"An accursed signal that!"
When the midnight rider reached the churchyard, he dismounted from his horse, bound it to an elderberry tree, and replied to the signal with a trumpet-blast of his own, whereupon a spectral flame shot up among the tombstones.
"Do you hear that? The devils are answering one another."
"It is either the devil or Valentine Kalondai."
"If it be Valentine Kalondai he will come hither, and we will take him prisoner; but if it be the devil "twere best to leave him alone."
That was very sage advice, certainly.
The horseman found the churchyard-gate open and went in.
He went straight to the spot where he had seen the flames shoot up.
It was no will-o"-the-wisp, no perambulating spirit, but Simplex, who, to scare the watchers and guide Valentine, had ignited lycopodium powder from time to time.
"Hush!" said he to his approaching friend, "they are on the watch."
"Let them watch!" murmured Valentine; "I have a sword with me.
Though I should die on the spot for it, I mean to speak to my beloved."
"You shall speak to her. Follow me! but duck your head that they may not see us."
With that he led Valentine along among the graves till they came to a large monument. It was a red marble obelisk, surmounted by a wreathed urn. The bed round the grave was planted with violets and primroses with an ivy border. On the pediment lay several wreaths.
"Look there!" said Simplex, drawing a dark lantern from beneath his mantle; "look and read!"
Valentine drew near and saw on the splendid monument the name, "Augustus Zwirina," followed by a long litany of the deeds and services of that distinguished citizen.
"Why have you led me to the grave of my mortal foe?" asked Valentine sternly.
"It is not your mortal foe who sleeps here," returned Simplex, "but pretty Michal. The night after they had buried your mortal foe, I came to the churchyard with the faithful Ali. Then we set to work and dug out the coffin of pretty Michal and brought it hither, and placed it where the coffin of Zwirina had been laid, and now you can be quite easy in your mind, for your beloved reposes in consecrated ground, and flowers bloom over her all the year round."
Valentine threw himself with his face to the ground.
"Listen how the ghosts are weeping!" said one of the watchers to his comrade.
"Depend upon it, Beelzebub is tormenting them!"
"Don"t look back or they"ll twist your neck for you!"
After Valentine had wept to his heart"s content, and consoled himself with the reflection that his tears would filter through the mound to his sleeping love and give her sweeter dreams, he arose and said to Simplex:
"But suppose the thing becomes known?"
"There are only three of us who know anything about it. One is Ali the Turk; your mother has emanc.i.p.ated him, and he has now gone home to Thessaly. The second is the grave, and the grave tells no tales.
I myself am the third, and I can keep as silent as the grave."
Valentine pressed his faithful friend to his heart and covered him with kisses. And then he kissed the grave and the flowers which covered it:
"Don"t you hear how the specters are kissing each other?" whispered one of the musketeers.
"No doubt Lucifer is caressing them!"
"And whither then have you removed Augustus Zwirina?"
"Why, where he ought to be, of course! We laid the good man in the churchyard ditch in the place intended for Michal, and all the a.s.ses of the town will come and nibble their thistles over his head from one year"s end to the other."
"Listen how the ghosts are laughing!"
"I would not go among them if they gave me the whole city of Ka.s.sa."
Even the howling wind seemed to take up the ghostly laughter and carry it on further. It was indeed a ghastly jest--a jest fit even to provoke a loud peal of laughter in a churchyard at midnight, that pretty Michal and the author of her death should have changed places with each other, that pretty Michal should have been laid in the flower-strewn bed, in the grave dug in consecrated ground and watered with tears, while the author of her death should have been cast forth into the churchyard ditch, to gaze up at the a.s.ses when they came to chew the thistles over his head.
"Now that you have spoken with your beloved, hasten away!"
"G.o.d bless you, my loyal comrade! Greet my dear mother. Tell her that to-morrow I am off to the wars. Eger is to be stormed. Tell her to pray that I may die a glorious death!"
With that he hastened back to his horse and darted away into the waste night.
"The ghost is riding back to his realm!"
"All good spirits praise the Lord!"
And if Dame Sarah prayed as her son desired her, her prayer was certainly heard in heaven. At the brilliant a.s.sault by which the city of Eger was won back to Hungary, Valentine Kalondai died a hero"s death on the field of honor.
CHAPTER x.x.xIX.
In which everyone at last gets his deserts.
Old Zurdoki, whose unseemly amours had been the cause of the tragedy of two loving hearts, so far from being sobered by this sad occurrence, so far from taking to heart the blood of the gentle lady which had flowed through his foul fault, had no sooner escaped from Poland with a part of the Prince"s routed troops (the rest had been carried away captive to the Crimea by the Tartars) than he set about another evil prank. Failing to seduce one of the pretty women, he now spread his nets for the second.
Here, too, he soon found a willing go-between. Even if Red Barbara were no more, there was still enough of witches and to spare. Was not Annie, the wife of the kopanitschar, at hand? So far from being scared at the fearful fate of her superior, she burned to occupy the vacant place of honor in the witches" ranks. For the saying of the sages, that from the blood of one martyr a hundred others spring up, is equally true when applied to evil-doers. Among sinners also there are enthusiasts who count it an honor to suffer for h.e.l.l, and where one felon is executed a hundred are always ready to step into his shoes. This was especially the case with witches. The burnt and tortured members of that grim sisterhood always had immediate and innumerable successors. The world seemed too small to hold them all.
The love of evil notoriety took possession of them like a sort of intoxication, and plunged into the abyss even those who otherwise would never have thought of becoming witches. It is thus that we are able to explain why Annie undertook a far more dangerous commission than even that by which Barbara had found her death. Moreover, the dazzling promises of Zurdoki, who was no n.i.g.g.ard with his money, had also great weight with her. And Zurdoki was now richer than ever.
George Rakoczy, when the Crim Tartars invaded Hungary, had intrusted the whole of his treasures to Zurdoki to conceal them in Berga Castle. On the way thither as much of this treasure might be lost as Zurdoki pleased. Who amid the hurly-burly of those troubled times would ever think of calling him to account for it?
So Zurdoki intrusted to Annie the billet-doux which he had written to the lovely Isabella, the spouse of Count Hommonai. He had not been very particular in his style, nor had he wasted his ardor in romantic effusiveness, but he went straight to the point like the man of business he was. He said he was ten times richer than Hommonai, and if the countess were kind to him, he would give her three hundred ducats down and a diamond collar such as princesses wear, besides making a will in her favor, whereby she would inherit after his death a city, a castle, two-and-twenty villages, and all the flocks, herds, and studs thereunto belonging.
Zurdoki, therefore, did not woo very romantically, perhaps, but for all that the letter was full of burning love. He thought that the handsomeness of the gift would make the lovely lady forget the ugliness of the giver.
But Isabella was very wroth when she received this shameful proposal. She immediately took the letter to her husband, and begged him to order the bearer of it to be exemplarily whipped. They were then dwelling at their castle at Saros.
"No," said Count Hommonai; "why whip the bearer of the letter, it is the writer who deserves a whipping." And he there and then dictated to his wife the answer she was to send to Zurdoki, which was so worded as to seem to consent to his proposition.