Part 14

“This skull,” said Spiagudry, bending to whisper in the young man’s ear, “you must try to obtain. The monster attaches a certain superstitious importance to its possession. His son’s skull once yours, you can do what you will with him.”

“That is all very well, my good fellow; but how am I to get this skull?”

“By some stratagem, sir. While the monster sleeps, perhaps.”

Ordener interrupted him: “Enough. Your good advice is useless. I cannot be supposed to know when my enemy is asleep. My sword is the only weapon which I recognize.”

“Sir, sir! it has never been proved that the archangel Michael did not resort to stratagem to vanquish Satan.”

Here Spiagudry stopped short, and stretching out his hands, exclaimed in scarcely audible tones, “Oh, heavens! Oh, heavens! What do I see? Look, master; is not that a short man walking before us in the path?”

“Faith,” said Ordener, raising his eyes, “I see nothing.”

“Nothing, sir? To be sure, the path bends, and he has disappeared behind that rock. Go no farther, sir, I entreat you.”

“Surely, if the person whom you imagine that you saw disappeared so quickly, it shows that he has no idea of waiting for us; and if he chooses to run away, that is no reason why we should do the same.”

“Watch over us, holy Hospitius!” ejaculated Spiagudry, who in all moments of danger remembered his favorite saint.

“You must,” added Ordener, “have taken the flickering shadow of some startled owl for a man.”

“And yet I really thought I saw a little man; to be sure, the moonlight often produces strange delusions. It was in the moonlight that Baldan, lord of Merneugh, took a white bed-curtain for his mother’s ghost; which led him to go next day and confess himself guilty of parricide before the judges of Christiania, who were about to condemn the dead woman’s innocent page. So we may say that the moonlight saved that page’s life.”

No one was ever more ready than Spiagudry to forget the present in the past. One anecdote from the vast storehouse of his memory was enough to banish all thought of the present. Thus the story of Baldan diverted his fears, and he added in a tranquil voice, “It is quite possible that the moonlight deceived me too.”

Meantime, they gained the top of the Vulture’s Neck, and began to get another glimpse of the ruins, which the steep slope of the rock had hidden from them as they ascended.

The reader need not be surprised if we frequently encounter ruins on the topmost peak of Norwegian mountains. No one who has travelled among the mountains of Europe can have failed to notice the remains of fortresses and castles clinging to the top of the loftiest peaks, like the deserted nest of a vulture or the eyrie of some dead eagle. In Norway especially, at the period of which we write, the variety of these aerial structures was as amazing as their number. Sometimes they consisted of long dismantled walls, enclosing a rock, sometimes of slender pointed turrets, surmounting a sharp peak, like a crown; or upon the snowy summit of a lofty mountain might be seen great towers grouped about a massive donjon, looking in the distance like an antique diadem. Here were the graceful pointed arches of a Gothic cloister, side by side with the heavy Egyptian columns of a Saxon church; there, close by some pagan chieftain’s citadel with its square towers, stood the crenellated fortress of a Christian lord; or, again, a stronghold crumbling with age, neighbored by a monastery ravaged by war. Of all these edifices--a strange medley of architectural styles, now almost forgotten, daringly constructed in apparently inaccessible spots--but a few ruins remained to bear witness alike to the power and the impotence of man. Within their walls deeds were perhaps done far worthier of repetition than all the stories which are written now; but time passed; the eyes which witnessed them are closed; the tradition of them died with the lapse of years, like a fire which is not fed; and when that is lost, who can read the secret of the ages?

The manor-house of Vermund the Refugee, which our two travellers had now reached, was one of those places about which popular superstition has woven endless amazing histories and marvellous legends. By its walls--composed of pebbles bedded in cement, now harder than stone--it was easy to determine that it was built about the fifth or sixth century. But one of its five towers remained standing; the other four, more or less dilapidated, and strewing the top of the rock with broken fragments, were connected by a line of ruins, which also showed the ancient limits of the inner courts of the castle. It was very difficult to penetrate this enclosure, littered as it was with stones and shattered blocks of granite, and overgrown with weeds and brambles which, clambering from ruin to ruin, crowned the broken walls with verdure, or overhung the precipice with long, flexible branches. On these drooping tendrils, it was said, dim ghosts often swung in the moonlight,--the guilty spirits of those who had wilfully drowned themselves in Lake Sparbo; and to these twigs, too, the water-sprite fastened the cloud which was to bear him home again at sunrise. Fearful mysteries were these, more than once witnessed by hardy fishermen, when, to take advantage of the time when dogfish sleep,[13] they ventured to row as far as Oëlmœ cliff, which loomed up in the darkness over their heads like the broken arch of some huge bridge.

Our two adventurers climbed the manor wall, though not without some difficulty, and crept through a crevice, for the door was filled with fragments. The only tower which, as we have said, remained standing, was at the extreme edge of the rock. It was, Spiagudry told Ordener, from the top of this tower that Munkholm lighthouse could be seen. They went towards it, although the darkness was at that moment complete, the moon being hidden by a great black cloud. They were about to cross a breach in another wall, in order to enter what was once the second courtyard of the castle, when Benignus stopped short, and suddenly seized Ordener’s arm with such a trembling hand that the young man himself almost fell.

“What now?” asked Ordener in surprise.

Benignus, without answering, pressed his arm more firmly, as if begging him to be silent.

“Well--” said the young man.

Another pressure, accompanied by an ill-suppressed sigh, decided him to wait patiently until this fresh fright should cease.

At last Spiagudry asked, in a stifled voice: “Well, master, what do you say now?”

“To what?” said Ordener.

“Yes, sir,” added the other, in the same tone; “I suppose you are sorry now that you came here?”

“No, indeed, my worthy guide; on the contrary, I hope to climb higher still. Why should you think that I am sorry?”

“What, sir, did you not see?”

“See! What?”

“You saw nothing?” repeated the honest keeper, with ever-increasing terror.

“Truly I did not,” impatiently answered Ordener; “I saw nothing, and I heard nothing but the sound of your teeth chattering with fright.”

“What! not behind that wall, in the shadow, those two flaming eyes, like comets, fixed directly upon us,--did you not see them?”

“Upon my honor, I did not.”

“You did not see them move up and down, and then disappear among the ruins?”

“I don’t know what you are talking about. Besides, what if I did see them?”

“What! Mr. Ordener, don’t you know that there is but one man in Norway whose eyes gleam in that way in the dark?”

“Well, and what then? Who is this man with the eyes of a cat? Is it Hans, your much-dreaded Icelander? So much the better if he be here! It will spare us a journey to Walderhog.”

This “so much the better” was not to the taste of Spiagudry, who could not help betraying his secret thought by the involuntary ejaculation: “Oh, sir, you promised to leave me at the village of Surb, a mile away from the battle.”

The generous and kindly Ordener understood, and smiled.

“You are right, old man; it would be unfair to make you share my danger; therefore fear nothing. You see this Hans of Iceland everywhere. May there not be some wildcat lurking among these ruins, whose eyes shine quite as fiercely as his do?”

Once more Spiagudry’s fears were set at rest, either because Ordener’s suggestion struck him as very plausible, or because his young companion’s composure proved contagious.

“Ah, sir,” said he, “if it had not been for you I should have died a dozen deaths from fright as I climbed these rocks. To be sure, I should never have attempted such a task if it had not been for you.”

The moon, which now broke through the clouds, showed them the gateway to the highest tower, the foot of which they had already reached. They entered, after raising a thick curtain of vines, which showered them with drowsy lizards and old decayed bird’s-nests. The keeper picked up a couple of pebbles, and striking them together, produced a few sparks, by means of which he soon set fire to a heap of dead leaves and dry branches collected by Ordener. In a few moments a bright column of flame rose into the air, and banishing the darkness about them, permitted them to examine the interior of the tower.

Nothing was left but a circular wall, which was very thick, and was overgrown with moss and vines. The ceiling and floors of its four stories had crumbled away one after the other, and now formed a vast heap of rubbish upon the ground. A narrow spiral staircase, entirely without a railing, and broken in various places, was built in the wall, to the top of which it led. As the fire began to crackle cheerily, a swarm of owls and ospreys flew up heavily, with strange, weird cries, and huge bats now and then hovered above the flames, poised upon their ashen wings.

“Our hosts do not receive us very merrily,” said Ordener; “but do not take fright again.”

“I, sir,” replied Spiagudry, seating himself close to the fire; “I fear an owl or a bat! I have dwelt with corpses, and I do not fear vampires. Ah, I only dread the living! I am not brave, I admit; but at least I am not superstitious. Come, sir, take my advice; let us laugh at these ladies in black petticoats and with such hoarse voices, and let us be thinking of supper.”

Ordener thought of nothing but Munkholm.

“I have here a few provisions,” said Spiagudry, drawing his knapsack from under his cloak; “but if your appetite be as good as mine, this black bread and mouldy cheese will not go far. I see that we shall have to observe the limits of the law laid down by the French king, Philip the Fair,--_Nemo audeat comedere præter duo fercula cum potagio._ There must be nests of gulls or pheasants on the top of this tower; but how are we to get there by that dilapidated staircase, which does not look as if it would bear the weight of anything but a sylph?”

“Still,” answered Ordener, “it must needs bear mine, for I shall certainly climb to the top of this tower.”

“What, master! to get a few gull’s-nests? Do not, for mercy’s sake, be so rash! It is not worth while to kill yourself for the sake of a better supper. Besides, suppose you should make a mistake and take the nests of these owls?”

“Much I care for your nests! Didn’t you tell me that I could see Munkholm light from the top of this tower?”

“So you can, young master; it lies to the south. I see that your desire to establish this point, so important to the science of geography, was your motive for taking this fatiguing journey to Vermund castle. But do consider, good Mr. Ordener, that it may sometimes be the duty of a zealous student to brave toil and hardship, but never to run into danger. I implore you, do not attempt that poor broken-down staircase, upon which even a crow would not venture to perch.”

Benignus was by no means anxious to be left alone in the tower. As he rose to take Ordener’s hand, his knapsack, which was lying across his knees, fell upon some stones, and gave forth a clear metallic ring.

“What have you in your wallet that rings so loudly?” asked Ordener.

This was such a delicate question that Spiagudry lost all desire to restrain his young companion.

“Well,” said he, without answering the question, “if, in spite of all my prayers, you persist in climbing to the top of this tower, at least beware of the broken places in the stairs.”

“But,” repeated Ordener, “you have not told me what you have in your knapsack to make it sound so metallic.”

This indiscreet persistence was extremely unpleasant to the old keeper, who cursed the questioner from the bottom of his soul.

“Oh, noble master,” he replied, “how can you show such curiosity about a paltry iron barber’s-basin, which clinked against a stone? If I cannot persuade you to change your mind,” he made haste to add, “come back as soon as you can, and be careful to hold fast to the vines which cover the wall. You will see Munkholm lighthouse to the south, between Frigga’s Footstools.”

Spiagudry could not have said anything better calculated to drive every other idea out of the young man’s head. Ordener, throwing aside his mantle, sprang toward the staircase, up which the keeper followed him with his eyes until he could only see him move like a faint shadow upward to the top of the wall, dimly lighted by the flickering flames and the cold rays of the moon.

Then reseating himself and picking up his knapsack, he said: “Now, my dear Benignus Spiagudry, while that young lynx cannot see you, and you are alone, make haste and break the cumbrous iron envelope which prevents you from taking possession, _oculis et manu_, of the treasure undoubtedly contained in this casket. When it is delivered from its prison, it will be lighter to carry and easier to conceal.”

Arming himself with a huge stone, he was about to break the lid of the box, when the firelight, falling on the iron lock, suddenly arrested the antiquarian.

“By Saint Willibrod the Numismatologist, I am not mistaken,” he exclaimed, eagerly rubbing the rusty lid; “those are indeed the arms of Griffenfeld. I came near doing a very foolish thing in breaking this lock. This may be the only perfect copy in existence of those famous armorial bearings destroyed in 1676 by the hangman’s hand. The devil! I will not touch this box. Whatever may be the value of its contents, unless, as seems scarcely probable, it should be coin of Palmyra or Carthaginian money, this is certainly still more precious. So here I am the sole owner of the now obsolete arms of Griffenfeld! Let me hide this treasure carefully, and I may some time discover the secret of opening the casket without committing an act of vandalism. The Griffenfeld arms! Oh, yes! here are the hand of Justice and the scales upon a gules ground. What luck!”

At each fresh heraldic discovery that he made as he polished the ancient coffer, he uttered a cry of admiration or an exclamation of content.

“By means of a solvent, I can open the box without breaking the lock. It probably contains the ex-chancellor’s treasure. If any one, tempted by the bait of the four crowns offered by the council for my head, should recognize me now and stop me, I can readily buy my freedom. So this blessed casket will save me.”

As he spoke, he looked up mechanically. All at once his grotesque features changed with lightning speed from an expression of intense delight to that of stupefied dismay; his limbs trembled convulsively, his eyes became fixed, his brow furrowed, his mouth gaped wide, and his voice stuck in his throat.

Before him, on the other side of the fire, stood a little man with folded arms. By his dress of blood-stained skins, his stone axe, his red beard, and the ravenous stare fastened on his face, the wretched keeper at once recognized the frightful character whose last visit he had received in the Spladgest at Throndhjem.

“It is I!” said the little man, with terrible calmness. “That casket will save you,” he added with a bitterly sarcastic smile. “Spiagudry, is this the way to Thoctree?”

The unfortunate man tried to stammer a word of excuse.

“Thoctree! Sir--My lord and master,--I was going--”

“You were going to Walderhog,” replied the other, in a voice of thunder.

The terrified Spiagudry mustered all his forces to deny the charge.

“You were guiding an enemy to my retreat. I thank you! ’Twill be one living man the less. Fear nothing, faithful guide; he shall follow you.”

The luckless keeper strove to shriek, but could with difficulty utter a feeble moan.

“Why are you so frightened at my presence? You were seeking me. Hark ye! Do not speak, or you are a dead man.”

The little man swung his stone axe above the keeper’s head. He added, in a voice which sounded like the roar of a mountain torrent as it bursts from some subterranean cave: “You have betrayed me.”

“No, your Grace! No, your Excellency!” gasped Benignus, scarcely able to articulate these words of apology and entreaty.

The other gave vent to a low growl.

“Ah! you would deceive me again! Hope not to succeed. Listen! I was on the roof of the Spladgest when you sealed your compact with that mad fool; twice you have heard my voice. It was my voice you heard amid the storm upon your road; it was I whom you met in Vygla tower; it was I who said, ‘We shall meet again!’”

The terrified keeper looked about him in despair, as if to summon help. The little man went on: “I could not let those soldiers who pursued you, escape my wrath; they belonged to the Munkholm regiment. I knew that I should not lose you. Spiagudry, it was I whom you saw again in Oëlmœ village beneath the miner’s hat; it was my footstep and my voice that you heard, and my eyes that you saw as you climbed to these ruins. It was I!”

Alas! the unfortunate man was but too well convinced of these dreadful truths. He rolled upon the ground at the feet of his fearful judge, crying in faint and agonizing accents, “Mercy!”

The little man, his arms still folded, fixed upon him a murderous look, more scorching even than the flames upon the hearth.

“Ask that casket to save you, as you said it would do,” he said sarcastically.

“Mercy, sir, mercy!” repeated the expiring victim.

“I warned you to be faithful and to be dumb. You have not been faithful; but in future I protest that you shall be dumb.”

The keeper, grasping the horrible meaning of these words, uttered a deep groan.

“Fear nothing,” said the man; “I will not part you from your treasure.”

At these words, unfastening his leather belt, he passed it through a ring on the cover of the casket, and by this means hung it about Spiagudry’s neck, the poor fellow bending beneath its weight.

“Come!” rejoined the monster, “to what devil will you confide your soul? Make haste and summon him, lest another demon whom you do not care about, take possession of it before him.”

The desperate old man, past all power of speech, fell at the little man’s knees, making countless gestures of terror and entreaty.

“No, no!” said his tormentor; “my faithful Spiagudry, you need not be distressed at leaving your young companion without a guide. I promise you that he shall go where you go. Follow me; you do but show him the way. Come!”

With these words, seizing the wretched man in his powerful arms, he bore him from the tower as a tiger might carry off a writhing serpent, and a moment later a fearful shriek rang through the ruins, mingled with a horrible burst of laughter.

XXIII.

Yes, we may reveal to the faithful lover’s tear-wet eye the distant object of his adoration. But alas! the moments of expectation, the farewells, the thoughts, the sweet and bitter memories, the enchanting dreams of two beings that love! Who can restore these?--MATURIN: _Bertram_.

Meantime the venturesome Ordener, after a score or more of narrow escapes from a fall during his perilous ascent, reached the top of the thick, round tower wall. At his unexpected visit, dusky old owls abruptly aroused from their nests, flew up, staring at him as they sailed away, and loose stones, displaced by his tread, rolled into the abyss, rebounding from projections in the masonry with a remote, hollow roar.

At any other time, Ordener’s gaze would have roamed far and wide, and his mind would have dwelt upon the depth of the gulf yawning beneath him, which seemed even greater from the thick darkness of the night. His eye, taking in all the great masses of shadow on the horizon, their sombre outlines but half revealed by a nebulous moon, would have striven to distinguish between mist and rocks, between mountains and clouds; his imagination would have lent life to all the gigantic forms, the fantastic shapes with which moonlight clothes hills and vapors. He would have listened to the indistinct murmur of lake and woods blended with the shrill sough of the wind through the crevices in the stones and through the dried grass at his feet, and his fancy would have lent words to all those low voices through which material Nature speaks while man sleeps, in the silence of the night. But although the scene unconsciously acted upon his whole being, other thoughts filled his mind. Hardly had his foot touched the top of the wall, when his eye turned to the southern sky, and he thrilled with unspeakable rapture as he saw beyond and between two small mountains a point of light gleaming upon the horizon like a red star. It was Munkholm beacon.

None but those who have tasted the truest joys which life can give can understand the young man’s happiness. His soul was filled with delight; his heart beat violently. Motionless, his eye fixed, he gazed at the star of hope and consolation. It seemed as if that beam of light traversing the darkness, and coming from the spot which held all that made life worth living, bore with it something of his Ethel. Ah! do not doubt it; one soul may sometimes hold mysterious communion with another, though widely parted by time and space. In vain the world of reality rears its barriers between two beings who love; inhabitants of an ideal world, they are present to each other in absence, they are united in death. What can mere bodily separation or physical distance avail if two hearts be indissolubly bound by a single thought and a common desire? True love may suffer, but it cannot die.

Who has not repeatedly lingered on a rainy night beneath some dimly lighted window? Who has not passed and repassed a certain door, rapturously wandered up and down before a certain house? Who has not abruptly retraced his steps, to follow, at evening, along some deserted, winding street, a floating skirt or a white veil suddenly recognized in the twilight? He who has never experienced these feelings may safely say that he has never loved.

As he gazed at the distant lighthouse, Ordener pondered. A sad and ironical contentment took the place of his first transports; a thousand varying thoughts and ideas crowded upon his agitated spirit. “Yes,” said he, “a man must labor long and painfully to win at last a ray of happiness in the vast night of existence. So she is there! She sleeps, she dreams, perhaps she thinks of me! But who will tell her that her Ordener even now hangs above an abyss, sad and lonely, surrounded by darkness,--her Ordener, who retains nothing of her but a single ringlet pressed to his heart and a faint light upon the horizon!” Then, looking at the ruddy glow of the huge fire burning in the tower beneath, and escaping through the crevices in the wall, he murmured: “Perhaps from one of her prison windows she casts an indifferent glance at the far-off flame upon this hearth.”

All at once, a loud shriek and a prolonged burst of laughter rose from the brink of the precipice below; he turned abruptly, and saw that the interior of the tower was vacant. Alarmed for the safety of the old man, he hurriedly descended; but he had taken but a few steps when he heard a dull splash, as if a heavy body had been thrown into the deep waters of the lake.

XXIV.