CHAPTER X.
THE SENTENCE.
The Diet, hastily summoned to Fehervár, strongly disapproved of the secret proceedings against Banfi. Paul Beldi was the first to declare that even if Banfi could be arrested by means of a league, a Diet was the only tribunal which could try him, and insisted that he should have every opportunity of defending himself.
The Prince came to the Diet with red eyes, an aching head, and a very irritable temper--the usual witnesses of a drunken debauch.
Teleki, finding the Diet beyond his control, got Apafi to dissolve it, by persuading him that if Banfi were brought before it he would escape altogether, and even turn the two-edged sword of justice against the Prince himself.
In the Privy Council itself, Kozma Horvath's opposition to the extra-judicial prosecution was all in vain. The league drew up thirty-seven articles of accusation against Banfi, and the magnate was impeached.
Most of these articles were so utterly frivolous as to need no reply. Banfi's real offence was his pretension to the throne, and this they dared not bring forward at all.
Banfi manfully replied on every count. In vain. Defend himself as he might, his adversaries knew only too well how much they had offended him: they could not afford to let him live.
The matter came to the vote.
Banfi was condemned to death.
On the day when this took place, no one could get at the Prince except the members of the league, who were constantly going in and out of Apafi's apartments with hasty steps and eager faces.
Towards evening they succeeded in bringing the besotted Prince to sign the sentence. It was no longer possible to recognize in the spectre-haunted drunkard the mild and gentle Prince, who had had a tear for the sorrows of the meanest of his servants.
Saddled horses and long rows of carriages had been standing before the castle gates since midday. Suddenly Ladislaus Csaky came very hastily out of the castle with a document hidden in the folds of his pelisse, and calling for his horse, mounted, nodded significantly to the other gentlemen who had followed him out, and galloped away. The other gentlemen thereupon leapt into their carriages, or on to their horses, with as much expedition as if some one was pursuing them, and exchanging hurried whispers, decamped so swiftly that in a few moments the Prince was left entirely alone.
Teleki was the last who quitted him. The Prince accompanied the minister to the very end of the ante-chamber. Black care was written in his face. He would hardly let Teleki go.
Teleki coldly withdrew his hand from the Prince's grasp.
"You have no need to brood over it, sir. It is not a question of the life of a man, but of the welfare of a state. If my own neck had stood in the way, I would have said, Hew it off! I say the same when it is another's."
With that he took his leave.
Apafi could not remain in his room. He was obliged to go out into the fresh open air. Inside something seemed to choke him, the air was so oppressive--or was it his own conscience? He went into the garden. The cool night air soothed his throbbing head; the sight of the starry heaven did good to his darkened soul. Leaning over the balcony, he looked amazedly out into the quiet night, as if he expected a star larger than all the rest to fall from heaven, or some one miles and miles away to call him by name.
Suddenly a scream fell on his ear.
He looked around with a shudder, and terror made him speechless--before him stood his consort, whom his counsellors had kept away from him for weeks.
The moment the last magnate had departed, her own faithful servants told her that the Prince had signed the death-warrant, and the terrified woman, breaking through the castle guards, rushed after Apafi, found him in the garden, seized him roughly, and shrieking rather than speaking in her agitation, exclaimed--
"Oh, accursed, accursed wretch! Thou hast shed innocent blood!"
Apafi tried to avoid his wife. He feared her.
"What do you want with me?" he asked in a hollow voice. "What do you mean?"
"You have signed Banfi's death-warrant."
"I!" cried Apafi feebly, trying to catch hold of his wife's hand.
"Away with that hand, monster! It is stained with my kinsman's blood."
"Then you don't consent to it?" stammered the abject creature. "Neither did I, but the magnates constrained me."
The Princess smote her hands together, and looked at her consort despairingly.
"You have brought blood on our family! You have brought a curse on the land and on me! Oh, why did I not let you perish in the hands of the Tartars? Where you are concerned virtue itself becomes a sin."
Apafi was crushed. Alone with his wife, he was something less than a man.
"I did not wish to kill him," he blurted out, "nor do I now; and if you wish it, I'll reprieve him. Here, take my signet-ring. Send a horseman after Csaky to Bethlen Castle. Reprieve your cousin and leave me in peace."
"What ho, there! Who is without?" shrieked the Princess.
The domestic servants came pouring in, headed by the pantler.
"Take four of the Prince's swiftest horses with you," cried Anna, as she wrote out the pardon with her own hand and made her husband sign and seal it. "Take this letter and hasten to Bethlen Castle. If one of the horses falls under you, take the others. Stop not an instant on the road! A man's life is in your hands!"
The grooms led forward the swift horses; the pantler swung himself into the saddle, and, leading the other three horses by the bridles, galloped away.
The Princess impatiently followed him with her eyes till he was out of sight, and then went up to her room again; but unable to rest there long, she came down once more, sent for her faithful old servant Andrew, and giving him an old piece of green velvet,[56] set him on horseback and sent him after the pantler.
[Footnote 56: Green velvet was the symbol of the princely dignity in Transylvania.]
"If the Prince's reprieve arrives too late, this will be a cere-cloth wherein to wrap the murdered man."
* * * * *
The same hour, perhaps at the self-same moment, Paul Beldi called his chief groom, bade him mount his swiftest horse, ride to Bethlen Castle, and inform the castellan there that he would cut his head off if the slightest harm happened to Banfi at Bethlen. He too dared not face his wife at that moment.
* * * * *
The same hour, perhaps at the self-same moment, Michael Teleki pressed the hand of his future son-in-law Tököli, and whispered in his ear, "We are a step nearer." And beneath the pressure of the youth's iron hand, the engagement ring which knitted him to Teleki's daughter snapped in two, and Teleki took it as an omen[57] that, one day, the hand of this youth would be stronger than his own.
[Footnote 57: The omen was justified when, nearly thirty years later, Tököli defeated and slew Teleki at the battle of Zernyes, 1691.]
* * * * *
That night all Transylvania was greatly disturbed. Farkas Bethlen could not sleep in his bed all night. Stephen Apor was so unwell that he had to send for his confessor, and Kornis lost himself so completely on his way home that he was forced to sleep in his carriage.
And what was going on in heaven? Towards midnight a storm arose, the like of which the oldest men could not call to mind. The lightning set forests and castles on fire; the falling clouds drove the rivers out of their beds. The alarm bells resounded everywhere. God sat in judgment over the land that night. The whole population was sleepless.
* * * * *
Only the reconciled consorts slept calmly.
With one arm under her husband's head and the other embracing him, the pale and fragile lady fell asleep. At times she wept in her dreams, and her tears fell on the pillow. She was dreaming of her happy bridal days, and of that sweet moment when she had laid her first and only child in her husband's arms, and she pressed him more closely to her, while he lay sleeping there so calmly, at enmity with the world, but reconciled to himself and to the better-half of his soul. Happiness, which had fled him in his palace, sought him out in his dungeon.
The night lamp cast its pale rays on the sleeping forms.
* * * * *
Through that terrible night, four horsemen, scarcely a thousand paces apart, are galloping at full speed towards Bethlen Castle. During the lightning flashes they sometimes catch a glimpse of each other, and then each of them digs his spurs more deeply into his horse's sides.
The first horseman reaches the castle gate and winds the signal horn. The drawbridge sinks groaning down; the horseman springs into the courtyard and places a letter in the hands of the flurried castellan. It is Paul Beldi's messenger.
The horseman who next arrives at the castle orders the gates to be opened in the name of the Prince. He hands the castellan a second letter. It is Ladislaus Csaky.
The castellan grows pale as he reads this letter.
"My lord," says he, "I have just received a message from Paul Beldi, threatening us with death in case any harm befalls the prisoner."
"You have your choice," answered Csaky. "If you obey me, Beldi may perhaps cut off your head to-morrow; but if you don't obey me, I'll cut off your head myself this instant."
The trembling castellan bowed submission.
"Up with the drawbridge!" commanded Csaky. "None must enter this castle without my permission. Whoever acts against my orders is a dead man!"
* * * * *
The spouses lay tranquilly sleeping in each other's arms. A minute later the door creaked on its hinges, and the Rev. Stephen Pataky, tearful and terrified, entered the dungeon. His heart died within him when he saw the consorts sleeping so calmly side by side.
He stepped up to Banfi to rouse him. As he touched his hand, Banfi awoke, and perceiving Pataky, who could not speak for emotion, tried to disengage his head from his wife's encircling arm without awakening her. At that very moment Lady Banfi opened her eyes. Pataky, wishing to conceal the fatal message from her, addressed Banfi in the Latin tongue--
"_Surge Domine! sententia lethalis adest!_"[58]
[Footnote 58: Arise, sir, the death-warrant has come!]
Lady Banfi, terrified by these mysterious words, the meaning of which Pataky's face so ill concealed, asked in mortal fear what was the matter.
"Nothing, my darling! nothing!" said Banfi, embracing her with a tender smile. "A pressing message which I must attend to at once. I'll be back again soon! Lie down and sleep gently!"
With these words he persuaded his wife to fall back upon her pillow, kissed her repeatedly with great tenderness, and soothed her caressingly between each kiss--"My soul! my delight! my love! my heaven!"
The wife little suspected that this was the parting kiss of a man about to meet his doom; Banfi looked at her so smilingly, feigning a joyful countenance as he stood on the threshold of death.
Then the castle horn again sounded. The Princess's first messenger had arrived, and demanded admittance in her Highness's name.
Csaky rushed hastily up-stairs, and just as Banfi, after half reassuring his consort, was about to quit her, suddenly burst open the door, and cried--
"Why so long a leave-taking? Get ready! The sentence stays for execution!"
Lady Banfi with a piercing scream rose from her couch, and stretching out both her arms towards Banfi, gazed speechlessly at him for a moment, then, clutching at her heart, fell back dead upon her pillow with wide-open eyes.
Banfi looked at his enemy with the bitterness of death, his streaming eyes hurled more curses at him than any lip could have uttered.
"Base, cowardly wretch!" he moaned, "was it then part of your mandate to murder my wife also?"
Csaky turned his head away, and said in a hoarse voice--
"Hasten! the time is short!"
"Short for me, but it shall be long for you! For a time is coming when you will curse the day of your birth, and will not be able to die as calmly as I do!--Leave me!--I would fain pray; but I cannot call upon my God while you are nigh!"
Csaky, overcome despite himself, quitted the room.
Banfi laid his hand on his forehead and prayed.
Outside the heavens were thundering.
"O God! who dost thunder on high, take my blood as a sacrifice for my sins, but let not a drop of it fall on the heads of those who shed it! Suffer not my native land to pay the price of my blood! Guard this poor land from every ill! Visit not this people in Thy anger, but be their refuge and their sure defence in the evil day! Forgive my enemies my death, as I forgive them!"
The thunder roared terribly. God was wroth that day. He would not hearken to such a prayer.
"Is your Excellency ready?" inquired Csaky impatiently, whilst the Princess's messengers hammered furiously at the gates, and demanded instant admission.
Banfi stepped up to his lifeless consort and kissed her cold, pale face for the last time; then, turning calmly to Csaky, he said--
"Yes; I am ready now!"
* * * * *
A quarter of an hour later Csaky admitted the messengers.
"What do you bring?" he asked the pantler.
"The Prince's pardon for the prisoner."
"You are too late!--And you?"
"A cere-cloth for the corpse!"
"You have brought it very opportunely."
The highest head of the Transylvanian nobility had already fallen in the dust.
* * * * *
The tragedy ends with the hero's death.
The tide of history brings other shapes and other leaders to the surface. The fate, the fashion, and the history of Transylvania are no longer the same.[59] The sword-stroke which slew Banfi cut short an epoch only half begun. The body of that dominating form reposes in the crypt of the church at Bethlen, and no one has inherited his spirit.
[Footnote 59: The subsequent fortunes of Apafi, Csaky, Teleki, Tököli, Azrael, and Feriz are related in Jokai's second historical novel, _Törökvilag Magyarorzagbán_ (_The Turks in Hungary_), which is a sequel to the present story, and ends with the collapse of the Turkish power in Hungary.]
But the chronicles say that whenever danger threatens Transylvania, the blood of the buried patriot flows from his simple tomb, a terror to the people, and a wonder to the world.
THE END.
RICHARD CLAY & SONS, LIMITED, LONDON & BUNGAY.
11, HENRIETTA STREET, W.C., _May, 1894._
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