Part 18

The knave’s eyes shot fire; his greedy, brutish face turned purple with anger. He never doubted my word, he knew Martemian too well.

“I have told you,” I said. “Will you loose me from this tree? I am stiff as you, and stiffer.”

He was not thinking of me, and cut my halter mechanically, watching Martemian all the while. He left my ankles bound, and thought that my hands were too, but in his anger he had been more careless than usual, and had cut a cord that left the noose loose on my wrists, but of this I gave no sign, though my heart leaped.

Martemian, meanwhile, had quenched his thirst, and now he was bathing his face; a process so unusual that it made patches of whiteness in the brunette tinge of his complexion.

Mikhail rose deliberately and untethered the horses, letting them stray for fresh provender, a custom of his at morning, then he walked slowly to the brook. I drew my hands cautiously out of the loosened cords and began to undo the bonds on my ankles.

Martemian ran his wet fingers through his long hair and beard. The morning air was sweet, and I saw him draw his breath deeply, and I watched the figure behind him--treading stealthily--draw a long sharp knife. One foot was free now, and I worked wildly at the other, yet--all the while--I watched the scene. The whiteness of the early morning lay far off on the plain, the stream sparkled, the black shadows hung behind us in the forest, the horses nibbled the short turf near me. One man stood still, the other crept, the long knife gleamed. Then Mikhail’s foot crushed a dried twig and Martemian wheeled and saw him. There was a scream of passion, a fierce answering roar, and the two clenched and fought, as demons might.

I sprang to my feet, and hunted the ground for a stick and found a stout one, then I caught the nearest horse and mounted.

They did not see me; they wrestled and writhed like two giants, the knife between them, death in their hearts. They rolled over on the ground and grappled, and Martemian was underneath.

I cut the other horses sharply with my stick and they reared, plunged forward, and ran before me like wild deer, and I--I rode for life, for liberty, for love!

The clatter of the horses’ feet roused the two ruffians; loosing each other, they rose from the dirt, shouting and running after me, but their horses ran before mine. I looked back and saw two tongues of flame, and a bullet clipped my ear while another grazed one of the horses on the flank, and faster and faster they fled, until the cries grew faint and far-distant, and died at last in silence. I looked back and saw only two little black dots on the crest of the slope, and, at last, nothing but the wide swell of the land.

And the wind blew from the south and the sun shone.

_XXXIV: A BOYAR’S FUNERAL_

I KEPT the pace at a run, until I had left my pursuers far behind, and then I had much ado to secure one of their horses. One, frightened by the shots, outran us, and was disappearing southward, but the other had fallen from a gallop to a trot, and from a trot to an amble, and, at last, stopped to crop the fresh grass by the wayside, and I caught him, though with some difficulty; but I had two good reasons for desiring his company upon the road. First, I had no mind to leave him for the two varlets, who would doubtless follow on foot--if they did not kill each other; and secondly, I meant to sell him at the first village I reached, for I was penniless and without weapons, besides having been robbed of my cloak and the lace ruffles at my neck and sleeves, and even of the gold buttons on my waistcoat, for the two ruffians had been a pretty pair of thieves, and would doubtless, in the end, have stripped me to my shirt.

It was then that my habits of observation served me well. M. de Turenne used to say of me, that not even a rat ran into camp without my knowledge--and he gave me great credit for it, though, perhaps, I should not tell of it, but what will you? If a man praise not himself, who will? Not his enemies, and not his friends, for they are ever envious of too much eminence; ’tis the way of the world. But, as I said, my observation served me well; but for it, I should never have found my way on those wild plains, but a stump here, or a dip of the land there, showed me the path, and riding with as much speed as I thought prudent for my horse-flesh, I reached the village where the women-folk were still swinging, and here I sold the led horse and bought a long Russian saber and some food for myself and my beast, and went on again, not caring to trust to their hospitality or loyalty, for my reappearance with two horses led at once to suspicion, and to increase my difficulties, before I was done with my bargains, in trotted the other horse, who had evidently been grazing in the meadow by the town, and nothing but a speedy departure saved me from being carried before the _starosta_--the village magistrate.

That night I lay under the open sky again, and only long enough to rest myself and my horse, and was in the saddle before dawn. I had bought food enough to last, with frugality, until I reached Troïtsa, and I steadily avoided all hamlets or signs of human habitation, fearing more complications, and by dint of prudence and hard riding I saw, at last, the golden crosses of Troïtsa, and for very joy I could have fallen down and prayed, as the Russians do, on the Hill of Prostration, when they first see Moscow. Of my friends, Martemian and Mikhail, I had seen nothing, and I fancied that one of them had been killed over that bag of roubles, for which they cared far more than they did for me.

As I approached Troïtsa my thoughts--never far-distant from their loadstar--dwelt constantly on the Princess Daria. I thought to find her there; it would be impossible for Voronin to return yet to the city, and if they were still in Troïtsa, I could find her, and learn her will and her inclinations. Every word that she had said to me, every gesture, the swift lifting of her slender, long-fingered hands, the droop of her head, or its proud erectness, the slender virginal outlines of her figure; all these things dwelt in my recollection. I was bewitched, if ever man was, and yet--and yet, did she love Galitsyn? With these pretty torments to sting and goad me on, I rode boldly into the village at the gates of Troïtsa, and finding quarters for my horse, set out, at once, on foot to make inquiries.

It was a cloudy day and exceedingly dreary; even the splendour of that great monastery seemed subdued. There were more pilgrims, though, I thought; more men and women kneeling here and there in the road facing the sacred place.

But I was inattentive to these things; I knew nothing yet, and I must learn something of her, and at once. I felt like a traveller in a desert country, I was athirst for tidings. Presently I came to the road that led to the shrine of Saint Sergius, and here I saw that the ground was strewn with bits of fir and hemlock, as these people ever strew the way before a corpse, and I heard the slow weird chant rising as the procession approached me. I was caught, hemmed in by the peasants around me, who fell on their knees. Slowly down the wide path of hemlock boughs wound the black-robed figures, and slowly with long-drawn notes rose the chant.

First came the lanthorn-bearers, though it was in the forenoon, four tall men in long black gowns with wide-brimmed black hats, and each one bore a candle, burning in a lanthorn, and behind them came a man with his head uncovered, his long grey hair floating in the breeze and he bore a sacred picture clasped to his breast, and--lest his touch should defile it--fine white cambric covered the edges of the frame where he held it. Then followed two men bearing the coffin-lid, on which lay the long sword, the embroidered robe of state, the arms and insignia of a great noble and boyar, and with him walked two boys carrying crosses on velvet cushions. These walked slowly--as they all did--and behind them came the priests and deacons in robes of black velvet, edged with silver and covered with silver crosses, and the deacons carried aloft the tapers and the censers which filled the with the dead sweetness of incense, and they led the chant, slower--slower and more solemn--for after them followed the bier, borne by six tall men in the rich robes of noblemen, and beside them were the bearers of more tapers, burning in keen yellow points in the grey day. The bier itself was covered with a pall of silver brocade and on it, in a magnificent embroidered robe of scarlet and gold, his hands clasping a cross on his breast, his face uncovered, lay the embalmed corpse. And the face, though distorted by death, was still the face of Kurakin.

I started, and stood staring while the gorgeous bier was borne slowly past me. Face to face again with him--mine enemy! Slain, too, in a fight with me, though not directly by my hand. His face, exposed so cruelly in the daylight, and with the flare, too, of the yellow tapers on it, seemed to reproach me. I had as certainly been his evil genius as I had been that of M. d’Argenson, and yet I could not feel regret. I knew the man’s life had been evil, report said that he had beaten his first wife to death, and his ways had been violent and bloody. So much the worse too, for him, in this his sudden taking-off. I stood staring, like a fool, while the crowd of mourners followed, his friends and his serfs, all bare-headed, and the last bare-foot. Then, reflecting that these people, if they recognised me, might hold me to account, I turned to find my way out of the press of onlookers, and had not gone two steps before I saw a face that I welcomed with joy. Not ten yards distant stood the dwarf, Maluta, and, at the sight of me, he beamed with delight. I beckoned to him to follow, and in a few moments we were comparatively alone, and I halted to ask and answer questions. He had been in great distress at my disappearance, and must know the particulars, even while he replied to my inquiries. He had only reached Troïtsa the night before, and he bore messages and letters, as well as more of my money, sent by Maître le Bastien, and he described his search for me and his perplexity, and ended by saying that he had thought, up to a moment ago, that I had gone with Prince Voronin, or in pursuit of him.

“Prince Voronin!” I cried excitedly; “I left him here with his daughter and his niece--is he back in Moscow?”

Maluta shook his head vehemently. “No, O excellency,” he replied; “Moscow bubbles as the pot does when the sterlet stews. He could not go there; he has gone to his own domain.”

“And the Princess Daria?”

“Is with him also,” said the dwarf, “she and her cousin and the female slaves, and the new wife of the prince, and all his retinue.”

“Where is his home?” I demanded sharply, for I meant to follow the great lion even to his lair.

Maluta pointed southward.

“Away and away,” he said, “many versts beyond the great white city, south still, toward the Tchornosjorn[B] and beyond, where the prince keeps peace with the Cossacks and is a great lord.”

“I will go after him,” I exclaimed.

The dwarf looked at me askance, his brows wrinkled.

“There is danger there, O my master,” he said shrilly; “even there the prince is lord, and who he wills to live, lives, and who he wills to die, dies, and he rules the land, and his house is strong, and there are twenty-eight bolts to the _terem_, and lo! the windows thereof are barred, so that not even the sweet-singing bird goes through them, and he has serfs by the score, strong men with the crossbow.”

I laughed bitterly. “Your picture is enchanting, Maluta,” I said. “How goes it in Moscow?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “The Streltsi reign, excellency,” he replied, “and the Czarevna Sophia. The Czarevitch Ivan and the Czar Peter will be crowned together, as lords and czars, and she, too, will rule--as the cat”--Maluta stretched out his hand like a cat’s paw--“rules the mice, and Galitsyn is a great prince and fair in her eyes, and the Naryshkins run like rats, and men dare not squeak--but the master goldsmith is safe.”

And so Maître le Bastien’s letters told me and something more. There were despatches from my cousin in France; Mme. de Montespan had fallen and Mme. de Maintenon would befriend me; the king was inclined to clemency, the scandal of the duel had blown over, more money was forwarded from my estates, and I could come home! It would have been a joyful summons two months ago, but now--I tore the letter, for the goldsmith had added some sage advice and urged M. le Marquis to go back to France.

“_Peste!_” I exclaimed, tossing away the fragments of the letter, “I go south to-morrow--to the land of the nightingale and the despot!”

The dwarf plucked at my coat.

“I--I also, go with you, O my master!” he said.

_XXXV: THE DWARF AND I_

FOR three days and nights the dwarf and I rode southward, and ever southward, and so long and tedious was the journey and so eternal the sameness of the level landscape that it seemed as if we rode and rode, without ever advancing a day’s journey. Ah! those steppes of southern Russia, wide and level and unending; sweeping away from us on every side, until they seemed to drop over the rim of the world. They were green then, for it was June, and the cattle grazed where, after a while, there would be only a dry desert swept by the south winds. Not a tree grew near us, only in the upper courses of the rivers was there timber, and the moujiks burned straw and dried dung.

And while we rode the dwarf chattered to me of the power of the great Prince Voronin, and the rumours, current on the back stairs of the palace, of Sophia’s jealousy of Prince Galitsyn, and his love for the Princess Daria. A conversation that furnished gall and wormwood in plenty for my diet, and while showing me the insignificance of my cause and my efforts, only served to make me the more obstinate; for I have that in me that will not yield. As I journeyed, however, I reflected that I was no longer a youth, nor so handsome and graceful as to please a young girl’s eye at once, and here my rank and fortune counted as nothing. I found myself examining my suit--a plain and dark one of taffeta--such as a gentleman might wear on a journey, but not fit for the great occasion of wooing a princess, yet the change of apparel, that I had provided, was scarcely more gaudy, and I grew peevish, remembered that I had grey hairs besides, and a stern cast of countenance, and was almost tempted to ask Maluta’s opinion, but forbore.

Yet, for all my ill-humour at my own appearance, which was that of a soldier rather than a courtier, I could not mend matters, and so went on, pushing forward as rapidly as I could, for something warned me not to linger on the road. We passed through the hamlets as quickly as we could, being ever assailed there by the curious and the idle, and, indeed, but for the need of supplies, I would not have troubled them. Thus we lay ever at night under the stars and found no inconvenience, save on the last night of our journey, when we were already on the outskirts of the prince’s domain. We had learned, by diligent inquiry, that his party had preceded us by two days only, and that there were women in it, so I pressed on, and when we were but a day’s journey from the great house of Voronin, we lay in a deserted hut to pass the night. Here there were trees about us, sparsely set, but gigantic, and the prince’s château was but a short distance from the village below us, where the serfs dwelt together, they who tilled the fields about us, and served him night and day.

It was that evening while we were at supper that I asked Maluta if he would follow me to France, and, at the question, his small face seemed to wither, his eyes rolled, and his great wing-like ears quivered.

“Have I not served my lord?” he asked humbly.

“So faithfully that I would fain reward you,” I replied; “in France I have a house and lands by the sea; and there you could live and die in peace, under my protection. Will you follow me, Maluta?”

He shivered and looked over his shoulder. In the west the red of sunset trailed upward toward the zenith, in long scarlet feathers; on the wide scene shadows fell.

“Have I not served my lord?” he repeated; “for I owed him my life--for him have I risked it!”

“So you have!” I retorted kindly. I was lying full-length on the grass and I rose now on my elbow; “and I would repay you.”

He fell on his knees. “Then leave me here, O my master,” he whimpered; “here was I born, here have I lived, here, also, will I die. In the strange land I should perish--my heart would be empty. I should never see the great white city again--I should die! Yet, I owe my life to you, O excellency, and if you will it--take it!”

“Saint Denis, you little rogue!” I exclaimed; “do you think I would kill you by taking you away? But what can you do here?”

He knelt meekly, his hands clasped, his eyes rolled up, the picture of a saint, though he was as arrant a little knave as ever lived, when he wanted to be.

“Here I can live,” he said, looking at me with that sidelong glance of his; “here I see the great tower of Ivan Veliki, I hear the bells, I dance for their czarish majesties, and in the kitchens of the palace are pickled mushrooms, and oil of cinnamon, and sterlet soup, and _pampushki_, and----”

I laughed aloud; I recollected his greedy feast on the day of his rescue. Here was a soul that could not forsake the flesh-pots.

“There are also dainties in France, and your feast cakes, your _pampushki_, are but flour and garlic,” I said, but he shook his head dismally.

“At least, I will make you independent of the kitchens,” I said; “money I can give you.”

As I spoke, one of the horses--startled, as I think, by some noise of the trees--plunged, and but for his halter would have run away. I started to my feet and fastened both more securely, but Maluta fell to trembling and crossing himself.

“’Tis the second time,” he whispered; “’tis Koshchei or one of his legion!”

Koshchei, one of the demons of the forest, was the terror of the Russian heart, and believed in, as I think, more devoutly than the Virgin and the saints.

“’Tis a sure sign of danger,” cried Maluta, “and see yonder, O excellency, the storm-cloud rises. Stribog, the god of the winds, is abroad; ’twill be a wild night--we must take the beasts into the hut, for if the tempest comes and they escape us, we cannot walk.”

The wisdom of this and his superior knowledge of the Russian climate made me comply, and it was well, for though we were crowded to the door of the hovel, the beasts were safe, and it was a night of the wildest. The great black storm-cloud rolled up, covering the heavens and the earth with the blackness of the pit, and the wind, rising steadily, swept over those wide plains with furious power. The few trees that stood about us bent and creaked, feeble as reeds, and the rain came down in torrents, and all through the fury of the tempest Maluta shouted a weird song, kneeling sometimes, while the water swirled around his little figure, and again lifting his arms over his head and dancing to and fro, swaying back and forth, and calling for protection on Koshchei and his legion of evil spirits. Once or twice, as the storm broke above us, in all its fury, and the wind came sweeping wild and mighty across the steppes, and the black heavens showed strange copperish streaks, Maluta fell face downward, at the threshold of the hut, and seemed to wrestle with an invisible foe, crying to me that the place was filled with evil spirits and that Koshchei the Deathless rode the wind, until--between the little demon-worshipper and the demon of the tempest--I was fairly beset, and crossed myself to be sure that I was yet a Christian. And through all those long hours the wind wailed and the dwarf chanted, until, at last, morning broke suddenly on the wild scene and little by little the tempest subsided.

But it was full noonday before we could set out, and having to advance cautiously now, to avoid questions, we could not reach the house before nightfall. But we were nearing it and my heart beat high, although the dwarf rode beside me, a drooping figure, exhausted doubtless by his unearthly vigil, and fearful of meeting the evil spirits of the forest, the Leshy and the Baba Yaga.

It was toward the late hours of the afternoon that we became aware that a party--a large one, too--travelled to the westward of us, and in the same direction. To avoid them we turned further east and, though we made good speed, night had already fallen before we saw the lights of a large village, and Maluta told me that it lay between us and the palace of Prince Voronin. Determined to avoid all suspicion, we dismounted at the edge of the hamlet, and the dwarf agreed to stay with the horses while I went forward to reconnoitre, though he did not care for the arrangement, for he distrusted my ability as a scout, and feared to be alone in the wood. However, I had no mind to play a secondary part here and one of waiting, so I left him on duty with the horses, and slipping past the first straggling houses of the settlement sought for the road to the prince’s château, and I was led to find this by the peasants themselves, who were all thronging toward the great house, drawn--as I was to learn--by the prospect of a spectacle. Using all the precaution I could, I advanced along the outskirts of the throng and finally mingled with it unnoticed, as the serfs pressed on behind a procession of flaming torches that was winding up the road that led to the great house before us.