The Slaves of the Padishah Part 25

With a second, with a third rock also he greeted them. The cava.s.ses, at their wits' end, fled back, and never stopped till they had clambered up the opposite ridge; they did not feel safe among the plunging rocks below and there they could be seen deliberating how it was possible to reach the road behind their backs.

Guessing their intention, the Prince sent his servant to fling a rock down upon them from the hillside beyond, which, as it came clattering down, made the cava.s.ses believe that their enemies were in force, and they climbed higher up still.

"There they will remain till evening," thought the Prince to himself; "so they will not overtake Mariska after all."

And so it conveniently turned out. The cava.s.ses, after consulting together for a long time fruitlessly as to what road they should take to get out of the dangerous pa.s.s, began to yell from their lofty perch at their invisible foes, threatening them with the highest displeasure of the Sultan if they did not allow them to pa.s.s through in peace; and when a fresh shower of rocks came down by way of reply, they unsaddled their horses and allowing them to graze about at will, lit a fire and squatted down beside it.

Meanwhile, the hunted lady, exchanging her tired horses for four fresh ones in the first Transylvanian village she came to, pressed onwards without stopping. Travelling all night she reached Szamosujvar in the early morning. The Prince was no longer there. He had migrated in hot haste, they said, before the rising of the sun, to Klausenberg.

Mariska did not descend from her carriage, but only changed her horses.

Three days and three nights she had already been travelling, without rest, in sickness and despair. And again she must hasten on farther. It was evening when they reached Klausenberg. The coachman, when he saw the towers in the distance, turned round to her with the comforting a.s.surance that they would now be at Klausenberg very shortly. At these words the lady begged the coachman not to go so quickly, and when he lashed up his horses still more vigorously notwithstanding, and cast a look behind him, she also looked through the window at the back of the carriage and saw a band of hors.e.m.e.n galloping after them along the road.

So their pursuers were as near to them behind as Klausenberg was in front.

There was not a moment's delay. The coachman whipped up the horses, their nostrils steamed, foam fell from their lips, they plunged wildly forward, the pebbles flashed sparks beneath their hoofs, the carriage swayed to and fro on the uneven road, the persecuted lady huddled herself into a corner of the carriage, and prayed to G.o.d for deliverance.

CHAPTER XIV.

OLAJ BEG.

The Prince was just then standing in the portico of his palace conversing with the Princess, whose face bore strong marks of the sufferings of the last few days. Shortly after the panic of Nagyenyed she had given birth to a little daughter, and the terror experienced at the time had had a bad effect on both mother and child.

Apafi's brow was also clouded. The Prince's heart was sore, and not merely on his own account. Whenever there was any distress in the princ.i.p.ality he also was distressed, but his own sorrow he had to share alone.

For some days he had found no comfort in whatever direction he might turn. The Turks had made him feel their tyranny everywhere, and the foreign courts had listened to his tale of distress with selfish indifference; while the great men of the realm dubbed him a tyrant, the common folks sung lampoons upon his cowardice beneath his very windows; and when he took refuge in the bosom of his family he was met by a sick wife, who had ceased to find any joy in life ever since he had been made Prince.

A sick wife is omnipotent as regards her husband. If Anna had insisted upon _her_ husband's quitting his princely palace, and returning with her to their quiet country house at Ebesfalu--where there was no kingdom but the kingdom of Heaven--perhaps he would even have done that for her.

As the princely pair stood on the castle battlements, the din of the town grew deeper, and suddenly the rumble of a carriage, driven at full tilt, broke upon the dreamy stillness of the castle courtyard, and dashing into it stopped before the staircase; the door of the coach was quickly thrown open and out of it rushed a pale woman, who, rallying her last remaining strength, ran up the staircase and collapsed at the feet of the Prince as he hastened to meet her, exclaiming as she did so:

"I am Mariska St.u.r.dza."

"For the love of G.o.d," cried the agitated Prince, "why did you come here? You have destroyed the state and me; you have brought ruin on yourself and on us."

The unfortunate lady was unable to utter another word. Her energy was exhausted. She lay there on the marble floor, half unconscious.

The Princess Apafi summoned her ladies-in-waiting, who, at her command, hastened to raise the lady in their arms and began to sprinkle her face with eau-de-Cologne.

"I cannot allow her to be brought into my house," cried the terrified Apafi; "it would bring utter destruction on me and my family."

The Princess cast a look full of dignity upon her husband.

"What do you mean? Would you hand this unfortunate woman over to her pursuers? In her present condition, too? Suppose _I_ was obliged to fly in a similar plight, would you fling _me_ out upon the high road instead of offering me a place of refuge?"

"But the wrath of the Sultan?"

"Yes; and the contempt of posterity?"

"Then would you have me bring ruin upon my throne and my family for the sake of a woman?"

"Better perish for the sake of a woman than do that woman to death. If you shut your rooms against her, I will open mine wide to receive her, and then you can tell the Sultan if you like that I have taken her."

Apafi felt that his wife's obstinacy was getting him into a hideous muddle. This audacious woman would listen to no reasons of state in any matter which interested her humanity.

What was he to do? He pitied the persecuted lady from the bottom of his heart, but the emissary of the Sublime Porte, Olaj Beg, had come to demand her with plenipotentiary power. If he did _not_ shelter the persecuted lady he would p.r.o.nounce himself a coward in the face of the whole world; if he _did_ shelter her, the Porte would annihilate him!

In the midst of this dilemma, one of the gate-keepers came in hot haste to announce that a band of Turkish soldiers was at that moment galloping along the road, inquiring in a loud voice for the Princess of Wallachia.

Apafi leant in dumb despair against a marble pillar whilst Anna quickly ordered her women to carry the unconscious lady to her innermost apartments and summon the doctor. She then went out on the balcony, and perceiving that the cava.s.ses had just halted in front of the palace, she cried to the gate-keepers:

"Close the gates!"

Apafi would have very much liked to have countermanded the order; but while he was still thinking about it, the gates were snapped to under the very noses of the cava.s.ses.

They began angrily beating with the shafts of their lances against the closed gate, whereupon the Princess called down to them from the balcony with a sonorous, authoritative voice:

"Ye good-for-nothing rascals, wherefore all that racket? This is not a barrack, but the residence of the Prince. Perchance ye know it not, because fresh human heads are wont to be nailed over the gates of your Princes every day as a mark of recognition? If that is what you are accustomed to, your error is pardonable."

The cava.s.ses were considerably startled at these words, and, looking up at the imperious lady, began to see that she really meant what she said.

For a while they laid their heads together, and then turned round and departed.

Apafi sighed deeply.

"There is some hidden trick in this," said he, "but what it is G.o.d only knows."

A few moments later a muderris appeared from Olaj Beg at the gate of the Prince, and, being all alone, was admitted.

"Olaj Beg greets thee, and thou must come to him quickly," said he.

Anna had drawn near to greet her guest, but hearing that Olaj Beg summoned the Prince to appear before him, she approached the messenger, boiling over with wrath.

"Whoever heard," she said, "of a servant ordering his master about, or an amba.s.sador summoning the Prince to whose Court he is accredited?"

But Apafi could only take refuge in a desperate falsehood.

"Poor Olaj Beg," he explained, "is very sick and cannot stir from his bed, and, indeed, he humbly begs me to pay him a visit. There is no humiliation in this--none at all, if I am graciously pleased to do it.

He is an old man of eighty. I might be his grandson, he is wont to scold me as if I were his darling; I will certainly go to him, and put this matter right with him. You go to your sick guest and comfort her. I give you my word I will do everything to get her set free. For her sake I will humble myself."

The Princess Apafi's foresight already suggested to her that this humiliation would be permanent, but, perceiving that her own strength of mind was not contagious, she allowed her husband to depart.

Apafi prepared himself for his visit upon Olaj Beg. With a peculiar feeling of melancholy he did _not_ put on his princely dolman of green velvet, but only the _kontos_ of a simple n.o.bleman, imagining that thus it would not be the Prince of Transylvania but the squire of Ebesfalu who was paying a visit on Olaj Beg. He went on foot to the house of Olaj Beg, accompanied by a single soldier, who had to put on his everyday clothes.

The dogs had been let loose in the courtyard, for the Beg was a great protector of animals, and used to keep open table in front of his dwelling for the wandering dogs of every town he came to.