead, met her with open arms. He pitied and nursed her for many long months till she recovered her health; but her beauty of form was gone for ever. Her soul grew dark with her woes; vengeance took the place of love in her heart towards him who had so basely wronged her; and bitterness against all her species rankled in her breast, and hourly grew deeper and deeper. Her senses at length became unsteady. She grew restless and moody, and, after two years abode with her father, she wandered forth, leaving with him the boy, and never more returned to her natal roof. She sought a wild home in the vicinity of her own son, where she could daily see him, watch with pride his growth, and even speak with him unknown and unsuspected. But when, as he increased in years and stature, he began to look like his father, she began to hate him too, though, alas! it cost her many a pang to do so.

"She now learned, that on the evening of the day on which she had been hurled from the balcony, the husband of the lady, followed by fifty armed men, surrounded the tower and demanded her surrender of her captor. He replied that he would give her up on two conditions: first, that his lands should not be confiscated: secondly, that he should be permitted to ride forth, wherever he would, unmolested; which terms the noble lord promised should be complied with if his lady should say she had received no insult at his hands; and if, further, he would bind himself to quit the realm within nine days thereafter. To this he assented. The gates were shortly after thrown open, and, mounted on the blood-bay charger which he always rode, he paced forth from his stronghold, passed slowly and sternly through the lines of besiegers, and, after trotting deliberately till he had got a great ways beyond them, put spurs to his horse and rode off, no man knew whither: though there is _one_ knows," she added, mysteriously, as if alluding to herself, "that within nine days he was on the sea, bound to the New World.

"The noble lord took possession of the tower, and joyfully embraced his lady, and thanked her, saying, that 'notwithstanding she had been a prisoner, she had not forgotten to make him a father;' and he took up and kissed the babe as if it had been his own flesh and blood, instead of sharing the mingled current that flowed in the veins of Hurtel of the Red-Hand and the fisher's daughter; and from thenceforward he took him home and made him the heir of his house. A little after that this brave lord fell in the wars, nor ever knew he the truth to his last dying breath. Thus ends my story, _Lord Robert of Lester_! Who, think you, was this noble lord and lady?"

The young man had listened to the latter part of her narration with thrilling attention. As she was drawing to the conclusion, he sprang from his feet, and laid a hand on either shoulder of the narrator, and looked steadily into her eyes, as if he would read there the dreadful secret he anticipated, yet dared not meet. He listened to each word that fell from her lips with the most absorbing and painful interest--his lips parted--his eyes starting from their sockets--his face convulsed, and brought close to hers--his fingers almost buried in the flesh of her shoulders! When, at the conclusion, she put the sarcastic question to him, which he trembled lest he could too well answer, his hands stole from her shoulders and suddenly fastened upon her throat.

"Woman! sorceress! die!" he hoarsely whispered, through his clinched teeth, with terrible energy.

She freed herself from his grasp with an extraordinary effort, and flung him from her, laughing loudly and wildly!

"Ha, ha, ha! _Robert of Lester!_ Does my story please thee, my _lord_! _my_ retainers! my _domains_!"

He looked at her for a moment with appalling calmness, and then, approaching her, said, in an even tone, but in a hollow voice that was horrible to hear,

"Woman or demon, tell me truly, who was this noble lady who gave birth to a son?"

"Elizabeth of Lester, the 'Dark Lady of the Rock,'" was the firm reply.

"Was this change of infants surely made?" he asked, in the same tone.

"I have said it."

"And what became of her child?"

"'Twas left with the fisherman."

"Does he now live?" he asked, with sudden interest.

"He does!"

"As a fisher's lad?"

"He follows the craft of him who reared him."

"On the beach beneath Castle Cor?"

"You have said."

A strange expression, too complicated to analyze, passed across his features. But he continued with the same awful calmness:

"The woman--the daughter--what became of her?"

"Thou wilt know hereafter."

"And her own boy--ha! _was_ it a _boy_?" he asked, suddenly.

"It was."

"He was taken home by my--by--Lord Lester?"

"Yes."

"Have they had no children since, woman?"

"None, ever, save him who was born beneath the roof of 'Hurtel of the Red-Hand.'"

"And this infant--this bastard child--this lowborn boy, grew up within the halls of Castle More as its liege lord?"

"He did!"

"And that boy stands before you?"

"He does!"

His calmness was appalling to witness. She shrunk from looking him in the face, and cowered before the light of his eyes.

"Mysterious woman! how thou camest by the knowledge of these things I know not. I believe thou hast spoken truth; thy tale hangs too well together for malice to invent."

He struggled with strong emotion. His brow darkened, his face worked convulsively. At last he seemed to have resolved on a settled purpose.

"Who knows this hellish secret besides thyself?" he asked, his penetrating glance resting on her face.

"None but thee," she said, meeting his eye with a wary look, as if anticipating danger from the tone of his voice.

"To every human eye, then, but _thine_, I am Lord of Lester?"

"Who of mortal mould should suspect thee to be other than he, when she who bore thee not believes thee to be the fruit of her womb."

"Thou wilt swear this?"

"I say it."

"'Tis enough. Does this fisher's boy know the secret of his birth?"

"No!"

"Does the old man?"

"No!"

"Thou wilt swear it?"

"I say it."

"'Tis well, woman! Thou shalt die!"

As he spoke he drew from his breast his hunting knife and sprang upon her. She detected the momentary lighting up of his eye ere he made the spring, and alertly avoided the blow by leaping through the door: he fell forward, and the blade shivered against the stone sides of the tower.

With a laugh of derision she fled along the passage pursued by him. Her voice and also her footsteps ceased as he reached the steps leading upward from the tomb, and, without any sound to guide him, he groped his way along the gallery. At length he approached the light; but, although he could see through the door out into the forest, she was nowhere visible! After vainly searching every part of the ruin, he abandoned the attempt, remounted his horse, and spurred towards Castle More.