Chapter THE FIRST: The Maiden in Her Bower

ALDARIN PICTURES TO THE LADYE ANNABEL THE GLORIES OF A LIVING-TOMB.

A lamp of alabaster, placed upon a small table of ebony, beside which was seated the Ladye Annabel, threw its softened beams around the apartment, and leaving the hangings, the stately bed, and the luxurious couches, wrapt in twilight shadow, cast a lovelier tint upon a vase of flowers standing upon the table, and revealed the fair maiden’s countenance and figure in soft and rosy light.

Her flaxen tresses, unrestrained by band or cincture, fell in a golden shower over her delicate neck and finely-turned shoulders; and streaming along the full and swelling bosom, but half concealed by the bodice of white, bordered by finest lace, they flowed soft and waving down to her very feet.

The figure of the Ladye Annabel realized an old saying, that nature shows all her art, and lavishes the richest of her beauties, upon her smallest creations.

In form slight and delicate, in stature somewhat below the usual size, the proportions of Annabel were of the most exquisite tracery of outline. Her arms, full and softly rounded, were terminated by hands small and white, with tapering fingers; her feet, thin and slender, and marked by an high instep, supported ancles as finely turned, as the movements of the maiden were light and graceful; the well-proportioned waist arose in lovely gradation into the bosom of rich and budding promise; the neck, gently arching, and graceful in every attitude, blended sweetly into the small and half dimpling chin, that harmonized with the face of loveliness and soul.

“Right beauteous shone those eyes of blue,” says the chronicler of the ancient MS., “glancing pure thoughts and light-hearted fancies; and right lovely were those glowing cheeks, in which the snow-white of the fair countenance bloomed into a roseate hue; and lovely was the small mouth of parting lips, delicious in their maiden ripeness; and sweet, surpassing sweet, was the expression of that face, where love and innocence beaming from every feature, seemed like the golden fruit of fairy land, only waiting to be gathered.”

Her face was a poem, written by the finger of God, in characters of youth and bloom.

A poem whose theme was ever beauty and love, speaking its meaning through the deep glance of a shadowy eye, sending forth its messages of sweetness from the smile of the wreathing lip, or preaching its lessons of thought and purity by the calm glory of the unclouded brow.

A face lovely as a dream, when dreams are loveliest, with an outline of youth and bloom, a brow clear, calm, and cloudless, over-arching the eyes of azure, whose brightness seemed unfathomable; with full and swelling cheeks, varying the snow-white of the maiden’s countenance by the damask of the budding rose; a small mouth, with curving lips; a chin all roundness and dimple, receding with a waving outline into the neck, all lightness and grace; while all around, the luxuriance of her golden hair, unbound and uncinctured, fell sweeping and waving, with a soft, airy motion, through the sunbeams shimmered round the fairy countenance of the maiden.

Alone in her bower sate the Ladye Annabel, her lip curving with scorn while she glanced at the letter of his grace of Florence, as it was flung along the floor, unopened and unheeded.

Her soul was agitated by the fearful memory of the last three days of mystery and blood, and then came confused and wandering thoughts of the scenes she had witnessed but an hour since, in the cavern of the dead.

Her mind was lost in a maze of never-ending doubts, when she contemplated the fearful death of the late Count.

She had never for an instant believed that Adrian could be guilty of the accursed act, neither had she dreamed that it was her father’s hand that dealt the blow.

The thought would have driven her mad.

Suddenly her thoughts were agitated by a fearful picture.

She saw Adrian stretched bleeding and dead upon the wheel--his limbs severed and torn, and his brow scarred by the instruments of torture, while the doomsman’s laugh rang in her ears. As the picture grew upon her mind in all its horrible details:--the glazed eye and the writhen lip, the chest heaving with the convulsive sobs of death, and the throat straining with the death rattle,--the maiden covered her face with her hands, and shrieked:

“Save me, holy Mary, save me from these fearful fancies!”

And as she spoke, the maiden burst into a flood of tears.

“_Annabel!_” whispered a voice at once deep-toned and full of affection.

She looked up, and her father, the Count Aldarin, stood before her.

“My daughter,” he continued, drawing a seat beside her, “how dost thou like these?”

He opened a casket which he held in his hand, and the light of the alabaster lamp flashed upon ornaments of gold and silver, such as might not shame a queen to wear.

There were bracelets for the wrists, there were chains for the arching neck, gems for the brow, pearls to be woven in the flowing hair; and as their bright and star-like blaze met the eye of the Ladye Annabel, she gave utterance to a cry of delight.

“I thank thee, father, I thank thee!” she exclaimed, as, clasping a bracelet of gold, bordered by pearls, around her fair and well-rounded wrist, she received it with a glance of admiration. “See, father, see! How beauteous are those pearls, how bright that gold, and the shape--how exquisite! O! father, this is kind of thee! ’Tis indeed a rich gift!”

“_It is a bridal gift!_” exclaimed the Count, in a low and quiet tone, and with his eyes fixed upon his daughter’s countenance, as if to note each varying expression of the fair and lovely features.

Annabel started as if an adder had stung her.

“A bridal gift? Said you not so? A bridal gift? From whom is it, my father?”

“His grace, the Duke of Florence, sends thee this rare and costly present. He sends it with his ardent wishes for thy health. He sends these jewels with the hope that ere three days have run their sands, he may behold them shining on the brow of his fair bride--the Ladye Annabel, Duchess of Florence.”

As in a calm and determined tone he spoke these words, a deadly paleness came over the damsel’s face; her lips dropped apart, and her fair blue eyes distended with a vacant look, the slender fingers of each hand slowly straightened, unclasping their grasp of the casket, which fell heavily to the floor, as her arms dropped listlessly by her side.

The old man surveyed his child for an instant with a look which told of his deep, his yearning affection, combined with the strange fancies ruling his destiny through life. In an instant he again spoke, and his voice, as it came from the depths of his chest, sounded wild and thrilling to the maiden’s ear.

“_My daughter!_” said he, taking her by the hand, “_thou shall wed this man!_”

Annabel replied not.

“Thou shalt, I say, wed the Lord of Florence. It must be so; therefore it were well that thou dost prepare thee for the bridal. I say it shall be so, my daughter. The word of Aldarin is passed!”

“Father,” replied the Ladye Annabel, in tremulous tones; “father, O! look not so sternly at me, your eyes chill my very heart. I would do your bidding--the Virgin and all the saints witness me, I would--but, father--”

“Annabel,” said the Count, in his deep tones of enthusiasm, “I have said it, and it shall be so. Wed the Duke of Florence, and behold thyself a--queen! All that heart can wish, or the wildest fancy desires, shalt thou possess, and claim as thine own. Wealth shall lavish its stores around thee, and honor shall bring the fairest and the noblest to bow low at the feet of the Ladye Annabel, Duchess of Florence.

“Lo! thou art in the ducal hall of Florence: behold thyself encircled by the gay and glittering throng; a thousand eyes are fixed upon thee in admiration, a thousand tongues speak their words of eloquence but to syllable that admiration, and a thousand swords, flashing in the light, are slaves to the slightest word of Ladye Annabel--the queen.

“The robes of a queen shall gird this lovely form, the stars of a coronet shall flash from that beauteous brow, and this fair hand, so beautiful in its alabaster whiteness, shall wave the sceptre over the heads of kneeling myriads! With a queenly port and a flashing eye, thou shalt look around thee, and behold the princely halls illumined by lamps, diffusing at once both light, soft as moonbeams, and fragrance sweeter than the breath of spring flowers. The lofty windows, with their rare carvings, shall give to view gardens rich with golden fruit, won from the far lands of the East, fragrant with shrubbery and gay with flowers, while ancient trees, in leafy magnificence, sweep their arching bows overhead. Fountains fling their columns of liquid diamonds up from the arbored paths, lulling waterfalls soothe the ear, distant music wakes delightful visions in the soul, solemn palaces, in all their grandeur of outline, break through the air of night! Palaces, gardens, unbounded wealth, rank, pride, place, honor--all, all shall be thine own!”

“All, my father, all--all--but love.”

As Annabel spoke, her eyes filled with tears, and her voice was choked with the sobs that convulsed her bosom.

To say that the picture of the Count had no effect upon the maiden, would be uttering an absurd and unnatural fiction. In bright and glowing colors arose the gorgeous pageantry before the mind of Annabel: it was all saith the Chronicler of the ancient MSS.--it was all that a woman could wish, the fruition of a woman’s most ardent aspiration. With Adrian, the companion of her childhood, the princely palace would have been like an abode of fairy land; with the Duke, it would have been a tomb--a golden sepulchre for the living-dead.

The answer of Aldarin was contemptuous and bitter.

“_Love!_--a dream--a phantom--a bubble!--_Love_, forsooth! the vision of warm-blooded youth, which all have felt, and none but fools obey, Girl,” continued he, “I have said that thou shouldst wed the Duke, and--by my soul!--_thou shalt wed him_! My word--the word of Aldarin--is passed. Think not to deceive _me_. I know thy motive in thus setting the bidding of a father at defiance. It is because thou dost affect the murderer of my only brother,--of thy kind uncle,--the PARRICIDE, Adrian--”

“O! father, he cannot--cannot be the doer of so dread a crime.”

“Who, then,” exclaimed the Count, bitterly, “who then was the doer of so dread a crime? Speak, my fair daughter, _who_ was’t?”

“IT WAS THOU! THOU! ALDARIN THE SCHOLAR!” exclaimed a voice that sounded strange and hollow through the lonely apartment.

“Holy Mary, preserve us!” shrieked Annabel. “Father, whence came that fearful voice?”

The Count Aldarin replied not. The convulsive motion that heaved his breast, and strained the lineaments of his countenance, showed that he was making a desperate attempt to command his soul.

“‘Tis naught, my daughter,” he began; “‘tis fancy--’tis--”

He finished the sentence by a howl of horror, that might have been uttered by a lost soul. Annabel beheld him gazing fixedly at some object behind her. She turned her head and saw a vision that drove the life current back from her heart.

A figure arrayed in the snow-white attire of the grave, looked with a pale and ghastly countenance, and hollow eyes, from among the folds of the crimson tapestry on the opposite side of the apartment.

With freezing blood, Annabel beheld the figure advance with a slow and measured step towards her. Her consciousness failed, and she fell insensible on the floor, at the same instant that Aldarin sank down with a yell of despair, while his mouth frothed, and his eyes glared like those of a maniac.

On toward the light advanced the figure in white.

In a moment it stood beside the prostrate forms of the father and child, and having gazed at them for an instant, it threw back the robe from its head, and the beams of the lamp flashed over the wan and ghastly face of the strange figure.

“Ha--ha--ha!” he laughed, in tones sepulchral with famine, “methinks I’ve frightened the old caitiff enow! O, St. Withold! but I do feel this fiend, Hunger, gnawing with its serpent teeth at my very heart! Nothing to eat for three days and as many nights! And this hand--half-severed at the finger joints--throbbing with pain all the while! Thanks to the hard lessons of a soldier’s life, that taught me to wrap this rough bandage round the wound! Had it been my good right hand--St. Withold!--Robin had been a dead man three days ago! True, I did make out to crawl toward one of the dead soldiers in the cavern. How sweetly the wine in his flask gurgled down my parched throat! I am faint with lack of food. By a soldier’s faith, I could eat a whole ox! St. Withold, an’ I do not get some nourishment in the shortest time possible, I may as well wrap me up in this pall, so as to be ready for burial! Ugh! the priest shall not say his prayers over thee yet, my friend Robin; courage.”

Having first divested himself of the funeral pall of the late lord, the famished soldier strode across the apartment, and opening the door that led into the ante chamber, he discovered Guiseppo and Rosalind seated upon one of the couches, apparently in the most amiable humor with each other.

“Look ye, sir page,” exclaimed Robin, as he showed his wan and wasted features through the opened door, “an’ ye stir not yourself right quickly, your master will be dead; and, fair damsel, the same may be said of your mistress, the Ladye Annabel.”

Rosalind shrieked with affright at the hollow voice and shrunken figure of the bold yeoman, and Guiseppo sprang with one bound from the couch half way across the apartment.

“Fear not, Rosalind,” he cried, drawing his dagger. “If it be a devil, I defy it in God’s name; and if it be a man why I will try what this good steel can do.”

“Tut, tut,” exclaimed Robin, “put up your cheese-knife boy. Come hither. Know you me not?”

“No more than I do the devil.”

“Mayhap then, fair Sir, you have heard of a _certain youth_, who on the night before he departed from the castle--the castle where his infancy had been passed--to be a page at court, took occasion to pour a sleeping potion into the wine of a _certain yeoman_; and then shaving one side of the yeoman’s face; concluded by tying a dead cat around his neck, thus making an honest soldier a mock of laughter for all the castle. Did’st ever hear of such a page? Eh? Guiseppo?”

“Why the Virgin bless me,” exclaimed Rosalind, “It’s Rough Robin!”

“Eh?” cried the page with a stare of astonishment.

“If you value your life, Guiseppo,” continued the yeoman; “Hie away, and bring me a dozen flasks of wine or so, and a round of beef. Speak not a word, but haste away. I am nigh starved to death, and the devil may tempt me to cut a slice from the trim figure of a certain page; away!”

As Guiseppo left the apartment, Rosalind asked the bold yeoman where he had been for the last three days, and wherefore he looked so much like a ghost risen from the dead merely for its own amusement.

“_My lord the Count Aldarin_,” replied Robin with a grim smile, “_despatched me--upon a long journey, to arrange matters of business entirely relating to himself._”

Having thus spoken, he again entered the bower of the Ladye Annabel, and laying hold of the senseless body of Aldarin, he dragged him into the ante-chamber, and then returned to assist the damsel Rosalind in the recovery of her mistress.