Two figures were kneeling upon the floor of an apartment, narrow and confined, as regards dimensions, and square in shape, hung with gorgeous folds of embroidered tapestry, dark-green in hue, with matting of strange pattern and curious device, brought from the far Eastern lands, strewn over the pavement of the room. The only object that broke the uniformity of the place, was a dark robe flung over some massive body in an obscure corner.
The light, clear and brilliant in its flame, placed on the matting between the kneeling men, threw its vivid beams on each face and form, over every line of their features, over every point of their apparel.
The Ladye Annabel stifled an expression of surprise which rose to her lips at the vision of this luxuriously furnished cell, in the midst of gloom and damp, and then with a writhing heart took in the details of this strange picture.
One of the kneeling figures was a soldier, the other was a monk.
The soldier, with his muscular hand laid on his bent knee, grasped a massive sword; his beetle brow surmounted by stiff and matted hair, giving a darker expression to his small and ferret-like eyes; while his companion, robed in the dark attire of a monk, with a pale, solemn face, lighted by the glare of an eye that seemed to dilate and burn, looked upon the man-at-arms with a glance meant to read more than the rugged visage—meant to read his very soul.
The Ladye Annabel listened to their low and muttered conversation with her very heart mounting to her throat.
“Thou wilt do it—eh, Albertine? Thou knowest my orders, sir monk?”
“The steel or the bowl?”
“The same, by the fiend! The hour—when the clock of the tower strikes twelve. He said so—thou knowest whom I mean. Why that dark and bitter smile? Blood o’ th’ Turk, monk, that smile shows thy white teeth—I like it not!”
“Nay, good Balvardo, be not angered with me. I was but painting a quiet picture to my fancy. Our victim, his eyes rolling in the death-struggle, his blue lips whitened with foam, his arms outstretched with the last convulsive spasm, and then—ha, ha!—the music of the death rattle! ’Tis excellent, i’faith, the picture—ha, ha, ha!”