The little lover had built for himself a booth against the steep rocks. Into this Morsinia would enter with bread and water, and placing them upon the stone which answered for a table, say, in imitation of older maidens assuming the care of husbands, "So will I always and faithfully provide for thee." Then she would touch the sides of the miniature house with a twig, which she called her distaff, saying, "I will weave for thee, my lord, goodly garments and gay." She would also sit down and undress and redress her doll, which Constantine had carved from wood, and which they said would do for the real baby that the bride was expected to array, in the ceremony by which she acknowledged the obligations of wifehood.[11]
But Michael was not at all disconsolate at this preference shown his brother; for he knew that Morsinia would prefer him to all the world when she heard what a great soldier he had become. Indeed, on some days Michael was lord of the little booth; and more than once the fair enchantress put the evergreen loop around both the boys in as sincere indecision as has sometimes vexed older hearts than hers.
CHAPTER III.
In the winter of 1443—a few months subsequent to the events with which our story begins—the Pass of Slatiza echoed other sounds than the cry of the eagle, the bleating of the flocks, and the songs and halloos of the mountaineers. Distant bugle calls floated between the cliffs. At night a fire would flash from a peak, and be suddenly extinguished, as another gleamed from a peak beyond. Strange men had gone up and down the road. With one of these Uncle Kabilovitsch had wandered off, and been absent several days. Great was the excitement of the little folks when Milosch told them that a real army was not far off, coming from the Christian country to the north of them, and that its general was no other than the great Hunyades, the White Knight of Wallachia—called so because he wore white armor—the son of that same King Sigismund and the fair Elizabeth Morsiney. How little Morsinia's cheeks paled, while those of the boys burned, and their eyes flashed, as their father told them, by the fire-light in the centre of their cabin, that the White Knight had already conquered the Turks at Hermanstadt and at Vasag and on the banks of the Morava, and was—if the story which Milosch had heard from some scouts were true—preparing to burst through the Balkan mountains, and descend upon the homes of the Turk on the southern plains. Little did they sleep at night, in the excitement of the belief that, at any day, they might see the soldiers—real soldiers, just like those of Alexander, and those of Bajazet—tramping through the Pass. The tremor of the earth, occasioned by some distant landslide, in their excited imagination was thought to be due to the tramp of a myriad feet. The hoot of the owl became the trumpet call for the onset: and the sharp whistle of the wind, between leafless trees and along the ice-covered rocks, seemed like the whizzing flight of the souls of the slain.
Once, just as the gray dawn appeared, Kabilovitsch, who had been absent for several days, came hurriedly with the alarming news that the Turks, steadily retiring before the Christians, would soon occupy the Pass. They were already coming up the defiles, as the mists rise along the sides of the mountains, in dense masses, hoping to gain such vantage ground that they could hurl the troops of Hunyades down the almost perpendicular slopes before they could effect a secure lodgment on the summit. The children and women must leave herds and homes, and fly instantly. The only safe retreat was the great cave, which the mountaineers knew of, lying off towards the other Pass, that of Soulourderbend.
The fugitives were scarcely gone when the mountain swarmed with Moslems. The mighty mass of humanity crowded the cliffs like bees preparing to swarm. They fringed the breastworks of native rock with abattis made of huge trunks of trees. During the day the Turks had diverted a mountain stream, so that, leaving its bed, it poured a thin sheet of water over the steepest part of the road the Christians were to ascend. This, freezing during the night, made a wall of ice. The Christians were thus forced to leave the highway and attempt to scale the crags far and near; a movement which the Turks met by spreading themselves everywhere above them. Upon ledges and into crevices which had never before felt the pressure of human feet clambered the contestants. Every rock was empurpled with gore. Turkish turban and Hungarian helmet were caught upon the same thorny bush; while the heads which had worn them rolled together in the same gully, and stared their deathless hatred from their dead eyes.
The Turks in falling back discovered the mouth of the cave in which the peasants had taken refuge. As the Moslem bugles sounded the retreat, lest they should be cut off by the Christians who had scaled the heights on their flanks, they seized the women and children, who soon were lost to each other's sight in the skurry of the retiring host. The hands of Constantine were tied about the neck, and his legs about the loins, of a huge Moslem, to whose keeping he had been committed. An arrow pierced the soldier to the heart.
It seemed as if more than keenness of eye—some inspiration of his fatherly instinct—led Kabilovitsch on through the vast confusion, far down the slope, outrunning the fugitives and their pursuers, avoiding contact with any one by leaping from rock to rock and darting like a serpent through secret by-paths, until he reached the horsemen of the Turks, who had not been able to follow the foot-soldiers up the steep ascent. He knew that his little girl would be given in charge to some one of these. He, therefore, concealed himself in the growing darkness behind a clump of evergreen trees, close to which one must pass in order to reach the horses. A moment later, with the stealth and the strength of a panther, he leaped upon a Turk. The man let go the tiny form of the girl he was carrying; but, before he could assume an attitude of defence, the iron grip of Kabilovitsch was upon his throat, and the steel of the infuriated old man in his heart. Under the sheltering darkness, carrying his rescued child, Kabilovitsch threaded his way along ledges and balconies of rock projecting so slightly from the precipitous mountain that they would have been discerned, even in daylight, by no eye less expert than his own. At one place his way was blocked by a dead body which had fallen from the ledge above, and been caught by the tangled limbs of the mountain laurel. Without relinquishing his load, he pushed with his foot the lifeless mass down through the entanglement, and listened to the snapping of the bushes and the crashing of loosened stones, until the heavy thud announced that it had found a resting place.
"So God rest his soul, be he Christian or Paynim!" muttered the old man. "And now, my child, are you frighted?"