hour to meet the Princess Daria? and then my mind trailed off into
confused recollections; I was conscious of a sharp pain in my head and
my nostrils were assailed by the ill-smelling smoke from a fire of
dried dung and straw. Fuel not being over-plentiful on the wide steppes
of Russia, the moujik commonly resorted to these unsavoury materials.
I opened my eyes slowly, as we do after a heavy sleep or a swoon, and
perceived that I was lying on the ground in a hovel. The door--too low
for a man to stand in upright--was open, and the draught from it made
the fire smoke, while two men were squatted at the threshold, throwing
dice. I tried to turn over to gain a better view of these ruffians,
but I found that I was bound, hand and foot, and, determined to learn
something of my surroundings before they discovered my revival, I lay
still, looking askance at them and little reassured by my observations.
They were as pretty a pair of knaves as any man would care to see,
and a closer inspection showed me the purple mark on the forehead
of one, that I had seen on the man at Troïtsa, and now, at closer
quarters, it seemed even more familiar. At last, I recognised him;
it was my Streltsi of the Zemlianui-gorod, the dispenser of roubles,
Martemian, son of Stenko. Was it possible that the rogue had pursued
me even to Troïtsa, that this was the fruit of the steward’s revenge?
I could not think so, but I did think that these ruffians were hired
by the Prince Voronin to remove me, and why they had not killed me I
could not divine, but reflected that they might think they had, and it
behoved one to lie still and await developments. Meanwhile, however,
the two rogues were deeply engaged in their game and helping themselves
to frequent potations from a large jug that stood between them. As
I watched from under my half-closed eyelids, one of them turned and
looked at me, while he was holding the jug to his lips.
“Thou hast killed him, Martemian,” he said gruffly, “and thou hast
exceeded thine orders--now the pay will be lost!”
Martemian cast a scowling glance at me.
“He’s not dead,” he said, in his deep bass; “think you I do not know
a dead rat, when I see it? He’ll come about presently and start on
his journey,” and he laughed harshly. “The Prince Galitsyn is a
blockhead to show such squeamishness; the fellow is better dead than in
Archangel.”
Prince Galitsyn! Ah! I strained my ears at that; not Voronin, but
Galitsyn--yet it might be both.
“What’s he doing it for?” asked the first speaker thickly, his mouth
full. “Is the fellow a Naryshkin?”
Martemian laughed. “What do you care?” he asked. “’Twill bring you your
wages, and”--he shrugged his shoulders--“if he is over-troublesome,
Mikhail, there are accidents that can happen on the road to the north.”
Mikhail laughed deeply and threw his dice, but after a moment he looked
up shrewdly at the other man--his superior in rank and in intelligence.
“What do you get for it, comrade?” he asked sharply, “what d’ye get?
There’ll be a fair division, or I’ll not go with you, not I.”
Martemian glared at him fiercely. “You rogue,” he said; “who saved your
back from the lash a month since? You’ll get your pay and hold your
tongue, or by Saint Nikolas of Mojaïsk, I’ll hold it for you!”
The other villain cowered, and I scarcely blamed him; there was
something terrible in the fierce face with the purple mark on the
forehead. Yet, though cowed, Mikhail was not content; he would have
said more, if I had not stirred--my bonds cutting my wrists--and
Martemian’s quick ear caught the sound, and he rose and, striding up to
me, bent down and scrutinised my face. He thought I knew no Russ.
“He’s well enough, Mikhail,” he said, stirring me with his foot; “bring
the horses--we must travel.”
My blood boiled at his touch and I tried to rise, but could not, and
he stood watching me grimly until I heard the horses come to the
door. Then Mikhail was bidden to loose my bonds, and I rose with some
difficulty, for my head swam. They had stripped me of my weapons and
now they did not untie my wrists. Not yet determined on my line of
action, I let them think I knew no Russ, hoping to hear more from them,
and they resorted to signs, accented with flourishes of their pistols,
to make me understand that I was to mount one of the three horses. It
is no time to disobey when two pistols are held to your head, and I
got on the horse and awaited developments. I thought that I could, at
least, guide the horse with my knees, and if the opportunity offered,
I could run for it. But opportunities were not to be plentiful. We
started northward, in single file, Mikhail ahead of me and Martemian
behind; both men armed and ready, as I knew, to shoot me down at the
first sign of flight.
It was not until we were mounted that I became aware of my
surroundings, and saw that we had been lying in a hut on the outskirts
of the pilgrims’ village at Troïtsa. I could see the great dome of
the monastery, and the light of the setting sun shone on the crosses.
I gnawed my lip in silence; it was the hour that the Princess Daria
would look for me. Ah, if my hands had but been free to fight them!
Something of my wrath and disappointment must have showed on my face,
for Martemian gave me a grim look and touched my horse on the flank.
“Get on with you!” he commanded harshly; “no loitering--forward, march!”
It was on the tip of my tongue to offer him a bribe, when it occurred
to me that my money must have gone with my weapons, and as I rode
between the two ruffians, I tried to feel, by raising my bound hands
to my bosom, and to my surprise the bag was there and felt as weighty
as ever. This perplexed me until a sudden thought solved the mystery.
Martemian was master of the situation and Martemian intended to have
all the gold. He had not searched further than my pockets with Mikhail,
because he meant to keep the spoil, and later I found this surmise to
be correct and it gave me a clew to a solution of my trouble, and set
me to plotting and planning as we jogged along the long straight road,
due north from Troïtsa. As we travelled I heard far off, and fainter
and fainter, the sweet call of the bells to prayer--to prayer--but I
never felt less like praying; I was in a perfect tempest of passion
and baffled rage, the captive of two ruffians and as helpless as a
clown--with my hands tied.
And yet it was May, and the breath of the northern spring was in the
air. The afterglow softened the wide sweep of the steppe, shadows lay
here and there, before us grew some trees. There was a sublimity in
the solitude of the scene, wide stretching as the sky above us, and
tipped at the western edge with crimson.
Before me rode Mikhail, and as he rode he sang a Slavic love song:
“‘_Little did I, the young one, slumber at night,
Little did I slumber, but much did I see in sleep.
Just as if in the middle of our court-yard there grew a cypress-tree,
And another sugar-sweet tree;
And on the tree were golden boughs,
Golden boughs and boughs of silver_,’”
sang the soldier, at the top of his trumpet voice:
“‘_Golden boughs and boughs of silver._’”
Behind me came Martemian--pistol in hand--a grim, purple-scarred man,
who had no mercy and no music in him. Between the two, I made my
choice. If I could have killed them then--and I would have done it if I
could--Martemian would have been the first.
We rode thus--passing, once or twice, a peasant pilgrim travelling
slowly and patiently toward the shrine of Saint Sergius, a
brown-skinned, lean moujik with a sheepskin caftan, and legs swathed
in folds of cloth, and shoes of lime-tree bark; a man whose life was
only labour and starvation and prayer. They came many, many leagues, on
foot, to pray, and they went back, on foot, praying still. They looked
at us with dull eyes, like dumb beasts, and passed with bowed heads. On
we went riding swiftly, ever northward; on and on, and night fell and
the stars shone overhead.
At last Martemian halted us, and getting me off my horse, coolly bound
my ankles and tethered me to a stump. Then they built a fire of fagots,
for we were on the edge of a little wood, and Mikhail cooked a meal of
fish, and while he was thus engaged, Martemian, aided by the light of
the fagots, came nearer to me and, taking a moment when the other’s
back was turned, searched me, and I lay still waiting, determined, now,
on my course. He found the bag of roubles and hid it quickly in his
own breast and was back, sitting on the ground and feigning sleep when
Mikhail brought the fish and bread. Liquor they had in plenty, but they
offered me only a cup of water, from a stagnant pool beside us, and a
piece of bread. Evidently my food was to be only sufficient to keep
body and soul together, but I ate it and said nothing; as yet I knew
no Russ, and I saw already a way to deal with this matter and watched
the two--suspicious enough now of each other--with grim satisfaction.
If I could not outwit two clownish rogues, surely I deserved my fate,
and yet--all night I lay, tied to a tree as helpless as a log, and
heard them snore beside me. And all the while I cursed my fate and
thought of the Princess Daria. It was madness, too, to think of her. I
had not kept the tryst; did she suspect the truth, or think me a poor
craven frightened by her father? I writhed then in my bonds and plotted
vengeance on Martemian; the other villain was but a slave and a dupe.
_XXXIII: I SOW DISSENSION_
IN the morning my two rogues had a very pretty quarrel over the
breakfast, and the result was that I only got a morsel of dry black
bread, while Martemian devoured all the meat and left bread and a
little fish for Mikhail. The latter, purple with rage, choked furiously
over his meal and eyed his superior so fiercely that more than once I
entertained wild hopes. However, the trouble blew over and we mounted a
little after sunrise, Martemian leading now, at least five yards ahead,
and Mikhail, sulky and hungry, in the rear, while I rode between, and
to-day they did not tie my hands; they knew full well that escape was
impossible, while one or the other could shoot me down at leisure.
At first, we passed through a belt of firs, sparse and storm-beaten
on the northern side, their trunks coated with grey lichens, and the
shadows were black here, in contrast to the endless sunlight on those
vast plains that surrounded us as we journeyed on. Plains where I could
see a man so far off that he was but a speck, and where the hardy,
shaggy-coated cattle grazed, travelling slowly southward in search
of the fresh green upon the slopes. Though it was spring and the sun
shone, it made me shudder to think of the snow on those steppes in
winter, of the rolling, soft, shimmering, deadly whiteness, and the
cold and the north wind.
As I rode, I studied the square outlines of Martemian’s figure; his
short, thick neck, red and folded at the nape, like a bull’s; his
brutal head, his wide shoulders and strong, muscular limbs gripping the
horse tightly with the knees. Not an easy man to kill, I reflected, and
as if my thoughts were carried to him by the current of the air, he
turned sharply, and looked me between the eyes, and scowled, meeting
my glance. Then he rode on, and once I saw him slyly peep at my bag of
roubles; meanwhile, however, I heard Mikhail’s horse plodding steadily
behind, but to-day he did not sing. It is a dangerous sign when a noisy
knave falls silent; I have ever found it so. The villain who stabbed
Henri Quatre did not sing, I warrant, or whistle either.
As the sun travelled upward in the heavens, we travelled upward too,
and the road lay straight and white before us, but now some low bushes
grew beside it, sprayed with green, and presently we rode through the
main street of a little hamlet, where the log houses were sparsely
planted about the chapel and the graveyard. And here the peasants came
out to stare at us and Martemian bought bread and meat and liquor--with
my money; and I saw the women swinging in public--a sport that the
Russian women loved so much that a swing of boards was made in every
village green, and a slave regularly appointed to swing the wives and
daughters of the freedmen. And some of these were very pretty, as I
saw, but all were painted on their faces, and their arms and hands, and
they were so curious at the sight of a foreigner in “German clothes,”
that they must needs run up to me and feel of my clothing, and many of
them forgot to drop the _fata_ over their faces, and looked up at me
coquettishly, for which one stout woman was seized by a puny, jealous
husband and well beaten as we rode away.
This journeying on and on in silence grew more and more oppressive, and
the pain in my head, though less than yesterday, was bad enough; yet,
as I looked from the brutal, dogged face of Martemian to the sulky,
watchful face of Mikhail, I grew hopeful. If I could but speak to the
duller rogue--but therein lay my difficulty, and the beasts travelled
well. We passed verst-stone after verst-stone, and all the way I tried
to remember and to mark the road, and yet had no means of even blazing
a tree trunk or casting a stone by the wayside, and the plains seemed
to stretch to the edge of the world. My plan--a desperate one--would
miscarry too, without fresh horses, and, as the day wore on, I stirred
uneasily in my saddle. It could scarcely be to-day, and--the Princess
Daria? Ah, but that way lay madness!
It was past noon and we had not halted; the horses began to lag and
hang their heads, and I saw Martemian shading his eyes with his hands,
looking, as I knew, for water, and the rogue behind, who had fallen so
silent all the forenoon, shouted to his leader.
“Will ye ride forever on an empty stomach, Martemian, son of Stenko?”
he roared. “If you had meat, I had nothing but bread and a fishbone,
and, by all Koshchei’s devils, I’ll have both meat and drink now!”
At the mention of Koshchei, a demon of the Russian forests, Martemian,
the brutal and the fierce, crossed himself and looked behind him, for
there is ever a leak-hole somewhere in a bully’s spiritual armour,
and this brute feared devils and prostrated himself at every wayside
shrine, red-handed though he might be, and branded seventy times seven
with the mark of Cain.
“You’ll have meat and drink too,” he growled at Mikhail, “and may it
choke you, if you summon devils here with your idle tongue. May the
Baba Yaga get you! Yonder is a spring; we’ll bait the horses here and
eat ourselves; there’s no hurry while Galitsyn pays,” and he laughed
deeply, the purple mark showing sharply on his forehead.
They were an hour or more at their dinner, eating greedily, and they
kept me between them that I might get no chance to run while they ate.
I looked well at the horses, and, seeing that they were fagged, set my
teeth to bide my time. So, after this, we rode again until nightfall,
through vast plains, and at last skirted a forest--black and gaunt in
its nakedness, not yet covered, but only tasselled here and there with
green and red. At sunset Martemian halted us for the night and, after
supping, and tying me, like an old horse, to a tree, they slept, but
they left the fire of fagots burning, for we heard more than once, in
the still darkness, that long, fierce, far-reaching yelp, the cry of
the wolf,--Saint Yegory’s dog,--and the horses snorted, and tugged at
their halters, shivering. I kept a vigil that night, the blackest--as
I thought--of my life, and the angel that visited it had the face
of Daria, but all the while I knew that she drifted from me, yet
to-morrow, to-morrow,--I told myself!
My plans were ripe, and the hour, for the horses would be fresh, the
woods a covert, and the goal--life and liberty. I watched the stars
go and saw the paling of the sky, the white finger of morning running
along the east, and, at last, daybreak. Martemian was ever the first to
stir; if the man slept, I think it was with one eye only, for he always
knew if I moved or struggled to be free, and he would rise, in the dead
of night, and tighten the very cord that I had loosened, but to-day
he played into my hands. He rose and went to the stream to drink,
and Mikhail, who lay near me, awoke and sat up and rubbed his eyes,
yawning until I thought the top of his head would surely split off the
lower half.
“A curse on it!” he grumbled; “I’m stiff as a stake, and half fed and
half paid, to boot. Curse the rogue, I’ll get more to-day or I’ll----”
He caught my eye and stopped--staring at me.
“Curse me!” he said, “if I don’t believe you know Russ!”
“I do,” I replied calmly, in a low voice, “but keep your tongue still,
if you would win. Look you,” I went on, “you have not ill-used me, I
owe you a good turn. Yonder rogue, at the stream, took a bag of roubles
from me--fifty roubles--and he has them at his belt.”
The knave’s eyes shot fire; his greedy, brutish face turned purple with
anger. He never doubted my word, he knew Martemian too well.
“I have told you,” I said. “Will you loose me from this tree? I am
stiff as you, and stiffer.”
He was not thinking of me, and cut my halter mechanically, watching
Martemian all the while. He left my ankles bound, and thought that my
hands were too, but in his anger he had been more careless than usual,
and had cut a cord that left the noose loose on my wrists, but of this
I gave no sign, though my heart leaped.
Martemian, meanwhile, had quenched his thirst, and now he was bathing
his face; a process so unusual that it made patches of whiteness in
the brunette tinge of his complexion.
Mikhail rose deliberately and untethered the horses, letting them stray
for fresh provender, a custom of his at morning, then he walked slowly
to the brook. I drew my hands cautiously out of the loosened cords and
began to undo the bonds on my ankles.
Martemian ran his wet fingers through his long hair and beard. The
morning air was sweet, and I saw him draw his breath deeply, and
I watched the figure behind him--treading stealthily--draw a long
sharp knife. One foot was free now, and I worked wildly at the other,
yet--all the while--I watched the scene. The whiteness of the early
morning lay far off on the plain, the stream sparkled, the black
shadows hung behind us in the forest, the horses nibbled the short turf
near me. One man stood still, the other crept, the long knife gleamed.
Then Mikhail’s foot crushed a dried twig and Martemian wheeled and saw
him. There was a scream of passion, a fierce answering roar, and the
two clenched and fought, as demons might.
I sprang to my feet, and hunted the ground for a stick and found a
stout one, then I caught the nearest horse and mounted.
They did not see me; they wrestled and writhed like two giants, the
knife between them, death in their hearts. They rolled over on the
ground and grappled, and Martemian was underneath.
I cut the other horses sharply with my stick and they reared, plunged
forward, and ran before me like wild deer, and I--I rode for life, for
liberty, for love!
The clatter of the horses’ feet roused the two ruffians; loosing each
other, they rose from the dirt, shouting and running after me, but
their horses ran before mine. I looked back and saw two tongues of
flame, and a bullet clipped my ear while another grazed one of the
horses on the flank, and faster and faster they fled, until the cries
grew faint and far-distant, and died at last in silence. I looked back
and saw only two little black dots on the crest of the slope, and, at
last, nothing but the wide swell of the land.
And the wind blew from the south and the sun shone.
_XXXIV: A BOYAR’S FUNERAL_
I KEPT the pace at a run, until I had left my pursuers far behind, and
then I had much ado to secure one of their horses. One, frightened by
the shots, outran us, and was disappearing southward, but the other had
fallen from a gallop to a trot, and from a trot to an amble, and, at
last, stopped to crop the fresh grass by the wayside, and I caught him,
though with some difficulty; but I had two good reasons for desiring
his company upon the road. First, I had no mind to leave him for the
two varlets, who would doubtless follow on foot--if they did not kill
each other; and secondly, I meant to sell him at the first village I
reached, for I was penniless and without weapons, besides having been
robbed of my cloak and the lace ruffles at my neck and sleeves, and
even of the gold buttons on my waistcoat, for the two ruffians had
been a pretty pair of thieves, and would doubtless, in the end, have
stripped me to my shirt.
It was then that my habits of observation served me well. M. de
Turenne used to say of me, that not even a rat ran into camp without
my knowledge--and he gave me great credit for it, though, perhaps, I
should not tell of it, but what will you? If a man praise not himself,
who will? Not his enemies, and not his friends, for they are ever
envious of too much eminence; ’tis the way of the world. But, as I
said, my observation served me well; but for it, I should never have
found my way on those wild plains, but a stump here, or a dip of the
land there, showed me the path, and riding with as much speed as I
thought prudent for my horse-flesh, I reached the village where the
women-folk were still swinging, and here I sold the led horse and
bought a long Russian saber and some food for myself and my beast, and
went on again, not caring to trust to their hospitality or loyalty,
for my reappearance with two horses led at once to suspicion, and
to increase my difficulties, before I was done with my bargains, in
trotted the other horse, who had evidently been grazing in the meadow
by the town, and nothing but a speedy departure saved me from being
carried before the _starosta_--the village magistrate.
That night I lay under the open sky again, and only long enough to rest
myself and my horse, and was in the saddle before dawn. I had bought
food enough to last, with frugality, until I reached Troïtsa, and I
steadily avoided all hamlets or signs of human habitation, fearing more
complications, and by dint of prudence and hard riding I saw, at last,
the golden crosses of Troïtsa, and for very joy I could have fallen
down and prayed, as the Russians do, on the Hill of Prostration, when
they first see Moscow. Of my friends, Martemian and Mikhail, I had seen
nothing, and I fancied that one of them had been killed over that bag
of roubles, for which they cared far more than they did for me.
As I approached Troïtsa my thoughts--never far-distant from their
loadstar--dwelt constantly on the Princess Daria. I thought to find
her there; it would be impossible for Voronin to return yet to the
city, and if they were still in Troïtsa, I could find her, and learn
her will and her inclinations. Every word that she had said to me,
every gesture, the swift lifting of her slender, long-fingered hands,
the droop of her head, or its proud erectness, the slender virginal
outlines of her figure; all these things dwelt in my recollection.
I was bewitched, if ever man was, and yet--and yet, did she love
Galitsyn? With these pretty torments to sting and goad me on, I rode
boldly into the village at the gates of Troïtsa, and finding quarters
for my horse, set out, at once, on foot to make inquiries.
It was a cloudy day and exceedingly dreary; even the splendour of that
great monastery seemed subdued. There were more pilgrims, though, I
thought; more men and women kneeling here and there in the road facing
the sacred place.
But I was inattentive to these things; I knew nothing yet, and I must
learn something of her, and at once. I felt like a traveller in a
desert country, I was athirst for tidings. Presently I came to the
road that led to the shrine of Saint Sergius, and here I saw that
the ground was strewn with bits of fir and hemlock, as these people
ever strew the way before a corpse, and I heard the slow weird chant
rising as the procession approached me. I was caught, hemmed in by
the peasants around me, who fell on their knees. Slowly down the wide
path of hemlock boughs wound the black-robed figures, and slowly with
long-drawn notes rose the chant.
First came the lanthorn-bearers, though it was in the forenoon, four
tall men in long black gowns with wide-brimmed black hats, and each one
bore a candle, burning in a lanthorn, and behind them came a man with
his head uncovered, his long grey hair floating in the breeze and he
bore a sacred picture clasped to his breast, and--lest his touch should
defile it--fine white cambric covered the edges of the frame where he
held it. Then followed two men bearing the coffin-lid, on which lay the
long sword, the embroidered robe of state, the arms and insignia of a
great noble and boyar, and with him walked two boys carrying crosses
on velvet cushions. These walked slowly--as they all did--and behind
them came the priests and deacons in robes of black velvet, edged with
silver and covered with silver crosses, and the deacons carried aloft
the tapers and the censers which filled the with the dead sweetness of
incense, and they led the chant, slower--slower and more solemn--for
after them followed the bier, borne by six tall men in the rich robes
of noblemen, and beside them were the bearers of more tapers, burning
in keen yellow points in the grey day. The bier itself was covered with
a pall of silver brocade and on it, in a magnificent embroidered robe
of scarlet and gold, his hands clasping a cross on his breast, his face
uncovered, lay the embalmed corpse. And the face, though distorted by
death, was still the face of Kurakin.