Chapter 6

_Goaler._ You shall not now be stolen: you have locks upon you: So graze as you find pasture.--_Cymbeline_, Act. V.

During the two or three minutes that the cavalry and their prisoner were waiting for an answer to the summons,--Bertram, who was relapsing at every instant into a dozy slumber and then as suddenly starting awake (probably in consequence of the abrupt stillness succeeding to the severe motion of a high-trotting horse), was suddenly awakened by the noise and stir of admission into the castle, which unfolded a succession of circumstances as grand and impressive as if they had been arranged by some great artist of scenical effect. From one of the towers which flanked the gates, a question was put and immediately answered by the foremost trooper: question and answer however were alike lost to Bertram and dispersed upon the stormy ravings of the wind. Soon after was heard the clank of bars and the creaking of the gates,--gates

That were plated with iron within and without Whence an army in battle array had march'd out.[1]

They were like the gates of a cathedral, and they began slowly to swing backward on their hinges. As they opened, the dimensions and outlines of their huge valves were defined by the light within; and, when they were fully open, a beautiful spectacle was exposed of a crowd of faces with flambeaus intermingled fluctuating on the further side of the court. The gateway and the main area of the court were now cleared for the entrance of the cavalry; and the great extent of the court was expressed by the remote distance at which the crowd seemed to stand. Then came the entrance of the dragoons, which was a superb expression of animal power. The ground continued to ascend even through the gateway and into the very court itself; and to the surprise of Bertram who had never until this day seen the magnificent cavalry of the English army, the leading trooper reined up tightly, and spurred his horse, who started off with the bounding ramp of a leopard through the archway. Bertram's horse was the sixtieth in the file; and, as the course of the road between him and the gates lay in a bold curve, he had the pleasure of watching this movement as it spread like a train of gun-powder, or like a race of sun-beams over a corn-field through the whole line a-head of him: it neared and neared: in a moment he himself was carried away and absorbed into the vortex: the whole train swept like a hurricane through the gloomy gateway into the spacious court flashing with unsteady lights, wheeled round with beautiful precision into line, halted, and dressed.

What followed passed as in a dream to Bertram: for he was by this time seriously ill; and would have fallen off horseback, if unsupported. The lights, the tumult, and his previous exhaustion, all contributed to confuse him: and, like one who rises from his bed in the delirium of a fever, he saw nothing but a turbulent vision of torches, men, horses' heads, glittering arms; windows that reverberated the uncertain gleams of the torches; and overhead an army of clouds driving before the wind; and here and there a pencil of moonlight that played upon the upper windows of an antique castle with a tremulous and dreamy light. To his bewildered senses the objects of sight were all blended and the sounds all dead and muffled: he distinguished faintly the voice of an officer giving the word of command: he heard as if from some great distance the word--"Dismount:" he felt himself lifted off horseback; and then he lost all consciousness of what passed until he found himself sitting in the arms of a soldier, and an old man in livery administering a cordial. On looking round, he perceived many others in the same dress, which he recognised as the Walladmor livery; and he now became aware that he was in Walladmor Castle.

"Is the Lord Lieutenant at home, Maxwell?" said the officer, addressing the old man who bore the office of warden in the castle.

"No, Sir Charles: he dines at Vaughan house--about twenty miles off. But he will return by midnight. And he left orders that the prisoner should be confined in the Falcon's tower."

Bertram here stood up, and signified that he was able to walk: upon which Sir Charles Davenant, the officer who had commanded the party of dragoons, directed the two constables to go before the prisoner and two dragoons behind--whilst the old warden showed the way.

Raising his head as they crossed the extensive court, Bertram saw amongst the vast range of windows three or four which were open and crowded by female heads as he inferred from the number of white caps. Under other circumstances he would have been apt to smile at such a spectacle as a pleasant expression of female curiosity: but at present, when he was taking his leave of social happiness--for how long a time his ignorance of the English laws would not allow him to guess, the sight was felt rather as a pathetic memento of the household charities under their tenderest aspect--and as suggesting the gentleness of female hands in painful contrast to the stern deportment of the agents of police and martial power by whom he was now surrounded. "Let all cynical women-haters," thought he, "be reduced for a month or two to my situation--and they will learn the blessed influences on human happiness of what they idly affect to despise." His own indiscretion however, as he could not disguise from himself, had reduced him to this situation: and however disturbed at the prospect before him he submitted with an air of cheerfulness and followed his guides with as firm a step as his bodily weakness would allow. Passing from the great court, at one corner, through a long and winding gateway feebly illuminated by two lanthorns, they found themselves at the edge of a deep abyss. It was apparently a chasm in the rock that had been turned to account by the original founder of the castle, as a natural and impassable moat; far beyond it rose a lofty wall pierced with loop-holes and belted with towers--that necessarily overlooked and commanded the whole outer works through which they had passed. At a signal from the old man a draw-bridge was dropped with a jarring sound over the chasm. Crossing this they entered a small court--surrounded by a large but shapeless pile of buildings, which gave little sign externally of much intercourse with the living world: here and there however from its small and lofty windows, sunk in the massy stonework, a dull light was seen to twinkle; and, as far as the lanthorn would allow him to see, Bertram observed every where the marks of hoary antiquity. At this point the officer quitted them, having first given his orders to the two dragoons in an under voice.

The termination of their course was not yet reached. At the further end of the court, the old warden opened a little gate; through this, and by a narrow arched passage which the dragoons could only pass by stooping, they reached at length a kind of guard-room which through two holes pierced in the wall received some light--at this time but feebly dispensed by the moon. This room, it was clear, lay near to the sea-shore; for the wind without seemed as if it would tear up the very foundations of the walls. The old man searched anxiously in his bundle of keys, and at length applied an old rusty key to the door-lock. Not without visible signs of anxiety he then proceeded to unlatch the door. But scarce had he half performed his work, when the storm spared him the other half by driving in the door and stretching him at his length upon the floor.

Below them at an immense depth lay the raging sea--luridly illuminated by the moon which looked out from the storm-rent clouds. The surf sent upwards a deafening roar, although the raving of the wind seemed to struggle for the upper hand. This aerial gate led to a little cell which might not unjustly have been named the house of death. From the rocky wall, upon which the guard-room stood, ran out at right angles into the sea a curtain of granite--so narrow that its utmost breadth hardly amounted to five feet, and resembling an artificial terrace or corridor that had been thrown by the bold architect across the awful abyss to a mighty pile of rock that rose like a column from the very middle of the waves. About a hundred feet from the shore this gallery terminated in a circular tower, which--if the connecting terrace had fallen in--would have looked like the work of a magician. This small corridor appeared the more dreadful, because the raging element below had long since forced a passage beneath it; and, the breach being continually widened by the equinoctial storms, it was at length so far undermined that it seemed to hang like an archway in the air; and the narrow causeway might now with some propriety be termed a sea-bridge.

Bertram here recognized that part of Walladmor Castle which he had seen from the deck of the _Fleurs de Lys_.[2]

The rude dragoons even looked out with awe upon the dreadful spectacle which lay before and below. One of them stepped with folded arms to the door-way, looked out in silence, and shaking his head said--"So that's the cage our bird must be carried to?"

"Aye," said the old man, (who had now raised himself from the floor;) "desperate offenders are always lodged there."

"By G---," replied the dragoon, "at Vittoria I rode down the whole line of a French battalion that was firing by platoons: there's not a straw to choose between such service as _that_ and crossing a d---d bridge in the clouds through a gale of wind like this. A man must have the devil's luck and his own to get safe over."

"What the h---ll!" said the other dragoon,--"this fellow is to be killed at any rate; so he's out of the risk: but must _we_ run the hazard of our lives for a fellow like him? I'm as bold as another when I see reason: but I'll have some hire, I'll have value down, if I am to stand this risk."

"It's impossible," cried the first constable--"no man can stand up against the wind on such a devil's gallery: what the devil? it has no balustrade."

"Shall we pitch the fellow down below?" said the second constable.

"I have nothing to say against it," replied one of the dragoons.

"Nor I," said the other, "but then mind--we must tell no tales."

"Oh! as to that," replied the first constable, "we shall say the wind carried him out of our hands; and I suppose there's no cock will crow against us when the job's done."

"And besides it is no sin," observed the second; "for hang he must; that's settled; such a villain as him can do no less. So, as matters stand, I don't see but it will be doing him a good turn to toss him into the water."

Unanimous as they were in the plan, they differed about the execution; none choosing to lay hands on the prisoner first. And very seasonably a zealous friend to Bertram stepped forward in the person of the warden. He protested that, as the prisoner was confided to his care, he must and would inform against them unless they flung _him_ down also. Under this dilemma, they chose rather to face again the perils of Vittoria. Ropes were procured, passed round the bodies of all the men, and then secured to the door-posts. That done, the constables stepped out first, the old man in the centre, and after them the two dragoons taking the prisoner firmly under their arms. The blasts of wind were terrifically violent; and Bertram, as he looked down upon the sea which raged on both sides below him, felt himself giddy; but the dragoons dragged him across. The old man had already opened the tower, and Bertram heard chains rattling. They led him down several steps, cut the ropes in two which confined him, but in their stead put heavy and rusty fetters about his feet and swollen hands. The five agents of police then remounted the steps; the door was shut: and the sound of bolts, locks, and chains, announced to the prisoner that he was left to his own solitary thoughts.

FOOTNOTES TO "CHAPTER XV.":

[Footnote 1: Christabelle.]

[Footnote 2: See p. 80. of vol. 1.]