“Ask me not of them, Ulrica,” replied Cedric, in a tone of grief mixed with abhorrence; “these traces form such a resemblance as arises from the graves of the dead, when a fiend has animated the lifeless corpse.”
“Be it so,” answered Ulrica; “yet wore these fiendish features the mask of a spirit of light when they were able to set at variance the elder Front-de-Boeuf and his son Reginald! The darkness of hell should hide what followed, but revenge must lift the veil, and darkly intimate what it would raise the dead to speak aloud. Long had the smouldering fire of discord glowed between the tyrant father and his savage son — long had I nursed, in secret, the unnatural hatred — it blazed forth in an hour of drunken wassail, and at his own board fell my oppressor by the hand of his own son — such are the secrets these vaults conceal! — Rend asunder, ye accursed arches,” she added, looking up towards the roof, “and bury in your fall all who are conscious of the hideous mystery!”
“And thou, creature of guilt and misery,” said Cedric, “what became thy lot on the death of thy ravisher?”
“Guess it, but ask it not. — Here — here I dwelt, till age, premature age, has stamped its ghastly features on my countenance — scorned and insulted where I was once obeyed, and compelled to bound the revenge which had once such ample scope, to the efforts of petty malice of a discontented menial, or the vain or unheeded curses of an impotent hag — condemned to hear from my lonely turret the sounds of revelry in which I once partook, or the shrieks and groans of new victims of oppression.”
“Ulrica,” said Cedric, “with a heart which still, I fear, regrets the lost reward of thy crimes, as much as the deeds by which thou didst acquire that meed, how didst thou dare to address thee to one who wears this robe? Consider, unhappy woman, what could the sainted Edward himself do for thee, were he here in bodily presence? The royal Confessor was endowed by heaven with power to cleanse the ulcers of the body, but only God himself can cure the leprosy of the soul.”
“Yet, turn not from me, stern prophet of wrath,” she exclaimed, “but tell me, if thou canst, in what shall terminate these new and awful feelings that burst on my solitude — Why do deeds, long since done, rise before me in new and irresistible horrors? What fate is prepared beyond the grave for her, to whom God has assigned on earth a lot of such unspeakable wretchedness? Better had I turn to Woden, Hertha, and Zernebock — to Mista, and to Skogula, the gods of our yet unbaptized ancestors, than endure the dreadful anticipations which have of late haunted my waking and my sleeping hours!”
“I am no priest,” said Cedric, turning with disgust from this miserable picture of guilt, wretchedness, and despair; “I am no priest, though I wear a priest’s garment.”
“Priest or layman,” answered Ulrica, “thou art the first I have seen for twenty years, by whom God was feared or man regarded; and dost thou bid me despair?”
“I bid thee repent,” said Cedric. “Seek to prayer and penance, and mayest thou find acceptance! But I cannot, I will not, longer abide with thee.”
“Stay yet a moment!” said Ulrica; “leave me not now, son of my father’s friend, lest the demon who has governed my life should tempt me to avenge myself of thy hard-hearted scorn — Thinkest thou, if Front-de-Boeuf found Cedric the Saxon in his castle, in such a disguise, that thy life would be a long one? — Already his eye has been upon thee like a falcon on his prey.”
“And be it so,” said Cedric; “and let him tear me with beak and talons, ere my tongue say one word which my heart doth not warrant. I will die a Saxon — true in word, open in deed — I bid thee avaunt! — touch me not, stay me not! — The sight of Front-de-Boeuf himself is less odious to me than thou, degraded and degenerate as thou art.”
“Be it so,” said Ulrica, no longer interrupting him; “go thy way, and forget, in the insolence of thy superority, that the wretch before thee is the daughter of thy father’s friend. — Go thy way — if I am separated from mankind by my sufferings — separated from those whose aid I might most justly expect — not less will I be separated from them in my revenge! — No man shall aid me, but the ears of all men shall tingle to hear of the deed which I shall dare to do! — Farewell! — thy scorn has burst the last tie which seemed yet to unite me to my kind — a thought that my woes might claim the compassion of my people.”
“Ulrica,” said Cedric, softened by this appeal, “hast thou borne up and endured to live through so much guilt and so much misery, and wilt thou now yield to despair when thine eyes are opened to thy crimes, and when repentance were thy fitter occupation?”
“Cedric,” answered Ulrica, “thou little knowest the human heart. To act as I have acted, to think as I have thought, requires the maddening love of pleasure, mingled with the keen appetite of revenge, the proud consciousness of power; droughts too intoxicating for the human heart to bear, and yet retain the power to prevent. Their force has long passed away — Age has no pleasures, wrinkles have no influence, revenge itself dies away in impotent curses. Then comes remorse, with all its vipers, mixed with vain regrets for the past, and despair for the future! — Then, when all other strong impulses have ceased, we become like the fiends in hell, who may feel remorse, but never repentance. — But thy words have awakened a new soul within me — Well hast thou said, all is possible for those who dare to die! — Thou hast shown me the means of revenge, and be assured I will embrace them. It has hitherto shared this wasted bosom with other and with rival passions — henceforward it shall possess me wholly, and thou thyself shalt say, that, whatever was the life of Ulrica, her death well became the daughter of the noble Torquil. There is a force without beleaguering this accursed castle — hasten to lead them to the attack, and when thou shalt see a red flag wave from the turret on the eastern angle of the donjon, press the Normans hard — they will then have enough to do within, and you may win the wall in spite both of bow and mangonel. — Begone, I pray thee — follow thine own fate, and leave me to mine.”
Cedric would have enquired farther into the purpose which she thus darkly announced, but the stern voice of Front-de-Boeuf was heard, exclaiming, “Where tarries this loitering priest? By the scallop-shell of Compostella, I will make a martyr of him, if he loiters here to hatch treason among my domestics!”
“What a true prophet,” said Ulrica, “is an evil conscience! But heed him not — out and to thy people — Cry your Saxon onslaught, and let them sing their war-song of Rollo, if they will; vengeance shall bear a burden to it.”
As she thus spoke, she vanished through a private door, and Reginald Front-de-Boeuf entered the apartment. Cedric, with some difficulty, compelled himself to make obeisance to the haughty Baron, who returned his courtesy with a slight inclination of the head.
“Thy penitents, father, have made a long shrift — it is the better for them, since it is the last they shall ever make. Hast thou prepared them for death?”
“I found them,” said Cedric, in such French as he could command, “expecting the worst, from the moment they knew into whose power they had fallen.”
“How now, Sir Friar,” replied Front-de-Boeuf, “thy speech, methinks, smacks of a Saxon tongue?”
“I was bred in the convent of St Withold of Burton,” answered Cedric.
“Ay?” said the Baron; “it had been better for thee to have been a Norman, and better for my purpose too; but need has no choice of messengers. That St Withold’s of Burton is an owlet’s nest worth the harrying. The day will soon come that the frock shall protect the Saxon as little as the mail-coat.”
“God’s will be done,” said Cedric, in a voice tremulous with passion, which Front-de-Boeuf imputed to fear.
“I see,” said he, “thou dreamest already that our men-at-arms are in thy refectory and thy ale-vaults. But do me one cast of thy holy office, and, come what list of others,