BALYIKA CAVE.
The sun rises late in November. When Blanka awoke, every one else in the
house was already up. Manasseh met her with the announcement that their
journey was thenceforth to be on horseback, at which she was as pleased
as a child. So that explained why their carriage-horses had been
saddled.
In the kitchen a plentiful breakfast stood ready,--hot milk, bacon
spiced with paprika, snow-white mountain honey, long-necked bottles of
spirits distilled from various fruits, cheeses rolled up in the fragrant
bark of the fir-tree,--all of which was new to Blanka and partaken of by
her with the keenest relish, to the great satisfaction of her host. What
was left on the table by his guests he packed up and made them carry
away with them, assuring them it would not come amiss.
Zenobia was to guide the travellers on their way. Blanka laughed with
delight as she mounted her horse. At first she found it strange enough
to sit astride like a man, but when she saw the stately Wallachian
maiden thus mounted, she overcame her scruples and even thought it great
fun. The little mountain horses were so steady and sure-footed that it
was like being rocked in a cradle to ride one of them.
The two young women rode ahead, while the men lingered behind a moment
to drink a stirrup-cup with their host, who would not let them go
without observing this ceremony. Entering the forest, Blanka accosted
her companion.
"Zenobia, call me 'Blanka,' and speak Hungarian with me. You spoke it
well enough in your sleep last night."
The Wallachian girl drew rein abruptly and crossed herself. "Holy
Virgin!" she whispered, "don't lisp a word of what you heard me say, and
don't ask me about it, either."
They rode on side by side up the slope of the mountain. Blanka was in
high spirits. The turf was silvered with hoar frost, except here and
there where the direct rays of the sun had melted it and exposed the
grass beneath, which looked all the greener by contrast. A stately grove
received the travellers. A silence as of some high-arched cathedral
reigned, broken occasionally by the antiphony of feathered songsters in
the trees overhead. A pair of wild peacocks started up at the riders'
approach and alighted again at a little distance. The ascent became
steeper. Horses bred in the lowlands must have long since succumbed to
the strain put upon them, but Aaron's good mountain ponies showed not
even a drop of sweat on their sleek coats.
Gaining the mountain top at length, the travellers saw before them a
wild moor threaded by a narrow path, which they were obliged to follow
in single file, Zenobia taking the lead. The sun was high in the heavens
when they reached the end of this tortuous path and found themselves at
a point where their road led downward into the valley below. A venerable
beech-tree, perhaps centuries old, marked this spot. It was the sole
survivor of the primeval forest that had once crowned the height on
which it stood. Held firm by its great, wide-reaching roots, which
fastened themselves in the crannies of the rock, it had thus far defied
the elements. Its trunk half hid a cavernous opening in the
mountainside, before which lay a large stone basin partly filled with
water.
"Here we will rest awhile, beside the Wonder Spring," said Zenobia,
leaping from her horse and loosening her saddle-girth. "We'll take a
bite of lunch and let our animals graze; then later we will water them."
"How can we?" asked Blanka. "There is scarcely any water here."
"There will be enough before long," was the reply. "That is why we call
it the Wonder Spring: every two hours it gushes out, and then subsides
again."
Blanka shook her head doubtfully, and, as if to make the most of the
water still remaining in the basin, she used her hand as a ladle and
dipped up enough to quench the thirst of her pair of fowls--for her
valuable present had not been left behind.
Meanwhile Aaron had spread the lunch on the green table-cloth provided
by good dame Nature, and had begun to cut, with his silver-mounted
clasp-knife, a generous portion for each traveller. But Blanka declared
herself less hungry than thirsty.
"The saints have but to wish, and their desires are fulfilled," was
Zenobia's laughing rejoinder. "Even the barren rocks yield nectar. Hear
that! The spring is going to flow in a moment."
A gurgling sound was heard from the cavernous opening behind the
beech-tree, and presently an abundant stream of crystal-clear water
burst forth, flooded the basin, and then went leaping and foaming over
the rocks and down the mountainside into the ravine below. Blanka
clapped her hands with delight at this beautiful appearance, and
declared that if she were rich, she would build a house there and ask
for no other amusement than to watch the spring when it flowed. She
laughed like a happy child, and perhaps in all Transylvania, that day,
hers was the only happy laugh that was heard.
Aaron gathered a heap of dry twigs and made a fire, at which he taught
Blanka to toast bread and broil bacon,--accomplishments not to be
despised on occasions like this.
In half an hour the spring ceased to flow. It stopped with a succession
of muffled, gurgling sounds from the depths of its subterranean channel,
ending finally with gulping down the greater part of the water that had
filled the basin. Then all was still once more.
Meanwhile something had occurred to trouble Blanka's happiness. Two or
three wasps, of that venomous kind of which half a dozen suffice to kill
a horse, lured from their winter quarters by the smell of food, were
buzzing about her ears in a manner that spoiled all her pleasure. Aaron
hastened to her assistance, and suspecting that the intruders had their
nest in the hollow beech, he made preparations to smoke them out.
Setting fire to a bunch of dry grass, he inserted it in the hollow of
the tree and confidently awaited results. A sound like the snort of a
steam-engine followed, and presently flames were seen bursting from the
top of the chimney-like trunk. The dry mould and dust of ages that had
collected inside this shaft had now caught fire, like so much tinder,
turning the whole tree in a twinkling into a mighty torch.
"Oh, what have you done?" cried Zenobia, starting up. "Do you know that
you have killed my father and set fire to the house that sheltered you
last night?"
Blanka at first thought the girl was joking, but when she saw Aaron's
vexed expression and Manasseh's ruffled brow, she knew that the words
must have a meaning that the others understood, though she did not.
"Quick!" exclaimed the Wallachian maiden. "Mount and away! You have not
a moment to lose. I hasten back to my father. You can find your way down
the mountain by following the bed of the brook. Night must not overtake
you in this neighbourhood. Oh, Aaron, may God forgive you for what you
have done this day!"
Out of the burning tree a pair of owls fluttered, blinded and
panic-stricken, a family of squirrels scampered off to a place of
safety, and a nest of serpents squirmed and wriggled away from that
blazing horror. Yet neither owls nor squirrels nor serpents fled with
more headlong haste than did our travellers. Zenobia galloped back the
way she had come, while the two men took Blanka between them and
clattered down the rocky bed of the now nearly dry mountain torrent.
Of all this Blanka could understand nothing. What great harm, she
wondered, could come from the burning of an old beech-tree?
Toward evening the travellers found themselves on a height commanding a
wide view of the surrounding country. To the north rose the cliff where
they had lunched at noon, and where they could still see black smoke
ascending in a column from the smouldering beech as from a factory
chimney. To the southeast another column of smoke was visible, and
toward the same quarter Torda Gap opened before them in the distance.
Aaron said they must halt here and rest their horses, whereupon all
three dismounted and Manasseh spread a sheepskin for Blanka to sit on;
but she chose rather to go in quest of wild flowers.
"Your Blanka is a jewel of a woman!" exclaimed Aaron to his brother.
"From early dawn she sits in the saddle, bears all the hardships of the
journey, and utters not a sigh of weariness or complaint. With that
filigree body of hers, she endures fatigues that might well make a
strong man's bones ache, and keeps up her good cheer through them all.
Nothing daunted by danger ahead, she makes merry over it when it is
passed. Yet once or twice I thought she was going to lose heart, but she
looked into your face and immediately regained her courage. But the
hardest part of the journey is still to come. Turn your field-glass
toward Monastery Heights, yonder, where you see the smoke. Do you find
any tents there?"
"Yes, and on the edge of the woods I see the gleam of bayonets."
"That is the camp of Moga's insurgents, and it lies between us and the
Szekler Stone. Every road leading thither is now unsafe for us. But hear
my plan. The insurgents hold Monastery Heights, and we must ride past
them, through the Torda Gap. The millers of the two mills that stand one
at each end of the Gap are my friends. The Hungarian miller at Peterd
has shut off Hesdad Brook to-day, to clear out the mill-race. He does it
once in so often, and I know he is about it now. So we shall have no
trouble making our way up the dry bed of the stream to the farther end
of the Gap. The miller there has promised to give a signal if the road
through the Torda woods is clear, and unless it is blocked by the
insurgents we can push on at once to the saw-mill on the Aranyos, where
a four-horse team is waiting for us with twelve mounted young men from
Bagyon as escort. But don't wrinkle your brow, we sha'n't come to
bloodshed yet awhile. A dozen Bagyon horsemen make nothing of dashing
through the whole Wallachian army, and not a hair of their heads will be
touched. We shall be shot at, but from such a distance that we shall
never know it. We will tell the young lady it is the custom in our
country to receive bridal parties with a volley of musketry. When we
reach the Borev Bridge we are as good as at home, and we shall be there
before any one can overtake us, I'll warrant."
"But what if the Torda woods are held by the enemy?" queried Manasseh.
"Then we will take up our quarters for the present in Balyika Cave.
Everything is provided there for our comfort, and we shall not suffer.
We'll wait until the danger passes. Near the Balyika Gate we shall find
a signal: a cord will be stretched from one rock to another, and a red
rag hung on it if danger threatens, but a green twig if all is well."
"And when you first proposed in Kolozsvar that we should go home by way
of Torda Gap, did you know the perils we should have to face?"
"Certainly," replied Aaron. "You can read my heart, brother, like an
open book, and I need not try to conceal anything from you. Do you
suppose we should ever have taken up arms unless we had been forced to
do so, even as you will exchange the olive-branch for the sword as soon
as you find what is dearest to you in danger? You cannot do otherwise;
the iron hand of destiny constrains you. You have brought your
sweetheart with you from Rome; your honour as a man obliges you to make
her your lawful wife. Our law, our canon, compels you to make your way
home with her, for nowhere else can your wedding be duly solemnised.
Suppose the enemy block your way: you are given a good horse, a trusty
sword and a brace of pistols, and then, with thirteen loyal comrades,
including myself, you clear a path, through blood if need be, to the
altar whither it is your duty to lead your betrothed."
While the two men thus discoursed on war and bloodshed, Blanka was
enjoying the late autumn flowers that the frost had spared. Indigo-blue
bell-flowers and red and white tormentils were still in bloom, while in
the clefts of the rocks she came upon the red wall-pepper and a kind of
yellow ragwort. She had gathered a great bunch of these blossoms when
she had the good fortune to find a clump of bear-berry vines, full of
the ripened fruit hanging in red clusters and set off by the leathery,
dark green leaves, which never fall. The bear-berry is the pride of the
mountain flora, and Blanka was delighted to meet with it.
"Are these berries poisonous?" she asked Aaron, with childish curiosity,
as soon as she rejoined her companions.
He put one of them into his mouth to reassure her; then she had to
follow his example, but immediately made a wry face and declared the
fruit to be very bitter.
"But the berries will do to put in my bouquets for your two brothers who
are coming to meet us," she said, as she seated herself on the sheepskin
to rest a few minutes and to tie up her flowers.
At these words Aaron's eyes filled, but he hastened to reply, with
assumed cheerfulness:
"In Balyika Glen we shall find a still more beautiful species of
bear-berry. It, too, is a kind of arbutus, but of great rarity, and
found nowhere else except in Italy and Ireland. We call it here the
'autumn-spring flower.' The stems are coral-red, the leaves evergreen,
and the blossoms grow in terminal umbels, white and fragrant, late in
the fall, while the berries do not ripen until the following autumn, so
that the beautiful plant bears flowers and fruit at one and the same
time, and thus wears our national colours, the tricolour of Hungary."
"Oh, where does it grow? Is it far from here?" exclaimed Blanka,
eagerly, starting up from her seat. She had lost all feeling of fatigue.
"It is a good distance, dear sister-in-law," replied Aaron. "To the
Torda Gap is a full hour's ride, and thence to Balyika Glen about as
far; and I'm afraid somebody is tired enough already, so that we had
best stay overnight in the mill and not push on until to-morrow
morning."
"No, I am not tired," Blanka asserted. "Let us go on this evening," and
she was ready to remount at once.
"But the horses ought to graze a little longer," objected Aaron, "and
even then we shall fare much better if we walk down the mountain; it
will be easier for us than riding."
With that he went off into the bushes and picked his hat full of
huckleberries, returning with which he drew a clean linen handkerchief
from his knapsack, used it as a strainer for extracting the juice of the
fruit, and then presented the drink in a wooden goblet to Blanka. She
left some for Manasseh, who drank after her and declared he had never
tasted a more delightful draught. She seemed now fully rested and
refreshed, and eager to resume their journey. Aaron put two fingers into
his mouth and whistled, whereupon the three horses came trotting up to
him. He called them by name, and they followed him as a dog follows his
master, while Manasseh and Blanka brought up the rear. Thus the party
descended the steep mountainside.
The Torda Gap is one of the most marvellous volcanic formations in
existence. It is as if a mighty mountain chain had been rent asunder
from ridge to base, leaving the opposing sides of the gorge rugged and
precipitous, but matching each other with a rude harmony of detail most
curious to behold. The zigzags and windings of the giant corridor, three
thousand feet in length, have a wonderful regularity and symmetry in
their bounding walls. The whole forms an entrance-way or passage of
solid rock, the most imposing gateway in the world, and a marvel to all
geologists.
The wonders of this mountain gorge, and the stories and legends that
Aaron narrated as the travellers proceeded, made Blanka entirely
unconscious of the difficulties of the way. After leaving the Peterd
mill behind them, they were forced to use the bed of the stream for a
road. Its waters were for the time being restrained, although numerous
pools were still standing, in which numbers of small fishes darted
hither and thither and crabs were seen in abundance. As the riders
advanced through the rocky passageway, its walls came nearer and nearer
together and left only a narrow strip of blue sky visible overhead, with
a few slanting rays of the evening sunlight playing high up on one side
of the gorge. At length the passage became so straitened that only three
fathoms' space was left between the confining walls. When Hesdad Brook
is at all full one can make his way through only with great difficulty
and by boldly breasting its waters. Therefore it is that very few people
have ever seen the gate of Torda Gap. Just above this narrow gateway is
situated the natural excavation in the mountainside, called from its
last defender, Balyika Cave.
As the travellers approached this spot, Aaron rode on ahead, ostensibly
to ascertain whether the water was still shallow enough to wade through,
but in reality to look for the preconcerted signal and remove it before
Blanka should come up. He had agreed with Manasseh, if the signal was
favourable, to offer to show her the flower garden of Balyika Glen and
to discourage all desire on her part to visit Balyika Cave, by alleging
that it was the haunt of serpents; but if the signal should be
unfavourable, he was to employ all his arts to make the young lady eager
to inspect the cavern and pass the night there.
He soon returned, and reported that it would be easy to wade their
horses through the gateway, after which they could go and view the
wonders of Balyika Cave.
"But aren't there any snakes in the cave?" was Blanka's first and most
natural inquiry. Every woman in her place would have put the same
question. Ever since Mother Eve's misadventure with the serpent in
Paradise, women have cherished a deadly enmity toward the whole reptile
family.
"Yes," was Aaron's reply, "there are snakes there."
Manasseh drew a breath of relief, but this time he had mistaken his
brother's meaning.
"We need not fear them, however," the elder made haste to add. "We will
build a fire and drive them out. Our fowls, too, will be a still better
protection for us; with their naked necks they will be taken for
vultures by the snakes, and we shall have no trouble whatever."
Manasseh now knew that dangers surrounded them, and that they must pass
the night in the cave. Aaron, however, put forth all his eloquence to
depict the charms of the place, likening its cavernous depths to the
groined arches of a cathedral, and telling how his ancestors had
maintained themselves there for months at a time in the face of a
besieging force. He assured Blanka that she would find it most
delightful to camp there by a blazing fire; he and Manasseh would take
turns watching while she slept, her head pillowed on a fragrant bundle
of hay.
They passed through the giant gateway, and clambered up to Balyika Cave,
a spacious chamber in the side of the cliff, rudely but strongly
fortified by a stone rampart that had been built to guard the entrance.
A wild rosebush grew in the narrow doorway and seemed at first to refuse
all admittance. Manasseh and Blanka waited without, while Aaron fought
his way through the brambles, which tore at his leather coat without
injuring it, and presently returned with three broad planks. He and
Manasseh held the briers aside with two of them and laid the third as a
bridge for Blanka to pass over unharmed. In a corner of the stone wall
lay a pile of hay, and behind it a supply of pitch-pine torches, one of
which Aaron now lighted. Then, like a lord in his own castle, he issued
his orders to his companions. Manasseh was to lead the horses up, one at
a time, and stable them in the rude courtyard, while Blanka was
instructed to sit on a stone and arrange her flowers and feed her
poultry. Meantime the master of ceremonies made everything ready for the
other two within the cave.
The cock and hen were soon picking the barley from their mistress's lap,
while she busied her fingers with the manufacture of a red necklace of
the hips that grew on the wild rosebush. That other necklace, the
dandelion chain, was treasured by Manasseh among his most precious
possessions. Soon the horses were led up, stalled and fed, and then
their groom drew in the wooden planks, according to his brother's
instructions, and carried them into the cave, leaving the wild rosebush
to resume its guardianship of the doorway. After this Aaron came out and
offered his arm, like a courteous host, to escort Blanka into the
cavern. She was no little surprised, on entering, to find herself in a
stately hall, clean and comfortable, and lighted and warmed by a
cheerful fire of fagots in its centre. Near the fire stood a table,
neatly spread with a white cloth, on which were placed glasses and a
pitcher of fresh spring-water. Beside the table a couch, rude but
comfortable, had been prepared for her repose.
"Aaron, you are a magician!" cried the young girl. "Where did you get
all these things?"
At this question the good man nearly let the cat out of the bag by
explaining that everything had long since been in readiness for their
coming. But he checked himself and considered his answer a moment. To
say that he had brought all this outfit in his knapsack would have been
too obviously a falsehood, so he sought another way out of the
difficulty.
"I told the miller," he replied, with a jerk of his thumb over one
shoulder, "that we should stay the night here, and he sent these things
forward by a short cut over the mountain."
Thus it was only the speaker's thumb, and not his tongue, that lied, by
pointing backward to the mill just passed, instead of forward to the
other mill at the upper end of Torda Gap.
Aaron now offered to show the wonders of this rock palace, which, like
the Palazzo Cagliari, consisted of two wings, from the second of which a
low and narrow passage led upward to the mountain spring whence the
thoughtful host had procured fresh water for their table. The previous
occupants of this abode seemed to have been provided with not a few
conveniences.
Returning to the fireside, Blanka was easily persuaded to try the couch
that had been spread for her. The three planks, laid on some flat stones
and heaped with sheepskins and rugs, made a very comfortable
resting-place even for a lady. Blanka demanded nothing further, except a
glass of water, and then begged Aaron to tell her some more stories, to
which she listened with her chin resting in her hand and her eyelids now
and then drooping with drowsiness, despite the interest she took in the
narrator's ingenious farrago of fact and fiction, of romance and
reality.
He told her how Balyika, the last lord of this castle, had held it for
years against the imperial troops; even after Francis Rakoczy's
surrender he had refused to lay down his arms, but had maintained his
position with a sturdy band of a hundred mountaineers. With this little
company he waged bitter warfare against his foes, losing his followers
one after another in the unequal contest, until he alone was left. Even
then he refused to yield himself, but outwitted all who strove to kill
or capture him. Finally he met the fate of many another brave man,--he
was betrayed by the woman he loved. He had been smitten with a passion
for the daughter of the Torda baker, the beautiful Rosalie; but her
affections were already bespoken by the butcher's apprentice, Marczi by
name, a youth of courage and activity. However, she deigned to receive
the outlawed chieftain's attentions, her sole purpose being to entrap
him and deliver him up to his foes. One evening, when she went to keep
an appointment with Balyika, she notified the village magistrate and the
captain of the yeomen. These two took an armed force and surrounded the
lovers' rendezvous, thinking thus at last to capture their man. But he
cut his way through the soldiery, and, fleeing over the mountain, made
straight for his cave in the Torda Gap, outstripping the pursuit of both
horse and foot--with the single exception of the injured lover, Marczi,
whom he could not shake off. The young man clung to his heels and chased
him to the very entrance of his retreat, where, just as the robber chief
was slipping through the opening of his cave, his pursuer hurled his
hatchet with such deadly aim that it cleft the fugitive's skull, and he
sank dead on the spot.
"And that was how the last lord of the cave came to his end," concluded
Aaron.
"But what about Marczi and Rosalie?" asked Blanka.
The narrator proceeded to gratify her curiosity by making the young man
fall into the hands of the Mongols, after which he was captured by a
troop of Cossacks; and then, when Aaron was putting him through a
similar experience with the dog-faced Tartars, his listener succumbed at
last to the drowsiness against which she had been struggling, and the
story was abruptly discontinued.
"I never heard that tale before, brother," said Manasseh, after assuring
himself that Blanka was really asleep.
"Nor I, either," was Aaron's candid reply; "but in a tight pinch a man
turns romancer sometimes. I don't know, though, what fables we can
invent to keep the young lady here over to-morrow. You think up
something, brother; don't let me go to perdition all alone for the lot
of yarns I've been reeling off to your sweetheart."
"Very well," assented the other; "I'll set my wits to work. Now you lie
down and rest a bit, while I stay up and tend the fire. At midnight I
will wake you and lie down myself while you watch."
Aaron lay down with a bundle of twigs under his head for a pillow, and,
muttering a snatch of a prayer, was fast asleep in a twinkling. Manasseh
was now left undisturbed to devise something new and surprising against
his brother's awakening. Tearing a leaf from his sketch-book, he wrote
as follows:
"DEAR BROTHER AARON:--I cannot close my eyes in sleep
while death threatens our brothers Simon and David. Nor can I
endure the thought of my birthplace being turned into a bloody
battle-field, and of the horrors of war invading the peaceful
valley whither I am bringing my bride, and which has ever looked
upon bloodshed with disapproval. It was my fond hope to give my
wife a glimpse of mankind in something like its original sinless
state, and to let her learn to know and worship the God of our
fathers as a God of love and gentleness. I am seeking a way by
which this cherished hope of mine may yet be realised. While the
Lord watches over your slumbers, I go in quest of the insurgent
leader. That which force and threats cannot effect may yet be
accomplished by peaceful means. I go to rescue our brothers from
imprisonment and death. No fears can hold me back, as no
inducements could prevail on me to slip stealthily by their place
of confinement and push forward to celebrate my wedding while they
perhaps were being led out to execution. I go forth alone and
unarmed, and I am hopeful of success. Meanwhile do you guard and
cherish my beloved. Above all, take her away from this place early
to-morrow morning. Our presence here is known to one man, and he
may betray us. You know the way to Porlik Grotto; few people are
even aware of its existence, so well is it hidden from the view of
travellers. Thither you must conduct our companion, and I will join
you there with our two brothers from Monastery Heights. I may
perhaps be there before you. But if it should please God not to
prosper my undertaking, take Blanka home with you, and, if the Lord
preserves our family, treat her as a sister. She is worthy of your
adoption. Break to her gently the news of my fate. In the
accompanying pocketbook is all her worldly wealth, as well as my
own savings. Take charge of it. My brother Jonathan resembles me in
appearance, and is a much better man than I. To him I leave _all_
that I now call mine.
"Do not betray to Blanka any anxiety on my account. If God be with
me, who shall prevail against me?
"Your brother,
"MANASSEH."