Nine feet long and six wide was the underground cellar wherein they had
plunged our hero.
In this space, a select company was already assembled, eighteen
individuals all told. And Mathias Raby now made the nineteenth in the
already overcrowded cell, and how he was to find a place there was a
knotty problem. It was lucky that the window over the door was not
filled with glass, but with an iron grating, which let in some air.
As a matter-of-fact, this cell was the best in the whole Assembly House,
as could be testified to by old Tsajkos, the eldest of the prisoners,
who was now quartered here. He was an old acquaintance of our hero, by
the way, and Raby had often provided the old man with tobacco, a luxury
which the prisoners were not allowed to smoke, but might chew, if they
could get it.
Nor was Tsajkos long in recognising the new-comer. He limped up to him,
rattling the heavy chains he wore on his legs, and clapped Raby on the
back in greeting, while the other occupants of the cell looked on in
wide-eyed amazement.
"So you have come to it at last, have you, my young friend? Now who
would have thought the likes of you would ever have tumbled into this
company? Why, I've always known you to be a well-brought-up fellow, who
never eat an apple that was not peeled. What can they have against you,
I should like to know? 'Not guilty' may do well enough up above there,
but you know as well as I, it does not do down here. Folks don't come to
a place like this for nothing, we all know that! Now tell us what it
is."
Disgust and repulsion almost choked Raby's powers of speech. He covered
his face with his hands.
"Come now, none of that sort of thing! We want no blubbering here. Don't
disgrace the company. If you want to cry, be off to the women's prison;
we know you've got two wives already there!"
At this, the whole crew yelled with hoarse laughter.
"Aha!" exclaimed a voice from the furthest corner. "So that's the
celebrated husband, is it? Well, I can tell you what he's here for; the
women themselves told me, and they had it from the heydukes; he is a
spy."
At these words, the whole band were roused to sudden uproar. "A spy! a
traitor!" they yelled in chorus. "He'll strangle us at night. Let's
squeeze the life out of him now."
"Be quiet, all of you," cried old Tsajkos, as he thrust the crowd back.
"You don't know what you're talking about. Stop your barking and listen
to me. He may be a spy, but he only betrays the gentry, and he'll never
turn on us poor folk. If a great lord robs or steals, he's down upon
him, but never on us."
"That's another matter," shouted the rest. "Then we'll be friends with
him."
And Raby had thereupon to submit to the rough greetings of his new
comrades in misfortune.
"They are not a bad sort," remarked Tsajkos, and he proceeded to point
out each individual member of the crew to Raby, specifying which was a
horse-stealer, and which a highwayman, identifying as well the thieves
and incendiaries among them. Most of them, however, it turned out, were
murderers.
To Raby the whole thing seemed more and more like a ghastly dream. Yet
his five senses warranted its reality: the low vault of the cell which
surrounded him, the fierce criminal faces of the prisoners, the clinking
of the fetters, the dirty grimy hands that grasped his own, the damp,
mouldy odour of the dungeon, the taste of the brackish water from the
prison well that the old man handed him to revive him--all these things
warned him that this was no dream, but a grim reality from which he must
find a speedy means of escaping.
He looked round, but his companion misconstrued the glance.
"You are wondering how you will manage to get forty winks here, eh,
comrade? Yes, it's a difficult matter, I warrant you; all the places
are taken, and each one has a right to his own. Unless Papis will let
you have his corner for the night, I really don't see how you are going
to manage it."
"Why not, pray?" exclaimed a voice from another corner. "Of course I
will, if I get well paid for it!"
Papis was a gipsy felon, already pretty advanced in years, his
complexion wrinkled and tanned like parchment, yet his hair was quite
black, and his teeth shone like ivory.
"Bravo, Papis!" cried the old man, while the lithe gipsy crawled between
the others and grinned at Raby.
"Don't have any fear, Papis," said Tsajkos, "the gentleman will pay you,
sure enough; he has no end of money. How much do you want for your
place?"
The gipsy did not hesitate. "A ducat a day," he retorted promptly.
Raby began to enter into the humours of the situation. He reflected a
minute on the proposal.
"That is not much, after all," he said politely.
"Ah, you are the right sort, you are," cried old Tsajkos. "I only hope
you'll be long with us. You shall just see what a good place we'll make
for you against the wall with no one on the other side, and my knees can
be your pillow. We can't do feather beds down here, or even run to
straw, but one sleeps soundest on the bricks after all."
"But where will Papis sleep himself?"
For all his own misery, Raby could not repress the question.
The whole crew burst out laughing. As soon as they had stilled their
mirth, the prisoners looked at each other embarrassed, and then at their
leader to explain.
The old man smiled slily.
"Where will Papis sleep? Why, in the bucket, to be sure, up above
there," he answered.
Raby looked up, and saw from the roof two chains hanging, through the
links of which two poles were thrust, and on these hung the great bucket
in which every evening the prisoners had to carry the water needed in
the kitchen of the Assembly House above.
They showed him how Papis got up. One of the prisoners seized the little
gipsy by the legs and hauled him up to the roof, after which, Papis took
the cover off the bucket, crawled inside, and disappeared from sight.
Raby was still more astonished.
"But how can the man sleep in that pail?" he asked, puzzled.
Everyone laughed, but quickly suppressed it, and all looked again rather
sheepish.
Tsajkos patted Raby's cheek patronisingly with his greasy hand, and
cried,
"Bless my stars! what a simple greenhorn it is; Papis will sleep sounder
to-night, thanks to you, on a comfortable bed."
"How may that be?"
"I'll whisper it in your ear. He will leave this place this evening on
your account."
"On my account, how can that be?" cried Raby astounded.
"Ay, sure enough, and come back early to-morrow morning again."
"Why, how is it possible?"
"That's not our affair. All that matters is he will come back. He does
this whenever some poor devil has a message to send to anyone outside.
To-day Papis will do it for you. Do you want to send a letter to anyone?
Have it ready, and he'll see they get it. And what is more, you can
trust him with gold; he'll bring back what you give him, even were it a
hundred ducats, all safe and sound. The Emperor himself has no more
trusty courier."
Raby's head began to whirl. How if he should take this means of
informing Joseph of his present situation?
"Yes, but how can I write a letter?" he exclaimed anxiously; "they have
not left me a single morsel of paper, or even a pencil-end."
"Ay, you shall have any amount, only turn your head away, and don't look
where I get it from; we don't want new-comers to learn these things all
at once."
The prisoners were already bent on widening their dungeon by breaking
through the roof with implements which Papis had procured for them. They
had removed first one stone and then another from the roof, and each
night and morning the stones were laid back in their places, in order to
arouse no suspicion, the clefts being hidden with bits of bread, and the
breach carefully strewn with mortar dust. The warder would thus not
notice it. In the cavity from which two of the stones had been removed,
they kept the more dangerous implements required for the work, and
likewise the writing materials.
A table was also improvised for Raby. At a sign from the old man, one of
the prisoners, a broad-backed fellow, placed himself on all fours in
front of him, so that Raby could make a desk of his shoulders.
"To whom is this letter addressed," inquired Tsajkos.
"To Abraham Rotheisel, in the Jewry," returned Raby.
"It will be all right. Take it, Papis!"
The little gipsy stretched his arm from under the lid of the bucket, and
seized the letter.
How he was ever going to get out with it was a mystery which Raby did
not pretend to fathom, but the gipsy clambered down again from his
hiding-place. It was growing dark.
The prisoners prepared a sleeping-place for Raby in a corner, spreading
a bit of old sheepskin on the floor, so that he might not find it too
hard.
When the guard was changed at six o'clock, and the great outer gate was
closed, a rattling of keys was heard without, and the gaoler came into
the dungeon to visit the prisoners and bring them their food. He came
first to Raby, tested the fetters on his hands and feet to see if they
were fast and then handed him a piece of black bread.
But the new-comer did not feel hungry and threw it away.
While the gaoler tried the fetters, two prisoners hauled the bucket
down, and the gipsy slipped into it under the lid.
Then the two men took the poles on their shoulders, and accompanied by
an armed warder, their chains clanking as they went, marched to the
well, Raby wondering the while how Papis was feeling during this
expedition.
He had leisure for reflection, for he did not get a wink of sleep the
whole night; how indeed could he close his eyes in this horrible place?
He had full scope for his imagination, for he knew every nook and corner
of the building, so familiar to him since his boyhood's days, from the
great council hall to the dainty little parlour, where the
spinning-wheel had hummed its well-remembered song. Only up till now had
the subterranean part remained unexplored ground to him; now he had had
the chance of seeing it for himself. How long was he to remain here?
That was the question. It was certain the Emperor would take steps to
free him, once he had his letter. But it would take at least four days,
two there and two back, and a day more for Rotheisel to convey the
missive to the Kaiser. Full five days therefore he would have to spend
in that frightful hole. But what would have been his thoughts could he
have foreseen how long his captivity was to endure? He would surely have
dashed his head against the wall in despair.
At last day began to break, and the rattling of keys and the gaoler's
footsteps were again audible outside. One night had gone!
Then the orders for the day were given as to which of the prisoners were
to sweep the court, and which to carry water.
Two of them thereupon lifted the bucket again on their shoulders, and
off they went, their fettered footsteps echoing along the corridor.
Those left had now more room, so they stretched themselves and tried to
sleep once again, for it would be some time before the others returned
to the cell.
It would soon be the hour for the gaoler to come again on his rounds,
and Raby began to dread lest he should note one of the party were
missing. But none were wanting. When the roll was called, the little
gipsy rose from a corner where he had apparently been huddled up, and
showed an abnormally distended grin on his brown face.
Directly the gaoler's back was turned, the gipsy wriggled up to him and
produced from one side of his mouth a many folded note; from the other a
roll of fifty ducats. No wonder he had grinned so broadly. He lay both
in Raby's hands.
Raby could fairly have embraced the mannikin, repulsive as he was. The
note, however, contained nothing more than these words: "To-day, steps
will be taken," and by the side of it, the cipher which represented
fifty ducats. Moreover, not one of the latter was missing.
How in the world had the fellow managed it all? But this demands another
chapter.