The Midnight Queen Part 23

"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 ma.s.sive 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, rus.h.i.+ng 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, s.h.i.+ning 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 s.h.i.+ning 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 e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n, lifted her s.h.i.+ning 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 p.r.o.noun 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 pa.s.sionate 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. .h.i.therto 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 pa.s.sion 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."