A Prize for Princes [NOOK Book]

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Richard Stetton stopped at the first turn into the main street and gazed down its length, lit by the soft brilliance of the moon. What he had seen in the last hour made him regret that he had come to Fasilica; he cursed the insatiable and morbid curiosity of youth that had brought him there.

Gutters running with blood; wild-eyed Turks, drunk with victory, striking down men, women, and children and looting their pockets and homes; the pitiful cowardice of the small garrison of soldiers whose duty it was to protect the little town with their lives; all this filled him with a revolting disgust and made him long to flee somewhere, anywhere, away from the sights and sounds of this night of horror.

Suddenly, as he stood wondering which way to turn, surrounded on every side by the terrible din and confusion of the stricken city, he was startled by hearing a new sound that rose above all the others.

It was the ringing of a bell, in wild, irregular strokes that seemed to epitomize the cries of suffering and despair which filled the streets from one end of the town to the other.

Stetton looked up; there could be no doubt of it -- the sound of the bell came from the air directly above; and there, before his eyes, he saw the form of a belfry in the shape of a cross appearing dimly in the moonlight, at the top of a low, rambling building of dark stone, against which he was at that moment leaning.

The significance of the cross did not escape the young man; his face went white as he murmured: "A convent! God pity them!"

He turned and started to retrace his steps down the little street through which he hadreached the center of the town.

As he turned he was jostled roughly by three or four Turks who were rushing past with drawn bayonets, and he again sought the shelter of the wall. Other soldiers came, until a group of thirty or more were gathered on the street in front of the stone building.

"This is the place," they were calling to one another. "How do we get in?"

They were searching along the wall for an entrance to the convent.

From round the corner there came a great shout of triumph and exultation from many gruff throats.

"Come, they have found it!" called the soldiers, as they disappeared in the direction whence the cries came.

Stetton, following them round the corner, saw in one glance that the convent and its occupants were doomed. A hundred or more soldiers were banging away with stones and paving-blocks at a little iron gate set between two pillars at the foot of a short flight of steps.

Others were approaching at a run down the street from either direction, having left their victims to a short respite at the scent of this larger and richer prey. The bell above continued to ring in a wild and vain cry to Heaven for assistance.

The gate trembled, hung crazily on one hinge, and fell. For an instant the soldiers hung back, then swept toward the opening in a mad rush.

Stetton saw, just within the door, the figure of a woman, bent and gray-haired, standing in the path of the invaders with uplifted arm. A stone hurled by the foremost soldier struck her in the face, and she sank to the ground, while the soldiers surged through the gateway over her body.

Stetton, feeling himself grow faint, again turned the corner to escape the fearful scene. Then, possessed of a sudden hot anger against these men whom war had turned into wild beasts, he halted and looked round as though for some magic wand or brand from Heaven with which to annihilate them.

His eye, roving about thus in helpless fury, fell on an open window set in the wall of the convent, not three feet above his head. It was protected by iron bars, through which the dim light of a candle escaped to meet that of the moon outside.

Without stopping to consider the reason or rashness of his action, Stetton rushed into the street, picked up a heavy stone and hurled it with all his force at the window. It struck squarely in the center, bending two of the bars aside for a space of a foot or more.

In another second the young man had leaped up and caught one of the bars, and, pulling his body up and squeezing it through the space left by the stone, found himself within the convent.

He stood in a small room with a low ceiling, entirely bare and unoccupied. At one end was a narrow door; he crossed to it, and, stopping on the threshold, stood transfixed with astonishment.

Before him was a room exactly similar to the other.

Two wooden chairs were placed against the wall at the right. A closet stood on the opposite side, and in the center was a wooden table holding some scattered papers, a Bible, and a crucifix. Near the left wall was a prie-dieu; and before it, on the bare stone floor, knelt the figures of a young woman and a girl.

It was the sight of the young woman that had halted Stetton and rendered him speechless. At the noise of his entrance she had turned her head to face him without moving from her position, and it was not strange that he was startled by the beauty of her face even in that moment of excitement.

Her hair, magnificently golden, flowed over the folds of her gray dress and covered the ground behind; her eyes, whose deep, blue-gray color could be perceived even in the dim candle light, gazed compellingly straight into the face of the intruder. He remained silent, returning the gaze.

The girl who knelt beside the young woman -- a small, slender creature with black hair and olive skin -- suddenly sprang to her feet and crossed to the center of the room, while her black eyes snapped viciously at the young man in the doorway.

"Coward!" she said in a low tone of hatred and fear. "Strike! Are you afraid, because we are two to one? Strike!"

"Vivi!"

It was the young woman who called. She had risen to her feet and made a step forward.

"You are not -- with them?" she continued, as her eyes again found Stetton's and seemed to take in every detail of his face and clothing. "You are of the town -- you will save us?"

The young man found his voice.

"I am an American. I came through the window. I will save you if I can. They have already entered the convent -- listen!"

From the corridors without came the sound of tramping feet and shouting voices.

"There is no time to be lost."

The girl and the young woman gazed about in terror, crying: "What shall we do? Save us!"

Stetton tried to collect his wits.

"Is there no way out -- no secret passage?"

"None."

"The rear entrance?"

"It can be reached only by the main corridor," replied the young woman.

"The roof?"

"There is no way to reach it."

"But where are the others? Surely you are not alone here? Have they escaped?"

The young woman opened her lips to reply, but the answer came from another quarter. As Stetton spoke, the oaths and ejaculations of the soldiers in the corridors without were redoubled, and a series of frightful screams sounded throughout the convent. The shrieks of distress and despair rose even above the hoarse cries of the soldiers; they came evidently from the room on the other side of the wall.

The face of the girl was white as she looked at Stetton and stammered: "They are in the chapel. They were hiding there. God pity them!"

She approached the young man with trembling knees and an eloquent gesture of appeal; he stood as though paralyzed by the cries from beyond.

The cries grew louder. Footsteps and the gruff voices of soldiers were heard approaching down the corridor outside; another moment and they would be discovered.

Feeling a hand on his arm, Stetton turned to find the young woman gazing at him with eyes that held impatience and resolution, but nothing of fear.

"Could we not escape through the window?" Her voice was firm and calm.

"The window?" Stetton repeated stupidly.

Suddenly roused, he turned and ran swiftly into the next room and glanced through the barred window by which he had entered. The street without was deserted. With a word to the others, who had followed and stood at his side, he squeezed his way through the bars and dropped to the ground below, falling to his knees. He got to his feet in time to catch the girl as she was pushed through the window by her companion. The young woman followed, disdaining any assistance as she came down lightly as a bird, and they stood together in the dimly lighted street.

Knowing that, close as they were to the main thoroughfare, they were apt to be discovered at any moment, Stetton lost no time in discussion of a route.

"Run!" he whispered, pointing down the narrow street by which he had approached the center of the town.

The young woman hesitated. "But you?"

"I'll follow. Go!"

Copyright © 2002 by Wildside Press