Chapter XIV: Charlie's First Day in Schlusselberg

Full of anxious thoughts, he passed more than half of the succeeding day on the ramparts of the castled-prison, alone, avoiding Colonel Bernikoff, Captain Vlasfief, and their subaltern, Tschekin, none of whom were consonant to his taste, for all were deep gamblers and heavy drinkers.

His mind was full of care for Natalie and all her family. Some desperate and revengeful plot, of which the desertion of her brother and of his cousin Usakoff was but the beginning, the means to an end, was certainly hatching--a plot that might too surely end in bloodshed, in the savage punishment and the ruin of all.

He sorrowed keenly for his two friends Basil Mierowitz and Apollo Usakoff, for both were polished and educated gentlemen, men of a class and style more common in some corps of the Russian army now, than in those days. And there was poor Mariolizza, too--so brightly beautiful, so happy, and so merry! Her love, her hopes and schemes, would all be crushed and blighted, as well as his own.

Balgonie was not without fears for himself, and of being compromised in the affair; or, perhaps, lured into subtle state intrigues and deep plots, in the failure or success of which he could have no interest politically or personally, save in his love for Natalie--a love that had changed the whole current of his ideas and opened up a new realm of thought and incentive to action.

Already he was beginning to revolt at the Russian service, and yet he had been happy in the Regiment of Smolensko, and had found in the land of his adoption, like every Scottish adventurer that has trod the Russian soil, honours scarcely to be won at home.

How long was he to be on the staff of this ferocious Commandant, and in this horrible prison, where many an innocent victim was pining hopelessly in chains and misery? "The mutual distrust in which people live in Russia," says the Abbé Chappe D'Auteroche in his scarce travels about this time, "and the total silence of the nation upon everything which may have the least relation either to the government or the sovereign, arise chiefly from the privilege every Russian has, without distinction, of crying out in public, _slowo dielo_; that is to say, 'I declare you are guilty of high treason, both in words and actions.' All the bystanders are then obliged to assist in arresting the person so accused; a father his son, and the son his father, while nature suffers in silence. The accuser and accused are at once conveyed to prison, and afterwards to St. Petersburg, where they are tried by the Secret Court of Chancery."

Thanks to this pleasant state of society, the chambers and chains of Schlusselburg were seldom unoccupied.

Vlasfief was hollow-hearted, avaricious, and sensual; Tschekin, the Lieutenant, a slimy, cruel, reckless, and ignorant Muscovite; but old Bernikoff was really a character whom Balgonie equally dreaded and despised.

His subtlety and oppression had been the means of reducing, at different times, some thirty officers to the ranks, with permission to serve and work their way up again; and many more were now cursing him and their fate, at Irkutsk and remoter Siberia, for their inability to purchase his mercy or good-will. When commanding at Cronstadt, he had been detected once in the act of transmitting whole sledge loads of government shot, shell, lead, and ropes, across the frozen gulf for sale in Sweden; and also in buying at a cheap rate base denuscas to pay the troops: but so trusted was the old rascal by the Empress, that he always escaped the degradation, the hanging or shooting, which, on those discoveries, were so freely meted out to his subalterns.

On the estate of Bernikoff a serf once amassed ten thousand roubles, and offered them for the freedom of his daughter, who was about to be married.

"Let me see the girl!" was the reply.

As a serf can possess nothing, the father trembled in his soul at this demand, as his daughter, unfortunately for herself, was beautiful.

"Holy Sergius!" exclaimed Bernikoff, "what business has a serf with ten thousand roubles; the girl and the money are alike mine!"

And so he literally and lawfully seized them both.

Though a savage soldier, like every old Muscovite, he was the slave of mechanical devotion. No statue or picture of the Holy Virgin, of St. Sergius, or St. Alexander Newski, was ever passed by him without a profound reverence and a sign of the cross. To such effigies he would address himself before he knelt even to the Empress: and before them he had been known to kneel and kiss the ground five minutes before or after he had knouted a miserable boor (whose pockets were empty), or nearly slain a soldier by making him run the gauntlet, for merely having the seams of his gloves sewn outward instead of in; for wearing his hat on the left side of his head instead of the right; or for some other offence equally heinous.

And it was on the staff of this distinguished officer (temporarily, however) that Charlie now, to his great disgust, found himself.

On three sides, far around this island prison, stretched the waters of Ladoga--the largest lake in Europe, being one hundred and thirty miles long, by nearly ninety broad; full of rocky isles and dangerous quicksands, over which, from its flat shores, sweep frequent and perilous storms.

From the somewhat dreary view of this small inland sea, whose northern and eastern coast could not be discerned, he turned to survey the fortress, with all its strength of gloomy walls, grated windows, and frowning cannon, till suddenly his eye was arrested by a very remarkable face, which was observing him from the sombre depth of a strongly barred and arched window of the great tower.

It was a pale face, but singularly handsome--grave, and even sad in expression--a young man's face with the slightest indication of a moustache, but for which, in its paleness and extreme delicacy of feature and tint, it might have passed for that of a twin brother of Natalie Mierowna!

Suddenly it was detected by a Cossack sentinel, who shouted shrilly, and slapped the butt-end of his loaded musketoon: on this, the face instantly disappeared.

This was he concerning whom Balgonie had brought that terrible dispatch--Ivan, the deposed Emperor--the prisoner of Schlusselburg!

"Twenty-three years!" thought Balgonie with a shudder; "twenty-three years in that tower--since his very babyhood--oh, it is terrible!"

Other ears had heard the shout of the sentinel; for now a man, who in a boat had been fishing near the fortress, suddenly shipped a pair of sculls, and pulled away towards the town with an air of alarm that seemed equalled only by his dexterity. This fisher had been hovering about the fortress all day. "Can he be the gipsy--the half-breed?" thought Charlie: "ah! the dispatch is out of my hands now."

Lieutenant Tschekin now approached with an invitation from Bernikoff to join him at dinner, adding, "remember that with the Colonel, eating is indeed a science, and temperance he views as mere want of spirit."

As they proceeded together through various archways and gates, the shrieks and entreaties of a man apparently in mortal agony rang through the echoing prisons with a horrible cadence, that chilled the free blood in Balgonie's veins.

A court through which they had to pass was crowded by soldiers, formed in hollow square, and Balgonie was compelled to linger and look on with Tschekin, who seemed rather to enjoy the spectacle.

"Hah," said he, "the punishment is nearly ended--let us wait and see the _batogg_!"

It was a soldier being knouted, which is simply the Russian word for "whipped."

Stripped to the loins, he was strapped to an erect board, formed like an inverted cone, and having three notches at the upper end, one to receive his chin, and the other two his wrists, while the torturer wielded a knout, the handle of which is usually eighteen inches long with a thong of thirty-six inches. This is always boiled in milk, by which process it swells and the edges become sharp, hard, and more destructive.

The whipper was skilful: he laid on his lashes from the neck to the loins, so as to deal them at intervals of one inch artistically apart, leaving a stripe of flesh between each; but these regulated and omitted stripes, after receiving a fresh knout, he proceeded to take off in succession, with wonderful and terrible precision, till the man's entire back was a mass of blood, and he hung, fainting and well-nigh speechless, by the wrists.

"Oh, Excellency," he said, in an imploring voice, "remember that my brother, Alexis Jagouski, aided you in escaping from the battle of Zorndorff!"

This was most true, but the story was a terrible one. At Zorndorff, where the Russians were defeated with such slaughter and driven towards the frontiers of Poland, the horse of Bernikoff was shot under him, and he was in danger of being cut down by the Prussian Hussars. In this sore extremity a Cossack named Alexis Jagouski took his leader behind him on his crupper; but that personage, finding that the double weight impeded the horse's speed, and that the Hussars were close behind, shortened his sabre in his hand, and plunging the blade into the body of his preserver, flung the corpse from the saddle, and escaped alone.

At this reminiscence Bernikoff only scowled more deeply; and now the lacerated back of the sufferer was strewed with coarse gunpowder, to which a match was applied. This is technically known as the _batogg_, and the agony it produced is indescribable.

The culprit was now cast loose, but was still able, according to the slavish usage of the country, to crawl on his hands and knees towards Bernikoff, and he gasped out:--

"Hospodeen--Excellency, I thank you humbly for this most merciful punishment."

"Begone, dog of an Asiatic!" replied the governor, kicking him in the face; "when next you seek to fill your pipe, this will teach you to keep your filthy fingers out of my tobacco pouch."

These were the defenders of their country, the Holy Russia, among whom a wayward fate had cast the Scottish palatine: the blood of the latter boiled within him; but he knew too well that to expostulate would be but to excite suspicion, and to court degradation and the musket. Something, however, in the expression of his face did not escape Bernikoff's keen and angry eyes.

"Ivanovitch Balgonie, a superior can never act unjustly to his inferior," said he sternly; and these words terribly embodied the genuine spirit of the true Russian _Tchinnovnik_, or noble class. "I am in the service of the state," he added; "and the state is the Czarina!"

Yet this upright Governor, who knouted the poor Cossack for pilfering a pipeful of tobacco, had always a garrison double its actual strength on paper, the pay and rations of the men of straw forming a pleasant addition to his many secret perquisites, while his soldiers starved and frequently begged food from the very prisoners they guarded.

It was neither hospitality nor love of society which had procured the honour of an invitation for Balgonie; but Bernikoff shrewdly suspecting that he might have some loose cash, resolved to possess himself thereof at cards; so barely was a dinner of _shee_ (which is identically Scotch broth), croquettes, with _purée_ of beet-root, beef in the Hussar style, with salad of baked beet-root and biscuits, dismissed, than champagne-cup, and vodka (or corn-brandy) punch became the order of the evening; and Bernikoff, who was a great gourmand, with his face flushed and his uniform open, after signing the cross and bowing thrice to a picture of St. Sergius, sat down to cards with Vlasfief and Tschekin, who were quite as sharp as himself, and with poor simple-hearted Charlie Balgonie, who dreaded to decline, circumstanced as he was on all hands; and who was glad when allowed to quit the table with the loss, he never could understand how, of twenty xervonitz, or pieces worth nine shillings sterling each.

"Now, Vlasfief--'tis you and I; rouge-et-noir!" exclaimed Bernikoff, draining a goblet of vodka punch at a draught.

"I am too weary to play, most excellent Colonel; pray excuse me," urged the Captain, who had lost considerably to his senior also.

"You, then, Tschekin?" said Bernikoff savagely.

"I hav'n't a kopec to spare, Excellency!"

"Well--I saw a pretty housemaid at your mansion in the town yesterday--the daughter of a serf apparently."

"Feodorowna?"

"Very likely--with red hair and brawn eyes."

"Ah! the same; she came with Madame Tschekin from the household of her father, General Weymarn."

"By all the devils, she is very like old Weymarn!"

"She is the daughter of my old nurse, Colonel," said Tschekin gravely, with an air of annoyance.

"I don't care whose daughter she is!"

"Well?"

"I'll put a hundred silver roubles on her."

"Done! I put her on the ace."

"The ace hath lost!" exclaimed Bernikoff, with a shout of laughter. "Holy Sergius! the girl is mine. To-morrow," he added, "I'll send a corporal and a file of men for her, with a covered kabitka. See that all her things are packed and ready, friend Tschekin, or write to your wife about it, and say you have lost her at cards."

"The devil!--Excellency--this can't be."

"Why? I won her fairly."

"But the girl is about to be married to her cousin."

"_Was_, you mean; the cards have changed her destiny, like that of the serfs whom Vlasfief drank away in champagne last night."

So passed Charlie's first day at Schlusselburg.