CORPORAL PODATCHKINE.
Scarcely had Charlie Balgonie achieved the passage of the Louga, and,
in the dark, forced his panting horse up the wooded bank towards the
lighted windows of the castle, than his guide and orderly, Corporal
Michail Podatchkine, who, for reasons which were his own, and which
shall ultimately be explained, had decoyed him many, many versts to
the southward of his proper route and then abandoned him, while he
still cautiously followed, and watched him plunge into the perilous
stream--watched him in the hope that he might perish in its icy
current; Corporal Podatchkine, we say, had barely seen that the
officer's safety was certain and assured, than he turned his horse's
head, and with a hoarse malediction on his bearded mouth, rode away
in an opposite direction.
The lighted windows of the Castle of Louga soon darkened and vanished
in his rear; the snow-flakes came thicker and faster on the icy
blast, whitening his round bearskin cap and fur shoubah or cloak, and
the untrimmed mane of his shaggy little horse; but with his long
lance slung behind him, his knees up to his saddle-bow, and his
fierce, keen eyes peering out the way before him, the amiable
Podatchkine, who, though a Livonian by birth, had the honour to hold
the rank of corporal in a corps of Cossacks, rode on through the
dense fir forest as unerringly as if every tree therein had been
planted by his own warlike hands.
Ere long, with a grunt of satisfaction, he struck upon a track that
led to the right and left, and he unhesitatingly pursued the latter.
There were then none of those verst-posts, about ten feet high or so,
such as may now be found by the side of the Russian roads through the
forests, or along the open steppe; but Podatchkine rode steadily on,
pausing only now and then to unsling and grasp his spear, or give a
fierce gleaming glance around him, while the nostrils of his thick
snub-nose dilated, when a prolonged and melancholy howl, rising from
the woody depths into the chill drear sky of night, announced that
some wolf was rousing itself in its lair among the grass, or in its
den beside the river.
Anon he came to a place where the forest was partially cleared, and
there stood a little hut built of squared logs. The walls of this
edifice were whitened artificially; but the roof was rendered whiter
still by a coat of the fast-freezing snow. A single ray of smoky
light streamed from the opening (which passed for a window) near the
door, on which Podatchkine, without dismounting, struck three blows
with the butt of his lance.
"Nicholas Paulovitch," he exclaimed, "are you within?"
The door was soon unfastened, and thereat appeared a figure, not
unlike an Esquimaux, bearing a pine torch. He was a man of great
stature and muscular development, clad in a caftan of coarse, thick,
and warm material, girt by a broad belt in which a long and rusty
knife was stuck; he had on bark shoes and long leggings of sheepskin,
which, like Bryan O'Linn's breeches, had "the skinny side out and the
hairy side in;" and he cultivated one long lock of grizzled hair
behind his right ear in the old fashion of the Black Cossacks; but
this appendage was concealed by the hood and tippet of fur which he
wore. This man, however, did not belong to any of the nomadic
military tribes, but was a species of Russian gipsy, a half-breed.
He held up the pine torch, and its flaring light tipped with a lurid,
weird, and uncertain glow his fierce, tawny, and repulsive visage,
causing his cunning and almond-shaped eyes to gleam redly, like two
carbuncles, from under their thick and impending brows, which were
nearly as shaggy as the moustache that blended with his greasy and
uncombed beard; and in the same light the head of Podatchkine's lance
and the hafts of his sabre, dagger, and pistols glittered at times,
being the only bright parts of his remarkably dingy costume.
"Is it you, Michail Podatchkine--and _alone_?" he asked surlily.
"Yes; even so, alone. Dost think I have the evil eye about me that
you stare so, Nicholas Paulovitch?"
"God forbid!" replied Nicholas with a shudder, for this idea is the
grossest and the greatest of all Russian superstitious; "but I
expected two--yourself and another."
"Who told you so?"
"Olga Paulowna, my sister, who yesterday saw you at Krejko."
"True, I remember. Now listen, old friend and comrade----"
"Hush, the girl is within and may hear you."
"Well," said Podatchkine, lowering his voice, while the other
extinguished his torch, half closed the door of his hut, and drew
nearer the speaker, "by order of General Weymarn, Governor of St.
Petersburg, General of the Cavalry, Director-General of the Canals,
Bridges, and Highways----"
"And the devil knows all what more!" said the other impatiently.
"Well?"
"I am ordered to guide this Carl Ivanovitch Balgonie, who is a
stranger, to the gates of Schlusselburg, as he bears to Bernikoff a
dispatch of importance; but I have been promised a heavy sum----"
"Ah! how much say you?"
"I have said nothing yet."
"But you spoke of a heavy sum."
"Two hundred silver roubles."
"Two hundred silver roubles!" exclaimed Nicholas, opening his
avaricious eyes with wonder, and then closing them again, so that
they looked like two narrow slits.
"Yes, every _denusca_, if I, by fair means or by foul, prevent the
delivery of that paper into the hands of old Bernikoff."
"He whose dagger tickled the throat of Peter III.: and by whom are
you offered this, friend Podatchkine?"
"I can trust you: well, by the Lieutenant Apollo Usakoff."
"The grandson of the Hetman Mazeppa!"
"The same; and by Basil Mierowitz----"
"Well, and what the devil have I to do with all this?" growled the
half-breed.
"Much: fifty roubles will be yours, Paulovitch, if you will assist
me," said Podatchkine in a husky whisper.
"Let us talk over this: dismount, and come in."
"Nay, there is Olga Paulowna: then I have other work to do; but give
me a drink, for I am sorely athirst."
The other speedily brought him a painted bowl full of foamy quass,
which the Cossack Corporal, for so we may term him, drained to the
dregs; though it is a liquor, to any but a Russian, horrible as the
water of Cocytus.
"Let us be wary, friend Podatchkine," said the woodman: "the knout is
not an angel, but it teaches us to tell the truth alike of ourselves
and of others."
Refreshed by his bitter draught, the Corporal shook the gathering
snow-flakes from the sleeves of his fur shoubah, and resumed somewhat
garrulously:
"My next instructions are, that the dispatch, which is from the
Empress herself (whom God and our Lady of Kazan long preserve!), and
which bears the imperial seal, shall never be delivered; but must be
obtained by me for Basil Mierowitz and the Lieutenant Usakoff, now
detached upon the Livonian frontier, and who both know as little as I
care, that its bearer is actually their own dearest and most valued
friend! I misled the Hospodeen Balgonie, lured him to the river's
brink, and left him there, in the hope that he and his horse might
become frozen on the steppe or in the forest, where I could rob him
at ease; but the man seems made of iron, and, to my astonishment, I
saw him swim the Louga. I thought all gone, he, the dispatch, and my
200 roubles, when he plunged his horse into the river; but he stoutly
won the opposite bank, and has made his way straight to the dwelling
of Count Mierowitz, where now, I doubt not, he is safely housed."
"It seems to me, friend Podatchkine, that you took a great deal of
useless trouble when you had your dagger and pistols," said the
other, suspiciously.
"Nay, if he was to perish thus, suspicion might too readily fall upon
me, for he is a favourite officer of the Empress, and of Weymarn too.
My plan is this: I may get the dispatch to-night in yonder castle of
Count Mierowitz."
"And if not?"
"Then I shall again lure and mislead Balgonie, and bring him here in
the night."
"What then?" asked the woodman doggedly.
"How dull we are, Paulovitch. We shall drug and drown him; thus
shall he die without a wound. I will take back the dispatch to
Novgorod; and you can carry the body on his horse to St. Petersburg,
where a sum will be given you for finding it. The poor stranger,
they will say, has perished amid our keen Russian frosts, and that
will be all. Nicholas Paulovitch, the carcass will be well worth
twenty roubles to thee."
"And thy fifty?"
"You shall receive when the affair is over, and when you come to me
at Novgorod, where I am quartered."
"By the bones of my tribe, and by the sword that flames in the hand
of the holy Michail, I am with you, Podatchkine!" exclaimed the
half-breed with ferocious joy, mingling his gipsy cant with that of
the Russian church. Then they shook heartily their hard and dingy
hands--hands that had wrought many a deed of merciless cruelty.
"And now, Paulovitch, give me a light for my pipe, and let me begone."
A few minutes more and these worthy compatriots had separated.
Podatchkine rode somewhat leisurely to a ford that he knew of lower
down the river, believing that in time the whole onus, and perhaps
suspicion, of Balgonie's death (if it was necessary) might fall on
the woodman, whom he had resolved to cheat of the promised fifty
roubles if he could.
"He will play me false," muttered Podatchkine. "Is not the dog a
gipsy? Beware of the tamed wolf, of the baptized Jew, and the enemy
who has made it up; why should I not delude him who will readily
delude me?"
Our enterprising Corporal was correct in his estimate of Nicholas
Paulovitch; for, at the same moment, that personage, while wrapped in
his filthy sheepskin (caring nothing for the comfort of any other bed
than the floor), was considering how he might drug and drown both the
officer and his treacherous guide, sell both their bodies at the
nearest military post, and, by taking the dispatch to Novgorod
himself, obtain the entire reward offered for it by the Lieutenants
Mierowitz and Usakoff, or still more, perhaps, by delivering it to
the Empress!
There was a third person who had overheard the first savage plot, and
who felt her heart stirred with pity and terror for Balgonie, who had
given her a silver kopec at Krejko but yesterday,--the gipsy girl,
Olga Paulowna, the sister of Nicholas Paulovitch; and she resolved to
baffle both conspirators if she could.
It was in perfect ignorance of who might be the bearer of that
dispatch (with the contents of which a spy had acquainted them) that
the two officers, who were then engaged in an extensive and dangerous
political and military conspiracy, contrived to have Podatchkine, in
the character of a guide and orderly, sent upon the trail of one who
was really their most valued friend and comrade; though, as a
foreigner and soldier of fortune, they deemed it proper to keep him
as yet in total ignorance of their daring hopes and plans.