"By the beard of Moses! I'll break your head with my stick if you come
stumbling over me in that way," growled Scanderbeg from beneath his
blanket, as a peasant-clad man tripped against his huge form extended
by the camp fire.
"Then let the cold shrink your hulk to its proper size," replied the
stranger. "But you should thank me, instead of cursing me, for waking
you up; for your fire is dying out, and you would perish, sleeping in
the blanket that exposes your feet that it may cover your nose. But
I'll stir your fire and put some sticks on it, if I may sit by it and
melt the frost from my beard and the aches from my toes. But whom have
you here?"
The man stooped down and eagerly removed the blanket from the
partially covered faces of the children.
"Constantine!" he exclaimed, "God be praised! and Kabilovitsch's
girl,--or the starlight mocks me!"
"Father!" cried the boy, waking and throwing his arms about the neck
of the man who stooped to embrace him.
"And Michael? is he here, too?" asked Milosch.
"No, father," said the child. "We were parted at the cave, and I have
not seen him except in my dream."
"In your dream, my child? In your dream? Jesu grant he be not killed,
that his angel spirit came to you in your dream! Did he seem bright
and beautiful--more beautiful than you ever saw him before--as if he
had come to you from Paradise? No? Then he is living yet on the earth;
and by all the devils in hell and Adrianople! I shall find him, though
I tear him from the dead arms of the traitor Castriot himself, as I
was near to taking you, my boy, from the grip of the Turk whose heart
I pierced with an arrow the day of the fight;--but I was set upon and
nigh killed myself by a score of the Infidels."
"And our mother dear?" asked Constantine. "She is safe?"
"Ay! ay! safe in heaven, I fear, but we will not give up hope until we
have searched our camps to-morrow; nor then, until we have burned
every seraglio of the Turks from the mountains to the sea. But who
brought you and the lass here?" asked Milosch, eyeing the form of the
surly man beside him.
"Why, good Uncle Kabilovitsch did," said the boy, staring in amazement
at the spot now usurped by the strange figure of Scanderbeg.
"Kabilovitsch went to fetch some fire-peat from the gully I told him
of," muttered Scanderbeg.
"Yes, he is coming yonder," said Milosch, as Kabilovitsch's well-known
hood and cape were outlined against the white background of a
snow-covered fir tree a short distance off. "But he has found no fuel.
Wrap close, my hearties: you will have no more blaze to-night. Ha!
Kabilovitsch!" said he, raising his voice, as the familiar form seemed
about to pass by. "Has the fire in your eye been put out by the cold,
that you cannot find your own place, neighbor? I would have sworn
that, if Kabilovitsch were blind, he could find a lost kid on the
mountains; and now he hardly knows his own nest."
The assumed Kabilovitsch came near, and gave an awkward salute, which,
while intended to be familiar, was not sufficiently unlimbered of the
habit of authority to avoid giving the impression that its familiarity
was only assumed.
"By the beard of Moses! I had almost mistook my own camp, now the
fires are smouldering," said he, approaching.
"He is not Kabilovitsch," said Milosch, half to himself and half
aloud.
"No," replied Scanderbeg. "But I'll go and find Kabilovitsch. Perhaps
he has more peat than he can carry. And, stranger, I'll help you find
what you are seeking--for you seem daft with the cold--if you will
help me find him I am to look for. By the beard of Moses! that's a
fair agreement; is it not?"
"A strange swear, that!" said Milosch, looking after the two forms
vanishing among the fir trees. "It is some watchword, and I like it
not among these camp prowlers. I fear for Kabilovitsch. The newcomer
wore his clothes, which I would know if I saw them on the back of the
cardinal; for good Helena cut the hood for our neighbor as she cut the
skirt for his motherless child, little Morsinia there. Some mischief
is brewing. I shall watch and not sleep a wink."
Had one been lurking in the copse of evergreens to which the men
withdrew, he would have overheard conversation of which these
sentences are parts.
"Yes, General Hunyades, the time has come. I can endure the service of
the Sultan no longer. But for what I am about to do I alone am
responsible, and must decline to share that responsibility with any
other, either Moslem or Christian. I believe, Sire, that I am in this
directed by some higher power than my own caprice. I am compelled to
it by invisible forces, as really as the stars are dragged by them
through the sky yonder."
"No star," replied Hunyades, "has purer lustre than that of your noble
purpose, and none are led by the invisible forces to a brighter
destiny than is Scanderbeg."
"Let not your Christian lips call me Scanderbeg, but Castriot," said
his companion. "Yes, I believe that my new purpose comes from the
inbreathing of some celestial spirit, from some mysterious hearing the
soul has of the inarticulate voice of God. Else why should the thought
of it so strangely satisfy me? I cast myself down from the highest
pinnacle of honor and power and riches with which the Moslem service
can reward one;--for I am at the head of the army, and even the
Vizier has not more respect at Adrianople than have I wherever the
soldiers of the Sultan spread themselves throughout the world. To
leave the Padishah will be to leave every thing for an uncertain
future. Yet I am more than content to do it."
"Not for an uncertain future, noble Castriot," replied Hunyades
warmly, grasping his hand. "The highest position in the armies of
Christian Europe is yours. My own chieftaincy I could demit without
regret, knowing that it would fall into your hands. The army of Italy
you can take command of to-morrow if you will; for that
scarlet-knobbed coxcomb of an ecclesiastic, Julian, is not fitted for
it. Or Brankovitch, the Servian Despot, will hail you as chief
voivode.[15] You have but to choose from our armies, and put yourself
at the head of whatever nation you will: for the legions will follow
the pointing of your invincible sword as bravely as if it were the
sword of Michael, the Archangel."
"No! No! These things tempt me not," said Scanderbeg. "I must live
only for Albania. That strange spirit which counsels me comes into my
soul like a pure blast from off my Albanian hills. The voices that
call me are like the dying voice of my father, the sainted Duke John,
who prayed then for his land and for his son--for both in the one
breath that floated his soul to God. Let me look again upon the rocky
fastnesses of the Vitzi, the waters of little Ochrida and Skidar, and
call them mine; I shall then not envy even the plume on your helmet,
generous Hunyades; nor regret what I forsake among the Moslems,
though my estate were that of the entire empire which the Padishah
sees in his dreams, when, not the city of Adrian, but the city of
Constantine shall have become his capital."
"Christendom will hardly forgive the slight you put upon it, noble
Castriot, by declining some general command, and will soon grow
jealous of your exclusive devotion to little Albania," said Hunyades,
with evident candor.
"Christendom will not lose, but gain, thereby," replied Scanderbeg.
"For is not Albania, after all, a key point in the mighty battle which
is still to be waged with the Turk over these Eastern countries of
Europe, from Adria to the Euxine?"
"How so?" asked Hunyades. "Have we not this day broken the power of
the Turk in Europe? and is he not now in headlong haste to the sea of
Marmora?"
Scanderbeg replied with slow, but ominous, words:
"General Hunyades, the Moslem power was not this day broken. Trust not
the semblance. My arm could have hurled your soldiers down the
northern declivities of yonder mountains with as much ease as yours
shattered the Turkish ranks at Vasag and Hermannstadt. The armies
still in front of you wait but the word to assail your camp with dire
vengeance for their mysterious defeat--ay, mysterious to them. And the
Padishah is hasting with the hordes released by his victories over the
Caramanians, to join them. No, Sire, the battle for empire on these
plains, and in Macedonia, and along the Danube, has not ended: it has
but just begun. And Albania will be the key spot for a generation to
come. No Ottoman wave can strike central Europe but over the Albanian
hills. A Christian power entrenched there will be a counter menace to
every invasion from the side of the Moslem, and a tremendous auxiliary
in any movement from the side of Christendom. My military judgment
concurs with the voice of that spirit which speaks within me, and bids
me as a Christian to live for Albania."
"I see in your plan," replied Hunyades, "a gleam of that far wisdom
that won for you the title of 'The eye of the Ottoman,' as your valor
made you the 'right hand of the Sultan.' While my view of the relative
power of the two civilizations now fronting each other on our
battle-lines might be different from yours, and I should place the key
point in the great field rather on the lower Danube than so far to the
west, I yet submit my judgment to yours. Assign to me my part in the
affair you would execute, and, my word as a soldier and a Christian,
you shall have my help."
"Nay," replied Scanderbeg. "As I said, I can share the responsibility
of my action with no one. Grave charges will ring against my name. My
old comrades will scorn my deed as treacherous. Even history will fail
to understand me. Let me act alone; obeying that strange voice which
will justify me, if not before men, at least at the last day of the
world's judgment. The Moslem has wronged me; outraged my humanity;
slit the tongue of my conscience that it should not speak to me of my
duty; and tried to put out the eyes of my faith. The Divinity bids me
avenge myself. But the vengeance is only mine, and God's. No other
hand must be stained with the blood of it, least of all thine, noble
Hunyades. My plan must be all my own. I only ask that, when I have
extricated myself from Moslem ties, I may have the friendship of
Hunyades. Especially that the way may be left open for my passing
through the places now held by your troops, without challenge and
delay. All else has been arranged by a handful of faithful Albanian
patriots."
"It shall be as you desire, General Castriot. Choose your password,
and it shall open the way for you though it were through the back door
of the Vatican."
"Let then the 'beard of Moses' be respected. My trusty Albanians are
accustomed to it."
"Good!" replied Hunyades. "And I will seal our compact by taking
Adrianople in honor of the departure of its only defender."
"Nay," said Scanderbeg. "It will not be wise to press upon the
capital. Every approach is guarded more securely than were those at
Vienna by the Christians. The Padishah's engineers are more skilful
than any in the land of the Frank or German. The new compound of
saltpetre and sulphur, of which you hardly know the use, is buried
beneath every gate; and a spark will burst it as Ætna or Vesuvius.[16]
Even the valor of the White Knight cannot conquer the soulless
element. The black grains never blanch with fear. No panic can divert
a stone ball hurled from cannon so that it shall not find the heart of
the bravest. I advise that your armies pause awhile with the prestige
of having scaled the Balkans. In a few months opportunities may have
ripened. Once I am in Albania, Sultan Amurath shall know that the
name of Scanderbeg--the Lord Alexander--was not his, but Fate's
entitling; for, unless my destiny is misread, the Macedonian legions
of the Great Alexander were not swifter than my new Macedonian braves
shall be. This will encourage the Venetians and Genoese; and with
their navies on the Hellespont, the timid Palælogus pressing out from
his covert of Constantinople, and insurrection everywhere from the
Crimea to Peloponnesus, there will not, a generation hence, be left a
turban in Europe. Believe me, General, the Turk's grip of nearly a
century, since he pinched the continent at Gallipoli, cannot be
loosened in a day."
"To no other than Castriot would I yield my judgment; and not to him,
but that his words are as convincing as his sword. Then so let it be,"
was the reply of the Christian leader.
The Albanian disappeared.
FOOTNOTES:
[15] Voivode; a Servian and Albanian term for general.
[16] Gunpowder was at this time coming into general use.