N I G H T B R I N G E R . S E
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AN OMINOUS BIRD
Sir James Oxenham of Devon was in a merry mood - so the story goes - and with good cause. It was the night before the marriage of his only child, his beautiful daughter Margaret, and scores of guests had come to feast in her honor. She was marrying the man of her choice, a promising youth who was much to Sir James's liking. Both families were pleased, in fact, and celebration was the order of the evening.
Sir James making an expansive speech, thanking the guests for their attendance, when suddenly he paled and stuttered to a halt. Alarm rustled through the audience, but at last he recovered his self-possession. He went on with the speech, but its former joviality was missing, and he hastened toward a conclusion. After the banquet, Sir James confided to a trusted servant the reason for his distress.
As he was speaking, the nobleman said, he saw a white-breasted bird appear, seemingly from nowhere, and fly toward Margaret. It circled her several times and then flew away. The servant needed no further explanation, since he knew well the story that a phantom bird had long haunted the Oxenham family. At last since the sixteenth century, and probably much earlier, the white bird hade been seen to hover near the deathbeds of Oxenhams. For generations it had been the family's harbinger of death. The servant tried to comfort his master, but it was no use. Sir James said he knew that Margaret was in mortal peril.
The nobleman's fears proved to be well founded. No sooner had the marriage service begun the next morning than an altar tapestry billowed out and a man who had been hiding behind it thrust his dagger through the fabric of Margaret's wedding gown and into her heart. She fell dead at the feet of her horrified groom. The assassin, a rejected suitor of the bride's, then stabbed himself to death with the bloody knife.
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