Читать книгу The Captain of the Janizaries - James M. Ludlow - Страница 7

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In the winter of 1443—a few months subsequent to the events with which our story begins—the Pass of Slatiza echoed other sounds than the cry of the eagle, the bleating of the flocks, and the songs and halloos of the mountaineers. Distant bugle calls floated between the cliffs. At night a fire would flash from a peak, and be suddenly extinguished, as another gleamed from a peak beyond. Strange men had gone up and down the road. With one of these Uncle Kabilovitsch had wandered off, and been absent several days. Great was the excitement of the little folks when Milosch told them that a real army was not far off, coming from the Christian country to the north of them, and that its general was no other than the great Hunyades, the White Knight of Wallachia—called so because he wore white armor—the son of that same King Sigismund and the fair Elizabeth Morsiney. How little Morsinia's cheeks paled, while those of the boys burned, and their eyes flashed, as their father told them, by the fire-light in the centre of their cabin, that the White Knight had already conquered the Turks at Hermanstadt and at Vasag and on the banks of the Morava, and was—if the story which Milosch had heard from some scouts were true—preparing to burst through the Balkan mountains, and descend upon the homes of the Turk on the southern plains. Little did they sleep at night, in the excitement of the belief that, at any day, they might see the soldiers—real soldiers, just like those of Alexander, and those of Bajazet—tramping through the Pass. The tremor of the earth, occasioned by some distant landslide, in their excited imagination was thought to be due to the tramp of a myriad feet. The hoot of the owl became the trumpet call for the onset: and the sharp whistle of the wind, between leafless trees and along the ice-covered rocks, seemed like the whizzing flight of the souls of the slain.

Once, just as the gray dawn appeared, Kabilovitsch, who had been absent for several days, came hurriedly with the alarming news that the Turks, steadily retiring before the Christians, would soon occupy the Pass. They were already coming up the defiles, as the mists rise along the sides of the mountains, in dense masses, hoping to gain such vantage ground that they could hurl the troops of Hunyades down the almost perpendicular slopes before they could effect a secure lodgment on the summit. The children and women must leave herds and homes, and fly instantly. The only safe retreat was the great cave, which the mountaineers knew of, lying off towards the other Pass, that of Soulourderbend.

The fugitives were scarcely gone when the mountain swarmed with Moslems. The mighty mass of humanity crowded the cliffs like bees preparing to swarm. They fringed the breastworks of native rock with abattis made of huge trunks of trees. During the day the Turks had diverted a mountain stream, so that, leaving its bed, it poured a thin sheet of water over the steepest part of the road the Christians were to ascend. This, freezing during the night, made a wall of ice. The Christians were thus forced to leave the highway and attempt to scale the crags far and near; a movement which the Turks met by spreading themselves everywhere above them. Upon ledges and into crevices which had never before felt the pressure of human feet clambered the contestants. Every rock was empurpled with gore. Turkish turban and Hungarian helmet were caught upon the same thorny bush; while the heads which had worn them rolled together in the same gully, and stared their deathless hatred from their dead eyes.

The Turks in falling back discovered the mouth of the cave in which the peasants had taken refuge. As the Moslem bugles sounded the retreat, lest they should be cut off by the Christians who had scaled the heights on their flanks, they seized the women and children, who soon were lost to each other's sight in the skurry of the retiring host. The hands of Constantine were tied about the neck, and his legs about the loins, of a huge Moslem, to whose keeping he had been committed. An arrow pierced the soldier to the heart.

It seemed as if more than keenness of eye—some inspiration of his fatherly instinct—led Kabilovitsch on through the vast confusion, far down the slope, outrunning the fugitives and their pursuers, avoiding contact with any one by leaping from rock to rock and darting like a serpent through secret by-paths, until he reached the horsemen of the Turks, who had not been able to follow the foot-soldiers up the steep ascent. He knew that his little girl would be given in charge to some one of these. He, therefore, concealed himself in the growing darkness behind a clump of evergreen trees, close to which one must pass in order to reach the horses. A moment later, with the stealth and the strength of a panther, he leaped upon a Turk. The man let go the tiny form of the girl he was carrying; but, before he could assume an attitude of defence, the iron grip of Kabilovitsch was upon his throat, and the steel of the infuriated old man in his heart. Under the sheltering darkness, carrying his rescued child, Kabilovitsch threaded his way along ledges and balconies of rock projecting so slightly from the precipitous mountain that they would have been discerned, even in daylight, by no eye less expert than his own. At one place his way was blocked by a dead body which had fallen from the ledge above, and been caught by the tangled limbs of the mountain laurel. Without relinquishing his load, he pushed with his foot the lifeless mass down through the entanglement, and listened to the snapping of the bushes and the crashing of loosened stones, until the heavy thud announced that it had found a resting place.

"So God rest his soul, be he Christian or Paynim!" muttered the old man. "And now, my child, are you frighted?"

"No, father, not when you are with me," said Morsinia.

"Could you stand close to the rock, and hold very tight to the bush, if I leave you a moment?"

"Yes, father, I will hold to the bush as tight as it holds to the rock."

Kabilovitsch grasped a root of laurel, and, testing it with main strength, swung clear of the ledge, until his foot rested upon another ledge nearly the length of his body below. Bracing himself so that he spanned the interval with the strength of a granite pillar, he bade the child crawl cautiously in the direction of his voice. As she touched his hands, he lifted her with perfect poise, and placed her feet beside his own on a broad table rock.

"Now, blessed be Jesu, we are safe! Did I not tell you I would some day take you to a cavern which no one but Milosch and I had ever seen? Here it is. Unless Sultan Amurath hires the eagles to be his spies—as they say he does—no eye but God's will see us here even when the sun rises. You did not know, my little princess, what a coward your old father had become, to run away from a battle. Did you, my darling?" said he kissing her. "Never did I dream that Ar——, that Kabilovitsch would fly like a frightened partridge through the bushes. But my girl's heart has taken the place of my own to-night."

As he spoke he slipped from his shoulders the rough cape, or armless jacket, of bear-skin, and wrapped the girl closely in it. He then carried her beneath the roof of a little cave, where he enfolded her in his arms, making his own back a barrier against the cutting night wind and the whirling snow. The cold was intense. Thinking only of the danger to the already half-benumbed and wearied body of the child, he took off his conical cap, and unwound the many folds of coarse woollen cloth of which it was made, and with it wrapped her limbs and feet.

Thus the night was passed. With the first streak of the dawn Kabilovitsch crept cautiously from the ledge, and soon returned with the news that the Turks had vanished, swept away by the tide of Christian soldiers which was still pouring over and down the mountain in pursuit.

Horrible was the scene which everywhere greeted them as they clambered back toward the road. The dead were piled upon the dying in every ravine. Red streaks seamed the white snow—channels in which the current of many a life had drained away. The road was choked with the hurrying victors. But the old man's familiarity with the ground found paths which the nimble feet of the maid could climb; so that the day was not far advanced when they stood on the site of their home. Scarcely a trace of the little hamlet remained. Whatever could be burned had fed the camp-fires of the preceding night. The houses had been thrown down by the soldiers in rifling the grain bins which were built between their outer and inner walls.

The old man sat down upon the door-stone of what had been his home. His head dropped upon his bosom. Morsinia stood by his side, her arm about his neck, and her cheek pressed close to his, so that her bright golden hair mingled with his gray beard—as in certain mediæval pictures the artist expresses a pleasing fancy in hammered work of silver and gold. They scarcely noticed that a group of horsemen, more gaily uniformed than the ordinary soldiers, had halted and were looking at them.

"By the eleven thousand virgins of Coln! I never saw a more unique picture than that," said one who wore a skull cap of scarlet, while an attendant carried his heavy helmet. "If Masaccio were with us I would have him paint that scene for our new cathedral at Milano, as an allegory of the captivity in Babylon."

"Rather of the captivity in Avignon. It would be a capital representation of the Holy Father and his daughter the Church," replied a companion laughing. "Only I would have the painter insert the portrait of your eminence, Cardinal Julian, as delivering them both."

"That would not be altogether unhistoric; for the deliverance was not wholly wrought until our time," replied the cardinal, evidently gratified with the flattering addition which his comrade, King Vladislaus, had made to his pleasing conceit. "But if to-day's victory be as thorough as it now looks, and we drive the Turks out of Europe, it would serve as a picture of the captivity in which the haughty, half-infidel emperor of the Greeks and his daughter, Byzantium, will soon be to Rome."

"But, by my crown," said Vladislaus, "and with due reverence for the great cardinal under whose cap is all the brain that Rome can now boast of—I think the Greeks will find as much spiritual desolation in Mother Church as these worthy people have about them here."

"I can pardon that speech to the newly baptized king of half-barbarian Hungary, when I would not shrive another for it," replied Julian petulantly. "The son of a pagan may be allowed much ignorance regarding the mystery of the Holy See. But a truce to our badgering! Let us speak to this old fellow. Good man, is this your house? By Saint Catherine! the girl is beautiful, your highness."

"It was my home, Sire, yesterday, but now it is his that wants it," replied Kabilovitsch.

"And where do you go now?" asked the cardinal.

"Towards God's gate, Sire; and I wish I might see it soon, but for this little one," said the old man, rising.

"Holy Peter let you in when you get there," rejoined His Eminence, turning his horse away.

"Hold! Cardinal," replied the king. "I am surprised at that speech from you. You have tried to teach me by lectures for a fortnight past that Rome has temporal as well as spiritual authority, all power on earth as well as in heaven. Now, by Our Lady! you ought to help this good man over his earthly way towards God's gate, as well as wish him luck when he gets there. But the priest preaches, and leaves the laity to do the duties of religion. Credit me with a good Christian deed to balance the many bad ones you remember against me, Cardinal, and I will help the man. The golden hair of the child against the old man's head were as good an aureole as ever a saint wore. And that Holy Peter knows, if the Cardinal does not. Ho, Olgard! Take the lass on the saddle with you. And, old man, if you will keep close with your daughter, you will find as good provision behind the gate of Philippopolis as that in heaven, if report be true. And, by Saint Michael! if we go dashing down the mountain at this rate we will vault the walls of that rich Moslem town as easily as the devil jumped the gate of Paradise."

Kabilovitsch trudged by the side of Olgard, who held Morsinia before him. It was hard for the old man to keep from under the hoofs of the horses as the attendant knights crowded together down the narrow and tortuous descent. Suddenly the girl uttered a cry, and, clapping her hands, called,

"Constantine, Constantine!"

The missing lad, emerging from a copse, stood for an instant in amazement at the apparition of his little playmate; then dashed among the crowd toward her.

"Drat the witch!" said a knight—between the legs of whose horse the boy had gone—aiming at him a blow with his iron mace. Constantine would have been trampled by the crowding cavalcade, had not the strong hand of a trooper seized him by his ragged jacket and lifted him to the horse's crupper.

"So may somebody save my own lad in the mountains of Carpathia!" said the rough, but kindly soldier.

"Ay, the angels will bear him up in their hands, lest he even dash his foot against a stone, for thy good deed," exclaimed a monk, who, with hood thrown back, and almost breathless with the effort to rescue the lad himself, had reached him at the same moment.

"Good Father, pray for me!" said the trooper, crossing himself.

"Ay, with grace," replied the monk, extricating himself from the crowd, and hasting back to the side of a wounded man, whom his comrades were carrying on a stretcher which had been extemporized with an old cloak tied securely between two stout saplings.

As night darkened down, the plain at the base of the mountain burst into weird magnificence with a thousand campfires. The Turks were in full retreat toward Adrianople, and joy reigned among the Christians. It was the eve of Christmas. The stars shone with rare brilliancy through the cold clear atmosphere.

"The very heavens return the salutation of our beacons," said King Vladislaus.

A trumpet sounded its shrill and jubilant note, which was caught up by others, until the woods and fields and the mountain sides were flooded with the inarticulate song, as quickly as the first note of a bird awakens the whole matin chorus of the summer time.

Cardinal Julian, reining his horse at the entrance to the camp, listened as he gazed—

"'And with the angel there was a multitude of the heavenly host praising God!' Let us accept the joy of this eve of the birth of our Lord as an omen of the birth of Christian power to these lands, which have so long lain in the shadow of Moslem infidelity and Greek heresy. Our camps yonder flash as the sparks which flew from the apron of the Infant Jesu and terrified the devil.[12] Sultan Amurath has been scorched this day, though the infernal fiend lodge in his skin, as I verily believe he does."

"Amurath was not in personal command to-day. At least so I am told," replied Vladislaus. "He is occupied with a rebellion of the Caramanians in Asia. Carambey, the Sultan's sister's husband, led the forces at the beginning of the fight. He was captured in the bog, and is now in safe custody with the Servian Despot, George Brankovich. Hunyades and the Despot have been bargaining for his possession. But the real commandant, as I have learned from prisoners—at least he was present at the beginning of the fight—was Scanderbeg."

"Scanderbeg?" exclaimed Julian with great alarm. "What! the Albanian traitor, Castriot?—Iscariot, rather, should be his name—This then, Your Majesty, is no night for revelry; but for watching. The flight of the enemy, if Scanderbeg leads them, is only to draw us into a net. What if before morning, with the Balkans behind us, we should be assaulted with fresh corps of Turks on the front? There is no fathoming the devices of Scanderbeg's wily brain. And never yet has he been defeated, except to wrest the better victory out of seeming disaster. Does General Hunyades know the antagonist he is dealing with? that it is not some bey or pasha, nor even the Sultan himself, but Scanderbeg? I have heard Hunyades say that since the days of Saladin, the Moslems have not had a leader so skilful as that Albanian renegade: that a glance of his eye has more sagacity in it than the deliberations of a Divan:[13] and that not a score of knights could stand against his bare arm. We must see Hunyades."

"I confess," replied King Vladislaus, "that I liked not the easy victory we have had. I would have sworn to prevent a myriad foes climbing the ice road we travelled yesterday, if I had but a company of pikemen; yet ten thousand Turkish veterans kept us not back; and they were led by Scanderbeg! There is mystery here. Jesu prevent it should be the mystery of death to us all! Let's to Hunyades! If only your wisdom or prayers, Cardinal, could reclaim Scanderbeg to his Christian allegiance, I would not fear Sultan Amurath, though he were the devil's pope, with the keys of death and hell in his girdle."

Hunyades was found with the advance corps of the Christians. But for his white armor he could scarcely be distinguished from some subaltern officer, as he moved among the men, inspecting the details of their encampment. The contrast of the commander-in-chief with the kingly and the ecclesiastical soldier was striking. He listened quietly to their surmises and fears, and replied with as little of their excitement as if he spoke of a new armor-cleaner:

"Yes! we shall probably have a raid from Scanderbeg before morning. But we are ready for him. Do you look well to the rear, King Vladislaus! And do you, Cardinal, marshal a host of fresh Latin prayers for the dying; for, if Scanderbeg gets among your Italians, their saffron skins will bleach into ghosts for fright of him."

The cardinal's face grew as red as his cap, as he replied:

"But for loyalty to our common Christian cause, and the example of subordination to our chief, I would answer that taunt as it deserves."