University of Virginia Library

4. CHAPTER THE FOURTH.
THE DEATH-TRAP.

ROBIN THE ROUGH IS ADVANCED TO HONOR,
WHILE THE SKELETON-GOD LAUGHS
OVER HIS SHOULDER.

The door flew suddenly open, and Robin, gazing
around, found himself standing in a small room,
circular in form, with arching ceiling, and floor
of stone. The walls were lined with shelves,
piled with massive books, clasped by fastenings of
silver and of gold, thrown among scrolls of parchment,
richly illuminated, and emblazoned with
strange figures, relieving pictures of dark and
hidden meaning.

The apartment having no casement, light was
supplied by a small lamp of curious workmanship,
depending from the arched ceiling, and diffusing
its intense and radiant beams all around the place,
making the lonely room as bright as though the
noonday sun shone over its shelves and walls.

Around the chamber were scattered strange instruments
pertaining to the science of astrology
or mysteries of alchemy; here richly emblazoned
parchments, inscribed with curious characters,
glittered in the light; and yonder, the ghastly
skull, with its hideous grin of mockery, was strown
along the floor, mingled with the bones of the human
skeleton, the last fragments of the tenement
of the living soul.

While Robin's eyes distended in wonder, as he hastily
glanced around the room, he stumbled and fell
against an object reared in the centre of the floor.

“The foul fiend take thee, slave!” shouted Aldarin,
as, with his extended arms, he stayed the
soldier in his fall. “Wouldst thou destroy the
labor of thrice seven long years? Wouldst thou
destroy a Mighty Thought? Stand aside from the
altar, and come not near it again, or by the body
of * * *, I will brain thee with this dagger! Thou
slave!” he shrieked, in tones of wild indignation,
as his blazing eye was fixed upon the face of the
yeoman, who stood confused and silent, “for what
dost thou suppose I have watched yon beechen
flame, by day and night, for twenty-one long years?
For what have I wasted the youth and the vigor
of my days before yon altar? Was it to have my
labor, the mighty thought, for which I have dared
what mortal never dared before, destroyed by thy
clumsy carcase? Dost think so, slave?”

Rough Robin murmured an excuse for his awkwardness,
and, while the Signior's features subsided
into their usual deep and solemn expression,
he again gazed around the room.

From the centre of the oaken floor arose a small
altar, built of snow-white marble, with a light blue
flame arising from a vessel of gold on its surface:
the fire sweeping along the sides of an alembic,
suspended over the altar by four chains, attached
to as many rods of gold placed at each corner of
the structure.

There was something so strange and solemn in
the entire aspect of the place—the light blue flame
arising in tongues of fire from the vessel of gold
on the snow-white altar, burning for ever beneath
the hanging alembic, the chains and rods of gold,
the pure and undimmed white of the marble, varied
by no sculpturing or ornament, combined with
the utter stillness and solitude of the room—that
Robin felt awed, he scarce knew why; and dark
forebodings crept like shadows over his brain.

The scholar seated himself upon a small stool
placed near the other, and pointing to another, in
a mild voice, desired Robin to follow his example.
The yeoman hesitated.

“It is not meet for a poor yeoman o' th' Guard
to rest himself in the presence of so great a scholar.”

“Nay, nay, good Robin, rest thyself. I was
angered with thee a moment hence, but now it is
all past. Seat thyself, brave yeoman.”

The soldier complied, and rested his stout person
upon a stool of oak, placed some six feet
from the spot where sat the Signior Aldarin. Robin
had but time to note a singular circumstance,
ere the scholar spoke. The stool upon which the
stout yeoman sat, was firmly jointed in a large
slab of red stone, which, spreading before him for
the space of some six feet, was curiously fixed in
the planks of the oaken floor.

With a mild and smiling look, the scholar
spoke:—

“Robin, thou hast been a true and faithful vassal
to my late brother. Thou didst right carefully
attend Lord Julian, when forced by the incurable
wound of a poisoned arrow, some three months
since, he returned from Palestine, leaving Sir
Geoffrey o' th' Long-sword, at the head of his
men-at-arms. Robin, I have long designed to testify
the good opinion in which I hold thee by
some substantial gift—thou shalt be Seneschal of
this mighty castle of Albarone!”

“Marry, good Signior—”

“How, sir!—dost thou address me as Signior?
Vassal, I am the Lord of Albarone!”

“But Adrian—”

“What sayest thou of Adrian? A murderer—
a parricide—his death is certain. The Duke of
Florence hath sworn it.”

“Well, my Lord Count, then, an' it pleases you
better, I was about to say that if I had my choice
I would sooner be made an esquire.”

“This thou shalt be:—first promise to serve
me faithfully in all that I shall command.”

“Well, as far as an honest man may, so far do
I promise.”

The scholar Aldarin mused a moment, and then
said carelessly:

“Was it not an exceeding wicked deed—this
murder of my good brother?”

“Aye, marry was it,” replied Robin, looking
fixedly at Aldarin, “and the fiend of hell, himself,
could not have done a more damned, or a more
accursed thing.”

“True, good Robin, 'twas a horrid murder.
What could have prompted Adrain to raise his
hand against his father, eh? good Robin?”

The yeoman did not reply. He cast his eyes
to the floor, and confusedly fingered his cap.

The Count Aldarin—so must I style him—
reached a folded parchment from a writing-desk,
and then asked:

“Why dost thou not speak, good Robin? What
art thinking of?”

“Why, heaven save your lordship,” said Robin,
speaking in a whisper, and gazing full in Aldarin's

face, “I was just wondering whether the
murderer embraced the Count ere he strangled
him?”

Aldarin started aside—his features were writhen
into a fearful contortion, and his whole frame
shook like a leaf of the aspen tree. Again he
turned his visage: it was calm as the face of innocence,
and a smile was on his pinched lip.

“Receive thy warrant as seneschal of the Castle
Di Albarone,” said Aldarin, as he held forth
the parchment. “Nay, kneel not, good Robin;
keep thy seat.”

Robin held forth his hand to reach the parchment;
his fingers touched it, when Aldarin stamped
his foot upon the floor, and the slab of red
stone fell quick as lightning beneath the yeoman.
A deep and dark well was discovered. In an instant
the stool affixed to the stone was empty, and
far below, in the depths of the pit, the echo of the
falling slab sank with a sound like the rushing of
the winter wind through the corridors of a deserted
mansion.

A face, with eyes rolling ghastlily, with the
lower jaw sunken, and the tongue protruding
from the mouth, appeared above the side of the
cavity, at the very feet of Aldarin, and a muscular
hand convulsively clutched the oaken planks;
while the body of the stout yeoman was seen
through the darkness of the pit, as he clung, with
the grasp of despair, to the floor of the room.

“Devil!” shouted the desperate soldier, as he
made a convulsive effort to tighten the grasp of
his hand on the smooth plank, “I'll foil thee yet.
'Tis not the fate of an honest man to die thus!
My doom—”

“Is death!” shrieked the scholar, and drawing
the glittering dagger from his robe, he smote the
fingers of the yeoman with its unerring steel.
The joints of the hand were severed, the grasp of
the soldier failed, he gave one dying look, and
then far, far down in the pit a whizzing noise like
the sound of a falling body was heard, and as it
grew fainter and fainter did Aldarin stand in attitude
of listening, gazing down into the shadowy
void, his arms outstretched, his eyes wildly glaring,
his lips apart, and every lineament of his
face expressive of triumph, mingled with hate and
scorn.

A wild, maniac laugh came from the murderer's
lips:

“Ha—ha—ha! caitiff and slave! Thou hast
met thy fate. The scholar hath enemies, but—
ha—ha!—they all disappear!”

Again he cast his eyes into the well. All was
still as death. A single look into the dark cavity,
and, with his bitter smile, Aldarin pictured the
mangled corse of the yeoman, lying in bloody
fragments, strewn over the vaults of the castle,
amid the corses of the ghastly dead. He stamped
his foot on the floor, and the red slab, bearing the
empty stool, slowly arose on its hinges, and was
again fixed in the oaken planks.

“Silent forever, prying fool! My secret is
safe. Thou shalt no more prate of a certain warm
embrace. Nay, nay; now for my schemes. I
must send on to Florence fresh proofs of Adrian's
guilt: witnesses, and so on, and so on. That
matter arranged, then comes the marriage of Annabel
and the Duke. Ha—ha! Let me think.”

Here he fell into a musing fit, and having newly
fed the beechen flame upon the altar of marble,
he approached a point of the Round Room, where
a small knob of iron projected from the oaken
floor. Stamping upon the knob, a division of the
shelving receded, and a portion of the wall, leaving
an open space, while a passage was disclosed
into a secret chamber, beyond the Round Room.
A door of dark and solid wood, painted in imitation
of the walls of the Round Room, had been
made in an aperture of the wall, with shelving
placed on its panels, and every sign or mark of
the existence of such a door, carefully and effectually
erased. It bore a complete resemblance to
the other parts of the walls, and no one, save
Aldarin, could have dreamed of its existence.
The small knob in the oaken floor, communicated
with a spring, and the secret door rolled into the
adjoining room on grooves fixed in the floor.

Aldarin stepped through the secret passage,
the door rolled back, and the Round Room was
left to the silent flame and the grinning skull.