Look where he might, on every side, the gleam of flashing eyes met the gaze of Aldarin; all along the court-yard the blackened mass swayed to and fro, like the waves of the ocean in a storm; and again heaven gave back to earth the combined yells of innumerable voices, mingling together in that fearful sound—the shout of a vast body of men, maddened and crazed by the impulse of carnage. “To the gibbet!” arose that shout of doom. “To the gibbet with the brother-murderer!”
With one glance Aldarin surveyed the scene around him.
There, grouped along the steps of stone, stood the stout yeoman, his brow wearing a steady frown, as, with his sword half drawn from the scabbard, he gazed upon the face of Aldarin; there stood two figures veiled in robes of sweeping sable, while—near his side—the erect form and venerable face of the knight o’ th’ Longsword confronted the Scholar.
“Sir knight,” exclaimed Aldarin, with a smile wreathing his pinched lip “though ye are somewhat hurried in your work of doom, I would make one brief request, ere I am borne hence. Is there no one in all this crowd who will bear a message from me to my son, the Lord Guiseppo?”
“That will I,” exclaimed the sharp-featured steward of the castle, advancing from the crowd. “Guilty thou mayst be, and thy hands stained with a brother’s blood, yet the request of a dying man may not be refused.”
“Give me the scroll.”
Aldarin bared the withered flesh of his left arm: he drew a poignard, small and delicate in shape, from his girdle, and while the crowd looked on in wonder and in fear, he stained the point of the stilletto with his blood. Another moment passed, and with the dagger’s point, hurriedly traced certain characters on a small slip of parchment which he also drew from his girdle.
“Bear this away,” he shouted, “bear this away to the Lord Guiseppo, and tell him that his father is on his way to the gibbet.”
“Man of blood and crime,” exclaimed Sir Geoffrey o’ th’ Longsword, as he advanced to the side of Aldarin, “thy life has been full of dark and fearful mystery; hast thou no dying words of repentance to speak, ere the cord tightens round thy neck? It is not well to dare the presence of God, with so much blood upon thy soul.”
Aldarin bowed his head low on his breast, and the bystanders whispered one to the other that the dreaded old man was wrapt in thought.