CHAPTER XIX.
The newcomers proved to be a detachment of Albanians. Constantine wasinstantly captured notwithstanding his declaration that his dress wasonly assumed.
"Aha! you are a Christian now in a Turk's skin, are you? But yesterdayyou were a Turk in a Christian's feathers," was the taunt with whichhe was greeted by one of the foremost riders, who continued hisbantering. "Your face is honest, if your heart is not, you Moslemdevil; for your ugly features will not lie though your tongue does. Iwould know that square jaw and red head equally well now, were itunder the tiara of the pope instead of under the turban; and I wouldcut your throat if you carried St. Peter's key in your girdle; youchange-skinned lizard!"
"Who is he?" cried the horsemen, gathering about.
"Why! the very knave who escaped us about sundown yesterday, afterspying our camp; and he has the impudence to ask us to take himprisoner that he may spy us again."
"Let us hamstring him!" cried another, "and, unless St. Christopherhas turned Moslem in paradise and helps the rascal, he will find nolegs to run away with again."
"Set him up for a mark when we halt," proposed a third. "A ducat tohim whose arrow can split his ear without tearing the cheek at fortypaces!"
Constantine was helpless as they adjusted a halter about his neck,with which to lead him at the side of a horseman, the butt of thescurrilous wit and sharper spear-points of his half mad and half merrycaptors.
They had gone but a few paces when the colonel commanding thedetachment made his way through the troopers to the front. He was avenerable man with long flowing white beard. His bodily strengthseemed to come solely from the vitality of nerve and the dominance ofhis spirit; for he was well worn with years.
"What is this noise about?" he asked sternly.
Before any could reply he stared with a moment's incredulity andwonder at Constantine, who relieved his doubts by recognizing him.
"Colonel Kabilovitsch!" cried he, doffing his turban as if it had beena Christian cap.[48] "Your men are playful fellows, as frolicksome asa cat with a mole."
"But why are you here, my boy? and why this disguise?" interruptedKabilovitsch.
The explanation was given in a few words;--on the one side the storyof the slaughter at the village, and the adventures of Morsinia andConstantine; on the other of how the news of the Turkish raid reachedthe camp at Sfetigrade about noon, and the rescuing party had startedat once under Kabilovitsch's command, and ridden at breakneck speedduring the entire night in the hope of meeting the Turks before theyemerged from the narrow valley.
Learning now that they were too late for this, Kabilovitsch halted hiscommand, and with Constantine sought the place where Morsinia was inwaiting. When the old man heard that the first assailants of thehamlet had been Albanians in disguise his rage was furious; andthrough his incautious words Morsinia learned more of her relation tothe voivode Amesa than her reputed father had ever told her; for themystery of her family had never been fully explained in her hearing.It had heretofore been deemed best that the girl should not be madethe custodian of her own secret, lest her childish prattle mightreveal it to others. Yet she had guessed the greater part of theproblem of her identity. But Kabilovitsch was now led by the newcuriosity which his inadvertent expressions had awakened in her, aswell as by the remarkably discreet and cautious judgment she haddisplayed, to tell her the entire story of her own life. This was not,however, until orders had been passed through the troop for rest, andthe fires hastily kindled along the roadside had prepared theirrefreshing breakfasts.
Removed from the hearing of all others, Kabilovitsch rehearsed toMorsinia and Constantine what the reader already knows of herextraction and early residence in Albania. He advised her to extremecaution against the slightest reference to herself as the young Marade Streeses, and that she should insist upon her identity as thedaughter of the Servian peasant Milosch and the sister of Constantine.
Morsinia buried her fair face in the gray beard of the old man, asyears ago she had done when they sat upon the door-stone of theirBalkan home, and sobbed as if his words had orphaned her. In a fewmoments she looked up into his fine but wrinkled face, and drawing itdown to hers, kissed him as she used to do, and said lovingly,
"I must believe your words; but my heart holds you as my father: forfather you have been to me, and child I shall be to you so long as Godgives us to one another."
The old man pressed her temples between his rough hands, and lookedlong into her deep blue eyes, as he said slowly,
"Ay, father and mother both was I to thee, my child, from thatterrible night, sixteen years ago. My rough arms have often cradledthee. But now you have a nobler and stronger protector in ourcountry's father, the great Castriot. To him you must go; for it is nolonger safe in these lonely valleys. Under his strong arm andall-watchful eye you will be amply protected. There are namelessenemies of the old house of De Streeses whom we must avoid asvigilantly as we avoid the Turks."
It was determined that Constantine should make a detour with her, andapproach Sfetigrade from the south, giving out that they werefugitives from the lower country, which the enemy had also beenraiding.
The colonel stated to his under officers, in hearing of the men, thatthe young Turk was really one of Castriot's scouts, and that the youngwoman was an accomplice. Borrowing from one and another sufficientAlbanian costumes to substitute for Constantine's disguise,Kabilovitsch dismissed the couple.
There was no end to the badgering the officious soldier who had firstarrested the scout received at the hands of his comrades. They jeeredat his double mistake in taking the fellow yesterday as a Turkish spyin Albanian uniform, because he had slipped away so shrewdly, and nowagain being duped by him a real Albanian in Turkish disguise. Somethrew the halter over the fellow's neck; others made mimic preparationfor hamstringing him; while one presented him with an immense scrollof bark purporting to be his commission as chief of the department ofsecret service, finishing the mock presentation by shivering the barkover the fellow's head. The unhappy man contented himselfphilosophically:--
"No wonder General Castriot baffles the enemy when his own men cannotunderstand him. You were all as badly twisted by that fellow's tricksas I was. But I will never interfere with that red head again, thoughhe wears a turban and is cutting the throat of the general himself."
Two days later a beautiful girl accompanied by her brother--who was asunlike her as the thorn bush is unlike the graceful flowering clematisthat festoons its limbs, both of them in apparent destitution,refugees from near the Greek border--entered the town of Sfetigrade.By order of the general, to whom their piteous story was told byKabilovitsch--for he had chanced, so he said, to come upon them asthey were inquiring their way to the town--they were quartered with afamily whose house was not far from the citadel. For some weeks thegirl was an invalid. A raging fever had been induced by overexcitement and the subsequent fatigue of the long journey. ColonelKabilovitsch could not refrain from expressing his interest in theyoung woman by almost daily calls at the cottage where she lay. Oneday, when it was supposed by the surgeon that she might not live, theold man was observed to stand long at the cot upon which the sick girlwas lying. A look of agony overspread his features when the surgeon,who had been feeling her pulse, laid her almost nerveless hand beneaththe blanket.
"Dear, good old man," said the housewife. "I warrant he has laid somepretty one of his own in the ground. Maybe a child, or a lover,sometime back in the years. These things do come to us over and overagain."
The brother of the sick girl scarcely noticed the visits of ColonelKabilovitsch, except to respond to his questions when no one buthimself could give the exact information about the patient'scondition; for none watched with her so incessantly.
But her marvellous natural vitality enabled the sufferer to outlivethe fever; and, as she became convalescent, the old colonel seemed toforget her. His interest was apparently in her suffering rather thanin herself.
FOOTNOTE:
[48] M
oslems do not remove the hat in making salutation.
The Captain of the Janizaries Page 19
