The Mysteries of Florence

by George Lippard

One moment in light, and the next in darkness—down through the gloom of the pit, plumb as a hurled rock, and swift as an arrow, the betrayed soldier fell, precipitated by the treachery of the scholar Aldarin.

The swiftness of his descent took from him all thought or sensation. His flight was suddenly terminated by a subterranean pool of water, into the depths of which he sunk for a moment, and then arose to the surface.

The coldness of the flood, together with an unconquerable stench that assailed his nostrils on all sides, restored the stout yeoman to sensation and feeling.

Spreading his arms instinctively outward, in an attitude of swimming, Rough Robin could neither guess where he was now, or with whom he had been conversing a moment since. His thoughts were wandering and confused, as are the thoughts of a man who dreams when half asleep and half awake.

Still swimming onward through the stagnant waters, Robin cast his eyes overhead, and discerned far, far above, a faintly twinkling light, somewhat of the size of a dim and distant star. He looked again, and it was gone. Around, above, and beneath was darkness: darkness which no eye could pierce, where all was shadow and vacuum—darkness that was almost tangible with its density. The cheek of the brave soldier was chilled by air that, heavy with dampness and mist, seemed as dead and stagnant as the waters in which he swam.

The light glimmering for an instant far above, brought dimly to his mind the person of Aldarin, and the incidents of a moment hence.

And then Robin thought that his fall of terror was only a dream, and, splashing and plunging in the dark waters, he sought to shake off the fearful night-mare that stiffened his sinews and froze his blood.

His extended hand touched a cold and slimy substance, and a small, bright speck shone like a coal of fire through the darkness. Robin grasped the slimy substance: it moved, and a noisome reptile wriggled in his hand.

Now it was that he became aware that the subterranean waters were filled by crawling serpents, who writhed around his legs, twined around his body, and struck his arms and hands at every movement. Their bright eyes sparkled in the waters, and their hissing broke upon the air, as they were thus disturbed by the presence of a strange visitor.

Robin was no coward, neither was he much given to strange fancies; but a feeling of intense terror chilled the very blood around his heart, as the thought came over him that he lay in that fearful place, of which so many legends were told by the vassals of Albarone. The peasantry had many stories of a vast, unearthly pit sunk far in the depths of the castle, where the fiends of darkness were wont to hold their revel and shake the bosom of the earth with the sounds of hellish wassail. Into this dark pit—so ran the legend—had many a shivering wretch been precipitated by the lords of Albarone; and here, unpitied and unknown, had the carcasses of the murdered lain rotting and festering in darkness and oblivion.