“How did you first meet Jurka? How did he know these were here? Whom have you killed to get them for him?”
Dmitri strove to speak calmly. Behind the boy’s story lay some conspiracy of Jurka’s, another undercurrent to reckon with in the great crimson tidal wave.
“I was suspected of being a revolutionist and ordered shot.” Steccho spoke jerkily, between his teeth, his head back as he smoked. “My father was head gamekeeper, before the war, on the Count’s estate north of Rigl where our home was. You know the place? On the mountain road from Moritza there is a castle of yellow rock standing high above the town.” He drew long inhaled puffs from his cigarette. The castle in the sun glow! The strange, numb, unsteadiness swept over him again as it had back there on the fire escape when he had watched the man seize Carlota. Lust and youth, even as Jurka had ravished the sweetness and laughter and pure joyousness of Katinka.
Dmitri and the room slipped out of his vision, submerged in a gray ocean of restfulness beyond which gleamed the castle of his dreams. How it had stood as an eternal symbol to his boyhood of the pomp and majesty of kings! Then had come the schooling at Sofia, and the smouldering fires of revolution that crept through the dry rotting underbrush and mould of oppression, unnoted by those who saw only the bravery of waving green boughs in the sunlight.
He had met Dmitri Kavec there, a teacher of political economy and sociology, tutoring younger men to pay his way, writing for certain Continental papers, talking always of the day when freedom should dawn. He was a Czech, with a mingling of Romany blood in his veins. It showed in his mastery of the violin, in his dark skin, not swarthy like Steccho’s, but clear and pale as yellow wine with the underlay of red. The boy’s eyes were furtive, restless, Dmitri’s like those of some captive eagle that sits motionless, watching passing crowds, alert and fearless. He, Steccho, had felt proud when he had been asked to join the group of men who assembled nightly in Dmitri’s quarters above the old coffee-house in the lower square. He had sat and listened to them, learning much of the underground wiring of secret diplomacy, much of the patience of the thinkers and workers.
Then had come dissension and a break in the university club ranks. Dmitri was called a dreamer, one of those who believed the end might be reached by brotherhood and teaching of the people. Even Steccho had chafed at such doctrine. Rather he liked the fighting, the carrying of blazing flambeaux in the race, the song of the torch, as Dmitri called their propaganda. After the outbreak of war he had become a spy for the Internationals. It had ended with that winter day when the royalist troops had caught him hiding in Rigl. A troop occupied the town on its way up to the mountain passes above Moritza. Personages of importance sat in conference with Jurka in the old smoke-stained room at the inn, and Steccho had found a way of listening, half-wedged down the side flue of an old rock chimney.
He had overheard much, gossip mostly from Jurka, of the vacillating, ambitious king who craved the title of Czar, of his wife, the sour-visaged queen, whom he had never loved, the stool pigeon of William. They had chatted of these, speculating on who would head the royalist cause if some day Ferdinand chanced to oversleep, found like his old friend Abdul Hamid with a five-inch blade parting his ribs.
Steccho had listened eagerly. There was a trickle of truth here and there through the talk. They placed more confidence in Sophia than in the king. The soldiers were grumbling for back pay. Some officers had been shot in the back by their own men. They had been caught fraternizing with the enemy, exchanging food and tobacco under the very noses of the nobles. Stores of supplies for the officers’ mess had been broken open and scattered to the wounded by their comrades.
Straws in the wind, Jurka said, his back to the fireplace, but signs to the wise. The people wearied of oppression. They must be taught to dance to a new tune. With victory Bulgaria would swallow up her enemies, she would sit like a brooding lioness, her cubs about her, renegade Greece, recreant Roumania, Servia crawling, the Slovacs whipped to heel. And eager to hear more, Steccho had leaned like a fool too far forward to catch the low-spoken words, and a rumble of loosened bricks had startled the soldiers into action.
He had been forced down by a dozen pricking, reaching sword-points as if he had been a porcupine in a hole, and had been condemned to be shot at once against the stable wall in the courtyard below.