_Goaler._ You shall not now be stolen: you have locks upon
you: So graze as you find pasture.--_Cymbeline_, Act. V.
During the two or three minutes that the cavalry and their prisoner
were waiting for an answer to the summons,--Bertram, who was relapsing
at every instant into a dozy slumber and then as suddenly starting
awake (probably in consequence of the abrupt stillness succeeding to
the severe motion of a high-trotting horse), was suddenly awakened by
the noise and stir of admission into the castle, which unfolded a
succession of circumstances as grand and impressive as if they had been
arranged by some great artist of scenical effect. From one of the
towers which flanked the gates, a question was put and immediately
answered by the foremost trooper: question and answer however were
alike lost to Bertram and dispersed upon the stormy ravings of the
wind. Soon after was heard the clank of bars and the creaking of the
gates,--gates
That were plated with iron within and without
Whence an army in battle array had march'd out.[1]
They were like the gates of a cathedral, and they began slowly to swing
backward on their hinges. As they opened, the dimensions and outlines
of their huge valves were defined by the light within; and, when they
were fully open, a beautiful spectacle was exposed of a crowd of faces
with flambeaus intermingled fluctuating on the further side of the
court. The gateway and the main area of the court were now cleared for
the entrance of the cavalry; and the great extent of the court was
expressed by the remote distance at which the crowd seemed to stand.
Then came the entrance of the dragoons, which was a superb expression
of animal power. The ground continued to ascend even through the
gateway and into the very court itself; and to the surprise of Bertram
who had never until this day seen the magnificent cavalry of the
English army, the leading trooper reined up tightly, and spurred his
horse, who started off with the bounding ramp of a leopard through the
archway. Bertram's horse was the sixtieth in the file; and, as the
course of the road between him and the gates lay in a bold curve, he
had the pleasure of watching this movement as it spread like a train of
gun-powder, or like a race of sun-beams over a corn-field through the
whole line a-head of him: it neared and neared: in a moment he himself
was carried away and absorbed into the vortex: the whole train swept
like a hurricane through the gloomy gateway into the spacious court
flashing with unsteady lights, wheeled round with beautiful precision
into line, halted, and dressed.
What followed passed as in a dream to Bertram: for he was by this time
seriously ill; and would have fallen off horseback, if unsupported. The
lights, the tumult, and his previous exhaustion, all contributed to
confuse him: and, like one who rises from his bed in the delirium of a
fever, he saw nothing but a turbulent vision of torches, men, horses'
heads, glittering arms; windows that reverberated the uncertain gleams
of the torches; and overhead an army of clouds driving before the wind;
and here and there a pencil of moonlight that played upon the upper
windows of an antique castle with a tremulous and dreamy light. To his
bewildered senses the objects of sight were all blended and the sounds
all dead and muffled: he distinguished faintly the voice of an officer
giving the word of command: he heard as if from some great distance the
word--"Dismount:" he felt himself lifted off horseback; and then he
lost all consciousness of what passed until he found himself sitting in
the arms of a soldier, and an old man in livery administering a
cordial. On looking round, he perceived many others in the same dress,
which he recognised as the Walladmor livery; and he now became aware
that he was in Walladmor Castle.
"Is the Lord Lieutenant at home, Maxwell?" said the officer, addressing
the old man who bore the office of warden in the castle.
"No, Sir Charles: he dines at Vaughan house--about twenty miles off.
But he will return by midnight. And he left orders that the prisoner
should be confined in the Falcon's tower."
Bertram here stood up, and signified that he was able to walk: upon
which Sir Charles Davenant, the officer who had commanded the party of
dragoons, directed the two constables to go before the prisoner and two
dragoons behind--whilst the old warden showed the way.
Raising his head as they crossed the extensive court, Bertram saw
amongst the vast range of windows three or four which were open and
crowded by female heads as he inferred from the number of white caps.
Under other circumstances he would have been apt to smile at such a
spectacle as a pleasant expression of female curiosity: but at present,
when he was taking his leave of social happiness--for how long a time
his ignorance of the English laws would not allow him to guess, the
sight was felt rather as a pathetic memento of the household charities
under their tenderest aspect--and as suggesting the gentleness of
female hands in painful contrast to the stern deportment of the agents
of police and martial power by whom he was now surrounded. "Let all
cynical women-haters," thought he, "be reduced for a month or two to my
situation--and they will learn the blessed influences on human
happiness of what they idly affect to despise." His own indiscretion
however, as he could not disguise from himself, had reduced him to this
situation: and however disturbed at the prospect before him he
submitted with an air of cheerfulness and followed his guides with as
firm a step as his bodily weakness would allow. Passing from the great
court, at one corner, through a long and winding gateway feebly
illuminated by two lanthorns, they found themselves at the edge of a
deep abyss. It was apparently a chasm in the rock that had been turned
to account by the original founder of the castle, as a natural
and impassable moat; far beyond it rose a lofty wall pierced with
loop-holes and belted with towers--that necessarily overlooked and
commanded the whole outer works through which they had passed. At a signal
from the old man a draw-bridge was dropped with a jarring sound over the
chasm. Crossing this they entered a small court--surrounded by a large
but shapeless pile of buildings, which gave little sign externally of
much intercourse with the living world: here and there however from its
small and lofty windows, sunk in the massy stonework, a dull light was
seen to twinkle; and, as far as the lanthorn would allow him to see,
Bertram observed every where the marks of hoary antiquity. At this
point the officer quitted them, having first given his orders to the
two dragoons in an under voice.
The termination of their course was not yet reached. At the further end
of the court, the old warden opened a little gate; through this, and by
a narrow arched passage which the dragoons could only pass by stooping,
they reached at length a kind of guard-room which through two holes
pierced in the wall received some light--at this time but feebly
dispensed by the moon. This room, it was clear, lay near to the
sea-shore; for the wind without seemed as if it would tear up the very
foundations of the walls. The old man searched anxiously in his bundle
of keys, and at length applied an old rusty key to the door-lock. Not
without visible signs of anxiety he then proceeded to unlatch the door.
But scarce had he half performed his work, when the storm spared him
the other half by driving in the door and stretching him at his length
upon the floor.
Below them at an immense depth lay the raging sea--luridly illuminated
by the moon which looked out from the storm-rent clouds. The surf sent
upwards a deafening roar, although the raving of the wind seemed to
struggle for the upper hand. This aerial gate led to a little cell
which might not unjustly have been named the house of death. From the
rocky wall, upon which the guard-room stood, ran out at right angles
into the sea a curtain of granite--so narrow that its utmost breadth
hardly amounted to five feet, and resembling an artificial terrace or
corridor that had been thrown by the bold architect across the awful
abyss to a mighty pile of rock that rose like a column from the very
middle of the waves. About a hundred feet from the shore this gallery
terminated in a circular tower, which--if the connecting terrace had
fallen in--would have looked like the work of a magician. This small
corridor appeared the more dreadful, because the raging element below
had long since forced a passage beneath it; and, the breach being
continually widened by the equinoctial storms, it was at length so far
undermined that it seemed to hang like an archway in the air; and the
narrow causeway might now with some propriety be termed a sea-bridge.
Bertram here recognized that part of Walladmor Castle which he had seen
from the deck of the _Fleurs de Lys_.[2]
The rude dragoons even looked out with awe upon the dreadful spectacle
which lay before and below. One of them stepped with folded arms to the
door-way, looked out in silence, and shaking his head said--"So that's
the cage our bird must be carried to?"
"Aye," said the old man, (who had now raised himself from the floor;)
"desperate offenders are always lodged there."
"By G---," replied the dragoon, "at Vittoria I rode down the whole line
of a French battalion that was firing by platoons: there's not a straw
to choose between such service as _that_ and crossing a d---d bridge in
the clouds through a gale of wind like this. A man must have the
devil's luck and his own to get safe over."
"What the h---ll!" said the other dragoon,--"this fellow is to be
killed at any rate; so he's out of the risk: but must _we_ run the
hazard of our lives for a fellow like him? I'm as bold as another when
I see reason: but I'll have some hire, I'll have value down, if I am to
stand this risk."
"It's impossible," cried the first constable--"no man can stand up
against the wind on such a devil's gallery: what the devil? it has no
balustrade."
"Shall we pitch the fellow down below?"
said the second constable.
"I have nothing to say against it," replied one of the dragoons.
"Nor I," said the other, "but then mind--we must tell no tales."
"Oh! as to that," replied the first constable, "we shall say the wind
carried him out of our hands; and I suppose there's no cock will crow
against us when the job's done."
"And besides it is no sin," observed the second; "for hang he must;
that's settled; such a villain as him can do no less. So, as matters
stand, I don't see but it will be doing him a good turn to toss him
into the water."
Unanimous as they were in the plan, they differed about the execution;
none choosing to lay hands on the prisoner first. And very seasonably a
zealous friend to Bertram stepped forward in the person of the warden.
He protested that, as the prisoner was confided to his care, he must
and would inform against them unless they flung _him_ down also. Under
this dilemma, they chose rather to face again the perils of Vittoria.
Ropes were procured, passed round the bodies of all the men, and then
secured to the door-posts. That done, the constables stepped out first,
the old man in the centre, and after them the two dragoons taking the
prisoner firmly under their arms. The blasts of wind were terrifically
violent; and Bertram, as he looked down upon the sea which raged on
both sides below him, felt himself giddy; but the dragoons dragged him
across. The old man had already opened the tower, and Bertram heard
chains rattling. They led him down several steps, cut the ropes in two
which confined him, but in their stead put heavy and rusty fetters
about his feet and swollen hands. The five agents of police then
remounted the steps; the door was shut: and the sound of bolts, locks,
and chains, announced to the prisoner that he was left to his own
solitary thoughts.
FOOTNOTES TO "CHAPTER XV.":
[Footnote 1: Christabelle.]
[Footnote 2: See p. 80. of vol. 1.]