AT THE BAR
How long those ragged elders carried on with their pretence of trial, is
beyond my power to say. I only know that my joints began to stiffen with
cramp, and to ache with crush, and my brain to hum like a factory wheel.
Even the relief of descrying Usi or Jack Nickols, on the bristly brow of
cliff a hundred feet over the dungeon-gate, was more than they dared to
afford me now; though I tried to persuade myself once or twice that I
espied the glint of metal there. Neither was there sound or sign of life
within the rocky jail, so far as watchful eyes and ears could learn;
while the cackle of the greybeards some fifty yards behind me resembled
a drone of bagpipes enlivened by a cherry-clapper.
At last I beheld a stately woman advance from the cover of the private
tent and take her seat in the chair of law, to receive the verdict of
her puppets. Then some hypocritical farce ensued, as if she were
shocked, and pleaded with them, and mourned to find them so inexorable.
My heart burned within me, and my fingers tingled to pull trigger at
some of them, such a fierce and dirty lot were they; but I said to
myself, "Let Hisar come, the fellow that broke the lovebird's leg." Then
as if the scene that could not be avoided was unfit for such gentle
eyes, the Princess, with a bow of resignation, retired into the sable
tent.
I lay close, and drew my head in, while four or five of the fighting men
followed the hoary villain who had acted as chief-justice to the door of
heavy metal sunk in the dark embrasure of the cliff. The old man drew
forth a key as long as a toasting-fork and much bigger, and with brawny
arms thrusting in both directions, and a screech as if from wounded
rock, the valves of the door slid back into their bed, as the damper of
a furnace slides. But one broad bar of metal spanned the opening
horizontally, about five feet above the iron threshold. The Osset
warriors stooped their white head-dresses under this heavy bar, and
disappeared in the gloom inside. That they would not slay their
prisoners there I knew, from Usi, and from Stepan's tales.
Presently they appeared again with a figure in the verge of sunlight,
towering over their woolly gleam.
I saw Sûr Imar's noble face, as calm as when he smiled on me, and
blessed me with his daughter. His hands were roped behind his back, his
silvery curls uncovered, and his broad white chest laid naked; except
that the red cross hung upon it, in which he wore some of his dead
wife's hair. Two of the men stretched spears behind him, as if he would
shrink from the steps of death; but he walked as if he were coming to
welcome some expected visitor, bowed his head without a word, and laid
his breast against the bar. There they cast a broad shackle round him
and made it fast behind his back; while a pompous dotard stood forth the
door, and read (or made believe read) the verdict of his brother idiots.
As he finished, my pistol muzzle lay true upon the foremost of them; the
man who first put hand to kinjal would never have put it to his mouth
again.
Then to my surprise, they all withdrew, cackling in their crock-saw
throats, while that old fiend showed his gums like a rat-trap, grinning
through his rheumy scrub. And the sound of tongues up the valley ceased;
and the blowing of horns, and the shrilling of fifes; and the only thing
that I could hear was the slow beat of a sheepskin drum, to call the
savages to the death, and the rapid thumps of my own heart.
Listening for the fatal step, I fixed my eyes once more upon the bound
and helpless victim. Perhaps to reduce his well-known strength, or to
lower his high courage, the affectionate sister had kept in his body
just life enough to last till he should be killed. His ribs stood forth,
and his cheeks were meagre, and the eyes looked worn and sunken; but
there was not a sign of fear or flinching, no twitch or quiver in the
smooth white forehead, and not so much as a palpitation in the broad
breast laid against the bar. Like a fool I raised my hand a little and
tried to attract his notice, but he kept his calm gaze towards his foes;
until a low heart-broken wail from an inner cell of the caverned rock
told of a sorrow beyond his own. Then for a moment he turned his head,
and spoke some words of comfort perhaps, or of love and long farewell,
to the one who could not come to him, or perhaps not even hear him; and
I hoped in the Lord of mercy that she could not see her father. At the
thought of that possibility even, hot as I was, my blood ran cold. Could
any woman exist who would set such a sight before a woman?
Suddenly a glow of deep amazement shone in Imar's haggard eyes. With a
wrench of his mighty frame he shook the steel bar like a ribbon, the
shackles on his chest gave way a little, and his grand face issued from
the gloom of granite into the testimony of the sun. Then the strong
aspect and vivid lines--as firm as the cliff to confront their
doom--relaxed and softened, and grew bright, as if memory forgot its
age, and went back upon its years, to have a play with tender visions.
"Oria, come at last!" he cried, with a smile to tempt her nearer; "my
Oria sent to call me home! The God, who has done this for me, will take
care of my daughter!"
Before him stood--betwixt him and me, although I had heard no
footsteps--a tall young figure in a long white robe, timid as a woman,
and as graceful; but with supple strength quivering for the will to man
it. On the left hip hung a heavy sword; but the right hand had fallen
away from the hilt, and the shoulders lay back with the sudden arrest.
"My son, my son, it is just," cried Imar; "slay me, as I slew thy
mother."
Then the shackled man turned his head away, that his eyes should make no
plea for him, and nature's dread could be seen in nothing but the quiver
of his long arched throat.
But the young man stood as if carved in stone, with both arms stretched
to his father, unable to take another step, unable to do anything but
wonder.
But betwixt their gaze a dark form leaped, quivering with fury, and wild
for blood, too ravenous for slaughter to have formed a proper plan of
it. And this was a very lucky thing for me.
For while he danced between them thus, with his hateful face on fire, in
the voluptuous choice of murder, there was time for me to leap out of my
hole, and get my cramped limbs flexible; not a moment, however, for any
kind of thought, and whatever I did was of instinct. What it was I know
not, nor does anybody else; it can only be told in a whirl as it befell.
Hisar, I think, made a jump at Hafer, before he saw me, and smacked his
face (as if he had been a child), and tried to snatch his sword, but was
thrust back, and then drew his own, and flew with it at the shackled
Imar's heart. But another was there--thank the Lord in heaven--I caught
the flame of Hisar's eyes on mine, as his blade went straight for Imar's
breast, and dashed it into splinters with my _toorak_. Then he hurled
the stump at me, drew his kinjal, and sprang, as if he were made of
wings, at my breast. I stepped aside quicker than I ever moved at
cricket, and as he passed me he ran against so hearty a whack upon his
wicked temples, that no more sin was concocted there.
Down he went, like a thistle at the ploughshare, and threw up his long
legs, and lay dead, with a tuft of bloody moss between his teeth. I took
the stump of his sword, which had struck me in the breast, and cut Sûr
Imar free, and hurried him inside (for he was lost as in a vision), and
stood with my revolver in the doorway, ready for the onset of the
fighting men. These being taken with astonishment hung back, as if they
had none to lead them; until the great lady appeared from the tent, to
receive the tidings of her brother's death.
Marva came forth in her majestic manner (having turned away her face,
perhaps with sisterly compunction), sweeping her black robe along the
ground, and framing her handsome features to the proper expression of
regret. Now the desire of her life was won. Paramount of the Eastern
Ossets, and the Western Lesghians; quit of the brother who had thwarted
her, and his son whom she had stolen for revenge and guile; nothing
remained but to make her own son the heir,--for he was born in wedlock,
though not of it,--marry him to the Lesghian heiress, and herself enjoy
all the power and the wealth, while he took his pleasure in the western
world. She despised all the ignorance and superstition round her too
loftily to act down to it; and perhaps looked down upon herself a
little, as she took her seat in the chair of stone. None the less she
did it with a royal air, more impressive to us from a woman than from
man.
To recover my breath, and be ready, I drew back in the shadow of the
prison entrance, where Hafer was standing by his prostrate father; and
much as I longed to see all that happened, for the moment I was out of
it. Not that I should have been much wiser even in the midst of them,
knowing nothing of the Osset tongue, which sounds like a chorus of
bull-frogs, bagpipes, pigs under a harrow, a cock in the roup, and a
hooter at the junction, even when the men are calm and keep the women
silent. However, those who understood them tell me that they reported
thus.
"Oh, lofty lady, mother of thy tribe, widow of the great Prince Rakhan,
the sentence hath been given according to thy will, and carried out even
as the Heaven hath decreed."
"Wise men, speak not of any will of mine; whatever hath been done is
good and righteous, to establish justice, and avenge the wrong. The barb
of the arrow of the Lord flies straight; never can it fail by any
crookedness of men. Yet the great Prince who has fallen was the nearest
of all flesh to me. I will be content with your testimony. I cannot gaze
upon him."
"But--but we know not how to say it, so as to mingle truth with
pleasure. Oh, lofty lady, it is not our enemy, Imar of the Kheusurs, who
is dead. Rather is it sorrowful indeed for us to speak. Would that the
Lord had made us liars, when He hath cast the truth into the breast of
evil!"
"Wise men, what is it? Or am I to call you fools, if ye could not even
execute your own decree aright?"
"It is no deed of ours. It is a spirit from the tombs, the tombs that
were made before the world itself. Let the high lady come and see."
She was girding up her long robe while they spoke, and the jewels on her
shapely feet flashed forth. With a gesture of disdain she waved the old
men back, but a score of wild warriors followed her, as she strode
towards the dungeon, to see her brother's corpse. Instead of that, she
stood before the body of her son, and a loud shriek proved that she was
still a woman. From the gloom of my shelter, I saw her proud eyes
aghast, and her arms thrown up, and her tall form quivering. Then she
controlled herself, and looked around.
"To weep by-and-by,--to avenge him first," she shouted (as they told me
afterwards), and such is the power of another's passion that I felt like
a murderer, and went forth with an impulse of shame to surrender myself.
For I had never slain a man till now.
"Idiot, get back!" cried a voice from the cliff, the voice no doubt of
Jack Nickols.
"Slay him,--shoot all of you, shoot, shoot, slay him!" the lady called
out, and herself seized a gun; "shoot him, though it be through my own
body!"
This order was beyond my understanding; but I saw at least a score of
muzzles looking at me, and I had not even the wit to move.
"Which will first reach me, the sound or the bullets?" That I should
thus ponder shows clearly enough that fear had overcome all sense of
terror.
"Now then; cut it short," I said, according to Jack Nickols,--though I
cannot remember a word of it,--and the fellows were surprised, and drew
their clumsy fingers back, and went down on their knees with
superstition. But the Princess Marva drew near to me, and the butt of a
gun was against her hip. She saw that I stood unarmed and nerveless, and
she could not help playing with the joy of her revenge. To be shot by a
woman! I had no power left. I could only stare, and wait for it.
"But I know him, I recognise my dear friend," she exclaimed in French,
while she fingered the trigger, with the muzzle not two yards from my
breast; "it is the gentleman desirous of my emeralds. Ah, thou shalt
have them! How many? Ten?"
To prolong my agony, she began to count, with glittering eyes and a
courteous smile, tapping my time on the trigger; and would you believe
that I could not stir, and could only keep my gaze fixed on her? Then
as she cried _Seven_, a white spot leaped--as it seemed to me--from the
palpitant surge of her bosom. Her dark robe opened, and her musket
dropped, as the roar of a gun rang overhead, and the Princess sank, with
her lips still smiling, as dead as a stone, into low-born arms.
"Usi, the Svân, hath his revenge!" a shrill cry from the crags
proclaimed; "Wolf's meat hath choked the Queen of Wolves."
Fear fell on all of us, as if the sky had opened; and the warriors
grounded their guns upon the moss, and crowded round one who had an
image on his breast. Then with one accord they began a mournful howl, of
a quality to come from the bowels of the earth, or send all her
inhabitants into them. My presence of mind was restored by this; and
with scarcely a wound I leaped back into my shelter, recovered my
weapons, and determined to die hard.