Windsor Castle by William Harrison Ainsworth (learn to read activity book TXT) 📕

the face, minion--you cannot!--you dare not!"

"Oh, Henry!" sobbed Anne.

"You have brought it upon yourself," said the king.

"She has," replied Catherine; "and, unless she pauses and repents, she will bring yet more upon her head. You suffer now, minion, but how will you feel when, in your turn, you are despised, neglected, and supplanted by a rival--when the false glitter of your charms having passed away, Henry will see only your faults, and will open his eyes to all I now tell him?"

A sob was all the answer Anne could return.

"You will feel as I feel towards you," pursued the queen--"hatred towards her; but you will not have the consolations I enjoy. You will have merited your fate, and you will then think upon me and my woes, and will bitterly, but unavailingly, repent your conduct. And now, Henry," she exclaimed, turning solemnly to him, "you have pledged your royal word to me, and given me your hand upon it, that if you find this woman false to you she shall expiate her offence on the block. I call upon you to ratify the pledge in her presence."

"I do so, Catherine," replied the king. "The mere suspicion of her guilt shall be enough."

"Henry!" exclaimed Anne.

"I have said it," replied the king.

"Tremble, then, Anne Boleyn!" cried Catherine, "tremble! and when you are adjudged to die the death of an adulteress, bethink you of the prediction of the queen you have injured. I may not live to witness your fate, but we shall meet before the throne of an eternal Judge."

"Oh, Henry, this is too much!" gasped Anne, and she sank fainting into his arms.

"Begone!" cried the king furiously. "You have killed her!"

"It were well for us both if I had done so," replied Catherine. "But she will recover to work my misery and her own. To your hands I commit her punishment. May God bless you, Henry!"

With this she replaced her mask, and quitted the chapel.

Henry, meanwhile, anxious to avoid the comments of his attendants, exerted himself to restore Anne Boleyn to sensibility, and his efforts were speedily successful.

"Is it then reality?" gasped Anne, as she gazed around. "I hoped it was a hideous dream. Oh, Henry, this has been frightful! But you will not kill me, as she predicted? Swear to me you will not!"

"Why should you be alarmed?" rejoined the king. "If you are faithful, you have nothing to fear."

"But you said suspicion, Henry--you said suspicion!" cried Anne.

"You must put the greater guard upon your conduct," rejoined the king moodily. "I begin to think there is some truth in Catherine's insinuations."

"Oh no, I swear to you there is not," said Anne--"I have trifled with the gallants of Francis's court, and have listened, perhaps too complacently, to the love-vows of Percy and Wyat, but when your majesty deigned to cast eyes upon me, all others vanished as the stars of night before the rising of the god of day. Henry, I love you deeply, devotedly--but Catherine's terrible imprecations make me feel more keenly than I have ever done before the extent of the wrong I am about to inflict upon her--and I fear that retributive punishment will follow it."

"You will do her no wrong," replied Henry. "I am satisfied of the justice of the divorce, and of its necessity; and if my purposed union with you were out of the question, I should demand it. Be the fault on my head."

"Your words restore me in some measure, my liege," said Anne. "I love you too well not to risk body and soul for you. I am yours for ever--ah!" she exclaimed, with a fearful look.

"What ails you, sweetheart?" exclaimed the king.

"I thought I saw a face at the window," she replied--"a black and hideous face like that of a fiend."

"It was mere fancy," replied the king. "Your mind is disturbed by what has occurred. You had better join your attendants, and retire to your own apartments."

"Oh, Henry!" cried Anne--" do not judge me unheard - do not believe what any false tongue may utter against me. I love only you and can love only you. I would not wrong you, even in thought, for worlds."

"I believe you, sweetheart," replied the king tenderly.

So saying, he led her down the aisle to her attendants. They then proceeded together to the royal lodgings, where Anne retired to her own apartments, and Henry withdrew to his private chamber.


II. How Herne the Hunter appeared to Henry on the Terrace.


Henry again sat down to his despatches, and employed himself upon them to a late hour. At length, feeling heated and oppressed, he arose, and opened a window. As he did so, he was almost blinded by a vivid flash of forked lightning. Ever ready to court danger, and convinced, from the intense gloom without, that a fearful storm was coming on, Henry resolved to go forth to witness it. With this view he quitted the closet, and passed through a small door opening on the northern terrace. The castle clock tolled the hour of midnight as he issued forth, and the darkness was so profound that he could scarcely see a foot before him. But he went on.

"Who goes there?" cried a voice, as he advanced, and a partisan was placed at his breast.

"The king! " replied Henry, in tones that would have left no doubt of the truth of the assertion, even if a gleam of lightning had not at the moment revealed his figure and countenance to the sentinel.

"I did not look for your majesty at such a time," replied the man, lowering his pike. "Has your majesty no apprehension of the storm? I have watched it gathering in the valley, and it will be a dreadful one. If I might make bold to counsel you, I would advise you to seek instant shelter in the castle."

"I have no fear, good fellow," laughed the king. " Get thee in yon porch, and leave the terrace to me. I will warn thee when I leave it."

As he spoke a tremendous peal of thunder broke overhead, and seemed to shake the strong pile to its foundations. Again the lightning rent the black canopy of heaven in various places, and shot down in forked flashes of the most dazzling brightness. A rack of clouds, heavily charged with electric fluid, hung right over the castle, and poured down all their fires upon it.

Henry paced slowly to and fro, utterly indifferent to the peril he ran--now watching the lightning as it shivered some oak in the home park, or lighted up the wide expanse of country around him--now listening to the roar of heaven's artillery; and he had just quitted the western extremity of the terrace, when the most terrific crash he had yet heard burst over him. The next instant a dozen forked flashes shot from the sky, while fiery coruscations blazed athwart it; and at the same moment a bolt struck the Wykeham Tower, beside which he had been recently standing. Startled by the appalling sound, he turned and beheld upon the battlemented parapet on his left a tall ghostly figure, whose antlered helm told him it was Herne the Hunter. Dilated against the flaming sky, the proportions of the demon seemed gigantic. His right hand was stretched forth towards the king, and in his left he held a rusty chain. Henry grasped the handle of his sword, and partly drew it, keeping his gaze fixed upon the figure.

"You thought you had got rid of me, Harry of England," cried Herne, "but were you to lay the weight of this vast fabric upon me, I would break from under it--ho! ho!"

"What wouldst thou, infernal spirit?" cried Henry.

"I am come to keep company with you, Harry," replied the demon; "this is a night when only you and I should be abroad. We know how to enjoy it. We like the music of the loud thunder, and the dance of the blithe lightning."

"Avaunt, fiend!" cried Henry. "I will hold no converse with thee. Back to thy native hell!"

"You have no power over me, Harry," rejoined the demon, his words mingling with the rolling of the thunder, "for your thoughts are evil, and you are about to do an accursed deed. You cannot dismiss me. Before the commission of every great crime--and many great crimes you will commit--I will always appear to you. And my last appearance shall he three days before your end--ha! ha!"

"Darest thou say this to me!" cried Henry furiously.

"I laugh at thy menaces," rejoined Herne, amid another peal of thunder--" but I have not yet done. Harry of England! your career shall be stained in blood. Your wrath shall descend upon the heads of those who love you, and your love shall be fatal. Better Anne Boleyn fled this castle, and sought shelter in the lowliest hovel in the land, than become your spouse. For you will slay her--and not her alone. Another shall fall by your hand; and so, if you had your own will, would all!"

"What meanest thou by all?" demanded the king.

"You will learn in due season," laughed the fiend. "But now mark me, Harry of England, thou fierce and bloody kin--thou shalt be drunken with the blood of thy wives; and thy end shall be a fearful one. Thou shalt linger out a living death--a mass of breathing corruption shalt thou become--and when dead the very hounds with which thou huntedst me shall lick thy blood!"

These awful words, involving a fearful prophecy, which was afterwards, as will be shown, strangely fulfilled, were so mixed up with the rolling of the thunder that Henry could scarcely distinguish one sound from the other. At the close of the latter speech a flash of lightning of such dazzling brilliancy shot down past him, that he remained for some moments almost blinded; and when he recovered his powers of vision the demon had vanished.


III. How Mabel Lyndwood was taken to the Castle by Nicholas Clamp-- And how they encountered Morgan Fenwolf by the way.


THE storm which had fallen so heavily on the castle had likewise visited the lake, and alarmed the inmates of the little dwelling on its banks. Both the forester and his grand-daughter were roused from their beds, and they sat together in the chief apartment of the cottage, listening to the awful rolling of the thunder, and watching the blue flashing of the lightning. The storm was of unusually long duration, and continued for more than an hour with unintermitted violence. It then paused; the thunder rolled off, and the flashes of lightning grew fainter and less frequent. During the storm Mabel continued on her knees, addressing the most earnest prayers to the Virgin for her preservation and that of her grandfather; but the old forester, though evidently much alarmed, uttered not a single supplication, but remained sitting in his chair with a sullen, scared look. As the thunder died away, he recovered his composure, and addressed himself to soothe the fears of his granddaughter. In this he had partially succeeded, and was urging her