Captain Kyd Volume I Part 12

"Ha, ha, Robert More! If men will obey thee thy brute will not. He has the eye to see dangers that are hidden from mortal vision."

"Witch--fiend!" cried the young man, fiercely, "I will dismount and hurl thee from the path if thou bar my way farther. Stand aside and let me pa.s.s!"

And a second time the infuriated rider urged the terrified beast forward, but was nearly unhorsed by his efforts to turn from the road.

In an instant he leaped to the ground and advanced upon her. She smiled scornfully as he approached, caught the arm he extended to seize her, and held him in her grasp with the force of a vice.

"Ha, ha, Robert More! thou art defeated."

Quick as lightning, with his other hand he drew from his breast a hunting-knife, and, elevating it above her head, said, in a cool, decided tone,

"Elpsy, release me, or I sheath this blade in thy heart!"

She fixed her dark wild eyes upon his face an instant, and reading aright its resolute expression, let go her grasp.

"'Tis well for thee, Elpsy," he said, returning the blade to his bosom; "thou hast saved thy wretched life, and thy blood is not on my soul. Now leave the path!" he added, sternly. "By the cross! ere I will be bearded thus on my own lands, I will command my retainers to hurl thee into the sea."

"_Thy_ lands! _thy_ retainers! Ha, ha, ha, Robert _More_! I have in store a punishment for thee and for thy pride, that will repay me for all thy arrogance! Oh, how thy haughty soul will writhe! how thy proud spirit will groan! _Have I not a cup for thee to drink?_--Oh, have I!

Ha, ha, ha!"

The foreboding words and wild laugh of the hag sunk deep into the soul of the young man. He was impressed by her manner as much as by her language, and, with a changing cheek, said quickly,

"What mean these dark words, Elpsy?"

"Dark! yes, they are dark to thee now, but I can make them clear as the sun at noon; ay, proud Robert of Lester! they shall scorch thee! wither thy soul! cause thy heart to shrink! thy neck to bow! thy head to lie in the very dust! Oh, will not the lowest slave among the va.s.sals that wait thy word pity thee, when thine ears receive what I would reveal!"

The wild prophetic air, the energy and taunting scorn with which she spoke, alarmed while it enraged him.

"Madness! Woman--fiend! monster of deformity! speak, I command thee."

"_Thou_ command _me_, Robert Lester! Well, there will be a time! Wouldst thou know what I have to reveal?" she asked, fixing on him her scorching eyes.

"Beware if thou art mocking my fears! I will pluck thy tongue from thy throat, and fling it to my hounds if thou hast trifled with me!"

"What I will tell thee will be so true, thou wilt indeed wish the tongue that spoke it had been plucked from its roots ere it had given it utterance. Nevertheless, the time has come for thee to hear; and I may no longer delay the recital of what, for thy sake," she added, with a softer manner, "I would bear close locked in my breast to the grave.

But," she concluded, in a lofty tone, "what is to be revealed must be made known, though the heavens were to fall and the earth to quake. Who shall stay the hand of fate when once it is lifted to destroy?"

"Elpsy," said Lester, in a deep and earnest voice, unable to throw off the presentiment of coming evil her words had awakened, "I would believe thou hadst something to make known to me either of good or evil, though of the latter alone I know thou art the minister. Yet, if thou hast aught to say, I am ready to listen, good mother!" he added, in a mild and persuasive tone.

"Robert More," she said, in a voice of super-human softness, while the frigid and austere character of her face pa.s.sed away, and her features a.s.sumed a more womanly and gentler expression; "those last few words were kindly spoken, and became thee: they have touched my heart--for even Elpsy has a heart," she said, with sarcastic bitterness; "for those kind expressions I would withhold from thee the knowledge of the doom that awaits thee. But it is not for me," she added, in an enthusiastic voice, and with returning wildness of the eye; "it is not for one like me to refuse to obey the decree that has gone forth against thee. As a mortal, I pity thee! as a woman, I could weep for thee! and as--No," she interrupted herself, and muttered, "no, he shall not know all now; he shall not learn all till my soul is on the wing; then, _then_ will it be time enough!" She then added aloud, "as the minister of the invisible world, I must do as I am commanded. Robert More, if you can bear to hear what I am doomed to tell, follow me!"

"Nay, Elpsy, speak to me here."

"Obey me!" she commanded, in an authoritative voice, that had a singular power over his will, and which he had not the ability to resist.

Without waiting for a reply, or looking round to see if she were followed, she turned from the bridle-path, and, bounding with great activity and with a sort of mad exhilaration of spirits over the fragments of stone that lay in her way, directed her course towards a low door at the foot of the crumbling tower. He hesitated a moment, and then, leaving his horse cropping the long rich gra.s.s that grew among the ruins, followed her. She entered the ruin, and, guided by a dim twilight that penetrated through the top of the ruinous arch, led the way along a covered pa.s.sage which ran in the direction of the chancel. Its extremity was wrapped in total darkness.

"Elpsy, I will follow thee no farther," he called, after advancing till he could no longer take a step safely in the impenetrable gloom that surrounded him, while she walked before him with a free, rapid, and confident pace.

"Take the end of my staff," she said, returning a few steps and placing it within his reach.

"Thy cabalistic wand, woman!" he repeated, in a tone of horror, recoiling from her several paces and crossing himself. "Avoid thee!"

Like many among the highborn and educated of that day, Lester was not above the superst.i.tious notions of the times, and a.s.sented to, perhaps without firmly believing, the existence and power of sorceresses. Among the great number of these singular beings that about this time rose up and filled the minds of all men, both in Great Britain and the New-England colonies, with pious alarm and G.o.dly horror, was Elpsy More, or "Elpsy of the Tower," for by both of these names she was known, who had the reputation, above all others who practised the black art, of being on the most intimate footing with his Satanic highness. Dark and wild were the tales that had gone forth, and were repeated in hall and cot, of the supernatural deeds of this communer with the world of spirits. By the imaginations of the credulous and timid she was invested with powers that could belong only to the Creator of the universe; and it was believed by all good Catholics, that every Whitsuntide the devil came to dine with her in the chancel of the old church, making a table of the marble tomb of Black Morris O'More; who, as the tradition went, sold his soul for the love of a beautiful lady, who turned out to be a fiend, and on the bridal night flew away with him into the regions of wo.

When Lester crossed the threshold of the gloomy gallery, these tales of diablerie had come crowding thick upon his memory, painted in their most vivid hues by his imagination; and with all his daring his blood ran cold in his veins: nevertheless, he had continued to grope on until he could go no farther, when he called to her. As the staff she offered came in contact with his hand, he had shuddered and shrunk back, remembering how that it was said her crutch was given her by her master, who had charmed it by hardening it in the fires of the ever-burning lake; and that whomsoever she touched with it, or even pointed it to, that wore neither cross, bead, nor blessed relic about his neck, his soul would surely be lost. Lester trembled as these legends pa.s.sed through his mind, crossed himself, and with great devotion muttered a _paternoster_.

"Here, then, is my hand!" she said, seeing his hesitation.

"Fearful being, I will not go with thee."

"Robert More, obey me! There is my hand. It shall not harm thee," she added, in that peculiar tone which held such a singular power over his volition.

Without replying, he took the extended hand and followed her through the dark pa.s.sage a few yards farther, when she stopped and said,

"Heed thy footsteps! Here are steps--thou must go down with me."

As she spoke she began to descend a flight of stone stairs into a vault beneath. He would have held back, but she gently and irresistibly led him down, when they stood upright in a damp chamber, in which a faint light struggled through an opening in the floor of the chapel above. The dank, noisome atmosphere of the place, and its subterraneous position beneath the chancel, filled him with awe and fear.

"Woman, whither have you led me?" he asked, in a voice deep with the mingled emotions of suspicion, alarm, and resentment.

"Into the tomb where rest the bones of Black Morris O'More," she answered, in a voice that sounded hollow and sepulchral.

"Mother of Heaven!" he gasped, "then is my soul lost!"

"Thou wilt little heed thy soul, proud youth, when thou hast heard my tale."

"Be speedy with thy story, then; for, good or ill befall, I will not long remain here."

"Fear not; thou art in no danger! Step cautiously, and I will guide thee across this chamber to my own house. This is only the anteroom to it.

Ha, ha!" she laughed frightfully. "See! I have grim Morris O'More to stand guard over my door."

As she said this she struck something, which, in the darkness, rattled like bones suspended from the ceiling of the vault.

"Sorceress!" cried he, shuddering at the sound, "I will go no farther."

"Come with me, Robert More!" she said, firmly; "and see thou fall not over the tomb of Black Morris in the way."

She drew him by the arm as she spoke with a strength far beyond his own.

He felt for his hunting-knife, determined to free himself by striking her with it.

"Hold!" she cried, divining his intentions; "I will not harm thee. Here is my abode!"

While speaking, she struck against the opposite wall with her staff, and a door flew open, exposing the interior of a small circular chamber receiving a dim light from the sky, which was seen calm and blue through the roofless tower above.

"Welcome to the abode of Elpsy of the Tower!" she said, with irony.

"'Tis not the princely one thou art accustomed to, but it will serve thy present purpose. Didst know that on thy domains thou hadst such a brave woodland palace? Look about thee!"

The young man entered the room with a feeling of relief that he no longer was in the very sepulchre, though still within reach, of the tomb of Black Morris the accursed. The apartment in which he now found himself originally had been constructed by the priests for the preservation of the sacred vessels of the church in times of hostile invasion of their domains. It was a subterranean room, situated beneath a circular tower or turret that rose at the southeast angle of the chapel. The tower once had contained three floors, one above the other; the mortises for the sleepers being yet visible, ranged regularly and at equal distances around the inner side. The top or roof of the tower, with its battlement and Gothic ornaments, had long since fallen in; and the floors, down even to the ground that formed the floor of the witch's apartment and the very foundation of the tower, had successively decayed and disappeared. The only entrance to this tunnel-like turret was the door from the sepulchre by which he had been admitted. From this vault to the chambers formerly above, access had been obtained by a circular stairway within the tower and conducting from floor to floor, the beds of the beams and fixtures which supported them still remaining in the masonry. The object of these once-existing upper chambers of the round tower is involved in mystery, though tradition hath given to the "three tower-chambers" each their own wild tale of dark superst.i.tion and priestly crime.