How Herne the Hunter
appeared to Henry on the Terrace.
Henry again sat down to his despatches,
and employed himself upon them to a late hour.
At length, feeling heated and oppressed, he arose,
and opened a window. As he did so, he was almost
blinded by a vivid flash of forked lightning.
Ever ready to court danger, and convinced, from the
intense gloom without, that a fearful storm was coming
on, Henry resolved to go forth to witness it.
With this view he quitted the closet, and passed through
a small door opening on the northern terrace.
The castle clock tolled the hour of midnight as he
issued forth, and the darkness was so profound that
he could scarcely see a foot before him. But
he went on.
“Who goes there?” cried
a voice, as he advanced, and a partisan was placed
at his breast.
“The king!” replied Henry,
in tones that would have left no doubt of the truth
of the assertion, even if a gleam of lightning had
not at the moment revealed his figure and countenance
to the sentinel.
“I did not look for your majesty
at such a time,” replied the man, lowering his
pike. “Has your majesty no apprehension
of the storm? I have watched it gathering in
the valley, and it will be a dreadful one. If
I might make bold to counsel you, I would advise you
to seek instant shelter in the castle.”
“I have no fear, good fellow,”
laughed the king. “Get thee in yon porch,
and leave the terrace to me. I will warn thee
when I leave it.”
As he spoke a tremendous peal of thunder
broke overhead, and seemed to shake the strong pile
to its foundations. Again the lightning rent
the black canopy of heaven in various places, and shot
down in forked flashes of the most dazzling brightness.
A rack of clouds, heavily charged with electric fluid,
hung right over the castle, and poured down all their
fires upon it.
Henry paced slowly to and fro, utterly
indifferent to the peril he ran now watching
the lightning as it shivered some oak in the home
park, or lighted up the wide expanse of country around
him now listening to the roar of heaven’s
artillery; and he had just quitted the western extremity
of the terrace, when the most terrific crash he had
yet heard burst over him. The next instant a dozen
forked flashes shot from the sky, while fiery coruscations
blazed athwart it; and at the same moment a bolt struck
the Wykeham Tower, beside which he had been recently
standing. Startled by the appalling sound, he
turned and beheld upon the battlemented parapet on
his left a tall ghostly figure, whose antlered helm
told him it was Herne the Hunter. Dilated against
the flaming sky, the proportions of the demon seemed
gigantic. His right hand was stretched forth
towards the king, and in his left he held a rusty
chain. Henry grasped the handle of his sword,
and partly drew it, keeping his gaze fixed upon the
figure.
“You thought you had got rid
of me, Harry of England,” cried Herne, “but
were you to lay the weight of this vast fabric upon
me, I would break from under it ho! ho!”
“What wouldst thou, infernal spirit?”
cried Henry.
“I am come to keep company with
you, Harry,” replied the demon; “this is
a night when only you and I should be abroad.
We know how to enjoy it. We like the music of
the loud thunder, and the dance of the blithe lightning.”
“Avaunt, fiend!” cried
Henry. “I will hold no converse with thee.
Back to thy native hell!”
“You have no power over me,
Harry,” rejoined the demon, his words mingling
with the rolling of the thunder, “for your thoughts
are evil, and you are about to do an accursed deed.
You cannot dismiss me. Before the commission
of every great crime and many great crimes
you will commit I will always appear to
you. And my last appearance shall he three days
before your end ha! ha!”
“Darest thou say this to me!” cried
Henry furiously.
“I laugh at thy menaces,”
rejoined Herne, amid another peal of thunder “but
I have not yet done. Harry of England! your career
shall be stained in blood. Your wrath shall descend
upon the heads of those who love you, and your love
shall be fatal. Better Anne Boleyn fled this
castle, and sought shelter in the lowliest hovel in
the land, than become your spouse. For you will
slay her and not her alone. Another
shall fall by your hand; and so, if you had your own
will, would all!”
“What meanest thou by all?” demanded the
king.
“You will learn in due season,”
laughed the fiend. “But now mark me, Harry
of England, thou fierce and bloody kin thou
shalt be drunken with the blood of thy wives; and
thy end shall be a fearful one. Thou shalt linger
out a living death a mass of breathing corruption
shalt thou become and when dead the very
hounds with which thou huntedst me shall lick thy
blood!”
These awful words, involving a fearful
prophecy, which was afterwards, as will be shown,
strangely fulfilled, were so mixed up with the rolling
of the thunder that Henry could scarcely distinguish
one sound from the other. At the close of the
latter speech a flash of lightning of such dazzling
brilliancy shot down past him, that he remained for
some moments almost blinded; and when he recovered
his powers of vision the demon had vanished.