King Matthias and the Beggar Boy Part 8

The battle was over and won, and a fortnight later Tornay Mihaly was one of the king's lieutenant-generals.

Matthias had by this time grown extremely fond of the young man. Michael was always so vigilantly on the alert, so blindly devoted to him, and so quick in his ways, that the king had no misgivings about any commission which he entrusted to him. It was certain to be done, and done well.

But this was not all. He was pleased, too, with the young man's evident grat.i.tude and n.o.bility of character--though not as much surprised as some others, who fancied that such things were not to be looked for in a beggar lad; for the king could read faces, and he had long since made up his mind about Michael.

In those days there were two bastions on the walls of the castle of Buda, towards Zugliget. They were used as magazines, but in case of a siege--which at that time Buda had little cause to dread--they would be garrisoned with soldiers, and were therefore already provided with guns.

These two bastions, one of which remains, though in an altered form, to the present day, were about a couple of fathoms apart; and now the king gave orders that both were to be set in order and made fit for dwelling-houses.

There was no opening on three of the sides, with the exception of some small windows high up, which let in the light, but would give the intended inmates no outlook; but on the fourth side, where the bastions faced each other, there were four long, narrow windows in each, guarded by strong iron bars.

The king was just now staying in Buda, and had given Michael command of part of the castle garrison; and he was so well satisfied with the way in which he discharged his duties, that hardly a week pa.s.sed without his giving him some fresh mark of his favour.

As for Michael's pa.s.sionate attachment to the king, it increased daily; every hint from him was a command, and he was always on the watch to try to interpret his wishes before they were put into words.

One morning he was summoned to the king's presence.

"Michael," said the king, in a good-humoured tone, "I am angry with you, and I am going to punish you."

"How have I been so unfortunate as to deserve the anger of the best of kings and masters?" asked the young man.

"Well, what do you think?" Matthias went on, laughing. "Am I very angry, and am I going to pa.s.s a severe sentence?"

"Mr. King," answered Tornay, who saw at once that Matthias was in high good-humour, "I think Your Highness has got hold of your anger by the small end this time, and perhaps you won't go quite so far as to have my head cut off."

"Your head may possibly be allowed to remain in its accustomed place,"

said the king jestingly. "However, it is not necessary that you should know which part of your person I have sentenced to punishment; it is enough, gossip, that you are to expiate your offence, and that to begin with I am going to send you to prison."

"Perhaps Your Highness is going to entrust me with the command of some abandoned wooden castle?"[11] said Michael.

[Footnote 11: Many small castles of wood and stone had been built in the north by the Bohemian freebooters already mentioned.]

"No," said the king; "you have not found it out this time. I have got other quarters for you."

"Very well, as Your Highness wills; but you won't get much good out of me if I am in prison."

"Listen. You can see the two bastions yonder on the Mount St. Gellert side of the castle. I have had them put in order, and you are to live in one of them."

Tornay listened, but he could not make it out at all. He saw the two bastions sure enough, and as they did not now look at all gloomy or prison-like, he was not alarmed at the idea of living in one of them; but he could not by any means conceive what the king's object could be.

"You are surprised," said the king, "aren't you? But the prison is tolerable enough. You will have four small rooms; and as for the look-out, well, I think you will be content with it; and then you will be your own jailer, so you need have no fear as to the strictness of the discipline. In a word, you are to move into your new quarters this very day."

Tornay retired; but on his way he racked his brains to discover why the king could want him to move into the bastion. What reason could he have?

If he was his own jailer, and could go in and out as he pleased, it was not a prison, simply different quarters, and better, at all events, than those he had had before; for he had been living in a very poor apartment of the castle, looking into a by-street.

"Well," thought he, "what do I know as to the king's motives? Who can ever tell what he has in his head? He wishes me to live there--good!

then that's enough, and there I will live."

So Tornay took possession of one of the bastions facing Pesth, and was very well satisfied indeed with his new quarters, which the king had had plainly but comfortably enough furnished. Perhaps the king had placed him there only as an excuse for making him more presents.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE BEGGAR BOY'S SONG.

Michael found himself very well off in his new quarters; and as nothing happened to explain the king's whim, he was confirmed in his belief that its only object was to make him more comfortable.

He was very punctual in attending to all his duties, and inspected the garrison very frequently, but he spent a good many of his spare hours in reading and study. For the king liked men of learning and cultivation, and Michael was bent upon pleasing him in these matters if he could.

Being in Buda, with a little time on his hands, gave him a capital opportunity of improving himself; for he had become acquainted with the king's great friend the librarian Galeotti, and through him he now made acquaintance with the famous library which Matthias was then forming under the direction of Galeotti and his fellow-worker Ugoletti.

The library was in the castle, and consisted of two great halls, in which, by the end of his life, the king had collected above fifty thousand volumes. He was constantly buying up valuable ma.n.u.scripts in Italy, Constantinople, and Asia; and he kept a number of men constantly employed in copying--four in Florence and thirty in Buda.

The ma.n.u.scripts were many of them beautifully illuminated and adorned with tasteful initials and pictures, and frequently with likenesses of the king and his wife, so that they were valuable as works of art.

The art of printing, too, had been lately introduced, and the printing-press was kept constantly at work adding to the contents of the polished cedar-wood book-shelves, which were protected by silken, gold-embroidered curtains: for Matthias treated his books royally and as if he loved them.

Besides books, the two halls contained three hundred statues, some ancient and some modern; and in the vestibule were astronomical and mathematical instruments, with a large celestial globe in the centre supported by two genii.

Michael had abundant opportunities of study, and knew that he could not please the king better than by availing himself of them. The Italian which he had learned from the grooms at Visegrad he now found most useful, as it enabled him to talk to the various artists, sculptors, musicians, and other distinguished men from Italy, whom the king loved to have about him.

The two librarians of course he knew well; then there was the great painter Filippo Lippi, and the Florentine architect Averulino, by whom the royal palaces both in Buda and Visegrad were beautified and enlarged. Carbo of Ferrara was writing a dialogue, in which he sang the praises of King Matthias; Galeotti was busy with a book of entertaining stories, full of anecdotes and sayings of the king, to which Michael certainly might have contributed much that was interesting; Bonfinius of Ascoli, reader to the queen, was engaged upon his History of Hungary; and various Hungarian authors were composing their chronicles and writing legends and poetry in Latin--that being still the language of the learned throughout Europe.

From the windows of his "prison" Michael had no view, as has been said, except of the other bastion, which was not particularly interesting, as it was uninhabited, so that he was not tempted to waste any time in looking out of the window. But he had only to go into the palace gardens when he wanted to get away from his books and rest his eyes and brain; and these covered a great deal of ground, extending indeed as far as to the neighbouring hills, then still covered with forests, where the king, who was an ardent sportsman, often went hunting.

Michael was sitting in the window one morning to eat his breakfast, when he chanced to look across to the opposite window, and saw, to his great surprise, that there was some one there, or at least he fancied that he saw some one, but the glimpse was so momentary that he could not be sure.

When one has nothing at all to look at, very small trifles become quite important; and the idea that he might have, or be going to have, neighbours was quite exciting. Certainly the king had said something about it, but hitherto he had seen no one.

In a fit of curiosity, Michael opened the window and looked out from time to time while he went on with his meal. Once he thought he saw some one flit past it again; but he had to hurry off to his military duties before he could make out whether the rooms were really occupied or not.

When he came back, the very first thing he did was to go up to the window again; and at last his curiosity was gratified, at least to some extent, for two persons were there--two women, one seated at a little embroidery-frame, and the other standing over her, looking at her work.

Their faces were hidden from him at first, but from their dress and figures he could see that one was elderly and the other quite young.

Presently the younger one raised her head from her work and looked up, and from the momentary glance which he had of her features, Michael fancied that he had seen her before somewhere or other. He could not for the moment think where it could have been, for it was the merest glimpse he had of her face before she looked down again.

He must not be so rude as to watch; but he could not resist an occasional glance as long as they were there. In another quarter of an hour, however, both figures had disappeared, and Michael saw no more of them. But the discovery that he had neighbours was quite exciting, and he was so much interested that he shook his head with some impatience when he found the window deserted in the afternoon. Till this event occurred, Michael had been in the habit of spending as short a time as possible within doors, and was most eager to mount his horse as soon as ever he had finished the work which he had set himself for the day. But now he was so consumed with curiosity that he actually kept his steed waiting a whole quarter of an hour later than usual, while he watched for the reappearance of the ladies.

But it was all to no purpose. For a moment he caught sight of a white hand raised, either to fasten the window or to point to something, but the next instant this too had disappeared. He was on the watch again when he returned home, taking care, however, to stand or sit where he could not be seen; and the next day and the next it was the same. He spent so much time in watching, indeed, that he got quite angry with himself at last; and then he would go out riding, and come back quite vexed and out of sorts.

"Bother it all!" he thought to himself; "of course I shall see her again sooner or later if she is there."

He was standing in his usual place again one evening, when he saw two shadows move away from the opposite window in the most tantalizing manner, and he felt so hopeful that he sat down to watch at his ease.

If tobacco had been known in those days, no doubt he would have lighted his pipe or a cigar; but as it was not, he had nothing to console himself with, and could only sit and "look for King David and his harp"

in the moon, as the saying is.