I shook it, and threw myself against it with my whole force, but it would not yield—the fugitive had barred it and cut off our only means of escape, for below us half a dozen mutineers began to ascend with fierce cries of baffled rage. I thrust the princess behind me into the shadow of the doorway, and Maluta darted after her, crowding against her feet, while I stood alone at the top of the stair, facing the savages as they came on. I was no boy; I had seen five pitched battles in my life, and I was under fire with the household troops at Seneffe, but I confess that none of these things moved me so much as those half dozen men leaping up that dim old stair, with just light enough to flash on their naked blades and show the whites of their wild eyes. A surly, mad, long-haired, long-bearded lot, with blood upon them and the reek of slaughter.
It takes long to tell it, but it was not long before they were upon me—crying for blood and vengeance.
XIX: AT NIGHTFALL
AT first I think the rioters took me for the boyar they were pursuing, for they leaped upward, yelling triumphantly, but the foremost, looking into the muzzle of my pistol when he expected an unarmed man, fell back a little on the others, and gave me time to speak.
“In the name of Sophia Alexeievna,” I said, remembering the magical effect of the password, “what seek ye here at the door of the chapel?”
“One of the Naryshkin rogues,” they cried; “and what are you?”
“A follower of the Czarevitch Ivan,” I said, and held up the signet.
They stood huddled together, uncertain for the moment, but already hungry for my blood. In that hour it mattered little whether I was a Naryshkin or a Miloslavsky; moreover, I saw that one of the knaves had caught sight of a woman’s figure behind me. I held my finger on the trigger of my pistol; it would cost them dear, but I had no hope of conquering six.
“He lies!” muttered one in the rear, a great brute whose brawny arms, bare to the shoulders, were smeared with blood; “he is a Naryshkin, or one of their accursed foreigners; he cannot talk without a twist of the tongue.”
“There’s a woman behind him,” cried another, and at that they began to laugh in a manner that might well have chilled the blood of the strongest.