They were now arrived at the gates, where Bertrand, observing the light
glimmer through a small casement of the portal-chamber, called aloud;
and the soldier, looking out, demanded who was there. 'Here, I have
brought you a prisoner,' said Ugo, 'open the gate, and let us in.'
'Tell me first who it is, that demands entrance,' replied the soldier.
'What! my old comrade,' cried Ugo, 'don't you know me? not know Ugo? I
have brought home a prisoner here, bound hand and foot--a fellow, who
has been drinking Tuscany wine, while we here have been fighting.'
'You will not rest till you meet with your match,' said Bertrand
sullenly. 'Hah! my comrade, is it you?' said the soldier--'I'll be with
you directly.' Emily presently heard his steps descending the stairs within, and then
the heavy chain fall, and the bolts undraw of a small postern door,
which he opened to admit the party. He held the lamp low, to shew the
step of the gate, and she found herself once more beneath the gloomy
arch, and heard the door close, that seemed to shut her from the world
for ever.
In the next moment, she was in the first court of the castle,
where she surveyed the spacious and solitary area, with a kind of calm
despair; while the dead hour of the night, the gothic gloom of the
surrounding buildings, and the hollow and imperfect echoes, which
they returned, as Ugo and the soldier conversed together, assisted to
increase the melancholy forebodings of her heart. Passing on to the
second court, a distant sound broke feebly on the silence, and gradually
swelling louder, as they advanced, Emily distinguished voices of revelry
and laughter, but they were to her far other than sounds of joy. 'Why,
you have got some Tuscany wine among you, HERE,' said Bertrand, 'if one
may judge by the uproar that is going forward. Ugo has taken a larger
share of that than of fighting, I'll be sworn. Who is carousing at this
late hour?'
'His excellenza and the Signors,' replied the soldier: 'it is a sign you
are a stranger at the castle, or you would not need to ask the question.
They are brave spirits, that do without sleep--they generally pass the
night in good cheer; would that we, who keep the watch, had a little of
it! It is cold work, pacing the ramparts so many hours of the night, if
one has no good liquor to warm one's heart.'
'Courage, my lad, courage ought to warm your heart,' said Ugo.
'Courage!' replied the soldier sharply, with a menacing air, which Ugo
perceiving, prevented his saying more, by returning to the subject of
the carousal. 'This is a new custom,' said he; 'when I left the castle,
the Signors used to sit up counselling.'