The Strange Story of Rab Raby Part 38

All the same, he soon found another pet in the shape of a little mouse, which, like himself, lived in captivity. At first it only timidly put its head out of its hole, and glided shyly and warily along the side of the wall; gradually, however, it perceived that the cell's occupant had strewn bread-crumbs on the floor, and furtively yet nimbly it picked them up. And by degrees it came nearer to the prisoner, and presently ventured to run up his knees and dared to eat the crumbs that the stranger hand held, and finally, in that same hand, sat on its hind legs, looking at Raby with the most whimsical expression imaginable on its diminutive face.

Poor Raby! The mouse might well look at him; perhaps it wondered who this haggard, unkempt man was, with the tangled growth of unshaven beard and lank hair drooping over the hollow eyes, framing a pale, lean face, disfigured by suffering.

This was the beginning of their strange friendship. The mouse would sport round him the whole day, or gambol about on his shoulder, and at night, would, as he lay on his plank bed, watch him from the ceiling, with bright, friendly eyes. Did Raby call to it, it would answer him with a little responsive squeak, and try to gnaw the links of the chain that bound the prisoner, with its tiny teeth. But did anyone enter, the mouse would hurry back into its hole.

But alas, there came a time when he had to lose even this humble companion. One evening he missed him, and only found the poor little beast dead in a corner--someone, apparently, having placed rat-poison in its hole. What the prisoner's feelings were, words do not express; his whole heart welled over with bitterness at this fresh proof of the malice of his enemies. They were, indeed, evil hearts that could find their pleasure in thus tormenting their victim.

CHAPTER x.x.xIII.

When the points in Raby's indictment had mounted up to eighty, he thought it time to make his protest to the presiding judge:

"I am shattered in mind and body alike; I desire to withdraw the accusation I have made, seeing it in no wise profits the oppressed people in whose interests I lodged it, but rather tends to their further hurt."

"That avails nothing," was the answer. "The accusation has been presented to the Emperor, and the complainant must justify it. Is the treasure to which the impeachment relates, found, a third of it falls to the informer; is the information thus lodged proved to be false, the informer forfeits his head forthwith. So out with your proofs!"

"Proofs? How can I furnish them I should like to know, fettered as I am, from a dungeon?" cried Raby in desperation. "Are not all my doc.u.ments in the hands of my enemies? Have not the archives of Szent-Endre been destroyed, and my private papers abstracted, so that I am denied all means of procuring the proofs I need?"

"How do you know that?" asked the judge, dumbfoundered.

"I know it only too well. Nay, I know too, it happened at the instigation of the authorities."

"This is the gravest evidence we have yet had of your guilt," cried the judge; "this shows you have held intercourse with the outside world, although forbidden by the law to do so."

"It only proves I am right," retorted the prisoner.

"Pray who are your accomplices who helped you in your correspondence?"

demanded his accuser angrily.

"No one and everyone body. The bare walls, the air itself, the iron door, my fetters, my guards--all are my accomplices if you like to call them so."

"Well, we will just make your chains a little faster so you can't move about quite so easily, my friend, that's all."

"That avails you nothing," exclaimed Raby. "Their clanking sounds even now in the ears of one who is your imperial lord and master, and will shortly be here in his city of Pesth to sit in judgment upon you. Let the guilty tremble before him, I have no need to do so."

These bold words enraged the judge beyond measure. How did Raby know that the Emperor was about to come to Pesth for the military manuvres, and there review the troops in person. Did he know as well that the Szent-Endre people were only biding their time to send a deputation to the Kaiser to ask for Raby's release, and to demand an inquiry into the conduct of the Pesth authorities in imprisoning him. It never occurred to them that an ordinary water-pitcher with a false bottom held the letters which Raby wrote and received, and that each heyduke who carried it, was an involuntary courier.

In vain did they interrogate the heyduke who brought it, and ordered him to be beaten; for each stroke the man received, he was sent by some unknown hand a gold piece, so he was not inclined to complain.

When the Emperor did arrive in Pesth, the following August, he learned with surprise that his emissary was still detained in prison. He straightway sent for the head magistrate, expressed his displeasure, and ordered Raby's immediate release on pain of all the authorities of the city being dismissed from office. This was an order which had to be obeyed.

So forthwith in the Emperor's presence, the mandate was sent that Mathias Raby be immediately released from custody. The command was peremptory and admitted of no evasion.

But the next night someone thrust under the door of Raby's cell, a note containing these words:

"Be ready this night! Your true friends are coming to fetch you away.

They will overpower the gaoler, take away the keys from him, and set you free."

"But it is evident," reflected Raby, "this is not from my friends; we don't conduct our correspondence like this. They have heard the Emperor has ordered my release, and now they want to convict me of trying to escape by force." And he gave the letter to the gaoler.

But, alas, it only made an excuse for a fresh inquisition, and they based on it the pretence of "a plot against the public safety."

Moreover, it was held to justify a still more rigorous treatment of the prisoner, who on this fresh charge of conspiring with bandits, was declared to have merited imprisonment anew. And the inquiry which followed lasted late into the autumn, whilst the Emperor was too much occupied in his fresh war with the Turks to be aware of this new turn of affairs.

And Raby's fetters were meantime rivetted more closely than ever, so that he could not write any more, and his wretched prison fare grew worse and worse. The winter too had come, and the prisoner was well-nigh frozen in his cell, for the dungeon was not warmed, and he had only his summer clothing which was now in tatters. On his complaining of the cold to the judges, they gave orders that Raby's cell should be heated three times a day.

The end of it was that they placed a stove in the cell which was so violently overheated that it burst, and Raby had to press his face to the wall in desperation to cool his scorched brow. Yet he could have escaped had he chosen, for the door of his cell was often left open, as if to abet his flight. But Raby, when he did leave prison, meant to leave it proudly and fearlessly, as an innocent man who is rightfully acquitted before his country's tribunal, not as a fugitive.

One day the gaoler came in to say that permission had been given for the prisoner to be shaved, and for his irons to be removed--a grace for which Raby hardly knew how to be thankful enough. It was a deadly pale, if clean-shaven face that the barber's mirror reflected, but small wonder, seeing that Raby had not seen the sunlight for a year and a half. This luxury was followed by an amelioration of his prison fare, and fresh bedding, for both of which benefits, especially the last, he was duly grateful, for it meant a good night's rest.

However, that very night, Raby was awakened from his first sleep by a tremendous rattling at his cell door, and the next minute it was burst open, and the light of the full moon flooded his dungeon. The prisoner thought he must be dreaming, but the same instant the cell was suddenly filled by a band of masked men in Turkish attire, with huge turbans on their heads, and armed with an array of weapons, including swords and muskets.

Raby was wondering in what language to address his strange visitors, when one of them accosted him in Serb, and then Hungarian.

"Fear nothing, Mr. Raby. We are true friends from Szent-Endre, and have bribed the guard and occupied the a.s.sembly House. We have come to set you free from this wretched dungeon by the Emperor's orders."

"But I do not wish to purchase my freedom by force," answered the captive, "and if the Emperor wished to deliver me, it would surely not be by masqueraders sent by night, but by his accredited emissaries in the full light of day."

"Here's the order signed by the Emperor," and the head of the band of maskers handed Raby a doc.u.ment which contained detailed and definite instructions anent the Szent-Endre affair, set forth in Serb, which was the Emperor's favourite language.

Raby protested against the idea of flight, but they overpowered his resistance, and made a show of armed force. "Silence, or you are a dead man," was their only answer to his protestations, and the prisoner, weak and enfeebled as he was by his privations, and dazed by the sudden surprise which had thus overtaken him, fell at last in a dead faint and lost all consciousness.

When he came to himself, he was dressed as a woman, in the coloured bodice and embroidered ap.r.o.n of the Serb peasant girl, and his hair tied with gay ribbons; it was for this, no doubt, that he had been shaven.

Raby's entreaties availed nothing. In vain he implored them to desist, and reminded them the military would be sent to overtake them, and then all would be over! His representations achieved nothing with his rescuers, and finally a rough, but powerful-looking fellow of the party seized Raby and carried him off on his back out of the cell, followed by the whole crew shouting and howling. The inhabitants of the a.s.sembly House must have been stone deaf, had they not been aroused by the tumult. The band dashed in the moonlight through the court and gateway, past the guard-room where four-and-twenty were wont to sleep, without being questioned by a single soul as to their escapade.

It was towards the Kecskemet gate that they hurried, as the likeliest one to be open, so as to get off thus with least delay, and thence away to the river-bank.

At that time, communication with the other side of the Danube was kept up by a so-called "flying-bridge," that was a work of art in its archaic way, consisting of a flat raft-like contrivance, whereto was attached a thick cable, which half a dozen small boats served to keep out of the water. Behind the last boat, at the so-called "Nun's Ferry," below Hare Island, the cable was fast anch.o.r.ed. Linked to this cable, the raft was towed by a single oar to and fro. At night the ferry was not generally used and the ferry-men were not there, but this time they were at their posts ready for the expected pa.s.sengers. The masked Turks took their places on it without delay, and off they drifted.

Poor Raby was trembling in every limb, princ.i.p.ally from the bitter cold of the December night, which, after his long confinement from the outer air, struck his senses with the sharpness of a knife. Moreover, he was not quite sure that these strange rescuers would not throw him overboard into the river, to find there an unknown and unhonoured grave.

However, they did nothing of the kind, but the party reached the other side safely. There horses, ready saddled, awaited them, and a coach and four. Three of the sham Turks sprang into the vehicle, and dragged Raby with them. The rest mounted the horses, and they took the way along the Old Buda road.

One of the escort had the kindness to throw his cloak over the freezing prisoner, the coach leading the way, the riders following. But gradually the hors.e.m.e.n dropped off till, when they reached Vorosvar, not one was to be seen.

By this time the released prisoner had succ.u.mbed to the unaccustomed strain on his already exhausted and overwrought nerves, and had lost all consciousness of what was going on around him, so that he had to be lifted out of the carriage in a swoon when they stopped at an inn.

When he awoke from his stupor late the next morning, he was in a comfortable bed. Only two of his late companions were to be seen, and they no longer wore Turkish dress, but the garb of the well-to-do Serb peasant, and, indeed, turned out to be respectable peasant-proprietors of Szent-Endre.

Yet neither their names nor faces were known to Raby.

For the rest, his two guardians showed themselves full of consideration for their patient. They procured him warm clothing, caused light invalid food to be prepared for him, and begged him not to be too anxious to try his strength with the journey. When Raby had sufficiently rested, the coachman received orders to drive slowly, so that it might not exhaust the traveller, and they set out again, not without many misgivings from the fugitive as to whether they could not be overtaken and their flight intercepted.

One of his companions, who told him his name was Kurovics, besought him to make his mind easy on this score. He pointed out how they would get the start of the authorities before these could mobilise their forces.

Then no one knew of the disguise in which Raby had escaped; from the description which the Pesth court would issue for his recovery, no one would recognise him, so he had no cause for fear.