Chapter XVIII: Doubt and Dread

Nearly all the events which followed the secret visit of Balgonie to the conspirators will be found in the more recent histories of Russia, and in the manifestoes published by the Empress Catharine at the time--especially her _oukaz_ subsequent to the revolt of Basil Mierowitz.

On returning to Schlusselburg, Balgonie found the Governor, Colonel Bernikoff, in a very bad humour indeed. The Grand Chancellor had recently sent him a prisoner, with a note to the effect that he wrote verses, and was otherwise a dangerous fellow--to keep him for a week or two, and then get rid of him. He had thrice sent to the Chancellor, to learn under what name the man was to be _buried_, for the fellow was dead now--so much had the damp atmosphere of the lower vaults disagreed with his poetical temperament; but no answer had been returned, which was very annoying. So Bernikoff, whose patience was never very extensive, was furious; but he strove to soothe his ruffled feelings by several enormous pinches of the sharp snuff of Beresovski, from the box which--as we have before hinted--had been found in the fob of the late Peter III.; and by batooning, or beating with his cane, the Cossack Jagouski, whom he had suddenly detected in the act of praying secretly before the little image of St. Sergius, which was his--Colonel Bernikoff's--own peculiar and particular property.

By the old laws of Muscovy, to be found worshipping at an image, erected by, or the property of another, designing thereby to have a share in the favour of the saint it represented, without being at any expense, was punishable by a fine, to refund "the owner some part of the money laid out for the said image;" but as the poor Cossack had not a copper denusca wherewith to bless himself, the Governor took it out of his back and shoulders (scarcely healed after his recent knouting), with the aid of a knotted walking cane.

"'To steal and to lie,' according to Bulharyn, a famous Russian writer, 'are the two auxiliary verbs of our language,'" said the Colonel, panting with exertion, as the Cossack crept away with a glance of subdued ferocity in his stealthy eyes; "we take all that for granted; but this slave has been stealing the interest of my saint for himself!"

He ordered an extra supply of wax candles to be lighted before the image, and then he knelt, bowed, and muttered:--

"Holy St. Sergius, heed not the prayers of that rascal, he is only a vile serf, a slave, a Cossack from the Ukraine. Thou hast been very good to me, and shalt be treated handsomely. Candles of the finest wax shall burn before thee all night. I will love and pray for thee, so do thou protect and intercede for me, most holy Sergius!"

And so he prayed till the dinner drum beat; and then, muttering an oath as he tripped over his sabre, the old savage hobbled away, to commit at least two of the seven deadly sins at table.

"No tidings yet, Carl Ivanovitch, of those traitors!" said Bernikoff, when he had somewhat recovered his breath, after a deep draught of quass, the froth of which adhered to his grisly mustachio: "the Captain Vlasfief, and my faithful friend Tschekin, with forty picked Cossacks, and a clever guide----"

"Nicholas Paulovitch, I presume."

"The same," continued Bernikoff, with a fierce grimace on his lips and a cruel leer in his eyes, as he masticated a huge mouthful of green borsch with beef and eggs; "the same, sir,--and what then?"

"Nothing, Excellency: but this oukha of sterlet is excellent. Well, these and the forty Cossacks----"

"Are scouring all the roads between this and St. Petersburg on one flank, and between this and North Ladoga on the other; so the cursed Asiatics cannot escape me."

"Who will betray them to you?" asked Balgonie, making a terrible effort to appear calm and unconcerned, as he played with his sword knot and the tassels of his sash, and forgot to eat.

"Who?" exclaimed Bernikoff, grinding his teeth, and eating very fast. "Their own friends--their own dear comrades--adherents, which you will. Russia is full of people, yea of many nations. The Empress can reckon her faithful slaves by millions; yet, when a Russian hath his hat on his head, its rim contains the only friend on whom he can rely."

"This is a severe libel on your country surely, Excellency."

"'Tis truth though; so Basil Mierowitz, Usakoff, and the rest, are all doomed men. No one was ever lost on a straight road; thus the soldier who diverges from the straight line of duty must speedily find himself face to face with degradation and death. Punishment to those traitors will be swift and sure! So, I only fear that the Grand Chancellor will never give me the pleasure of having them under my judicious care in Schlusselburg. We have certain old vaults, built below the tide mark by Ivan the Terrible, for some of those people of Novgorod who leagued with the King of Poland. They are always full of fog; and I am curious to know how long an able-bodied prisoner might live there, or rather how long he would be in dying. But excuse me, Hospodeen, I confess me to-morrow, and there rings the bell for vespers already;" and making many Greek signs of the cross and other genuflexions, Bernikoff, after having gorged himself at table, hurried away to the chapel, where Father Chrysostom officiated.

Charlie gladly sought the solitude afforded by the stockades and outworks of the fortress on the side towards the Lake of Ladoga. There, as elsewhere, was of course, a chain of sentinels; but they did not interrupt his lonely communing with himself.

By his interest in Natalie, by his deep love for her, and more than all, perhaps, by his recent visit and interview, he already felt himself "art and part" (to use a Scottish legal phrase), or _particeps criminis_, with the rash adherents of Ivan. If one of these deserted the cause in which they had embarked, then would their lurking place be at once discovered, and the story of his recent visit be revealed.

He dreaded lest Bernikoff and others suspected his friendly interest in the family of Count Mierowitz, and that more might yet be learned of it; thus he would have experienced neither shock nor surprise, had he, at any hour, in that land of treachery and espionage, seen either Captain Vlasfief, Lieutenant Tschekin, or any other officer of the fortress, advancing towards him sabre in hand, with an armed party, to demand his sword, to make him a prisoner, and march him off to the same prison which already held the old Count and Mariolizza, the innocent betrothed of Basil, and might soon hold another, who was dearer still--Natalie!

"If I love her," he would say to himself at times, "why should I shrink from sharing all that she suffers now--all she may yet endure? Yet it would be wiser to watch well for her sake, and seek to save, or bear her away; but how--and where to?" was the next bewildering thought.

And the generous Basil, the fiery and chivalrous Usakoff, oh that he might save them too! He mourned for Usakoff, who was the very soul of honour and heroism, the worthy grandson of that Mazeppa who, when Charles the XII. was retreating from Pultowa, swam the Borysthenes by the side of the fugitive king, and of whom the latter said in the words of the bard;--

"Of all our band,
Though firm of heart and strong of hand,
In skirmish, march, or forage, none
Can less have said or more have done
Than thee, Mazeppa! on the earth
So fit a pair had never birth,
Since Alexander's day till now,
As thy Bucephalus and thou;
All Scythia's fame to thine should yield,
For pricking on o'er flood and field."

So worthy of such an ancestor, was he, too, to perish?

This was, indeed, a miserable mood of mind in which to pass the nights and days of inactivity--of suspense and anxiety in which none could share, in that strong, guarded, and somewhat lonely fortress, which was washed, as we have said, on one side by the Neva, and on the other by the Lake of Ladoga, the very ripples of whose waves sounded hatefully in the ears of Balgonie.

"Oh," thought he, "to be with Natalie on the side of a green and breezy Scottish mountain--on any part of the shore of free and happy Britain! to be with her there in peace and security, far, far from this land of suspicion and ferocious despotism, of state intrigues and savage punishments, where every second man is the spy upon, and the betrayer of, his fellow."

Britain he might never see more: and now he found himself vaguely speculating on the probable comforts and public amusements afforded by Siberia, and those growing cities of the sorrowing and the banished, Tobolsk and Irkutsk, on the banks of the Lower Angara.

He feared to look much, or often, towards the distant Wood of the Honey Tree, lest watchful eyes might be upon him to gather hints therefrom; still more did he fear to visit Natalie again, lest, by doing so, he might lead to the discovery and arrest of all: so the days and nights of dread, of longing, and suspense, passed slowly after each other now.

The barriers of rank and wealth--the wealth afforded by the Count's estates and mines, his populous villages of serfs, and vast forests of timber--had all been removed now, and Natalie was reduced to a level lower even than her lover's; yet he cursed the mad schemes that had brought about such a revolution, and tossed feverishly and sleeplessly on his bed, when he thought of Natalie Mierowna,--his own loving and beloved Natalie,--so delicate and so tender, with her white soft skin and silky hair, her earnest and beautiful eyes, lurking among stern and outlawed soldiers in yonder damp cavern of the rocks, upon her bed of leaves and moss, at the mercy, perhaps, of any adherent of Basil's, who, to save his own head, might prove a traitor to them all! This dread was ever before him.

The whole affair reminded him of some of the old Scottish raids or Jacobite plots, of years long passed away; and it was fated to resemble the former more strongly in some of its features, as the dark sequel will show.

The guards and sentinels at Schlusselburg were doubled; the patrols were incessant by land, while on the lake the gun-boats of Admiral Mackenzie cruised near the walls; the cannons were loaded; the watch-words changed sometimes twice within four-and-twenty hours; and the general state of preparation for a sudden attack was unremitting: but time passed on quietly until the night of the fifteenth of September, when the crowning catastrophe came.