The Midnight Queen, May Agnes Fleming [phonics books .txt] 📗

it up and snuffed it with his fingers, and held it aloof, much as Robinson Crusoe held the brand in the dark cavern with the dead goat.

In the velvet pall of blackness before alluded to, its small, wan ray pierced but a few inches, and only made the darkness visible. But Sir Norman groped his way to the wall, which he found to be all over green and noisome slime, and broken out into a cold, clammy perspiration, as though it were at its last gasp. By the aid of his friendly light, for which he was really much obliged--a fact which, had his little friend known, he would not have left it--he managed to make the circuit of his prison, which he found rather spacious, and by no means uninhabited; for the walls and floor were covered with fat, black beetles, whole families of which interesting specimens of the insect-world he crunched remorselessly under foot, and massacred at every step; and great, depraved-looking rats, with flashing eyes and sinister-teeth, who made frantic dives and rushes at him, and bit at his jack-boots with fierce, fury. These small quadrupeds reminded him forcibly of the dwarf, especially in the region of the eyes and the general expression of countenance; and he began to reflect that if the dwarf's soul (supposing him to possess such an article as that, which seemed open to debate) passed after death into the body of any other animal, it would certainly be into that of a rat.

He had just come to this conclusion, and was applying the flame of the candle to the nose of an inquisitive beetle, when it struck him he heard voices in altercation outside his door. One, clear, ringing, and imperious, yet withal feminine, was certainly not heard for the first time; and the subdued and respectful voices that answered, were those of his guards.

After a moment, he heard the sound of the withdrawing bolts, and his heart beat fast. Surely, his half-hour had not already expired; and if it had, would she be the person to conduct him to death? The door opened; a puff of wind extinguished his candle, but not until he had caught the glimmer of jewels, the shining of gold, and the flutter of long, black hair; and then some one came in. The door was closed; the bolts shot back!--and he was alone with Miranda, the queen.

There was no trouble about recognising her, for she carried in her hand a small lamp, which she held up between them, that its rays might fall directly on both faces. Each was rather white, perhaps, and one heart was going faster than it had ever gone before, and that one was decidedly not the queen's. She was dressed exactly as he had seen her, in purple and ermine, in jewels and gold; and strangely out of place she looked there, in her splendid dress and splendid beauty, among the black beetles and rats. Her face might have been a dead, blank wall, or cut out of cold, white stone, for all it expressed; and as she lightly held up her rich robes in one hand, and in the other bore the light, the dark, shining eyes were fixed on his face, and were as barren of interest, eagerness, compassion, tenderness, or any other feeling, as the shining, black glass ones of a wax doll. So they stood looking at each other for some ten seconds or so, and then, still looking full at him, Miranda spoke, and her voice was as clear and emotionless as her eyes,

"Well, Sir Norman Kingsley, I have come to see you before you die."

"Madame," he stammered, scarcely knowing what he said, "you are kind."

"Am I? Perhaps you forget I signed your death-warrant."

"Probably it would have been at the risk of your own life to refuse?"

"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 massive 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, rushing 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, shining 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 shining 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 ejaculation, lifted her shining 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 pronoun 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 passionate 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,