A sudden cry pealed out over the mere, where old Nicholas was standing in his boat, poling back towards the island. He lifted a hand, pointed to the sky, bent to his work, and brought the boat over with foam at the prow. Voices answered him from the landing stage, where his old wife and two soldiers were watching the sky. They entered the court when Nicholas had moored his boat and clapped to the gate.
Rosamunde and Miriam leant against the stone balustrading of the stairway, watching the distant fire. The increasing grandeur of the scene reacted differently upon the two, inspiring fear in the Jewess and an unconscious calm in the Lady of Joyous Vale. A broad glare now hung as a curtain above the trees, and against it rose a thousand moving things. The sky grew full of screaming birds sweeping in terror from the breath of the fire, their wings whirring and panting towards the south. Some swooped for the island, settled on the roof and walls, or plunged, chattering, into the garden beneath. A great raven perched on the tiles overhead, and sat there croaking like a messenger of death.
Above the contrasted blackness of the forest foreground rose the aureole of the approaching fire. Pennons of flame tongued towards the heavens, while vast masses of smoke merged into the clouds. The glare began to play upon the surface of the mere, splashing the waves with ruddy gold, gleaming on the foam as it swept from the west. The distant peaks caught the earthly lightning from afar; the roar of the great furnace gathered and grew.
Even as the two women watched in silent awe, the meadow lands edging the lake seemed alive with hurrying shadows. The gloom teemed with desperate life. The wild beasts of the wood came panting out, herding and struggling towards the water. The wolf and the hare were flying together; the boar and the stag galloped side by side. Droves of wild pigs broke out in black masses, while above, with a perpetual whirr of wings, birds pinioned with the wind from the drifting smoke.
The live things were soon fighting in the shallows, trampling each other, bellowing and howling. The water grew alive with struggling beasts where a pack of wolves had taken to the mere and headed for the island. They crawled ashore by the stage, trotted hither and thither, their ululations making the night more terrible.
Ever the fire came nearer, beating up to heaven, rolling southwards with palpitating splendour. A vast canopy of smoke had overspread the valley. Soon the deep gloom of the near thickets grew streaked with light as with the gleaming through of some rich sunset in scarlet and gold. Trees were falling in the forest, and the wind blew as from a furnace.
Rosamunde and Miriam stood still at the top of the stone stair. The terror of the night stupefied the senses, numbed even fear by the chaos of its splendour. It was as the end of all things upon earth, when the myriad wings of angels should dome the heavens, and the universe should elapse in fire.
A thousand demoniac voices seemed to answer the howling of the wolves. All about the island the beasts padded, casting up their snouts, giving tongue to swell the midnight chorus. The voices of the madhouse were as the voices of hell.
Rosamunde and the Jewess drew back from the stairway into the room, stood shivering at the door, listening to the uproar beneath. They heard a sound as of splintered wood, yells of exultation, old Nicholas’s voice fierce yet faint, the terse cracking of his whip. Rosamunde, white and fearful, seized Miriam’s arm, spoke in a hoarse whisper.
“The mad folk have broken loose.”