CHAPTER XXVIII.

THE CASTLE OF HELNŒSLAND.

After carelessly setting on fire the fortress of Fredricksort, Merodé had been ordered by Tilly to establish himself in the next suitable castle; and in search of this, after a desultory and--to the people--disastrous march along the shore of the Lesser Belt, he daringly crossed over to Fuhnen, an island so named in consequence of its beauty and fertility, and established himself in an old tower, on the sandy promontory of Helnœsland.

Grim and strong, but small, and blending with the rock on which it is built, the castle had formed part of the dowery of the fair Florentina, Princess of Denmark, who about 1380 was espoused by Sir Henry Sinclair of Roslin (in Lothian), whom the king her father created Duke of Oldenburg, and Lord of Zetland; and I believe that his coat-of-arms, with the cross engrailed, the ships within the tressure, and the motto of the Lairds of Roslin, _Commit thy work to God_, are yet to be seen above the porch of the old fortress, collared by the orders which he wore--the Thistle, the Golden Fleece, and St. Michael.

While all the incidents which have occupied the last few chapters were passing elsewhere, Gabrielle was a prisoner in Helnœsland, pining for her father, for her sister, and for freedom, exposed to the incessant persecution of Merodé, who, instead of proceeding to extremities, had grown wonderfully tractable, and actually went the length of offering his hand, as well as his amiable heart.

When not attended by the count, Prudentia was ever by her side, to sing his praises. In this affair the dancer acted, apparently, with great self-denial; but, in truth, she and Merodé had grown perfectly tired of each other; and she was only waiting an opportunity for quietly and conveniently marching off with all the gold and jewels she could lay her pretty hands upon.

"Perverse one," said Prudentia, on one occasion, kissing Gabrielle; "have I not said a thousand times, that this handsome and gallant noble will marry you with joy?"

"Why does he not marry _you?_?" asked Gabrielle simply; "I am sure you are much prettier than I."

"I am only a poor girl of Spain (_Ay de mi Espana!_)--you are the daughter of a great noble."

"The count should remember that, and permit me to join my father----"

"Who is not himself free; rumour says he is marching to Stralsund; but truth adds, as I have said before, that he is imprisoned by the emperor at Vienna."

"My poor father!"

"The Count of Merodé is at present heir-presumptive to the Duke of Pomerania!"

"But the duke may marry."

"What! old Bogislaus IV?" asked Prudentia, with a merry burst of laughter.

"Yes--and have heirs."

"Very likely," replied Prudentia drily; "for heirs often come into noble families when they have no business to be there."

So great was her terror of Merodé, that Gabrielie scarcely ever dared to undress; she slept by snatches, closing her eyes like a child lulled by weariness and weeping; and often started, thinking that she heard the voice of her sister, addressing her in the accents of affection and tenderness, or distress and despair; or imagining that she felt the hateful touch of the crime-blackened Merodé, or saw the handsome face, the grave, dark, honest eye of Ian Dhu. Frequently she thought herself again in the little dogger, rolling over the foam-crested waves of the Lesser Belt, and that friends were beside her. Then she would spring from the couch of the beautiful but guilty Spanish girl, to look forth on the dawning day, and the young alder-trees, that waved their green branches beneath the old grey tower of Helnœsland.

At last, one morning Prudentia disappeared, and all the valuables of Merodé--his diamond order of Carinthia, his massive gold chain with his holy medals, his purse, &c.--vanished with her, and all the magnificent jewels he had placed at the disposal of Gabrielle, who was doubly shocked on discovering the character of the woman who had been her companion; and that she was Prudentia, the celebrated dancer, and the sister of the infamous Bandolo; for in the first burst of his anger, the count told every thing. The horror of Gabrielle increased. The remembered sweetness of the dancer's manner, seemed now all acting and professional study; her wit became levity, her charming candour, impudence.

Gabrielle felt more than ever the impossibility of trusting any of those around her, and her heart shrunk within itself. Dreading his own officers, none of whom were very scrupulous, Merodé kept her so secluded that now she saw no one, save an old German woman, the wife of a Fourrier de Campement, whose waggon for retailing beer and tobacco, or exchanging them for plunder, had followed the regiment from Vienna.

As one day will suffice for a specimen of the system pursued by the incorrigible Merodé, I will select that on which he last did Gabrielle the honour to place at her disposal his hand as well as his heart; for he was now beginning to reflect, that if she ever procured her freedom, without some such guarantee (for her silence) as matrimony, old Rupert-with-the-Red-plume, who certainly was, as he knew, then _en route_ for Stralsund, at the head of a column of infantry, might take a terrible vengeance on the whole house of Merodé.

The room occupied by Gabrielle was low and gloomy; it had two windows arched and grated:--one faced the Lesser Belt, and the shore of Alsen, about ten miles distant; the other opened to the promontory on which the tower was situated, and overlooked its spacious garden. There, the parterres were bordered by deep edgings of old boxwood; the older hedges and alleys formed labyrinths, overtopped by the rustling leaves of the shady beeches. About their old stems, the purple bramble and the yellow honeysuckle grew in heavy and matted clusters, while long dark wreaths of spiral ivy clambered along their gnarled branches. Here and there, to terminate the vista of the long shady walks, were placed several ancient stones, covered with hideous emblems, and those mysterious Runes, the invention of which is ascribed to Odin, ruler of the elements and king of spells.

Gabrielle seldom gazed into the garden, for some of Merodé's officers were usually seated on the benches there, playing chess, smoking, drinking, or toying with some of the ladies who had occupied the waggons seen by Father Ignatius. Her sad eyes were constantly fixed on the blue waters of the Belt; there liberty and freedom seemed to be; the passing ships--the sky and ocean--with the seabirds floating like white specks amid the sparkling azure.

Though the season was summer, a large piece of turf (the only fuel in Fuhnen) burned in the fireplace of her chamber; for these old castles by the sea are ever damp and cold. This was supplied from time to time by fresh peats heaped on by the Fourrier's wife, with an enormous pair of iron tongs, from an oak bunker, built into a recess, which, like the fireplace, the doors, windows, and every other opening in the edifice, had a low-browed narrow arch, with deep zigzag mouldings, springing from little shafted pillars with escalloped capitals. Great squares of hideous and uncouth tapestry, wrought, as tradition says, by the Princess Florentine, covered the walls. The figures and the subject were enough to appal even a stouter heart than Gabrielle's.

They represented the last human sacrifice offered up in Britain. In the midst of a wood of gloomy pines stood a group of tall, ghostly, and long-bearded Druids, armed with their brass celts, and bearing goblets of mead. Amidst them, stood Einhar, Earl or Jarl of Caithness, who, in a battle near Avon-Horsa, in the days when Gregory the Great was King of Scotland, had taken prisoner Haldona, Prince of Norway, and offered him up to Odin. On an altar of stone the prince lay bound, and in his throat was the knife of the arch-druid,* for even in Gregory's days, some priests of Paganrie still lingered in the northern isles.

* A mound still marks where this occurred, A.D. 893.

These horrible, misshapen, and ghastly figures, were unpleasant objects for Gabrielle to contemplate; and she always turned from them to the engrailed cross, the heraldic ships, and motto of the Sinclairs, which the princess had hung upon the pines of the forest, committing an anachronism by no means uncommon in ancient tapestries.

Lost in thought, with her cheek resting on her right hand, Gabrielle had been gazing on the waters of the Belt, which mellowed with the shore in the sunny evening haze. Her pretty feet, cased in high-heeled shoes of scarlet velvet, richly embroidered with gold, rested on a satin footstool. Her right hand played with her fine hair, which hung in short loose ringlets, according to the fashion of the time.

A step, and the touch of a hand aroused her.

She turned to meet the impassioned eyes of Merodé, with his lanky black mustache, long ringleted hair, parted in the centre of his forehead, and his sinister face a little flushed by wine and recent merriment. She gave a slight shudder--a shrug of her shoulder, and said--

"Oh--is it you again?"

"And have you really an aversion for me, whom even my enemies admit to be the first in the breach, the foremost in the charge, and the last in retreat--though the Imperialists never do retreat. The heedlessness and imprudence of youth have plunged me into an abyss of misery and error; but my pride still bears me up, Gabrielle--yea, above even your scorn."

She did not reply.

"Ah!" said he in a low voice, "if I could only be her friend, it would not be a bad preface to the part of lover."

"Friend--oh, never!" replied Gabrielle, who had overheard these words: "Merodé can never be the friend of a virtuous woman."

Merodé seemed to be stung by her words; but he laughed, while her eyes filled with tears.

"Upon my soul, girl, you will weary me by this incessant resistance. You are just like Clelia or Cleopatra, who did not give their lovers so much as the smallest kiss, sometimes for six years."

"Dear Ernestine--if you knew all I suffer here!" said Gabrielle, bursting as usual into a passionate fit of weeping.

"Oh, do not talk of Ernestine!" said Merodé, rather coarsely, for the wine he had just imbibed was loosening his tongue, while it clouded his faculties. "I do not see why you should have such a horror of following my regiment in a gilded caleche drawn by six white horses, when she follows the bare legs of the Scottish musketeers in a caleche drawn by two brown Holsteiners."

"Wretch--silence!" said Gabrielle, crossing to the opposite window, and seating herself.

"Wretch--silence? here is a specimen of such good manners as we learn in Vienna!" said Merodé, following and leaning on the back of her chair. He continued to say a hundred fine things, with which the fluency of the time, his own ready invention, and impulsive nature supplied him. For more than an hour he continued to talk thus; and for that hour Gabrielle did nothing but weep and sob--sob and weep--without replying, till her eyes became inflamed, her face pale, her head ached, and her heart grew sick.

"Ah! tell me, my pretty Gabrielle, why am I so repugnant to you? 'Pon my honour, one would almost imagine I was a veritable ogre! Now, for the last time, I conjure you to tell me, if I have any hopes of living, or if I must blow out my brains? Speak--this silence--this grief--this apathy, overwhelm me with sorrow. Ah, what an unhappy rascal I am!"

Still there was no reply given.

Merodé had been so accustomed by presents, by flattery, and feigned affection, to overcome every obstacle thrown in his way by the many dark, brown, and fair beauties whom he had subdued, that he was piqued, perplexed, and even amused by the difficulty and resistance he encountered in Gabrielle. This gave her a new and dangerous charm; and, after his own fashion, he was now beginning to love her, at the very time when--had he been successful--that love would have been dying away; so he continued to string together assertions of his love and admiration, in the style of camp and barrack love-making, most familiar to him.

"You are so enchanting, Gabrielle! you are just the height I admire, and you must remember how I adored you at Vienna. Though when taken in detail, perhaps, your face is not of that kind which sculptors--the blockheads!--term strictly handsome, when taken altogether, it is divine! Your eyes are lively, full of tenderness and fire; your lips are full of smiles--(certainly not just now, by the Henckers!) but red as a rosebud; and your ankles--'pon my soul, they are very fine!"

Here Gabrielle retreated to the other window, and turned her back, but he followed her; then she began to tremble with anger.

"I do not mean to insult you--I do not mean to be rude! I have the tongue of an ass," said Merodé, beginning to speak very thick. "What is all this about? Now, if I was not a young fellow of spirit--ah pardon me, poor little Tot!--or is it a romance we are acting? I never meant to marry, but hang me as high as Mordecai, if I will not marry you, Gabrielle, ay, marry you in sober earnest--rather than not have you."

"Insult upon insult!" she murmured.

"Come, come, Gabrielle," said he, approaching a step; "listen to what I say, for assuredly your friends have forgotten you."

"It almost seems so," she replied, drowned in tears; "but even it were so, God will not forget me."

"Neither He nor they can protect you, while under the colours of the valiant regiment de Merodé."

"For pity's sake, do not, on any account, be tempted to speak blasphemy," said she.

"Der Teufel! what a difference between girls of eighteen and girls of five-and-forty; the first are as timid as the latter are forward. If I had said to the Baroness Fritz a thousandth part of the fine things I have said to you, she would have melted away in my arms at once. But what the deuce is the matter now? What is it you see; why are your eyes fixed--your nostrils dilated--your cheek flushed? Ah, damnation! am I tipsy, or blind?"

The sad face of Gabrielle had suddenly changed. Her eyes sparkled with tears of astonishment and joy; her cheeks flushed with crimson, her lips trembled.

"Ian!" she exclaimed, stretching her hands towards the window. "Ian--my cousin--come to me--save me, and take me to Ernestine!"

The surprise of Merodé at all this speedily became rage. He followed the direction of her eye from the window, and, gazing along the sandy beach towards the north, at an angle of the rock on which the outer-wall of the tower was built, he saw the imposing figure of a Scottish Highlander standing erect, as he coolly took a survey of the whole place. He wore a green tartan kilt, with a bright cuirass and helmet; the entire pinions of an eagle surmounted the cone of the latter; a round shield was on his left arm, and a drawn claymore glittered in his right hand. On seeing this bold fellow within musket-shot of the walls, Merodé could scarcely believe his senses; but the stranger was Ian, as the sequel will show.

"Der Teufel!" said the count, almost choking with rage; "I will notch that rascal's head for him. I knew not that any of these Scots were on this side of the Belt. Hallo! to your arms there," he cried, rushing down-stairs to the court-yard; "to your muskets there, the quarter-guard! Kaspar--Schwindler do you see that fellow, by the water-side?"

They did see him, and fired several shots, the report of which palsied Gabrielle with fear; and she fell upon her knees, but forgot to pray, for her heart had forgotten to beat; and, like one who had been stunned by a thunderbolt, she listened, as shot after shot rang from the tower battlement over her head; and then she saw the snow-white smoke curling away on the wind.

Ian had vanished before the first shot was fired.

"He has escaped," said Merodé, returning breathless, with knitted brows and a bitter smile; "are you rejoiced to hear it?"

Gabrielle did not reply; her thankfulness was too great for utterance.

"Ay, the tall Scot brandished his sword in defiance, and even while we saw the bullets knocking the sand about him, and whitening the trunks of the trees, he plunged into yonder thicket and disappeared. I have sent out Sergeant Swashbuckler, with a party, and hope to have him hanged as a spy before nightfall.

"And so yonder tall fellow is your lover, eh? Oh you need not deny it; I saw your eye say so. Never did a woman's eye light up as yours was lit, save for a lover or a husband. Now little one, tell me, what see you in that great swinging Scot, that you cannot see in me? Still no answer. Are we becoming sulky, passionate, and quarrelsome? 'Pon my soul, women are greater enigmas than those of the Sphynx I used to hear about at Gottingen. So we have got a lover, have we? oh--very well! I shall not break my heart, believe me."

Merodé was angry, and his heart was full of bitterness and jealousy; but he concealed it admirably.

"Now that your friends are in this neighbourhood, I shall have work cut out for me; they must be received with such hospitality and honour as the arsenals of the Emperor enable us to afford to such visitors. Farewell just now, Gabrielle. I give you three days to think of it. (Three days! now, have I not the patience of Job?) If in that time you do not learn to love me, I shall hate you!" and he retired singing the fag end of an old song,

"Three days, fair maid, my love will last, And in three days my love is past."

New hope sprang up in the bosom of Gabrielle.

Ian--and what a tide of suffocating thoughts his cherished image brought upon her mind--could not be alone, if in the vicinity of Helnœsland. He had heard of her detention there, and had come to free--perhaps to love, her.

What happiness might yet be in store for her!

Since she had been Merodé's prisoner, she had calculated the time, and found it many, many weeks, these made hundreds of hours, each of which had been counted, and watched wearily too.

She ceased to count them from that period, and began to reckon anew from the time when she had seen Ian.

He escaped the Merodeurs, and the fate their leader intended him to suffer; but many a long hour passed slowly on, and Gabrielle found herself still a prisoner in the old tower of Helnœsland.