Balgonie had scarcely thrown himself at length on the soft, but not very odorous, pile of skins which formed his couch, when a face appeared at the little window, which was pulled open, and a voice called to him in a low and earnest whisper:
"Hospodeen—Carl Ivanovitch! Hospodeen, attend to me; but oh, be silent, as you value your life!"
He started up, softly approached the window, and saw, by the dim starlight, a fair female face with very dark eyes, white and regular teeth, and long, glittering ear-rings.
"I have seen this face before," thought he; "but when, and where?"
Balgonie, in truth, was too much of a lover to have more than one female face ever before his eyes—that of Natalie Mierowna.
"I am Olga, the gipsy," said the girl, humbly.
"Olga! Olga! whom I saw at the house of Count Mierowitz this evening?"
"The same, Hospodeen!" (Balgonie expressed an exclamation of astonishment to find her, as he thought, so far from that place.) "You gave me a silver kopec once upon a time, at Krejko, when passing through that town with Michail Podatchkine; and, this evening you saved me from the whip of the dvornick, when for the third time I had ventured near the Count's mansion, in a vain search for you, or the Hospoza Mierowna."
"In search of us—and for what purpose, girl?"
"To warn you, that for nearly a month past, a plot has been formed to deprive you of a valuable paper, and even of your life."
"My life—when?"
"On the first opportunity."
"By whom—and where, girl—where?"
"Here in this solitary hut—even now your assassins are in consultation—listen."
He placed his ear to the trap-door, and heard the murmur of hoarse whispers below.
"Hush," said Podatchkine, as already related, "take care!" Then followed the question of the subtle and ferocious Stepniak, as to why he had not given Balgonie a "prod" with his lance in the forest; and the whole conversation in all its horrible details, up to the moment when the wretched Corporal with death and terror mingling in his soul, fell from his seat in a stupor.
"Father in heaven!" exclaimed Balgonie, full of despair and horror, as he mechanically felt for his fatal dispatch, to ascertain that it was yet safe, "I have drunk of this drugged stuff, and am also lost!"
"Nay," said the gipsy, hurriedly, "nay——"
"I drank the accursed wine from a cup——"
"True; but not from the cup which was intended for you."
"How?—speak!—speak!"
"The wine and the cups too were all stolen by Podatchkine, with many other things, at different times, from the household of Count Mierowitz. This night you were duly expected here, and thus a plan was laid to destroy both you and your treacherous guide. Two cups were fully and deeply drugged by my brother Nicholas: one was richly mounted with silver; and knowing well that it was to be set before you, I abstracted it barely an hour ago, substituting another of the same kind, and now I have it here. Oh, Hospodeen, a narrow escape you have had!"
Balgonie began to breathe more freely; but, assured that never had he run so narrow a risk of death, he felt, though enraged and furious, his blood run cold, when contemplating the fate intended for him. Peeping through a chink of the hatch or trap-door, he saw that the ladder of access had been removed, and that the door of the squalid cottage was open now, for the loutchin flared more than ever in the night wind. It was then extinguished; but still he could see, and hear them dragging forth the passive form of Corporal Podatchkine, whom he supposed to be dead.
Personally, Balgonie felt that he was no match for either of the powerful giants below—men whose bodily strength was quite equal to their ferocity, and whose daggers and hatchets might make mince-meat of him. Moreover, they had now deprived Podatchkine of his sabre and loaded pistols, and were thus more completely armed. Charlie had his hand on his sword—a handsome Turkish sabre; but relinquishing the ideas either of attack or defence, while the glow of rage rose in his breast and cheek, he thought only of immediate flight.
"If you would save your life and the dispatch of the Empress, follow me this instant, and get your horse before they return: you have not a moment to lose."
It was the gipsy girl who spoke again, in her low earnest whisper, and with perfect decision.
"Then I owe my escape—my safety——"
"To my gratitude. Pass through the window and descend by the wall."
"Women," says a certain philosopher, "are not at all inferior to men in coolness and courage, and perhaps much less in resolution than is commonly imagined; the reason they appear so is, because women affect to be more afraid than they really are, and men pretend to be less."
Balgonie found that the courageous girl to whose guidance he now trusted himself, had been enabled to reach the window by standing on the roof of the outhouse, or shed, in which Podatchkine had stabled their horses. The whole edifice being built of squared logs, was not very high, and it afforded easy means of ascent and descent, by the interstices consequent to its rude construction by the hatchet. He soon leaped to the ground, and softly assisted her to descend.
"Here is your horse: you see, Hospodeen, that your kindness to the poor gipsy girl was not thrown away."
Balgonie looked rapidly to his bit and girth, adjusted himself in his saddle, hooked up the hilt of his sabre, and shortened his rein, almost unaware of the black tragedy being so coolly and deliberately acted on the other side of the cottage.
"Ten versts farther from this will bring you to the monastery of the Troitza, which you will know by its three domes. You have but to ride straight westward by the forest path; God keep you, and may you and the beautiful Hospoza be happy in your loves!"
"Tell me, gipsy girl——"
"Ah, I can foretell nothing, save that in love mere merit is of little matter."
"What is of most importance—beauty?"
"No."
"What then?"
"Success, Hospodeen."
He almost laughed, as he slipped into her hand two xervonitz (the largest coins he had), and in a moment more was galloping over the soft grass of the forest path she had indicated.
"By Jove," thought he, as he spurred on, "I shall not be sorry when this infernal dispatch is safe in the hands of old Bernikoff; and to think of that wretch of a Podatchkine! I always expected the fellow to be a rogue, but not of so deep a dye!"
The unfortunate Corporal, now, as he deserved, hanging head foremost downward in the draw-well, stark and stiff and cold, had been to all appearance a good Russian, Balgonie reflected: he neither confessed, fasted, nor did penance (too much bother all that would have been for the Corporal of Cossacks); but he kept Lent regularly to all appearance; made a sign of the cross fussily before and after every meal; always went to church when in camp or quarters; and never omitted his prayers and genuflexions at night, if in haunted places or when passing a wayside cross, especially if any one was by. All this was no doubt studiously hypocritical; and Charlie remembered that his worthy Uncle Gram kept Fast-days and "Sabbaths" with stern and gloomy rigour; that he said a long and sonorous prayer before meals—a longer prayer after them; that he went thrice daily to kirk at the ordained periods, and had nightly a noisy expounding and out-pouring of the spirit that would have put the great John of Geneva himself to the blush.
"Ah," thought poor Charlie, as he trotted on his lonely way through the darkened forest, "decidedly there are Podatchkines in Scotland as well as elsewhere, and in Russia."
The light was beginning to dawn, for it was the morning of one of the first days of May, so long had he been detained by illness—shall we say by love?—at the castle by the Louga, that Muscovite Eden, as now it seemed to him. The birds were chirping merrily in the woods; and in some places he saw the brown rocks shaded by a species of graceful silver birch and dark rowan tree, similar to those that grew in his native strath at home.
By midsummer he knew that the birchen glades he traversed would be in full foliage, and that the rowan berries would hang in ripe red clusters among the thick green leaves; and that there, too, would be grey lichens on the granite cliffs, and in their clefts soft emerald moss, the wild strawberries, and the drooping bells of the purple foxglove, just as he had seen them where the Earn "gurgling kissed her pebbled shore" as it flowed towards the Tay.
They seemed like old friends in that strange place, and with a sigh of gratitude for his escape from a perilous and deadly snare was mingled one of hope—a wish—a bootless wish, that one day he might sit by the banks of the lovely Earn with Natalie by his side, amid all the security his native land afforded, and under the white blooming hawthorns that cast their sweet fragrance to the soft winds of the Perthshire valley.
Beloved Natalie—so fair and delicate, so dark haired and so bright-eyed! Her diamond ring, and still more her lock of soft and silky hair, brought all the charm and sense of her presence vividly before him. He counted the brief hours since they had parted, and sighed to think how many hours and days and weeks must inevitably elapse before they met again.
In memory and imagination, he conned over and over again each tender speech and glance, each mute caress and passionate kiss, with every circumstance and minutiæ of their occurrence and bestowal; and what lover has not done so since time began, and apples grew, and roses bloomed in Eden! Even his recent narrow escape and the gipsy's gratitude were forgotten in the ardour of his thoughts.
And he sighed again, when thinking how wild and insane were the dreams in which he was indulging, as he touched his horse with the spurs, on seeing the three shining domes of the Troitza, or monastery of the Holy Trinity, rise before him amid the green woodlands.
After traversing a green valley some five or six miles in length, bordered on each side by forests of fir trees, dark, solemn and acutely conical, where the sunlight could scarcely ever penetrate to the thick rank grass and herbage that grew below, and where a merry gurgling brook rushed noisily along by the side of the narrow horseway, Charlie Balgonie drew his bridle at the gates of the Troitza monastery, when its white walls, its three great cupolas, shaped each like a gigantic onion inverted, covered with plates of burnished copper, and all painted and bestarred, were shining gaily in the morning sun.
There he was made welcome by the monks—quaint-looking men, in long black caftans, with high black caps, fashioned like our modern hats, but without brims, and having black veils floating behind over their long, straight hair. He deposited some money with the treasurer, declined the invitation of the sacristan to see the uncorrupted body of some saint with an unpronounceable name, reposing in its shrine like a silver bedstead, and its head begirt by a diadem with pearls as large as pistol bullets; for the saint had been a martyr, who, in the days of Ivan Basilovitch, the Tartars had rewarded for his attempts to convert them by knocking out his brains; and now he was a miserable mummified relic of humanity, before which, for many ages, thousands of devotees had knelt and wept and smote their breasts in paroxysms of prayer. Charlie waived the invitation; and after having a good breakfast in the refectory, and there telling his story to the monks, he was somewhat bewildered when informed by them, that after all his (certainly circuitous) journey with Podatchkine on the preceding evening and night, and after his riding since he had left the cottage of the gipsy, he was still barely twenty miles from the Louga!
Was a spell cast upon him? was his horse bewitched, that he was to continue travelling thus, and yet never make progress? It almost seemed so; but one of the monks, a more shrewd man than his brothers, explained the whole affair as being consequent to the cunning of Podatchkine, and his scheme for destroying the dispatch-bearer.
A large party of pilgrims on horse and foot were returning to St. Petersburg that afternoon. With them Balgonie travelled for the remainder of his journey; and, after traversing a wild and desert tract of country, on the evening of the next day he had the pleasure of beholding, in the distance before him, that new but vast and splendid capital,—
"Proud city! Sovereign mother thouOf all Sclavonian cities now,"—
covering the once wild waste whereon, before the time of Peter the Great, the father of his country, a few wretched fishermen were wont to contend with the wolves and bears for a spot to erect their huts—where, as Count Segur says, winter reigned for eight months of the year, rye was an article of garden culture, and a bee-hive a curiosity.
Its bulbous-shaped Byzantine domes, and tall needle-like spires, and all its countless roofs, that rose beyond each other in ridgy succession like the waves of the sea, and are generally like the sea in colour, being of a brilliant green or an ashy hue, were now all tinted redly by the rays of the setting sun, which cast the shadows of its many bridges on the waters of the Neva and of the canals that glided silently and darkly beneath them.
As the sun sank beyond the Gulf of Finland, and the shadows deepened on every plated dome and granite rampart, the great gilt crosses of our Lady of Kazan (a fane which was ten years in building) and of many other noble churches glittered, or rather seemed to burn like stars, amid the deep blue of the cloudless sky beyond.
Balgonie's satisfaction, on finding himself so near the end of his journey, was somewhat clouded by a trivial circumstance.
After entering the city by a palisaded barrier, where stood a guard of the Regiment of Valikolutz, he checked his horse's pace, while the caravan of pilgrims, whom he now wished to quit, traversed a long street of small wooden houses that lay beyond. Here, close by the margin of the Neva, lay a man with his loose caftan wet and dripping, and a piece of sack or old canvas spread over his face. On his breast lay his fur cap, as if to receive alms for his burial; for none doubted that he was a poor drowned fellow just fished up from the Neva, and that money was required of the religious and charitable alike for his obsequies and masses for the repose of his soul. So all the pilgrims from the Troitza threw something into the fur cap, where denuscas, kopecs, even roubles and Polish ducats, jingled fast together, while the passers muttered prayers and made signs of the cross.
All the caravan had passed, so the clatter of Balgonie's charger, steel-scabbard, and accoutrements, seemed to create a different effect on the attentive ear of the seemingly drowned man; for the knave, who had only been acting, started up, and, with his spoil, fled like a hare down one of the little alleys that opened off the wooden street. He vanished in the twilight, yet not so quickly but that Balgonie was able to recognise in his face and form, the bulky and muscular half-bred, the gipsy, Nicholas Paulovitch.
What had brought him to St. Petersburg? Was he still dogging the luckless dispatch-bearer, or had he only fled thither that, among its thousands, he might elude the punishment with which Count Mierowitz would be sure to visit him, if the murder of the Corporal was discovered?
This episode made Balgonie feel uncomfortable, and suspicious that other and hidden dangers yet menaced him, as he rode steadily but watchfully through the densely crowded, but monotonously regular streets of houses, which are stuccoed, white-washed, and decorated with different colours, roofed with wood and iron, painted in most instances green, and nearly all pillared and piazzaed—each long vista, with its oil lamps, being terminated by domes and spires; and erelong he saw the lights shining in the lofty windows of that magnificent crescent, which, for a time, was the palace of Catharine's most cherished favourite, "the fair-faced Lanskoi," as Byron has it—
"A lover who had cost her many a tear,And yet but made a middling Grenadier."
And now the melodious bells were ringing for vespers in the towers of our Lady of Kazan—a Greek cruciform fane, which was founded as a rival to St. Peter's at Rome, and named after the Tartar kingdom of Kazan. It is the greatest church in the city, and one of high sanctity.
Along the northern margin of the Neva, a river broad as the Thames at London Bridge, but (unlike the Thames) deep, blue, and transparent as crystal, lined with solid granite quays, and bordered by many stately palatial edifices, Balgonie pursued his way; but the stars were shining at midnight on the vast sheet of water called the Lake of Ladoga, before he, weary and worn with fatigue, dismounted beneath the formidable gates of the castellated prison of Schlusselburg, which had been strengthened and fortified anew by General Count Todleben, whose arrest and quarrel with the Empress had made so much noise three years before the time our story opens.
Twenty-four miles eastward of the city, the small town and fortress of Schlusselburg stand, at a point where the Neva issues from the Lake of Ladoga, and on the left bank of the river. The little town had then somewhere about three thousand inhabitants, who chiefly lived by the manufacture of cotton and porcelain.
On an island, where the river joins the lake and moats it round, is built the fort, which is about four hundred yards square: its walls are of stone, massive, and fifty feet in height, terminating in battlements and turrets of antique form.
The passage to this island is by a long drawbridge.
The guard which kept this formidable state prison, where many a hopeless sigh was wafted through the rusty bars of its prison grilles across the waters of Ladoga, was composed entirely of a body of dismounted Cossacks, selected for the purpose, as the task of keeping or secluding the dethroned Emperor Ivan was one of no small responsibility and importance; so these men were all Cossacks of a high class, and were rather richly dressed.
Their short blue jackets were elaborately embroidered with yellow lace, and a multitude of gilt buttons, but were hooked across the chest; their trowsers of scarlet cloth were loose, long, and gathered into their boots, which were of brown Russian leather, and reached to six inches above the ankle. Their busbies of black shining fur had bright scarlet bags, tall white feathers, a cockade, and tasselled cord. They were all clean and soldier-like men, well moustached, and sternly resolute in bearing; and all were armed with musketoons, short sabres, and brass pistols.
A guard of these men received Balgonie at the gate and drawbridge with a profound military salute; and a picturesque aspect they presented, as their arms flashed in the murky light of the great oil lantern that swung in the dark, weird, and deep-mouthed archway, where a massive portcullis showed its iron teeth, all red and rusted by the mists of the Neva and the stormy blasts that swept across the Lake of Ladoga.
The great masses of the fortress, ghostly and shrouded, with faint red lights gleaming out here and there; the enormous strength of the gates, their planking, bolts, and bars; the thickness of the walls; the number of embrasures and loopholes for cannon and musketry, all converging to one point, the approach or river entrance; the number of sentinels, and, more than all, the vast strength of the portcullis and double gates, together with the difficulties he experienced in procuring admission, though in uniform, and though a staff officer bearing a dispatch of the Empress, all served to impress unpleasantly on the mind of Charlie Balgonie a state of extreme watchfulness, of suspicion, and mistrust; and also a sense of the vast responsibility of the charge confided by Catharine to Colonel Bernikoff.
That gallant officer and estimable personage had retired long since, after a deep drinking bout, and would be—as Lieutenant Tschekin (the son-in-law of General Weymarn), who was third in command of the fortress, informed Balgonie—quite invisible till breakfast time to-morrow, when the dispatch would be delivered to him: and a sigh of real annoyance escaped Charlie, when he found that this odious paper was to be yet some eight hours or more in his secret pocket.
He repaired to the officers' guard-room at the barrier gate, and there, wrapped in his cloak, without undressing (as he hoped next day to exchange the atmosphere of Schlusselburg for that of some hotel in the Vasili-Ostrov), lay down to sleep, and if possible to dream of Natalie; but he had undergone too much toil for such gentle phantasms, so he slept like a dormouse, till the sun was high in heaven, unawakened even by the deep boom of the morning gun, a 36-pounder, as it pealed across the Lake of Ladoga; but ultimately he was roused by Tschekin and Captain Vlasfief, a very handsome young man, but a cruel and heartlessroué, whom ultimately he detested. These, after shaking him heartily, announced that Colonel Bernikoff awaited him at breakfast, and was not in a mood to brook much delay.
His hasty toilette was soon complete, and he was speedily ushered into a plain, almost naked whitewashed apartment arched with stone. Through its grated windows the morning sun shone cheerily, and the blue waters of the lake could be seen with the white sails of many a tiny coasting vessel.
Here, at a table of plain Memel timber, destitute of cloth, but on which massive silver vessels with rudely formed wooden bowls and platters were oddly intermingled, was seated the Governor, who, like the czars and boyars of old, still took quass for breakfast with roasted beef or bear's ham, bread with caviare, greens with vinegar, salted plums and other abominations. But Balgonie saw that coffee and even tea, with ham, eggs, and kippered salmon, were prepared, with other condiments, for those who, like himself, had nothing of the Tartar in their blood.
"Hail to you—I wish you health," said Bernikoff, courteously enough, in the old Russian fashion, and presenting his hand to Charlie, who took it, shuddering as he remembered the fate of Peter III.; "welcome to Schlusselburg, Captain Ivanovitch Balgonie."
Bernikoff, who wore a dark-green undress uniform faced with scarlet, was a man well up in years; he had fierce and shining black eyes that made soldier and serf alike quail beneath their gaze; yet they were small, cunning, and twinkling eyes, the lashes of which were half closed—the eyes of one who could act the cruel tyrant on one hand, and the cringing slave on the other. He had a massive, square, and brutal jaw, thin wicked lips, a nose as round as a grape-shot, close short grizzled hair, and long snaky mustachioes.
He was of Tartar blood, and came of those "warlike and merciless tribes who studied nothing but the use of arms; who passed their lives on horseback; who even lived on their horses in this sense, that their chief food was horseflesh and the milk of mares; who, at the same time, could go for days without food; and who, when they took a city by storm, put all the inhabitants to the sword except the working men."
"Seat yourself, Captain, and proceed to breakfast, while I read your dispatch," said the Governor. "Holy Sergius! it is from Catharine Christianowna herself! The Czarina is great, but Heaven is higher!" he added, placing the paper on his forehead, as he bowed over it; and then taking an enormous pinch of Beresovski snuff, a most pungent compound, from a gold box said to have been found in the pocket of Peter III., he proceeded to peruse that document which had proved of such trouble to the bearer.
The eyes of Balgonie, Tschekin, and Vlasfief, who alone were present, were fixed inquiringly upon him, and they could see that the contents disturbed him greatly; he grew pale and flushed by turns; his brows contracted to a terrible frown; a red spark of devilish light glittered in his eyes, and his lips were compressed.
"Ah, the Asiatics! the accursed Asiatics!" he muttered. This is a most opprobrious epithet in Russia, and excited some surprise in his hearers.
He carefully folded the dispatch, and turning sternly to Charlie, who was keeping his eyes on him and drinking his coffee the while, he said:—
"Ivanovitch Balgonie, there is a feather in the seal—the usual sign ofhasteamong us here in Russia; yet you have not troubled yourself much with speed, for this dispatch is dated at Novgorod more than a month back!"
"Permit me to explain, Excellency," said Balgonie eagerly, and anxiously too.
"I shall be glad if youcanexplain it," replied Bernikoff, with increasing sternness. "I have known a general, a leader in ten battles, degraded, knouted, and sent to hunt the ermine with a cannon ball at his heels for a smaller dereliction of duty than this."
Balgonie's heart beat very fast while he related his story—of his being misled by a traitor twice; of the passage of the Louga at such terrible hazard; of his subsequent illness; and the episode at that log hut.
"That you were in the guidance of a traitor, I knew before your arrival; and I am extremely glad that he fell into his own snare," replied Bernikoff, a little more calmly; "but this matter is extremely awkward for you, and becomes more complicated every hour."
After glancing again at the dispatch, and bending his keen, rat-like eyes on Balgonie, he asked:
"Were Basil Mierowitz or Usakoff, the grandson of Mazeppa, at the Castle of Louga any time during your sojourn there?"
"No, Excellency, neither of them were."
"Spies say differently—but you can swear it?"
"On my honour do I swear it! But why?"
"I have had bad news from the head-quarters of your regiment, and from Lieutenant-General Weymarn, since you left Novgorod."
"And these tidings, Excellency?"
"Are to the effect that your friends, the two subalterns, have both deserted, with several soldiers, all of whom are natives of the Ukraine."
"Deserted!"
"And are nowhere to be found, though pursued by a whole sotnia of Cossacks."
"Deserted!" reiterated Balgonie with real concern.
"Yes—the cursed Asiatics!" replied Bernikoff, expectorating with great vehemence, and thoroughly believing that each time he did so, he cast out a devil.
For some moments intense anxiety and alarm bewildered Balgonie, and he felt himself grow pale at a time when six searching eyes were bent with a doubtful expression upon him. He remembered the hostility, the threatening and mysterious words of Natalie, and grew almost sick with apprehension of he knew not what, as he muttered inaudibly—
"Basil deserted—and his cousin too! The whole family will be inculpated and degraded. Oh, Natalie, my hapless love! Did General Weymarn state this inhisdispatch?" he asked aloud.
"He did, and at its end referred to you."
"To me, Excellency?"
"Yes; here is the document, and it concludes thus: 'as I and the Regiment of Smolensko will shortly march into St. Petersburg, Captain Carl Ivanovitch Balgonie need not return to Novgorod; but until then, shall attach himself to your staff, and remain in Schlusselburg, where, erelong, you may require all the good service he can render you.—WEYMARN.'"
Great were the mortification and disgust of Balgonie on learning that he was to remain for an indefinite period in a place so revolting and uncomfortable, and with no other society than that of three military jailers,—cruel, hard-hearted, and avaricious Muscovites of the worst kind; and with these orders died his hopes of revisiting, as he intended, Louga, on his return, and of seeing Natalie again.
Under ban as all the household of Mierowitz would be now, should he ever see her more? Every way fate and the tide of events seemed to be against him and her, already in the very dawn of their love.
"And now, gentlemen," said the Governor, lowering his voice, "the Empress's dispatch contains only two lines, thus: 'A scheme is formed to free Prince Ivan.Let him not fall alive into the hands of those who come to seek for him!' Nor shall he!" exclaimed Bernikoff with ferocious enthusiasm, as he dashed a cup of vodka among his quass, and drained the goblet, after shouting, "The health of Her Imperial Majesty Catharine Christianowna—hurrah!"
"Hurrah, hurrah!" added Vlasfief and the Lieutenant.
Balgonie also, as in duty bound, essayed to "hurrah," but the sound died away on his lips.
Full of anxious thoughts, he passed more than half of the succeeding day on the ramparts of the castled-prison, alone, avoiding Colonel Bernikoff, Captain Vlasfief, and their subaltern, Tschekin, none of whom were consonant to his taste, for all were deep gamblers and heavy drinkers.
His mind was full of care for Natalie and all her family. Some desperate and revengeful plot, of which the desertion of her brother and of his cousin Usakoff was but the beginning, the means to an end, was certainly hatching—a plot that might too surely end in bloodshed, in the savage punishment and the ruin of all.
He sorrowed keenly for his two friends Basil Mierowitz and Apollo Usakoff, for both were polished and educated gentlemen, men of a class and style more common in some corps of the Russian army now, than in those days. And there was poor Mariolizza, too—so brightly beautiful, so happy, and so merry! Her love, her hopes and schemes, would all be crushed and blighted, as well as his own.
Balgonie was not without fears for himself, and of being compromised in the affair; or, perhaps, lured into subtle state intrigues and deep plots, in the failure or success of which he could have no interest politically or personally, save in his love for Natalie—a love that had changed the whole current of his ideas and opened up a new realm of thought and incentive to action.
Already he was beginning to revolt at the Russian service, and yet he had been happy in the Regiment of Smolensko, and had found in the land of his adoption, like every Scottish adventurer that has trod the Russian soil, honours scarcely to be won at home.
How long was he to be on the staff of this ferocious Commandant, and in this horrible prison, where many an innocent victim was pining hopelessly in chains and misery? "The mutual distrust in which people live in Russia," says the Abbé Chappe D'Auteroche in his scarce travels about this time, "and the total silence of the nation upon everything which may have the least relation either to the government or the sovereign, arise chiefly from the privilege every Russian has, without distinction, of crying out in public,slowo dielo; that is to say, 'I declare you are guilty of high treason, both in words and actions.' All the bystanders are then obliged to assist in arresting the person so accused; a father his son, and the son his father, while nature suffers in silence. The accuser and accused are at once conveyed to prison, and afterwards to St. Petersburg, where they are tried by the Secret Court of Chancery."
Thanks to this pleasant state of society, the chambers and chains of Schlusselburg were seldom unoccupied.
Vlasfief was hollow-hearted, avaricious, and sensual; Tschekin, the Lieutenant, a slimy, cruel, reckless, and ignorant Muscovite; but old Bernikoff was really a character whom Balgonie equally dreaded and despised.
His subtlety and oppression had been the means of reducing, at different times, some thirty officers to the ranks, with permission to serve and work their way up again; and many more were now cursing him and their fate, at Irkutsk and remoter Siberia, for their inability to purchase his mercy or good-will. When commanding at Cronstadt, he had been detected once in the act of transmitting whole sledge loads of government shot, shell, lead, and ropes, across the frozen gulf for sale in Sweden; and also in buying at a cheap rate base denuscas to pay the troops: but so trusted was the old rascal by the Empress, that he always escaped the degradation, the hanging or shooting, which, on those discoveries, were so freely meted out to his subalterns.
On the estate of Bernikoff a serf once amassed ten thousand roubles, and offered them for the freedom of his daughter, who was about to be married.
"Let me see the girl!" was the reply.
As a serf can possess nothing, the father trembled in his soul at this demand, as his daughter, unfortunately for herself, was beautiful.
"Holy Sergius!" exclaimed Bernikoff, "what business has a serf with ten thousand roubles; the girl and the money are alike mine!"
And so he literally and lawfully seized them both.
Though a savage soldier, like every old Muscovite, he was the slave of mechanical devotion. No statue or picture of the Holy Virgin, of St. Sergius, or St. Alexander Newski, was ever passed by him without a profound reverence and a sign of the cross. To such effigies he would address himself before he knelt even to the Empress: and before them he had been known to kneel and kiss the ground five minutes before or after he had knouted a miserable boor (whose pockets were empty), or nearly slain a soldier by making him run the gauntlet, for merely having the seams of his gloves sewn outward instead of in; for wearing his hat on the left side of his head instead of the right; or for some other offence equally heinous.
And it was on the staff of this distinguished officer (temporarily, however) that Charlie now, to his great disgust, found himself.
On three sides, far around this island prison, stretched the waters of Ladoga—the largest lake in Europe, being one hundred and thirty miles long, by nearly ninety broad; full of rocky isles and dangerous quicksands, over which, from its flat shores, sweep frequent and perilous storms.
From the somewhat dreary view of this small inland sea, whose northern and eastern coast could not be discerned, he turned to survey the fortress, with all its strength of gloomy walls, grated windows, and frowning cannon, till suddenly his eye was arrested by a very remarkable face, which was observing him from the sombre depth of a strongly barred and arched window of the great tower.
It was a pale face, but singularly handsome—grave, and even sad in expression—a young man's face with the slightest indication of a moustache, but for which, in its paleness and extreme delicacy of feature and tint, it might have passed for that of a twin brother of Natalie Mierowna!
Suddenly it was detected by a Cossack sentinel, who shouted shrilly, and slapped the butt-end of his loaded musketoon: on this, the face instantly disappeared.
This was he concerning whom Balgonie had brought that terrible dispatch—Ivan, the deposed Emperor—the prisoner of Schlusselburg!
"Twenty-three years!" thought Balgonie with a shudder; "twenty-three years in that tower—since his very babyhood—oh, it is terrible!"
Other ears had heard the shout of the sentinel; for now a man, who in a boat had been fishing near the fortress, suddenly shipped a pair of sculls, and pulled away towards the town with an air of alarm that seemed equalled only by his dexterity. This fisher had been hovering about the fortress all day. "Can he be the gipsy—the half-breed?" thought Charlie: "ah! the dispatch is out of my hands now."
Lieutenant Tschekin now approached with an invitation from Bernikoff to join him at dinner, adding, "remember that with the Colonel, eating is indeed a science, and temperance he views as mere want of spirit."
As they proceeded together through various archways and gates, the shrieks and entreaties of a man apparently in mortal agony rang through the echoing prisons with a horrible cadence, that chilled the free blood in Balgonie's veins.
A court through which they had to pass was crowded by soldiers, formed in hollow square, and Balgonie was compelled to linger and look on with Tschekin, who seemed rather to enjoy the spectacle.
"Hah," said he, "the punishment is nearly ended—let us wait and see thebatogg!"
It was a soldier being knouted, which is simply the Russian word for "whipped."
Stripped to the loins, he was strapped to an erect board, formed like an inverted cone, and having three notches at the upper end, one to receive his chin, and the other two his wrists, while the torturer wielded a knout, the handle of which is usually eighteen inches long with a thong of thirty-six inches. This is always boiled in milk, by which process it swells and the edges become sharp, hard, and more destructive.
The whipper was skilful: he laid on his lashes from the neck to the loins, so as to deal them at intervals of one inch artistically apart, leaving a stripe of flesh between each; but these regulated and omitted stripes, after receiving a fresh knout, he proceeded to take off in succession, with wonderful and terrible precision, till the man's entire back was a mass of blood, and he hung, fainting and well-nigh speechless, by the wrists.
"Oh, Excellency," he said, in an imploring voice, "remember that my brother, Alexis Jagouski, aided you in escaping from the battle of Zorndorff!"
This was most true, but the story was a terrible one. At Zorndorff, where the Russians were defeated with such slaughter and driven towards the frontiers of Poland, the horse of Bernikoff was shot under him, and he was in danger of being cut down by the Prussian Hussars. In this sore extremity a Cossack named Alexis Jagouski took his leader behind him on his crupper; but that personage, finding that the double weight impeded the horse's speed, and that the Hussars were close behind, shortened his sabre in his hand, and plunging the blade into the body of his preserver, flung the corpse from the saddle, and escaped alone.
At this reminiscence Bernikoff only scowled more deeply; and now the lacerated back of the sufferer was strewed with coarse gunpowder, to which a match was applied. This is technically known as thebatogg, and the agony it produced is indescribable.
The culprit was now cast loose, but was still able, according to the slavish usage of the country, to crawl on his hands and knees towards Bernikoff, and he gasped out:—
"Hospodeen—Excellency, I thank you humbly for this most merciful punishment."
"Begone, dog of an Asiatic!" replied the governor, kicking him in the face; "when next you seek to fill your pipe, this will teach you to keep your filthy fingers out of my tobacco pouch."
These were the defenders of their country, the Holy Russia, among whom a wayward fate had cast the Scottish palatine: the blood of the latter boiled within him; but he knew too well that to expostulate would be but to excite suspicion, and to court degradation and the musket. Something, however, in the expression of his face did not escape Bernikoff's keen and angry eyes.
"Ivanovitch Balgonie, a superior can never act unjustly to his inferior," said he sternly; and these words terribly embodied the genuine spirit of the true RussianTchinnovnik, or noble class. "I am in the service of the state," he added; "and the state is the Czarina!"
Yet this upright Governor, who knouted the poor Cossack for pilfering a pipeful of tobacco, had always a garrison double its actual strength on paper, the pay and rations of the men of straw forming a pleasant addition to his many secret perquisites, while his soldiers starved and frequently begged food from the very prisoners they guarded.
It was neither hospitality nor love of society which had procured the honour of an invitation for Balgonie; but Bernikoff shrewdly suspecting that he might have some loose cash, resolved to possess himself thereof at cards; so barely was a dinner ofshee(which is identically Scotch broth), croquettes, withpuréeof beet-root, beef in the Hussar style, with salad of baked beet-root and biscuits, dismissed, than champagne-cup, and vodka (or corn-brandy) punch became the order of the evening; and Bernikoff, who was a great gourmand, with his face flushed and his uniform open, after signing the cross and bowing thrice to a picture of St. Sergius, sat down to cards with Vlasfief and Tschekin, who were quite as sharp as himself, and with poor simple-hearted Charlie Balgonie, who dreaded to decline, circumstanced as he was on all hands; and who was glad when allowed to quit the table with the loss, he never could understand how, of twenty xervonitz, or pieces worth nine shillings sterling each.
"Now, Vlasfief—'tis you and I; rouge-et-noir!" exclaimed Bernikoff, draining a goblet of vodka punch at a draught.
"I am too weary to play, most excellent Colonel; pray excuse me," urged the Captain, who had lost considerably to his senior also.
"You, then, Tschekin?" said Bernikoff savagely.
"I hav'n't a kopec to spare, Excellency!"
"Well—I saw a pretty housemaid at your mansion in the town yesterday—the daughter of a serf apparently."
"Feodorowna?"
"Very likely—with red hair and brawn eyes."
"Ah! the same; she came with Madame Tschekin from the household of her father, General Weymarn."
"By all the devils, she is very like old Weymarn!"
"She is the daughter of my old nurse, Colonel," said Tschekin gravely, with an air of annoyance.
"I don't care whose daughter she is!"
"Well?"
"I'll put a hundred silver roubles on her."
"Done! I put her on the ace."
"The ace hath lost!" exclaimed Bernikoff, with a shout of laughter. "Holy Sergius! the girl is mine. To-morrow," he added, "I'll send a corporal and a file of men for her, with a covered kabitka. See that all her things are packed and ready, friend Tschekin, or write to your wife about it, and say you have lost her at cards."
"The devil!—Excellency—this can't be."
"Why? I won her fairly."
"But the girl is about to be married to her cousin."
"Was, you mean; the cards have changed her destiny, like that of the serfs whom Vlasfief drank away in champagne last night."
So passed Charlie's first day at Schlusselburg.
Fortunately for Balgonie, there was a chaplain, or priest, of the Russian Greek Church, attached to the fortress; and his society, at times, tended to alleviate what he endured from having to associate with such a human bear as Colonel Bernikoff,—an annoyance from which he would only be relieved by the longed-for return of General Weymarn and the Regiment of Smolensko to St. Petersburg.
The ceremonies of religion retain in Russia all their pristine influence, and afford the miserable and unlettered serf a short season of relaxation from labour and severity during festivals, when he may enjoy his can of fiery vodka and revel in intoxication. Unlike many of the Russian clergy, who adopt the cowl merely as the means of evading slavery in civil life, or slavery added to peril in the army, and also as a chance of attaining to power and nobility, Father Chrysostom, the Chaplain of Schlusselburg, was a humane, gentle, and learned old priest, whom the Commandant had been depraved enough to strike with his clenched hand on more than one occasion; but prior to doing so, he had always contrived, oddly and superstitiously enough, to have the chief badge of the father's sacred office, his baretta abstracted and hidden.
Through the good offices of the Chaplain, with the permission of the Governor, which was yielded very unwillingly, Balgonie (whose curiosity and commiseration were greatly excited) was presented one evening to the deposed Emperor Ivan, and the particulars and incidents of that interview made a deep and sad impression upon him.
The entrance-door of the central tower was small, arched, and of great strength. Above it were carved the Russian arms, first adopted by Ivan Basilovitch in the sixteenth century: a spread-eagle, having on its breast an escutcheon bearing St. Michael and a dragon, with three crowns in chief for Muscovy and the two Tartar kingdoms of Kazan and Astracan.
On passing through a little paved court, grated over with iron, where the royal recluse was permitted to breathe the external air, while a sentinel trod to and fro above his head; another door-way, secured by a portcullis grooved into the wall, gave access to the narrow stair which led to his apartments. These were two in number: their windows and doors were all grated with iron; and sentinels, with loaded arms, watched every avenue by day and night.
His sitting-room was plainly, even neatly furnished: its chief ornaments being a pretty Madonna and some gaudy pictures of Muscovite saints; and it had one window, which opened towards the vast expanse of the Lake of Ladoga.
Pale, handsome, and resigned, gentle in eye and manner, the poor young Prince had grown to manhood in total ignorance of the outer world and of all he had lost. He knew only the four walls of the prison, the changing hues of the waves and clouds, the wild swans and the waters of Ladoga.
As related in our fifth chapter, the Prisoner of Schlusselburg was the eldest son of the Princess of of Mecklenburg, Elizabeth-Catharine, niece of the Empress Anne. His father was Anthony Ulric, Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbuttel, whose whole family was banished Russia by the usurping Empress Elizabeth.
The infant Ivan had been dethroned, after being a king for exactly one year.
During the reign of the Empress Catharine, he was detained in Schlusselburg "under the denomination of aPerson Unknown, and it was given out that his senses were impaired, though it is pretty well understood that this is without foundation." "His fate has been particularly lamentable," continues a newspaper of the period; "torn from the bosom of his family, he has now passed twenty-three years in close captivity. The late Empress Elizabeth, towards the latter end of her life, seemed disposed to treat this noble captive with clemency and favour, either from sentiments of justice and compassion, or to render two great personages more circumspect and submissive."
These personages were her successors, the unfortunate Peter III. and Catharine II.
Ivan's mother is said to have died of grief; but Duke Anthony Ulric and his four other children were all confined for life in a house at Horsens, a town of Jutland, at the extremity of the Baltic, where they had a precinct of a mile English; but it was surrounded by high palisades, beyond which they dared not venture under pain of death; and there the Duke, old and blind, passed the last years of his melancholy life.
His youngest daughter, Elizabeth, "was a woman of high spirit and elegant manners," according to Coxe, the traveller, who visited her; "she possessed portraits of her father and mother, and even contrived to procure a rouble of her brother Ivan, struck during his short reign. It is difficult to conjecture how she could obtain a coin, the possession of which was more than once punished by the Empress Elizabeth as high-treason, and it is still more difficult to imagine how she could secret it from the knowledge of her guards during her long imprisonment."
Confinement had rendered Ivan's features unnaturally pale and delicate; and, by years of systematic constraint and oppression, his fine, clear, and very beautiful dark eyes had a soft, subdued, and chastened expression, that was singularly touching and winning.
The tone of his voice was also gentle and alluring.
"Hospodeen," said he, presenting his hand to Balgonie, "I rejoice to meet you, if one who leads a life so strange as mine can be said to rejoice; but you are one to whom I may talk a little without danger—eh, Father Chrysostom? And he has told me, Hospodeen, that you are not a Russian, but a native of some island that is far away in the sea. What are you? A Tartar—a Tcherkesse? Oh no, you cannot be either. I know them; for they guard me," he added, with a little shudder.
"I am your friend, believe me, Ivan Antonovitch," replied Balgonie, who was touched by the childlike simplicity of the poor recluse, who was plainly attired in a caftan of fine green cloth, edged with a narrow trimming of yellow fur; the square crowned cap, which he only wore when in the grated court, was of the same materials. A small gold cross was at his neck, a rosary of amber hung at his right wrist, and a little pipe, the only luxury allowed him, was dangling from one of his breast buttons.
When in his presence, Balgonie always thought with horror of the cruel tenor of the dispatch he had brought, and trembled for the result of his friends' conspiracy.
To teach Ivan anything, even to read or to write, was treason; yet he had gleaned a little of his own history, and that of his family, from the casual remarks of his guards and from the Chaplain, during the long, long years of his captivity, the reason for which he failed to understand, but the system of which had become as a second nature to him; and the little he learned, made a deep, rather than a bitter impression upon him.
The whole energies of each successive Chaplain had been given to preparing him for another and a brighter state of existence, and to turning his hope's and wishes towards it, rather than to this world, of which he was well-nigh weary if not utterly ignorant; and so much was he impressed by the uncertainty of human life in general, and of his own in particular, that daily, for years, he had seen the sun rise from the waters of Ladoga in doubt whether he would see it set; and nightly had he laid down his head without the assurance of being a live man in the morning.
Life had no charm—death no terror for Ivan.
In his visits, which were frequent, as the young Prince had conceived a great regard for him, Charlie Balgonie knew not upon what topics to converse; for he experienced great difficulty in fashioning his sentences and observations to suit a listener whose knowledge of the external world and of all the machinery of life was so limited. In those visits, Balgonie was always accompanied by the Chaplain, or Captain Vlasfief, as the watchful and suspicious Bernikoff would by no means permit them to have an interview alone.
"I am so glad to have you for a friend, Ivanovitch Balgonie," the Prince would say sometimes; "though Father Chrysostom assures me that kings may have peers and soldiers, serfs and slaves, but, alas! they can never have a friend! I have heard my guards say that I was once a King—an Emperor; but I cannot remember when. It must have been long, long ago, as Russia has had four monarchs since. I have not even a dream of it—an Emperor? Yet I shall too probably die even as Demetrius did. I cannot remember even my mother; for they tell me that she died of sorrow, when I was brought here from a place called Moscow. Do you, Hospodeen, remember yours?"
"When I was but a child she died, to my sorrow. Had she lived, I might not have been here in Russia to-day," replied Balgonie.
"Well—but you may remember," persisted the young Prince.
"True, your Highness; memories I have of a soft fair face that bent over my little bed at night; of one who kissed and hushed me to sleep; but those memories are faint or vivid, broken and uncertain, according to my mood of mind; and strange it is that they come to me more in dreams by night than thoughts by day, especially as I grow older."
"I should like to have some such dreams, but then I have nothing to remember; I know not even my own age or when I came here," said Ivan thoughtfully. "If I do dream, by night, I seem to hear only what I hear by day—the voices of the Cossack sentinels, the screams of the sea-birds, the dashing of the waves when the wind crosses the lake, or the clanging of the castle bell. Then there are times when I dream that I see Demetrius, and then I awake in a cold perspiration. Tell me of the things that are being acted in the great world that lies beyond the Lake of Ladoga, for Father Chrysostom speaks to me only of Heaven."
"It is said that the King of Prussia has agreed to the proposal of—of—the Empress, about the county of Wirtemberg, in Silesia."
"How, agreed?"
"Count Biron is to have the estate as Duke of Courland, on paying eight thousand guineas to Field-Marshal Count Munich," said Balgonie.
The Prince sighed with a bewildered air, for all those names were quite new to him.
"And who is Count Biron?" he asked.
"A friend of the Empress," said Father Chrysostom rather hastily, to anticipate the reply of Balgonie.
"Tell me something more. Nay, Father Chrysostom, don't chide us, pray," said he, seeing that the white bearded chaplain looked uneasy and rose to retire.
"Conversation of this kind is strictly forbidden," said he; "and if Captain Vlasfief was here——"
"Oh!" exclaimed the Prince, with a shudder, but not of anger (he seemed too gentle for that emotion), "don't talk of Vlasfief I implore you. Pray tell me more news, Hospodeen; I shall learn all the names in time, and try to remember them."
"There are strange tidings from Warsaw," replied Balgonie, who began to get bewildered and knew not on what to converse, if the most simple topics of the day were forbidden; "a battle has been fought at Slonim, between Prince Radzivil and the Russians, who defeated him after a five hours' engagement, and the Princess Radzivil, who is newly married and remarkably beautiful, fought on horseback among the Polish troops."
"Ah, Demetrius fought on horseback too," said the Prince, as if speaking to himself, and a gesture of undisguised impatience escaped the chaplain; "pray tell me something more, for no one ever speaks of such things to me."
"A new theatre has been opened at St. Petersburg," replied Balgonie (who thought to himself, "the devil is in it, if I cannot speak ofthat!"), "and there was represented an opera, entitledCharles the Great."
"Ah, I don't quite understand all that; say it again."
Indeed, Balgonie might as well have spoken of carbonic gas or the Atlantic cable, had he ever heard of such things; for the mind of the young Prince could not comprehend the most simple matters of every day-life. This was merely the result of his entire seclusion; but the adherents of the Empress, her favourites and lovers, industriously circulated through Russia the report that he was in a state of idiotcy.
"And this place that you spoke of?" he resumed enquiringly.
"The theatre?"
"Yes, Hospodeen; who lives in it?"
"One of the actresses performed a magnificent cantata, in honour of the Empress."
"Ah! 'tis she, I understand, who keeps me here," said the Prince, with a sad smile; and now in real terror, and quite repenting the introduction he had brought about, Father Chrysostom rose to hurry Balgonie away.
As they were retiring, the Prince said:—
"Hospodeen, you have dropped something."
It was the locket with Natalie's hair.
"What is in this?" asked Ivan, with childlike interest.
"A lock of hair, your Highness."
"How odd! and you wear it, just as I wear my cross?"
"It is the gift, the souvenir of a lady I love, and who loves me: a countrywoman of your own."
"A woman?" said Ivan, ponderingly.
"Yes, Excellency."
"I have never looked upon a woman's face, and know not what it is like, though the Empress (whom God long preserve!) visited me when a child, as I have been told. I have heard that they are not bearded like men. I shall never see one, it is forbidden; yet—yet—as I often tell Father Chrysostom, I have dreams by day—dreams of something else than wild swans and bearded Cossacks—of something to cling to, some one to love and be loved by. It must be this kind of love you speak of—oh yes, it must!" said Ivan, as he gazed with stupid, but reverent wonder at the lock of hair, ere he returned it to Balgonie.
"Poor young Prince!" exclaimed the latter, as the chaplain hurried him away, and the portcullis clanged behind them in its grooves of stone.
The priest now urged upon Balgonie, that if his visits were to be continued, the affairs of the outer world must in no way be referred to, or the result might be most disastrous for all concerned.
"The seclusion in which the prisoner is kept, has, I fear, impaired his understanding," said Balgonie.
"Hah! do you think so?" grunted Colonel Bernikoff, who overheard the remark, as they issued from the tower of Ivan. "You must know, that your genuine Russian is like a tiger, as some writer has it—a tiger who licks the hand of his keeper, so long as he is chained; but who tears him asunder when loose. The Empress quite understands this!"
"How is it that you intrust me so freely to visit your prisoner?" asked Charlie, who began to fear that Bernikoff might be laying some snare for him, by according this hitherto unwonted permission.
"Do you really wish to know?"
"Yes, Colonel—why I in particular—I only?"
"Because you are the safest man in Russia to have this liberty."
"How?"
"As a soldier of fortune,—a stranger among us,—you can have no sympathy with anything but the strict and steady execution of your duty; and the line of that," added Bernikoff, darting a keen glance at the Scot, "as with us all, lies in fidelity to the Empress."
"True," replied Balgonie, with something of sadness in his tone, and very little of enthusiasm.
"Thus, were I to order you to blow Ivan Antonovitch from the mouth of a cannon, I should expect you to obey!"
"I trust that no such test of my obedience will ever be necessary," replied Balgonie, with a hauteur which Bernikoff was somewhat unused to see among his subordinates.
"We shall have some other and more troublesome prisoners in Schlusselburg ere long," said the Governor, with knitted brows.
"Whom do you mean?"
"Old Count Mierowitz and his family. Warrants have been issued by the Chancellor to arrest them all."
"All!" said Balgonie, in a faint voice.
"Yes, women as well as men: an escort of the Regiment of Smolensko arrived at St. Petersburg yesterday with the Count and the Hospoza Mariolizza. His daughter, who seems to be deeply involved in some plot, has for the time effected her escape. But they will soon be all before the Secret Chancery, and then the knout and the wheel will be at work with a vengeance!"
The reader may judge how these and similar remarks affected poor Charlie, while the Governor, as if pleased that he could thus inflict pain, walked away with a malicious smile on his sombre visage, cramming tobacco into the bowl of his pipe.
There were times, however, when the captive Prince, after his acquaintance with Balgonie, was a little less resigned, and had strange longings to see something of the great world that lay beyond his prison walls, and the waves that lashed them; to see other faces than those of the fierce and bearded Tchernemoski and Volga Cossacks who guarded him; a longing even to do something great and daring, to be remembered in after years with love and reverence; to be remembered, as he said, "in tradition, like Demetrius." Then, feeling all the utter hopelessness of such new aspirations, he would strive to be contented, to repeat with fresh energy the daily prayers set for him by Father Chrysostom, and to be grateful for life, lest he should die even as Demetrius died.
"Who is this Demetrius, of whom he constantly speaks, and whose fate he fears so much may be his own?" asked Balgonie one day.
"It is an old, but a strange and terrible story," replied the chaplain. "When Ivan Basilovitch died about the end of the sixteenth century, his widow was banished to Northern Russia by the new Czar Feodor, whose Prime Minister urged that he could never reign in peace or security unless he imitated the Turks by sacrificing all who were nearly allied to the throne; so he exiled his mother, as I have said, and ordered an officer to assassinate his younger brother Demetrius.
"The officer, being a humane man, was filled with horror on receiving an order so barbarous; but fearing alike to disobey, or to leave the terrible task to be fulfilled by one less scrupulous, he took the child with him to a remote district, travelling many days' journey from Moscow. Then he wrote some words indelibly on the skin of the little Prince, tied a cross of brilliants about his neck, laid him at the door of a peasant's hut, and galloped away.
"To the tyrant Feodor he gave a circumstantial detail of how and where he had killed the infant Prince, and sought the promised reward.
"'Receive itthus!' replied Feodor, who plunged a sword into his heart, the further to suppress all proof of guilt.
"The young tyrant died of a poison administered by his Chancellor, and others inherited his crown; but all to perish miserably in succession. And no less than four pretenders all appeared, each calling himself Demetrius, to contest for the throne; and all the land was deluged with blood.
"Some twenty years after the alleged death of the brother of Ivan, a young Cossack of the Volga was bathing in that river with some of his companions, who saw with surprise that he had chained round his neck a cross of brilliants, and that certain words in the old Muscovite character were pricked upon his back. They were examined by a neighbouring priest and found to be—-
'This is Demetrius, son of the Czar.'
"Then all exclaimed that the true Demetrius had been found at last, and that a miracle from Heaven had saved him. His life was soon in peril, so he fled to Holstein, the Duke of which, after keeping him long in prison, sold him to the Emperor Michael, by whom he was savagely quartered alive. And it is the fate of this hapless heir of Russia, whose story he thinks in some points resembles his own (although he really knows but little of his own annals), that haunts the unfortunate Ivan in his gloomiest hours."
With evident suspicion and mistrust, Bernikoff viewed the growing intimacy between his prisoner Ivan and the Scottish Captain; and though he neither recommended that it should cease or interdicted it, as he might and perhaps ought to have done, he made many mental notes thereof.
Though Balgonie sympathised with Ivan to the fullest extent, he knew too well the danger of doing more; and he felt that he had his own share of secret sorrow and anxiety, and might yet have greater to endure. The girl he loved with all the strength of a first and romantic passion was already a political fugitive; her father and cousin were prisoners, and perhaps in chains; her brother and his kinsman, Usakoff, already viewed as criminals; and with the terrors of despotism hanging over them all.
Natalie a fugitive—and where? In the wild forests, perhaps, where wolves and outlaws lurked: what perils and privations might she not be suffering! Natalie so delicate, so pure, so gently nurtured, and so highly bred.
Balgonie was aware, also, that intimacy with the family of Count Mierowitz, and the deep interest he had in their fate, was fraught with personal peril to himself in such a land of tyranny as Russia. Full of such thoughts as these one forenoon, he was leaning on a cannon in one of those deep embrasures of the fortress which faced the drawbridge communicating with the land. The guard was in the act of lowering the bridge to permit a man to pass out. This person was just parting from Bernikoff, with whom he had been for some time in close and earnest conversation, and from whom he was evidently receiving money—an unusual circumstance, as that distinguished field-officer generally lavished more kicks and cuffs than thanks or kopecs.
On beholding this man, as he bowed humbly, cap in hand, cross the bridge and disappear among the houses of the town beyond, Balgonie experienced a species of nervous shock. He could not doubt that this fellow, so gigantic in stature and powerful in muscular development, in the coarse caftan and leathern girdle, with the long lock of grizzled hair dangling behind his right ear, was Nicholas Paulovitch, the murderer of Podatchkine, the gipsy woodman, and the swindling mendicant of the barrier at the Neva.
"This man here in Schlusselburg," thought Balgonie, with indignation and alarm; "here in earnest conversation with Bernikoff! The spirit of mischief seems to pervade the air again!"
A few minutes afterwards the Cossack Jagouski who, as related, had been so severely knouted by Bernikoff for pilfering a pipeful of tobacco, came forward with tottering steps, and looking painfully thin and feeble from recent suffering; and with the crouching bearing of the Muscovite towards a superior, said that his Excellency the Governor wished to speak with him in his quarters, whither Balgonie at once repaired, after having, as military etiquette required, buckled on his sword.
"Carl Ivanovitch," said Bernikoff, who certainly had rather a perturbed air, "some suspicious characters are in our vicinity, and have actually been hovering in boats about the fortress. What think you of that?"
"Suspicious characters, Excellency—how?"
"In a Tratkir of the town, one dropped this coin—a silver rouble of the prisoner Ivan—Ivan the Unknown Person. To possess one, unless as I do this, for proof of treason, is to court death or Siberia."
"And from whom had you this?"
"A spy," replied the Colonel curtly.
"The man who has just left you?"
"The same."
"Nicholas Paulovitch," continued Balgonie, with increasing astonishment at the other's coolness; "the assassin of the Corporal—the wretch of whom I told you when I first arrived here!"
"All that may, or may not be," replied Bernikoff, with a stern air, almost amounting to rudeness: "when I require this devil of a fellow no more, you may impale him, if you please; but molest him not at present."
"I do not see, Excellency, that all this in any way concerns me," said Balgonie haughtily, as he lifted his hat, and put his sabre under his arm, as if about to retire.
"It does concern you thus far. I shall anticipate any attempt that be made by those lurkers, whoever they may be. You must remember," he added, lowering his voice, "the tenor of the dispatch you brought me?"
"Perfectly," replied Charlie, in a somewhat faint voice, as he knew not how terrible or repugnant might be the duty assigned him by this military despot.
"Well, you shall pass forth into the town tonight, with a patrol of twenty men, armed with sabres and carbines. Surround and search the Tratkir in the main street, and compel all therein, who seem suspicious, to produce their papers; and if they are without such, bring them to me, and I shall question them, in a fashion of my own."
By the laws of Russia, at that time, persons could not travel from St. Petersburg, or even from place to place, without a passport, describing their occupation, appearance, and route, which they were not at liberty to alter; and in the rural districts, travellers required a pass from the lord whose estate they may have been upon, before they were at liberty to quit it. Without such a document, no one would dare to furnish them with food or shelter, nor could a postmaster give them horses, however high their rank, or great their of reward. [Transcriber's note: the rest of this paragraph illegible in scan.]
"And I am to take twenty men with me?" said Balgonie, after an unpleasant pause.
"Yes! the bridge will be lowered for you after sunset. Whoever these lurkers are, they have been seen and overheard; and this coin is proof sufficient to warrant the transportation of a whole province. Be they who they may, by every dome in sacred Mother Moscow, they shall find me ready for them!"
And Bernikoff grimly touched his small dagger, a species of weapon which a Russian officer is seldom or never without, even in the present day; and when Charlie Balgonie remembered how that same dagger had been thrust into the throat of the half-strangled Peter III., a flush of indignant hate and aversion crossed his honest face. To him it was evident that the spirit of mischief or malevolence made Bernikoff select him, as one whom he suspected of a friendly interest in the family of Count Mierowitz, for this unpleasant duty, instead of Captain Vlasfief, the Lieutenant of Schlusselburg, or any other officer, who must have been better acquainted with the adjacent town and all its places of entertainment, than he, a total stranger, could ever be.