The Midnight Queen [0]
The Midnight Queen
by Mary Agnes Fleming
CONTENTS.
I. The Sorceress
II. The Dead Bride
III. The Court Page
IV. The Stranger
V. The Dwarf and the Ruin
VI. La Masque
VII. The Earl's Barge.
VIII. The Midnight Queen.
IX. Leoline.
X. The Page, the Fires, and the Fall
XI. The Execution
XII. The Doom
XIII. Escaped
XIV. In the Dungeon
XV. Leoline's Visitors
XVI. The Third Vision
XVII. The Hidden Face
XVIII. The Interview.
XIX. Hubert's Whisper
XX. At the Plague-pit
XXI. What was Behind the Mask
XXII. Day-dawn
XXIII. Finis
THE MIDNIGHT QUEEN,
CHAPTER I.
THE SORCERESS.
The plague raged in the city of London. The destroying angel had
gone forth, and kindled with its fiery breath the awful
pestilence, until all London became one mighty lazar-house.
Thousands were swept away daily; grass grew in the streets, and
the living were scarce able to bury the dead. Business of all
kinds was at an end, except that of the coffin-makers and drivers
of the pest-carte. Whole streets were shut up, and almost every
other house in the city bore the fatal red cross, and the ominous
inscription. "Lord have mercy on us." Few people, save the
watchmen, armed with halberts, keeping guard over the stricken
houses, appeared in the streets; and those who ventured there,
shrank from each other, and passed rapidly on with averted faces.
Many even fell dead on the sidewalk, and lay with their ghastly,
discolored faces, upturned to the mocking sunlight, until the
dead-cart came rattling along, and the drivers hoisted the body
with their pitchforks on the top of their dreadful load. Few
other vehicles besides those same dead-carts appeared in the city
now; and they plied their trade busily, day and night; and the
cry of the drivers echoed dismally through the deserted streets:
"Bring out your dead! bring out your dead!" All who could do so
had long ago fled from the devoted city; and London lay under the
burning heat of the June sunshine, stricken for its sins by the
hand of God. The pest-houses were full, so were the plague-pits,
where the dead were hurled in cartfuls; and no one knew who rose
up in health in the morning but that they might be lying stark
and dead in a few hours. The very churches were forsaken; their
pastors fled or lying in the plague-pits; and it was even
resolved to convert the great cathedral of St. Paul into a vast
plague-hospital. Cries and lamentations echoed from one end of
the city to the other, and Death and Charles reigned over London
together.
Yet in the midst of all this, many scenes of wild orgies and
debauchery still went on within its gates - as, in our own day,
when the cholera ravaged Paris, the inhabitants of that facetious
city made it a carnival, so now, in London, they were many who,
feeling they had but a few days to live at the most, resolved to
defy death, and indulge in the revelry while they yet existed.
"Eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow you die!" was their
motto; and if in the midst of the frantic dance or debauched
revel one of them dropped dead, the others only shrieked with
laughter, hurled the livid body out to the street, and the
demoniac mirth grew twice as fast and furious as before. Robbers
and cut-purses paraded the streets at noonday, entered boldly
closed and deserted houses, and bore off with impunity, whatever
they pleased. Highwaymen infested Hounslow Heath, and all the
roads leading from the city, levying a toll on all who passed,
and plundering fearlessly the flying citizens. In fact,
far-famed London town, in the year of grace 1665, would have
given one a good idea of Pandemonium broke loose.
It was