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The Red Axe

by S. R. Crockett · English · Gutenberg #12191 · 616,127 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Red Axe

Author: S. R. Crockett


        
Release date: April 1, 2004 [eBook #12191]
                Most recently updated: October 28, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12191

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RED AXE ***

                               THE RED AXE

                             By S.R. Crockett

                                   1900




CONTENTS


      I. DUKE CASIMIR RIDES LATE
     II. THE LITTLE PLAYMATE COMES HOME
    III. THE RED AXE OF THE WOLFMARK
     IV. THE PRINCESS HELENE
      V. THE BLOOD-HOUNDS ARE FED
     VI. DUKE CASIMIR'S FAMILIAR
    VII. I BECOME A TRAITOR
   VIII. AT THE BAR OF THE WHITE WOLF
     IX. A HERO CARRIES WATER IN THE SUN
      X. THE LUBBER FIEND
     XI. THE VISION IN THE CRYSTAL
    XII. EYES OF EMERALD
   XIII. CHRISTIAN'S ELSA
    XIV. SIR AMOROUS IS PLEASED WITH HIMSELF
     XV. THE LITTLE PLAYMATE SETTLES ACCOUNTS
    XVI. TWO WOMEN--AND A MAN
   XVII. THE RED AXE IS LEFT ALONE
  XVIII. THE PRIME OF THE MORNING
    XIX. WENDISH WIT
     XX. THE EARTH-DWELLERS OF NO MAN'S LAND
    XXI. I STAND SENTRY
   XXII. HELENE HATES ME
  XXIII. HUGO OF THE BROADAXE
   XXIV. THE SORTIE
    XXV. MINE HOST RUNS HIS LAST RACE
   XXVI. PRINCE JEHU MILLER'S SON
  XXVII. ANOTHER MAN'S COAT
 XXVIII. THE PRINCE'S COMPACT
   XXIX. LOVES ME--LOVES ME NOT
    XXX. INSULT AND CHALLENGE
   XXXI. I FIND A SECOND
  XXXII. THE WOLVES OF THE MARK
 XXXIII. THE FLIGHT OF THE LITTLE PLAYMATE
  XXXIV. THE GOLDEN NECKLACE
   XXXV. THE DECENT SERVITOR
  XXXVI. YSOLINDE'S FAREWELL
 XXXVII. CAPTAIN KARL MILLER'S SON
XXXVIII. THE BLACK RIDERS
  XXXIX. THE FLAG ON THE RED TOWER
     XL. THE TRIAL OF THE WITCH
    XLI. THE GARRET OF THE RED TOWER
   XLII. PRINCESS PLAYMATE
  XLIII. THE TRIAL FOR WITCHCRAFT
   XLIV. SENTENCE OF DEATH
    XLV. THE MESSAGE FROM THE WHITE GATE
   XLVI. A WOMAN SCORNED
  XLVII. THE RED AXE DIES STANDING UP
 XLVIII. HUGO GOTTFRIED, RED AXE OF THE WOLFMARK
   XLIX. THE SERPENT'S STRIFE
      L. THE DUNGEON OF THE WOLFSBERG
     LI. THE NIGHT BEFORE THE MORN
    LII. THE HEADSMAN'S RIGHT
   LIII. THE LUBBER FIEND'S RETURN
    LIV. THE CROWNING OF DUKE OTHO
     LV. THE LADY YSOLINDE SAVES HER SOUL
    LVI. HELENA, PRINCESS OF PLASSENBURG




THE RED AXE




CHAPTER I

DUKE CASIMIR RIDES LATE


Well do I, Hugo Gottfried, remember the night of snow and moonlight when
first they brought the Little Playmate home. I had been sleeping--a
sturdy, well-grown fellow I, ten years or so as to my age--in a stomacher
of blanket and a bed-gown my mother had made me before she died at the
beginning of the cold weather. Suddenly something awoke me out of my
sleep. So, all in the sharp chill of the night, I got out of my bed,
sitting on the edge with my legs dangling, and looked curiously at the
bright streams of moonlight which crossed the wooden floor of my garret.
I thought if only I could swim straight up one of them, as the motes did
in the sunshine, I should be sure to come in time to the place where my
mother was--the place where all the pretty white things came from--the
sunshine, the moonshine, the starshine, and the snow.

And there would be children to play with up there--hundreds of children
like myself, and all close at hand. I should not any longer have to sit
up aloft in the Red Tower with none to speak to me--all alone on the top
of a wall--just because I had a crimson patch sewn on my blue-corded
blouse, on my little white shirt, embroidered in red wool on each of my
warm winter wristlets, and staring out from the front of both my
stockings. It was a pretty enough pattern, too. Yet whenever one of the
children I so much longed to play with down on the paved roadway beneath
our tower caught sight of it he rose instantly out of the dust and hurled
oaths and ill-words at me--aye, and oftentimes other missiles that hurt
even worse--at a little lonely boy who was breaking his heart with loving
him up there on the tower.

"Come down and be killed, foul brood of the Red Axe!" the children cried.
And with that they ran as near as they dared, and spat on the wall of our
house, or at least on the little wooden panel which opened inward in the
great trebly spiked iron door of the Duke's court-yard.

But this night of the first home-coming of the Little Playmate I awoke
crying and fearful in the dead vast of the night, when all the other
children who would not speak to me were asleep. Then pulling on my
comfortable shoes of woollen list (for my father gave me all things to
make me warm, thinking me delicate of body), and drawing the many-patched
coverlet of the bed about me, I clambered up the stone stairway to the
very top of the tower in which I slept. The moon was broad, like one of
the shields in the great hall, whither I went often when the great Duke
was not at home, and when old Hanne would be busy cleaning the pavement
and scrubbing viciously at the armor of the iron knights who stood on
pedestals round about.

"One day I shall be a man-at-arms, too," I said once to Hanne, "and ride
a-foraying with Duke Ironteeth."

But old Hanne only shook her head and answered:

"Ill foraying shalt thou make, little shrimp. Such work as thine is not
done on horseback--keep wide from me, _toadchen_, touch me not!"

For even old Hanne flouted me and would not let me approach her too
closely, all because once I had asked her what my father did to witches,
and if she were a witch that she crossed herself and trembled whenever
she passed him in the court-yard.

Now, having little else to do, I loved to look down from the top of the
tower at all times. But never more so than when there was snow on the
ground, for then the City of Thorn lay apparent beneath me, all spread
out like a painted picture, with its white and red roofs and white houses
bright in the moonlight--so near that it seemed as though I could pat
every child lying asleep in its little bed, and scrape away the snow with
my fingers from every red tile off which the house-fires had not already
melted it.

The town of Thorn was the chief place of arms, and high capital city of
all the Wolfmark. It was a thriving place, too, humming with burghers and
trades and guilds, when our great Duke Casimir would let them alone;
perilous, often also, with pikes and discontents when he swooped from the
tall over-frowning Castle of the Wolfsberg upon their booths and
guilderies--"to scotch the pride of rascaldom," as he told them when they
complained. In these days my father was little at home, his business
keeping him abroad all the day about the castle-yard, at secret
examinations in the Hall of Judgment, or in mysterious vaults in the
deepest parts of the castle, where the walls are eighteen feet thick, and
from which not a groan can penetrate to the outside while the Duke
Casimir's judgment was being done upon the poor bodies and souls of men
and women his prisoners.

In the court-yard, too, the dogs, fierce russet-tan blood-hounds,
ravined for their fearsome food. And in these days there was plenty of
it, too, so that they were yelling and clamoring all day, and most of
the night, for that which it made me sweat to think of. And beneath the
rebellious city cowered and muttered, while the burghers and their
wives shivered in their beds as the howling of Duke Casimir's
blood-hounds came fitfully down the wind, and Duke Casimir's guards
clashed arms under their windows.

So this night I looked down contentedly enough from my perched eyrie on
the top of the Red Tower. It had been snowing a little earlier in the
evening, and the brief blast had swept the sky clean, so that even the
brightest stars seemed sunken and waterlogged in the white floods of
moonlight. Under my hand lay the city. Even the feet of the watch made no
clatter on the pavements. The fresh-fallen snow masked the sound. The
kennels of the blood-hounds were silent, for their dreadful tenants were
abroad that night on the Duke's work.

Yet, sitting up there on the Wolfsberg, it seemed to me that I could
distinguish a muttering as of voices full of hate, like men talking low
on their beds the secret things of evil and treason. I discerned
discontent and rebellion rumbling and brooding over the city that clear,
keen night of early winter.

Then, when after a while I turned from the crowded roofs and looked down
upon the gray, far-spreading plain of the Wolfmark, to the east I saw
that which appeared like winking sparks of light moving among the black
clumps of copse and woodland which fringed the river. These wimpled and
scattered, and presently grew brighter. A long howl, like that of a
lonely wolf on the waste when he calls to his kindred to tell him their
where-abouts, came faintly up to my ears.

A hound gave tongue responsively among the heaped mews and doggeries
beneath the ramparts. Lights shone in windows athwart the city. Red
nightcaps were thrust out of hastily opened casements. The Duke's
standing guard clamored with their spear-butts on the uneven pavements,
crying up and down the streets: "To your kennels, devil's brats, Duke
Casimir comes riding home!"

Then I tell you my small heart beat furiously. For I knew that if I
only kept quiet I should see that which I had never yet seen--the
home-coming of our famous foraying Duke. I had, indeed, seen Duke
Casimir often enough in the castle, or striding across the court-yard
to speak to my father, for whom he had ever a remarkable affection. He
was a tall, swart, black-a-vised man, with a huge hairy mole on his
cheek, and long dog-teeth which showed at the sides of his mouth when
he smiled, almost as pleasantly as those of a she-wolf looking out of
her den at the hunters.

But I had never seen the Duke of all the Wolfmark come riding home ere
daybreak, laden with the plunder of captured castles and the rout of
deforced cities. For at such times my father would carefully lock the
door on me, and confine me to my little sleeping-chamber--from whence I
could see nothing but the square of smooth pavement on which the
children chalked their games, and from which they cried naughtily up at
me, the poor hermit of the Red Tower. But this night my father would be
with the Duke, and I should see all. For high or low there was none in
the empty Red Tower to hinder or forbid.

As I waited, thrilling with expectation, I heard beneath me the
quickening pulse-beat of the town. The watch hurried here and there,
hectoring, threatening, and commanding. But, in spite of all, men
gathered as soon as their backs were turned in the alleys and street
openings. Clusters of heads showed black for a moment in some darksome
entry, cried "U-g-g-hh!" with a hateful sound, and vanished ere the
steel-clad veterans of the Duke's guard could come upon them. It was like
the hide-and-seek which I used to play with Boldo, my blood-hound puppy,
among the dusty waste of the lumber-room over the Hall of Judgment,
before my father took him back to the kennels for biting Christian's
Elsa, a child who lived in the lower Guard opposite to the Red Tower.

But this was a stranger hide-and-seek than mine and Boldo's had been. For
I saw one of the men who cried hatefully to the guard stumble on the
slippery ice; and lo! or ever he had time to cry out or gather himself
up, the men-at-arms were upon him. I saw the glitter of stabbing steel
and heard the sickening sound of blows stricken silently in anger. Then
the soldiers took the man up by head and heels carelessly, jesting as
they went. And I shuddered, for I knew that they were bringing him to the
horrible long sheds by the Red Tower through which the wind whistled. But
in the moonlight the patch which was left on the snow was black, not red.

After this the crooked alleys were kept clearer, and I could see down the
long High Street of Thorn right to the Weiss Thor and the snow-whitened
pinnacles of the Palace, out of which Duke Casimir had for the time being
frightened Bishop Peter. Black stood the Gate Port against the moonlight
and the snow when I first looked at it. A moment after it had opened, and
a hundred lights came crowding through, like sheep through an entry on
their way to the shambles--which doubtless is their Hall of Judgment,
where there waits for them the Red Axe of a lowlier degree.

The lights, I say, came thronging through the gate. For though it was
moonlight, the Duke Casimir loved to come home amid the red flame of
torches, the trail of bituminous reek, and with a dashing train of riders
clattering up to the Wolfsberg behind him, through the streets of Thorn,
lying black and cowed under the shadows of its thousand gables.

So the procession undulated towards me, turbid and tumultuous. First a
reckless pour of riders urging wearied horses, their sides white-flecked
above with blown foam, and dark beneath with rowelled blood. Many of the
horsemen carried marks upon them which showed that all had not been
plunder and pleasuring upon their foray. For there were white napkins,
and napkins that had once been white, tied across many brows. Helmets
swung clanking like iron pipkins from saddle-bows, and men rode wearily
with their arms in slings, drooping haggard faces upon their chests. But
all passed rapidly enough up the steep street, and tumbled with noise and
shouting, helter-skelter into the great court-yard beneath me as I
watched, secure as God in heaven, from my perch on the Red Tower.

Then came the captives, some riding horses bare-backed, or held in place
before black-bearded riders--women mostly these last, with faces
white-set and strange of eye, or all beblubbered with weeping. Then came
a man or two also on horseback, old and reverend. After them a draggled
rabble of lads and half-grown girls, bound together with ropes and kept
at a dog's trot by the pricking spears of the men-at-arms behind, who
thought it a jest to sink a spear point-deep in the flesh of a man's
back--"drawing the claret wine" they called it. For these riders of Duke
Casimir were every one jolly companions, and must have their merry jest.

After the captives had gone past--and sorry I was for them--the
body-guard of Duke Casimir came riding steadily and gallantly, all
gentlemen of the Mark, with their sons and squires, landed men, towered
men, free Junkers, serving the Duke for loyalty and not servitude, though
ever "living by the saddle"--as, indeed, most of the Ritterdom and gentry
of the Mark had done for generations.

Then behind them came Duke Casimir himself. The Eastland blood he had
acquired from his Polish mother showed as he rode gloomily apart,
thoughtful, solitary, behind the squared shoulders of his knights. After
him another squadron of riders in ghastly armor of black-and-white, with
torches in their hand and grinning skulls upon their shields, closed in
the array. The great gate of the Wolfsberg was open now, and, leaving
behind him the hushed and darkened town, the master rode into his castle.
The Wolf was in his lair. But in the streets many a burgher's wife
trembled on her bed, while her goodman peered cautiously over the leads
by the side of a gargoyle, and fancied that already he heard the clamor
of the partisans thundering at his door with the Duke's invitation to
meet him in the Hall of Judgment.




CHAPTER II

THE LITTLE PLAYMATE COMES HOME


But there was to be no Session in the Hall of Judgment that night. The
great court-yard, roofed with the vault of stars and lit by the moon, was
to see all done that remained to be done. The torches were planted in the
iron hold-fasts round about. The plunder of the captured towns and
castles was piled for distribution on the morrow, and no man dared keep
back so much as a Brandenburg broad-piece or a handful of Bohemian
gulden. For the fear of the Duke and the Duke's dog-kennels was upon
every stout fighting-kerl. They minded the fate of Hans Pulitz, who had
kept back a belt of gold, and had gotten himself flung by the heels with
no more than the stolen belt upon him, into the kennels where the Duke's
blood-hounds howled and clambered with their fore-feet on the
black-spattered barriers. And they say that the belt of gold was all that
was ever seen again of the poor rascal. Hans Pulitz--who had hoped for so
many riotous evenings among the Fat Pigs of Thorn and so many draughts of
the slippery wine of the Rheingan careering down the poor thirsty throat
of him. But, alas for Hans Pulitz! the end of all imagining was no more
than five minutes of snapping, snarling, horrible Pandemonium in the
kennels of the Wolfsberg, and the scored gold chain on the ground was all
that remained to tell his tale. Verily, there were few Achans in Duke
Casimir's camp.

And it is small wonder after this, that scant and sparse were the jests
played on the grim master of the Wolfsberg, or that the bay of a
blood-hound tracking on the downs frightened the most stout-hearted rider
in all that retinue of dare-devils.

Going to the side of the Red Tower, which looked towards the court-yard,
I saw the whole array come in. I watched the prisoners unceremoniously
dismounted and huddled together against the coming of the Duke. There was
but one man among them who stood erect. The torch-light played on his
face, which was sometimes bent down to a little child in his arms, so
that I saw him well. He looked not at all upon the rude men-at-arms who
pushed and bullied about him, but continued tenderly to hush his charge,
as if he had been a nurse in a babe-chamber under the leads, with silence
in all the house below.

It pleased me to see the man, for all my life I had loved children. And
yet at ten years of age I had never so much as touched one--no, nor
spoken even, only looked down on those that hated me and spat on the very
tower wherein I dwelt. But nevertheless I loved them and yearned to tell
them so, even when they mocked me. So I watched this little one in the
man's arms.

Then came the Duke along the line, and behind him, like the Shadow of
Death, paced my father Gottfried Gottfried, habited all in red from neck
to heel, and carrying for his badge of office as Hereditary Justicer to
the Dukes of the Wolfmark that famous red-handled, red-bladed axe, the
gleaming white of whose deadly edge had never been wet save with the
blood of men and women.

The guard pushed the captives rudely into line as the Duke Casimir strode
along the front. The women he passed without a sign or so much as a look.
They were kept for another day. But the men were judged sharp and sudden,
as the Duke in his black armor passed along, and that scarlet Shadow of
Death with the broad axe over his shoulder paced noiselessly behind him.

For as each man looked into the eyes of Casimir of the Wolfsberg he read
his doom. The Duke turned his wrist sharply down, whereupon the attendant
sprites of the Red Shadow seized the man and rent his garment down from
his neck--or the hand pointed up, and then the man set his hand to his
heart and threw his head back in a long sigh of relief.

It came the turn of the man who carried the babe.

Duke Casimir paused before him, scowling gloomily at him.

"Ha, Lord Prince of so great a province, you will not set yourself up any
more haughtily. You will quibble no longer concerning tithes and tolls
with Casimir of the Wolfmark."

And the Duke lifted his hand and smote the man on the cheek with his
open hand.

Yet the captive only hushed the child that wailed aloud to see her
guardian smitten.

He looked Duke Casimir steadfastly in the eyes and spoke no word.

"Great God, man, have you nothing to say to me ere you die?" cried Duke
Casimir, choked with hot, sudden anger to be so crossed.

The elder man gazed steadily at his captor.

"God will judge betwixt me, a man about to die, and you, Casimir of the
Wolfmark," he said at last, very slowly--"by the eyes of this little maid
He will judge!"

"Like enough," cried Casimir, sneeringly. "Bishop Peter hath told me as
much. But then God's payments are long deferred, and, so far as I can
see, I can take Him into my own hand. And your little maid--pah! since
one day you took from me the mother, I, in my turn, will take the
daughter and make her a titbit for the teeth of my blood-hounds."

The man answered not again, but only hushed and fondled the little one.

Duke Casimir turned quickly to my father, showing his long teeth like a
snarling dog:

"Take the child," he said, "and cast her into the kennels before the
man's eyes, that he may learn before he dies to dread more than God's
Judgment Seat the vengeance of Duke Casimir!"

Then all the men-at-arms turned away, heart-sick at the horror. But the
man with the child never blanched.

High perched on the top tower, I also heard the words and loved the maid.
And they tell me (though I do not remember it) that I cried down from the
leads of the Red Tower: "My father, save the little maid and give her to
me--or else I, Hugo Gottfried, will cast myself down on the stones at
your feet!"

At which all the men looked up and saw me in white, a small, lonely
figure, with my legs hanging over the top of the wall.

"Go back!" my father shouted. "Go back, Hugo! 'Tis my only son--my
successor--the fifteenth of our line, my lord!" he said to the Duke
in excuse.

But I cried all the more: "Save the maid's life, or I will fling myself
headlong. By Jesu-Mary, I swear it!"

For I thought that was the name of one great saint.

Then my father, who ever doted on me, bent his knee before his master:
"A boon!" he cried, "my first and last, Duke Casimir--this maid's life
for my son!"

But the Duke hung on the request a long, doubtful moment.

"Gottfried Gottfried," he said, even reproachfully, "this is not well
done of you, to make me go back on my word."

"Take the man's life," said my father--"take the man's life for the
child's and the fulfilling of your word, and by the sword of St. Peter I
will smite my best!"

"Aye," said the man with the babe, "even so do, as the Red Axe says.
Save the young child, but bid him smite hard at this abased neck. Ye have
taken all, Duke Casimir, take my life. But save the young child alive!"

So, without further word or question, they did so, and the man who had
carried the child kissed her once and separated gently the baby hands
that clung about his neck. Then he handed her to my father.

"Be gracious to Helene," he said; "she was ever a sweet babe."

Now by this time I was down hammering on the door of the Red Tower, which
had been locked on the outside.

Presently some one turned the key, and so soon as I got among the men I
darted between their legs.

"Give me the babe!" I cried; "the babe is mine; the Duke himself
hath said it." And my father gave her to me, crying as if her heart
would break.

Nevertheless she clung to me, perhaps because I was nearer her own age.

Then the dismal procession of the condemned passed us, followed by my
father, who strode in front with his axe over his shoulder, and the
laughing and jesting men-at-arms bringing up the rear.

As I stood a little aside for them to pass, the hand of the man fell on
my head and rested there a moment.

"God's blessing on you, little lad!" he said. "Cherish the babe you have
saved, and, as sure as that I am now about to die, one day you shall be
repaid." And he stooped and kissed the little maid before he went on with
the others to the place of slaughter.

Then I hurried within, so that I might not hear the dull thud of the Red
Axe, on the block nor the inhuman howlings of the dogs in the kennels
afterwards.

When my father came home an hour later, before even he took off his
costume of red, he came up to our chamber and looked long at the little
maid as she lay asleep. Then he gazed at me, who watched him from under
my lids and from behind the shadows of the bedclothes.

But his quick eye caught the gleam of light in mine.

"You are awake, boy!" he said, somewhat sternly.

I nodded up to him without speaking.

"What would you with the little maid?" he said. "Do you know that you and
she together came very near losing me my favor with the Duke, and it
might be my life also, both at one time to-night?"

I put my hand on the maiden's head where it lay on the pillow by me.

"She is my little wife!" I said. "The Duke gave her to me out in the
court-yard there!"

And this is the whole tale of how the Little Playmate came to dwell with
us in the Red Tower.




CHAPTER III

THE RED AXE OF THE WOLFMARK


Just as clearly do I remember the next morning. The Little Playmate lay
by me on my bed, wrapped in one of my childish night-gowns--which old
Hanne had sought out for her the night before. It was a brisk, chill,
nippy daybreak, and I had piled most of the bedclothes upon her. I lay at
the nether side clipped tight in my single brown blanket. It was
perishing cold. Out of the heaped coverings I saw presently a pair of
eyes, great and dark, regarding me.

Then a little voice spoke, sweetly and clearly, but yet strangely
sounding to me who had never before heard a babe speak.

"I want my father--tell him to send Grete, my maid, to attend on me, and
then to come himself to sit by the bed and amuse me!"

Alas! her father--well I knew what had come to him--that which in the
mercy of the Duke Casimir and in the crowning mercy of the Red Axe, I had
seen come to so many. The dogs did not howl at all that morning. They,
too, were tired with the hunting and sated with the quarry.

All the same, I tried to answer my companion.

"Little Maid!" said I, "let me be your maid and your father. I will
gladly get you all you want. But your good father has gone on a weary
journey, and it will be long ere he can hope to return."

"Well," she said, "send lazy Grete, then. I will scold her soundly for
not bringing the sop of hot milk-and-bread, which, indeed, is not food
for a lady of my age. But my father insists upon it. He is dreadfully
obstinate."

Now there was no one but our old deaf Hanne in the kitchen of the Red
Tower. She stayed only for cooking and keeping the house clean. My father
never paid her wages, and she never asked any. She did her work and took
that which she needed out of the household purse without check or
question. It was long before I guessed that Hanne also owed her life to
my father's care. I had noticed, indeed, when he had upon him the red
headman's dress, which fitted him like a flame climbing up a tall back
log on the winter's fire, that old Hanne trembled from head to foot and
shrank away into her den under the stairs. Many a time have I seen her
peeping round the corner of the kitchen-door and tottering back when she
heard him come down the stair from the garret. And I guessed so well the
reason of her fear that I used to cry to her:

"Come out, good Hanne; the Red Axe is gone."

Then would she run, pattering like a scared rabbit over the uneven floor,
to the window, and watch my father stalking, grim and tall, across the
open spaces of the yard towards the Judgment Hall of Duke Casimir, the
men-at-arms avoiding him with deft reverence. For though they hated him
almost as much as did the fat burghers, they feared him, too. And that
because Gottfried Gottfried was deep in the confidence of the Duke; and,
besides, was no man to stand in the ill-graces of when one lived within
the walls of the Wolfsberg.

So this morning it was to the ancient Hanne that I ran down and told her
how, as quickly as she might, she must bring milk and bread to the
little one.

"But," said she, "there is none save that which is to be sodden for your
father's breakfast and your own."

"Do as you are bid, bad Hanne!" cried I, being, like all solitary
children, quickly made angry, "or I will tell my father to drive you
before him when next he goes forth clad in red to the Hall of Justice."

At which the poor old woman gave vent to a sharp, screechy cry and caught
at her skinny throat with twitching, bony fingers.

"Oh, but you know not what you say, cruel boy!" she gasped. "For the love
of God, speak not such words in the house of the Red Axe!"

But, like an ill-governed child, I was cruel because I knew my power, and
so made sure that Hanne would do what I asked.

"Well, then, bring the sop quickly," said I, "or by Peter-and-Paul I will
speak to my father. He and I can well be doing with beaten cakes made
crisp on the iron girdle. In these you have great skill."

This last I said to cheer her, for she loved compliments on her cooking.
Though, strange to tell, I never saw her eat anything herself all the
years she remained in our house.

When I was gone up-stairs again I looked about for the Little Playmate.
She was not to be seen anywhere. There was only a tiny cosey-hole down
among the blankets, which was yet warm when I thrust my hand within it.
But it was empty and the top a little fallen in, as if the occupant had
set her knee on it when she crawled out. A baby stocking lay outside it
on the floor.

"Little maid!" I cried, "where are you?"

But I heard nothing except a hissing up on the roof, and then a great
slithering rumble down below, which boomed like the distant cannons the
Margraf sent to besiege us. I listened and shuddered; but it was only the
snow from the tall roof of the Red Tower which had slipped off and fallen
to the ground. Then I had a vision of a slender little figure clambering
on the leads and the treacherous snow striking her out into the air, and
then--the cruel stones of the pavement.

"Little maid, little maid!" I cried out again, beginning to weep myself
for pity at my thought, "where are you? Speak to me. You are my
playmate."

Then I ran to the roof, and, though the stones chilled me to the bone and
the frost-bitten iron hasps of the fastenings burned me like fire, I
opened the trap-door and looked out. There above me was the crow-stepped
gable of the Red Tower, with the axe set on the pinnacle rustily bright
in the coming light of the morning--all swept clean of snow. But no
little maid.

I ran to the verge and peered down. I saw a great heap of frozen snow
fallen on its edge and partly canted over, half covering a deep red stain
which was turning black and horrid in the daylight. But no little maid.

Then I ran all over the house calling to her, but could not find her
anywhere. I was just beginning to bethink me that she might be a fairy
child, one that came at night and vanished like the dream gold which is
forever turning to withered leaves in the morning. At last I bethought me
of my father's room, where even I, his son, had never been at night, and
indeed but seldom in the day. For it was the Hereditary Justicer's fancy
to lodge himself in the high garret which ran right across the top of the
Red Tower, and was entered only by a little ladder from the first turning
of the same staircase by which I had run out upon the leads.

I went to the bottom of the garret turnpike. The little barred door stood
open, and I heard--I was sure that I heard--light, irregularly pattering
footsteps moving about above.

It gave me strange shakings of my heart only to listen. For, though I was
noways afraid of my father myself, yet since I had never seen any man,
woman, or child (save the Duke only) who did not quail at his approach,
it was a curious feeling to think of the lonely little child skipping
about up there, where abode the axe and the block--the axe which had
done, I knew so well what, to her father only the night before.

So I mustered all my courage--not from any fear of Gottfried Gottfried,
but rather from the uncertainty of what I should see, and quickly mounted
the stair.

I shall never forget what I saw as I stood with my feet on the rickety
hand-rail of the ladder. The long dim garret was already half-lighted by
the coming day. Red cloaks swung and flapped like vast, deadly, winged
bats from the rafters, and reached almost to the ground. There was no
glass in any of the windows of the garret, for my father minded neither
heat nor cold. He was a man of iron. Summer's heat nor winter's cold
neither vexed nor pleasured him. So it was no marvel that at the
chamber's upper end, and quite near to my father's bed, lay a wreath of
snow, with a fine, clean-cut, untrampled edge, just as it had blown in at
the gable window when the storm burst from the east.

My father lay stretched out on his bed, his head thrown back, his neck
bare--almost as if he had done justice on himself, or at least as if he
waited the stroke of another Red Axe through the eastern skylight which
the morning was already crimsoning. His scarlet sheathings of garmentry
lay upon a black oaken stool, trailing across the floor lank and hideous,
one of the cuffs which had been but recently dyed a darker hue making a
wet sop upon the boards.

All this I had seen many a time before. But that which made me tremble
from head to foot with more and worse than cold, was the little white
figure that danced about his bed--for all the world like a crisped leaf
in late autumn which whirls and turns, skipping this way and spinning
that in the wanton breezes. It was the Little Playmate. But I could not
form a word wherewith to call her. My tongue seemed dried to the roots.

She had taken the red eye-mask which came across my father's face when he
did his greater duties and tied it about her head. Her great, innocent,
childish eyes looked elfishly through the black socket holes, sparkling
with a fairy merriment, and her tangled floss of sunny hair escaped from
the string at the back and fell tumultuously upon her shoulders.

And even as I looked, standing silent and trembling, with a little
balancing step she danced up to the Red Axe itself where it stood angled
against the block, and seizing it by the handle high up near the head she
staggered towards the bed with it.

Then came my words back to my mouth with a rush.

"For the Holy Virgin's sake, little maid, put the Red Axe down!" I cried,
whisperingly. "You know not what you do!"

Then even as I spoke I saw that my father had drawn himself up in bed,
and that he too was staring at the strange, elfish figure. Gottfried
Gottfried, as I remember him in these days, was a tall, dark, heavily
browed man, with a shock of bushy blue-black hair, of late silvering at
the temples--grave, sombre, quiet in all his actions.

But what was my surprise as the little maid came nearer to the bed
with her pretty dancing movement, carrying the axe much as if it had
been an over-heavy babe, to see the Duke's Justicer suddenly skip over
the far side of the bedstead and stand with his red cloak about him,
watching her.




CHAPTER IV

THE PRINCESS HELENE


"What devil's work is this?" he said, frowning at her severely.

And I confess that I trembled, but not so the little maid.

"Do not be afraid, mannie," she said, laying down the axe on the stock of
the couch, against which its broad red blade and glass-clear cutting edge
made an irregular patch of light. "Come and sit down beside me on your
bed. I shall not hurt you indeed, mannie, and I want to talk to you.
There is nothing but a little boy down-stairs. And I like best to talk
with men."

"I declare it is the dead man's brat I saved last night for Hugo's sake!"
I heard my father mutter, "the maid with the girdle of golden letters."

Presently a smile of amusement struggled about his mouth at her bairnly
imperiousness, but he came obediently enough and sat down. Nevertheless
he took away the heavy axe from her and said, "Put this down, then, or
give it to me. It is not a pretty plaything for little girls!"

The small figure in white put up a tiny fat hand, and solemnly withdrew
the red patch of mask from before the wide-open baby eyes.

"I am not a little _girl_, remember, mannie," she said, "I am a Princess
and a great lady."

My father bowed without rising.

"I shall not forget," he said.

"You should stand up and bow when I tell you that," said she. "I declare
you have no more manners than the little boy in the brown blanket
down-stairs."

"Princess," said my father, gravely, "during my life I have met a great
many distinguished people of your rank; and, do you know, not one of them
has ever complained of my manners before."

"Ah," cried the little maid, "then you have never met my father, the
Prince. He is terribly particular. You must go _so_" (she imitated the
mincing walk of a court chamberlain), "you must hold your tails thus"
(wagging her white nightrail and twisting about her head to watch the
effect), "and you must retire--so!" With that she came bowing backward
towards the well of the staircase, so far that I was almost afraid she
would fall plump into my arms. But she checked herself in time, and
without looking round or seeing me she tripped back to my father's
bedside and sat down quite confidingly beside him.

"Now you see," cried she, "what you would have had to put up with if you
had met my father. Be thankful then that it is only the little Princess
Helene that is sitting here."

"I think I had the honor to meet your father," said Gottfried Gottfried,
gravely, again removing the restless baby fingers from the Red Axe and
laying it on the far side of the couch beyond him.

"Then, if you met him, did he not make you bow and bend and walk
backward?" asked the Playmate, looking up very sharply.

"Well, you see, Princess," explained my father, "it was for such a very
short time that I had the honor of converse with him."

"Ah, that does not matter," cried the maid; "often he would be most
difficult when you came running in just for a moment. Why, he would
straighten you up and make you do your bows if you were only racing
after a kitten, or, what was worse, he would call the Court Chamberlain
to show you how to do it. But when I am grown up--ah, then!--I mean to
make the Chamberlain bow and walk backward; for you know he is only
taking care of my princedom for me. Oh, and I shall have you well taught
by that time, long man. It is cold--cold. Let me get into your bed and I
will give you your first lesson now."

So with that she skipped into my father's place and drew the great red
cloak about her.

"Now then, first position," she commanded, clapping her hands like a
Sultana, "your feet together. Draw back your left--so. Very well! Bend
the knee--stupid, not that one. Now your head. If I have to come to you,
sir--there, that is better. Well done! Oh, I shall have a peck of trouble
with you, I can see that. But you will do me credit before I have done
with you."

In a little while she tired of the lesson.

"Come and sit down now"--she waved her hand graciously--"here on the bed
by me. Though I am a Princess really, I am not proud, and, as I said, I
may make something of you yet."

My father came forward gravely, wrapped himself in another of his red
cloaks, and sat down. I shivered in my blanket on the stair-head, but I
could not bear to move nor yet reveal myself. This was better than any
play I had ever watched from the sparred gallery of the palace, to which
Gottfried Gottfried took me sometimes when the mummers came from
Brandenburg to divert Duke Casimir.

"My father, the great Prince, took me for a long ride last night. There
was much noise and many bonfires behind us as we rode away, and some of
the men spoke roughly, for which my father will rate them soundly to-day.
Oh, they will be sick and sorry this morning when the Prince takes them
to task. I hope you will never make him angry," she said, laying her hand
warningly on my father's; "but if ever you do, come to me and I will
speak to the Prince for you. You need not be bashful, for I do not mind a
bit speaking to him, or indeed to any one. You will remember and not be
bashful when you have something to ask?"

"I will assuredly not be bashful," said my father, very solemnly. "I will
come and tell you at once, little lady, if I ever have the misfortune to
offend the most noble Prince."

Then he bent his head and raised her hand to his lips. She bowed in
return with exquisite reserve and hauteur; and, as it seemed to me, more
with her long eyelashes than with anything else.

"Do you know, Black Man," she said--"for, you know, you are black, though
you wear red clothes--I am glad you are not afraid of me. At home every
one was afraid of me. Why, the little children stood with their mouths
open and their eyes like this whenever they saw me."

And she illustrated the extremely vacant surprise into which her
appearance paralyzed the infantry of her native city.

"I am glad my father left me here till he should come back. Do you know,
I like your house. There are so many interesting things about it. That
funny axe over there is nice. It looks as if it could cut things. Has it
ever cut anything? It is so nicely polished. How do you keep it so, and
can I help you?"

"I had just finished polishing and oiling it before I fell asleep,"
answered Gottfried Gottfried. "You see, little Princess, I had very many
things to cut with it last night."

"What a pity the Prince had not time to wait and see you! He is so very
fond of going out into the forest with the woodman. Once he took me to
see the tallest tree in all our woods cut down with just such an axe as
that--only it was not red. Have you ever seen a high tree cut down?"

"I have cut down some pretty tall ones myself!" said the Duke's Justicer,
smiling quietly at her.

"Ah, but not as tall as my father! It is beautiful to see him strip
his doublet and lay to. They say there is not a woodman like him in
all our land."

Helene looked at my father, whose arms were folded in his great cloak.

"But you have fine strong arms too," she said. "You look as if you could
cut things. Did my father ever see you cut down tall trees?"

"Yes," said Gottfried Gottfried, slowly, "once!"

"And did he say that you cut well?" the little maid went on, with a
strange, wilful persistence in her idea.

"He neither said that I did well nor yet that I did ill," replied
Gottfried Gottfried.

"Ah!" said Helene, "that was just like the Prince. He was afraid of
flattering you and making you unfit for your work. But if he said
nothing, depend upon it he was pleased."

"Thank you, Princess," said my father. "I think he was well enough
pleased."

Just then there came a noise that I knew--a sound which chilled every
bone in my body.

It was the clear ring of a steady footstep upon the pavement without. It
came heavily and slowly across the yard. The outer hasp of our door
clicked. The door opened, and the footstep began to ascend the stair.

There was but one man in the world who dared make so free with the
Red Tower and its occupant. Our visitor was without doubt the Duke
Casimir himself.

For the first time I saw my father manifestly disconcerted. The little
maid's life might be worth no more than a torn ballad if Duke Casimir
happened to be in evil humor or had repented him of his mercy of the
past night. I saw the Red Axe look aimlessly about for a hiding-place.
There was a niche round which certain cloaks and coverlets were hung.

"Come in here," he said, abruptly.

"Why should I hide, whoever comes?" asked the Little Playmate,
indignantly.

"It is the Duke Casimir," whispered my father, hurriedly, stirred as I
had never seen him. "Come hither quickly!"

But the little maid struck an attitude, and tapped the floor with her
foot.

"I will not," she said. "What is the Duke Casimir to me that am a
Princess? If he is good, I will give him my hand to kiss!"

But at this point I rushed from the ladder-head, and, taking her in my
arms, I sped up the turret stairs with her out upon the leads, my hand
over her mouth all the time.

And as I ran I could hear the Duke trampling upward not twenty steps in
the rear. I opened the trap-door and went out into the clear morning
sunshine. And only the turn of the stair prevented Casimir from seeing me
go up the narrow turret corkscrew with my little white burden.

Then I heard voices beneath, and I knew, as if I had seen it, that my
father stood up straight at the salute. Presently the voices lowered, and
I knew also that the Duke Casimir was unbending as he did to none else in
his realm save to the Hereditary Justicer of the Wolfmark.

But I had my hands full with the little Princess. I dared not go down
the stairs. I dared not for a moment take my palm off her mouth. For as
like as not she would call out for the Duke Casimir to come and deliver
her from my cruelty. So I stuck to my post, even though I knew that I
angered her.

The morning was warm for a winter's day in Thorn, and I pulled open my
brown blanket and wrapped her coseyly within it, chilling myself to the
bone as I did so.

It seemed ages before the Duke strode down the stair again, and took his
way across the yard, with my father, in black, after him. For so he was
used to dress when he went to the Hall of Judgment, to be present and
assist at the discovery of crime by means of the Minor and Extreme
Questions.

Then, so soon as they were fairly gone, I took my hand from the mouth of
the Little Playmate, and carried her down-stairs; which as soon as I had
done, she slapped my face soundly.

"I will never, never speak to you any more so long as I live, rude
boy--common street brat!" she said, biting her under-lip in ineffectual,
petulant anger. "Listen, never as long as I live! So do not think it!
Upstart, so to treat a lady and a Princess!"

And with that she burst into tears.




CHAPTER V

THE BLOOD-HOUNDS ARE FED


But the Princess-Playmate spoke to me again. I was even permitted to call
her Helene. Me she addressed uniformly as "Hugo Gottfried." But neither
her name nor mine interfered with our plays, which were wholly happy and
undisturbed by quarrelling--at least, so long as I did exactly what she
wished me to do.

On these terms life was made easy for me from that day forth. No longer
did I wistfully watch the children of the street from the lonely window
of the Red Tower. They might spit all day on the harled masonry at the
foot of the wall for aught I cared. I no longer desired their society.
Had I not that of a real Princess, and if my companion was inclined to be
a little wayward and domineering--why, was not that the very birthright
of all Princesses?

Helene and I had great choice of plays within the walls of the solemn
castle. So long as we kept to the outer yard and did not intrude upon the
Duke's side of the enclosure, we were free to come and go at our
pleasure. For even Casimir himself was soon well accustomed to see us run
about like puppies, slapping and tumbling, and minded us no more than the
sparrows that pecked in the litter of the stable-yard. Indeed, I think he
had forgotten all about the strange home-coming of the Little Playmate.

The kennels of the blood-hounds especially were full of fascination for
us. That fatal deep-mouthed clamoring at morn and even drew us like a
magnet. Helene, in particular, never tired of gazing between the chinks
of the fence of cloven pine-wood at the great russet-colored beasts with
their flashing white teeth, over which the heavy dewlaps fell. And when
my father, with his red livery upon him and a loaded whip in his hand,
once a day opened the tall, narrow door and went within, we thought him
brave as a god. Then the way the fierce beasts shrank cowering from him,
the fashion in which they crouched on their bellies and heaved their
shoulders up without taking their hind quarters off the ground, equally
delighted and surprised us.

"Your father is almost as great a man as _my_ father," said the Princess
Helene, who, however, was rapidly forgetting her dignity. Indeed,
already it had become little more than a fairy-tale to her. And that was
perhaps as well.

One day, when I was about thirteen, or a little older, my father came out
with a new short mantle in his hand, red like his own.

"Come hither, Hugo Gottfried!" he said, for he had learned the trick of
the name from Helene.

I went to him tardy-foot, greatly wondering.

"Here, chick," he said, in his kindly fashion, "it is time you were
beginning to learn your duties. Come with me to-day into the kennels of
the blood-hounds."

But I hung back, shifting the new mantle uneasily on my shoulders, yet
not daring to throw it off.

"I do not want to go, father," said I, edging away in the direction of
the Playmate.

"What, lad!" he cried, slapping me on the shoulder; "they will not hurt
thee with that cloak on. They know their masters better--as their fathers
and mothers knew our fathers. Have we, the Gottfrieds, been the
Hereditary Justicers of the Wolfmark for six hundred years to be afraid
now of the blood-hounds that are kept to hunt the Duke's enemies and to
feed on the Duke's carrion?"

"It is not that I am afraid of the dogs, father," I made answer to him.
"I would quickly enough go among them, if only you would let me go
without this scarlet cloak."

My father laughed heartily and loudly--that is, for him. A quick ear
might have heard him quite three feet away.

"Silly one!" he exclaimed, "do you not know that even the Duke Casimir
dares not set foot in the kennels--no, nor I myself, save in the garb
they know and fear--as indeed do all men in this state."

Still I hung my head down and scraped the gravel with my foot.

"Haste thee," said my father, roughly. "Once it is permitted to a man to
be afraid; to fear twice, and fear the same thing, is to be a coward. And
no Gottfried ever yet was a coward. Let not my Hugo be the first."

Then I took courage and spoke to him.

"I do not wish to be executioner," I said; "I would rather ride
a-soldiering far away, and be in the drive of battle and the front of
danger. Let me be a soldier and a man-at-arms, my father. I am sure I
could become a war-captain and a great man!"

Gottfried Gottfried stared blankly at me, and his blue-black hair rose in
a crest--not with anger, of which he never showed any to me, but in sheer
astonishment. He continued to rub it with his hand, as if in this manner
he might possibly reach an explanation of the mystery.

"Not wish to be Hereditary Executioner? Why, are you not a Gottfried, the
only son of a Gottfried, the only son of his father, who also was a
Gottfried and Hereditary Red Axe of the Wolfmark? Why, lad, before there
was a Duke at all in the Wolfsberg, before he and his folk came out of
the land of the Poles to fight with the Ritterdom of the North, we, the
Gottfrieds of Thorn, wore the sign of the Red Axe and dwelt apart from
all the men of the Mark. For fourteen generations have we worn it!"

"But," said I, sadly, "the very children on the street hate me and spit
on me as I pass; the maids will not so much as speak to me. They scyrry
in-doors and slam the wicket in my face. Think you that is pleasant? And
when as a lad of older years I set out to woo, whither shall I betake me?
For what door is open to a Gottfried, to him who carries the sign of
the Red Axe?"

"Ah, lad," said my father, patiently, "life comes and life goes. It is
nigh on to forty years since even thus my father held out the curt mantle
for me. And even so said I. Time eats up all things but the hearts of
men. And they abide ever the same--yearning for that which they cannot
have, but nevertheless accepting with a sharp relish the things which are
decreed to them; even as do the Duke's carrion-eaters yonder, which,
by-the-way, are waiting most impatiently for their meal while we thus
stand arguing."

He was about to move away when his eye fell on Helene. At sight of her he
seemed to remember my last words, about going a-wooing.

He considered a moment and then said: "You are young yet to think of
courting, Hugo, but have no fear either for the love-making or the
wedding. Sweet maids a many shall surely come hither. Why, there is one
growing up yonder that will prove as fair as any. I tell you the
Gottfrieds have married great ladies in their time--dames and dainty
damsels. They have had princesses to be their sweethearts ere now. Come,
then, lad--no more words, but follow me."

And for that time I went after him obediently enough, but all the same my
heart was rebellious within me. And I determined that if I had to ran to
the ends of the earth, I should never be Hereditary Executioner nor yet
handle the broadaxe on the bared necks of my fellow-men.

We went in among the dogs--great, lank, cowering, tooth-slavering brutes.
I followed my father till we came to the feeding-troughs. Then he bade me
to stand where I was till he should set their meat in order. So he
vanished behind, the barriers. Then, when he had prepared the beasts'
horrid victual, though I saw not what, he opened the narrow gate, and the
howling, clambering throng broke helter-skelter for the troughs, cracking
and crunching the thigh-bones, tearing at the flesh, and growling at one
another till the air rang with the ear-piercing din.

And outside the little Helene flung herself frantically at the split
pines of the enclosure, crying, bitterly, "Take off that hateful mantle,
Hugo Gottfried! I hate it--I hate it! Take it off!"

My father stood behind the dogs, whose arched and bristling backs I could
just manage to see over the fence of wooden spars, and dealt the whip
judicially among them--at once as a warning to encroachers and a
punishment for greed.

Then all unharmed we went out, and as soon as my father had gone up to
his garret-room in the tower, I tore the red cloak off and trampled it in
the dirt of the yard. Then I went and hid it in a little blind window of
the tower opposite the foot of the ladder which led to my father's room.
For, because of my father's anger, I dared not destroy the badge of shame
altogether, as both Helene and I wished to do.

Day by day the Little Playmate (for so I was now allowed to call her--the
Princesshood being mostly forgotten) grew great and tall, her fair,
almost lint-white hair darkening swiftly to coppery gold with the glint
of ripe wheat upon it.

Old Hanne followed her about with eyes at once wistful and doubtful.
Sometimes she shook her head sadly. And I wondered if ever the poor old
stumbling crone, wizened like a two-year-old winter apple, had been as
light and gay a thing as our dainty rose-leaf girl.

One day I was laboring at the art of learning to write, along with Friar
Laurence--a scrawny, ill-favored monk, who, for good deeds or misdeeds, I
know not which, was warded in a cell opening out of the lower or garden
court of the Wolfsberg, when I heard Helene dance down the stairs to the
kitchen of the Red Tower.

"Hannchen!" she cried, merrily, "come and teach me that trick of the
broidering needle. I never can do it but I prick myself. Nevertheless,
I can fashion the Red Axe almost as clearly as the pattern, and far
finer to see."

Friar Laurence raised his great, softly solid face, blue about the jowls
and padded beneath the eyes with craft.

"That little maid is over much with old Hanne," he said, as if he
meditated to himself; "she will teach her other prickings than the
needle-play. The witch-pricking at the images of wax was what brought her
here. Aye, and had it not been for your father wanting a house-keeper,
the Holy Office would have burned the hag, and sent her to hell, flaming
like a torch of pine knots."

Now this was the first I had heard with exactness of the matter of old
Hanne's having been a witch. And now that I knew it for certain I began
to imagine all sorts of unholy things about the poor wretch, and grew
greatly jealous of Helene being so often in the kitchen. Whereas before I
had thought nothing at all about the matter, save that Hannchen was a
dull, pleasant, muttering, shuffling-footed old woman, who could make
rare good cream-cakes when you got her in the humor.

And that was not often.




CHAPTER VI

DUKE CASIMIR'S FAMILIAR


I mind it was some tale of years later that I got my first glimpse below
the surface of things in the town of Thorn, and especially in the castle
of the Wolfsberg.

Duke Casimir continued to move, as of yore, in cavalcade through
his subject city. The burghers bowed as obsequiously as ever when
they could not avoid meeting him. There were the old lordly
perquisitions--thunderings at iron-studded doors, battering-rams set
between posts, and the clouds of dust flying from the driven lintels, the
screams of maids, the crying of women, a stray corpse or two flung on to
the street, and then the procession as before, arms and legs, with a
mercenary soldier between each pair, fore and aft. All this was repeated
and repeated, till the dull monotony of tyranny began to wear through the
long Teutonic patience to the under-quick of Wendish madness.

It chanced that one night I could not sleep. It was no matter of maids
that kept me awake, though by this time I was sixteen or seventeen and
greatly grown--running, it is true, mostly to knees and elbows, but
nevertheless long of limb and stark of bone, needing only the muscle laid
on in lumps to be as strong as any.

I had begun to steal out at nights too--not on any ill errand, but that I
might have the company of those about my own age--'prentice lads and the
wilder sons of burghers, who had no objection to my parentage, and
thought it rather a fine thing to be hand-in-glove with the son of the
Red Axe of Thorn. And there we played single-stick, smite-jacket,
skittles, bowls--aye, and drank deep of the city ale--the very thinnest
brew that was ever passed by a bribed and muzzy ale-taster. All this was
mightily pleasant to me. For so soon as they knew that I had determined
to be a soldier, and not the Red Axe of the Wolfmark, they complimented
me greatly on my spirit.

Well, as I lay awake and waited for the chance to slip down a rope from
my bedroom window, whose foot should I hear on the turret stairs but that
of my Lord Duke Casimir! My very heart quailed within me. For the fear of
him sat heavy on every man and woman in the land. And as for the
children--why, as far as the Baltic shore and the land of the last
Ritters, mothers frightened their bairns with the Black Duke of the
Wolfsberg and his Red Axe.

So now the Duke and the Red Axe were to be in conference--as indeed had
happened nearly every day and night since I could remember. So that
people called my father the Duke's Private Devil, his Familiar Spirit,
his Evil Genius. But I knew other of it--and this night, of all nights in
the year, I was to know better still.

It was a summer midnight--not like the one I told of when the story
began, white with snow and glittering with the keen polish of frost. But
a soft, still night, drowsy yet sleepless, with an itch of thunder
tingling in the air--and, indeed, already the pulsing, uncertain glow of
sheet-lightning coming and going at long intervals along the south.

I crouched and nestled in the hole in the wall where I had long ago
hidden the hated red cloak, pulling my knees up uncomfortably to my chin.
And great lumps of bone they were, knotted as if a smith had made them in
the rough with a welding hammer and had forgotten to reduce them with the
file afterwards. At that time I was thoroughly ashamed of my knees.

But no matter for them now. Duke Casimir passed in and shut the door.

"Gottfried," I heard him say, "I am a dead man!"

These words from the great Duke Casimir startled me, and though I knew
well enough that Michael Texel, the Burgomeister's son, was waiting for
me by the corner of the Jew's Port, I decided that, as I might never hear
Duke Casimir declare his secretest soul again, I should even bide where I
was; and that was in the crevice of the wall among the old clothes, which
gave off such a faint, musty, sleepy smell I could scarcely keep awake.

But the Duke's next words effectually roused me.

"A dead man!" repeated Casimir. "I have not a friend in all the realm of
the Mark besides yourself. And there is none of all that take my bounty
or eat my bread that is sorry for me. See here," he said, querulously,
"twice have I been stricken at to-day--once a tile fell from a roof and
dinted the crown of my helmet, and the second time a young man struck at
my breast with a dagger."

"Did he wound you, Duke Casimir?" asked my father, speaking for the first
time, but in a strangely easy and equal voice, not with the distance and
deference which he showed to his lord in public.

"Nay, Gottfried," replied Duke Casimir; "but he bruised my shirt of mail
into my breast."

And I heard plainly enough the clinking of the rings of chain-armor as
the Duke showed his hurt to my father. Presently I heard his voice again.

"And the Bishop has touched me in a new place," he said. "He declares
that he will lay his interdict upon me and my people--ill enough to hold
in hand as they are even now. When that is done they will rise in
rebellion. My very men-at-arms and knights I cannot depend upon--only
upon you and the Black Riders."

"In the matter of the Bishop's interdict, or in other matters, do you
mean that you can trust my counsel, Duke Casimir?" asked my father.

"'Tis in the burial of the dead that the shoe will pinch first with these
burghers of Thorn and among our soldiers at the Wolfsberg. For mass,
indeed, they care not a dove's dropping--but that the corpse should be
carried to a dog's grave, that they cannot away with. Red Axe, I tell you
we shall have the State of the Mark about our ears in the slipping of a
hound's leash--and as for me, I know not what I shall do."

"Listen, and I will counsel you, Duke Casimir! Care you not though the
east wind brought Bishop Peters whirling over the Mark, as many as the
January snowflakes that come to us from Muscovy. I, Gottfried Gottfried,
tell you what to do. In every parish of the Mark there is a parson. Every
clerk of them hath a Presbytery, in which he dwells with those that are
abiding with him. Bid you the soldiers that are obedient to you to carry
all the corpses of the dead to the Presbytery, and leave them there under
guard. Then let us see whether or no the parsons will give them burial.
What think you of the counsel, Duke Casimir?"

I could hear the Duke rise and pace across the floor to where my
father sat on his bed. And by the silence I knew that the two men were
shaking hands.

"Red Axe," said the Duke, much moved, "of a truth you are a great
man--none like you in the Dukedom. These beard-wagging, chain-jingling
gentry I have small notion of. And would you but accept it, I would give
you to-morrow the collar of gold which befits the Chancellor of the Mark.
None deserves to wear it so well as thou."

My father laughed a low scornful laugh.

"Because I bid you teach the parsons their own religion, am I to be made
Chancellor of the Mark? A great gray wolf out of the forest were as
suitable a Chancellor of the Mark as Gottfried Gottfried, the fourteenth
hereditary Red Axe of Thorn!"

Then I heard him reach over his bed for something. I stole out of the
hole in the wall and crouched down till my eyes rested at the great
latchet hole through which the tang of leather to lift the bolt
ordinarily goes. I could see my father sitting on his bed and the Red
Axe lying across his knees. He took it in hand, dangling it like an
infant. He caressed it as he spoke, and ran his thumb lovingly along the
shining edge.

"Ah," he said, "my beauty, 'tis you and not your master they should make
High Chancellor of this realm. 'Tis you that have held the power of life
and death, and laid the spirit of rebellion any time these twenty years.
And well indeed wouldst thou look with a red robe about thee" (here he
reached for a cloak that swung from the rafters contiguous to his hand);
"a noble presence wouldst thou be in a tun-bellied robe and a collar of
shining gold! Bravely, great State's Chancellor of the Wolfmark, wouldst
thou then lead the processions and preside at the diets of justice--as
indeed thou dost mostly as it is."

And he made the Red Axe bow like a puppet in his hands as he swept the
cloak of red out behind the handle.

I could see Duke Casimir now. He had drawn up a stool and sat opposite my
father, with his elbows on his knees. One hand was stroking the side of
his head, and his haughtiness had all fallen from him like a forgotten
overmantle. He looked another man from the cruel, relentless Prince who
had ridden so sternly at the head of his men-at-arms and looked so
callously on at the death of men and the yet more bitter agony of women.

He stared at the floor, absorbed in his own gloomy thoughts, while my
father regarded him with his eyes as though he had been a lad in his
'prenticing who needed encouragement to persevere.

"Duke," he said, steadily, "you have borne the rule many years, and I
have stood behind you. Have I ever advised you wrong? Make peace with the
young man, your nephew; he is now only the Count von Reuss, but one day
he will be Duke Otho. And if he be rightly guided he may be a brave ruler
yet. But if not, and he gather in his hand the various seditions and
confused turbulences in the Dukedom, why, a worse thing may befall."

"You advise me," said the Duke, lifting his head and looking at his
Justicer, "to recall my nephew and risk all that threatened us ere he
fled to the Prince of Plassenburg--Karl, the Miller's Son."

Gottfried Gottfried continued to run his thumb to and fro along the edge
of the Red Axe.

"Even so," he replied, without raising his head; "give him the command of
the Black Riders of the Guard, who, as it is, adore him. Let him try his
'prentice hand on Bamberg and Reichenan. And if he offend, why, then it
will be time to apply for further advice to this chancellor in the Red
Robe, whose face so shines with wisdom."

The Duke rose.

"Well, on your head be it!" he said.

"Nay," said my father, "I but advise, it is for you to decide, my Lord.
If Duke Casimir sees a better way of it, why, then the words of his
servant are but as the tunes that the east wind whistles through the
key-hole."

And at the mention of key-holes I imagined that I saw my father's eyes
rest on the latchet crevice. So I bethought me that it was time for me to
be retiring to bed. To my room, therefore, I went straightway, tiptoeing
on the points of my hose. And with ears cocked I heard my father attend
the Duke to the door, and on across the yard, lest any night-wandering
traitor should take a fancy to make a hole in the back of Duke Casimir of
the Wolfmark.

Presently came my father in again, and I heard his foot climb steadily
up to my room. The door opened, and never was I in so deep a sleep. He
turned down the coverlet to see that I was undressed--but that I had seen
to. Whereat he departed fully satisfied.

Nevertheless this interview left me with a great feeling of insecurity.
If the Duke Casimir were thus full of fears, doubts, misgivings, whence
came the fierce and cruel courage with which he dominated his liege
burghers and harassed the country round about for a hundred leagues? The
cunning of a weak man? Say, rather, the contrivance of a strong servant
to hide the frailty of a weak master.

Then first it was that I saw that my father Gottfried Gottfried was the
true ruler of the Wolfmark, and that the man who had carried me on his
shoulders and played with the little Helene was--at least, so long as
Duke Casimir lived--the greatest man in all the Dukedom and first
Councillor of State, whether the matter were one of peasant or Kaiser.




CHAPTER VII

I BECOME A TRAITOR


Much was I flattered, and very naturally so, when Michael Texel made so
manifest a work about pleasing me and having me for his comrade. For
though I was now nineteen, he was five years my senior, and his father,
being both Burgomeister and Chief Brewer, was of the first consideration
in the town of Thorn.

"Hugo," said Michael Texel, "there be many lads in the city that are
well, and well enough, but none of them please me like you. It may be
that your keeping so greatly to yourself has made you passing thoughtful
for your age. And whereas these street-corner scraps of rascaldom care
for nothing but the pleasing of pothouse Gretchens, we that are men think
of the concerns of the State, and make us ready for the great things that
shall one day come to pass in Thorn and the Wolfmark."

I nodded my head as if I knew all about it. But, indeed, in my heart, I
too preferred the way of the other lads--as the favor of maids, and other
lighter matters. But since one so great and distinguished as Michael
Texel declared that such things were but useless gauds, unworthy of
thought, I considered that I had better keep my tongue tight-reined as to
my own desires.

I shall now tell the manner of my introduction to the famous society of
the White Wolf.

From the very first time that ever I saw him, Michael Texel had much to
say about a certain wondrous league of the young men of Thorn and the
Wolfmark. He told me how that every man with a heart in him was
enrolled among them: the sons of the rich and great, like himself; the
sons of the folk of no account (like myself, doubtless); the soldiers of
the Duke--nay, it was whispered very low in my ear, that even the young
Count Otho von Reuss, the Duke's nephew and heir, had taken high rank in
the society.

I asked Michael what were the declared objects of the association.

"See," he cried, grandly, with a wave of his hand, "this city of Thorn.
It lies there under the Wolfsberg. With a few cannon like Paul Grete, the
Margrave's treasure, Duke Casimir could lay our houses in ruins.
Therefore, in the meantime, let us not break out against Duke Casimir.
But one day there will come an end to the tyrant Duke. Tiles will not
always break harmless on helmets, nor the point of steel always be turned
aside by links of chain-armor. As I say, an hour will come for Casimir as
for other malefactors. And then--why, there is the young Otho. And he has
sworn the vows of the White Wolf to make of Thorn a free city with a
Stadtholder--one with power and justice, chosen freely by the people, as
in other Baltic cities. Is there a man of us that has not been
plundered?--a maid that does not go in fear of her honor while Casimir
reigns? Shall this thing be? Not surely forever. The White Wolf shall see
to it. She has many children, and they are all dear to her. Let the Duke
Casimir take his count with that!"

So, as was natural, I became after that more than ever eager to join this
most notable league of the White Wolf.

One night I had sat late talking to the Little Playmate, who was now
growing a great maid and a beautiful--none like her, so far as I could
see, in all the city of Thorn--a circumstance which made me more ready to
be of Michael Texel's opinion with regard to any flighty and
irresponsible courting of the maids of the town. For had I not the
fairest and the best of them all at home close by me? On this night of
which I speak it was almost bedtime when I heard a knocking at the outer
port, and went to open the wicket.

And lo! there was Michael Texel come all the way to the Red Tower for me,
though it was by his own trysting that we had agreed to meet at the inn
of the White Swan. Nevertheless there he was. So there was nothing for it
but to bring him in. I presented him in form to the Little Playmate, who
had quite forgotten her Princess-ship by this time in the sweetness of
being our house-angel of the Red Tower.

I saw in a moment that Michael Texel was astonished at Helene's beauty,
as indeed well he might be. But she, on her part, hardly so much as
glanced at him, though he was a tall and well-grown youth enough, with
nothing remarkable about him save pale hair of much the same color as his
complexion, and a cut on one side of his upper lip which in certain
lights gave him a sneering expression.

But to Helene he spoke very carefully and courteously, asking her whether
she ever went to any of the Guild entertainments for which Thorn was
famous. And upon her saying no--that my father did not think it fitting,
Michael said, "I was sure of it; none could forget if once they had seen.
For never in the history of Thorn has so fair a face graced Burgher dance
or Guild festival, nor yet has a foot so light been shaken on the green
in any of our summer outgoings."

Now this was well enough said in its way, but only what I myself had
often thought. Not that the Playmate took any notice of his words or was
in any degree elated, but kept her head bent demurely on her work all the
time Michael Texel was with us.

Presently there entered to us, thus sitting, Gottfried Gottfried, who
had come striding gloomily across the yard in his black suit from the
Hall of Judgment, and at his entrance Michael instantly became awkward,
nervous, and constrained.

"I must be going," he said; "the Burgomeister bade me be early within
doors to-night."

"Is the noble Burgomeister lodging at the White Swan?" asked my father,
with his usual simple directness, as he went hither and thither ordering
his utensils without heeding the visitor.

"No," said Michael, startled out of his equanimity; "he bides in his own
house by the Rath-house--the sign is that of the Three Golden Tuns."

The Red Axe nodded.

"I had forgotten," he said, indifferently, and stood by the great
polished platter-frame over the sideboard, dropping oil on the screws of
a certain cunning instrument which he was wont to use in the elucidation
of the Greater Question.

I could see Michael turning yellow and green, but whether with anger or
fear I could not tell. Helene, who loved not the tools of my father, had,
upon his entrance, promptly gathered up her white cobwebs and lace, and
had betaken herself to her own room.

"I must be bidding you a fortunate evening and wishing you an untroubled
sleep," said Michael, with studious politeness, rising to his feet. Yet
he did not immediately move away, but stood awkwardly fingering his hat,
as if he wished to ask a question and dared not.

"It is indeed a fine place for a sound sleep," said my father, nodding
his head grimly, "this same upper courtyard of the Wolfsberg. There are
few that have once slept here, my noble young sir, who have ever again
complained of wakefulness."

At this moment the hounds in the kennels raised their fierce clamor. And,
without waiting for another word, Michael Texel took himself off down
the stairs of the Red Tower. Nor did he regain his composure till I had
opened the wicket and ushered him out upon the street.

Then, as the postern clicked and the familiar noises of the city fell on
his ear--the slapping flat-footed lasses crying "Fried Fish," the sellers
of "Hot Oyster Soup," the yelling venders of crout and salad--Michael
gradually picked up his courage, and we proceeded down the High Street of
Thorn to the retired hostel of the White Swan.

"Frederika," he cried, as he entered, "are the lads here yet?"

"Aye, sir, aye--a full muster," answered the old mild-faced hostess, who
was busily employed knitting a stocking of pale blue in the porch,
looking for all the world like the sainted mother of a family of saints.

Michael Texel walked straight through a passage and down a narrow
alley, the beautiful apple-cheeked old woman following us with her eyes
as we went.

Our feet rang suddenly on hollow pavement as we stooped to enter a low
door in the side wall, almost concealed from observation by an
overgrowth of ivy.

"Halt!" cried a voice from the dusk ahead of us, and instantly there was
a naked sword at each of our breasts. We heard also the click of swords
meeting behind us. I turned my head, and lo! there at my very shoulder I
saw the gleam of crossed steel. My heart beat a little faster; but, after
all, I had been brought up with sights and sounds more terrible than
these, and, more than that, I had within the hour seen Michael Texel, the
high-priest of these mysteries, turn all manner of rainbow colors at the
howling of our blood-hounds and a simple question from my father. So I
judged that these mighty terrifications could portend no great ill to one
who was the son of the formidable Red Axe of the Wolfsberg.

Sometimes it is a mighty comfortable thing to have a father like mine.

I did not hear the question which was asked of my guide, but I heard
the answer.

"First in charge," said Michael Texel, "and with him one of the
Wolf's litter."

So we were allowed to proceed. But in the bare room which received us I
was soon left alone, for, with another question as briefly asked and
answered, the click of swords crossed and uncrossed before and behind
him, and the screechy grind of bolts, Michael passed out of sight within.
While as for me, I was left to twirl my thumbs, and wish that I had
stayed at home to watch the nimble fingers of the Playmate busy at her
sewing, and the rounded slenderness of her sweet body set against the
light of evening, which would at that hour be shining through the windows
of the Red Tower.

Nevertheless, it was no use repining or repenting. Here was I, Hugo
Gottfried, the son of the Red Axe, at the inner port of a treasonable
society. It was certainly a curious position; but even thus early I had
begun to consider myself a sort of amateur of strange situations, and I
admit that I found a certain stimulus in the thought that in an hour I
might have ceased to be heir to the office of Hereditary Justicer of the
ducal province of the Wolfmark.

Presently through the door there came one clothed in the long white
garments of a Brother of Pity, the eye-holes dark and cavernous, and the
eyes shining through the mask with a look as if the wearer were much more
frightened than those who looked upon him.

"Child of the White Wolf," he said, in a shaking voice, "would you dare
all and become one of the companions of the mysteries?"

But the accent of his voice struck me, the son of Gottfried Gottfried,
the dweller in the enclosure of the Red Tower, as painfully hollow and
pretentious. I had looked upon real terror, even plumbed some of the
grimmer mysteries of existence, and I had no fears. On the contrary, my
spirits rose, and I declared my readiness to follow this paltering,
knock-kneed Brother of Pity.

We stopped and went through another narrow passage, in the midst of which
we were stayed by thin bars, which were shot before and behind us, and by
a cold point of iron laid lightly against my brow. In this constrained
position my eyes were bandaged by unseen fingers.

The starveling Brother of the Wolf took me by the hand and led me on.
Then in another moment came the sense of lights and wider spaces, the
rustle of many people settling down to attention; and I knew that I was
in the presence of the famous secret tribunal of the White Wolf, which
had been set up in defiance of the authority of the Duke and against the
laws of the Mark.




CHAPTER VIII

AT THE BAR OF THE WHITE WOLF


"Who waits at the bar with you, brother?" said a voice which, though
disguised, carried with it a suggestion of Michael Texel.

The announcement was made by the officer who brought me in.

"'Tis one Hugo Gottfried, son of Gottfried Gottfried, hereditary
executioner to the tyrant."

I could hear the thrill of interest which pervaded the assembly at the
announcement. And for the first time I thought almost well of the
honorable office to which I had been born.

"And what do you here, son of the Red Axe, in the place of the Sacred
Fehme of the White Wolf?"

The question was the first addressed directly to me.

"I came," said I, as straightforwardly and simply as I could, "with
Michael Texel, because he asked me to come. And also because I heard that
there was good ale to be had for the drinking at the White Swan of Thorn,
where we are now met."

A low moan of horror went about the assembly at the frivolity of my
answer, which plainly was not what had been expected.

"Daring mocker!" cried a stern voice, "you speak as one unacquainted with
the dread power of the White Wolf, which has within her grasp the keys of
life and death--and has suckled great empires at her dugs. Beware, tempt
not the All-powerful to exercise her right of axe and cord!"

"I do not tempt any," answered I, boldly enough--yet with no credit to
myself, for I could have laughed aloud at all this hollow pretence,
having been brought up within the range of that which was no mockery. "I
am willing to become a loyal member of the Society of the White Wolf for
the furtherance of any honest purpose. All things, I admit, are not well
within the body politic. Let us, in the city of Thorn, strive after the
same rights as are possessed by the Free Cities of the North. If that be
your object, the son of the Red Axe is with you--with you to the death,
if need be. But for God's sake let us take off these masks and set
ourselves down to the tankard and the good brown bread with less
mummery--a sham of which others have the reality."

"Peace, vain, ignorant fly!" cried the same speaker, one with a young
voice, which he was trying, as I thought, to make grave and old; "terror
must first strike your heart, or you cannot sit down with the Society of
the White Wolf. You stand convicted of blasphemy against this our ancient
and honorable institution--blasphemy which must be suddenly and terribly
punished. Hugo Gottfried, I command you--make your head ready for the
striker. Bare the neck and bow the knee!"

But I stood as erect as I could, though I felt hands laid upon my
shoulders and the breathing of many close about me.

"Knights and gentlemen," said I, "I am not afraid to die, if need be. But
ere you do your will upon me, I would fain tell you a tale and give you a
warning. Here I am one among many. I am also of your opinion, if your
opinion be against tyranny. But for God's sake seek it as wise men and
not as posturing knaves. As for Michael Texel--"

"Name not the mortal names of men in this place of the White Wolf!" said
the same grave voice.

At which I laughed a little.

"If you will tell me what to say instead in the language of the
immortals, I will call my friend by that name. Till then Michael
Texel, I say--"

I was pulled by force down upon my knees.

"Your pleasure, gentlemen," said I, as coolly as I might; "you may do
with me as you will, but give me at least leave to speak. Your meetings
here at the White Swan are known to the Red Axe, my father, and therefore
to the Duke Casimir."

A low groan filled the wide hall. I could feel that my words touched them
on the raw.

"Also this very night I saw one of your noblest members tremble with
alarm--for the Society, not for himself, I warrant--when Gottfried
Gottfried spake lightly of your meetings here as of a thing well known.
I am not afraid of my life. In the sight of my father I went forth from
the Red Tower in the company of Michael Texel. He knew of your place of
meeting. And well I wot that if I am not within the precincts of the
Red Tower by midnight, the officers of Duke Casimir and his Judgment
Hall will come knocking at these doors of yours. I ask you, are you
ready to open?"

"Rash mortal!" said the voice again to me, "you mistake the White Wolf if
you think that she or her children are afraid of any tyrant or of his
officers. You yourself shall die, as has been appointed. For none may
speak lightly of the White Wolf and live to tell the tale!"

"So be it," I replied, calmly; "but first let me recount to you the story
of Hans Pulitz. Not for the hiding of a belt of gold, as men say, was he
condemned. But because he had plotted against the life of the Duke and of
his minister of justice, the Red Axe. Would you know what happened? I
will tell you briefly:

"Ten men, accounted strong, held Hans Pulitz. Ten men could scarce lead
him through the court-yard to the chair on which sat Duke Casimir. I saw
him judged. Was he not of the White Wolf? Did the White Wolf save him?
Have her teeth ravened for those that condemned him? Or have you that are
of that noble society kept close in your halls and played out your puppet
shows, while poor Hans, who was faithful to you to the end,
went--whither?"

A sough of angry whispering filled the room, rising presently into a roar
of indignation.

"Traitor! Murderer! Spy!" they cried.

"Nay," said I, "'fore God, Hugo Gottfried was more sorry for the poor
deceived slave than any here. For, in the presence of the Duke, I cried
out against the horror. But being no more than a boy, I was stricken to
silence by the hand of a man-at-arms. Then I saw Hans Pulitz cast loose.
I saw him seized by one man--even by the Red Axe--raised high in the air,
and flung over the barriers among the ravening and leaping blood-hounds.
I heard the hideous noises that followed--the yells of a man fighting for
his life in a place of fiends. I shut my ears with my hands, yet could I
not shut out that clangor of hell. I shut my eyes, closer than you have
shut them for me now. I fled, I knew not where, terror pursuing me. And
yet I saw, and do now see, the Duke sitting with crossed hands as if at
prayers, and the Red Axe standing motionless before the men-at-arms,
pointing with one hand to the Duke's vengeance! Shall I tell you now why
I am not afraid?"

After hearing these words it was small wonder that they cried yet more
against me.

"Death to the traitor--bloody death--like that which he has rejoiced in!"

"Nay, my friends," said I, "it was because of the death of Hans Pulitz
and that of others that I would strengthen the hands of liberty and make
an end of tyranny. But not, an' it please you, with child's plays and the
cast-off garmentry of tyrants. What can you do to me in the Inn of the
Swan that can equal the end of poor Hans Pulitz--of whom they found
neither bone nor hair, took up no fragment of skin or nail, save the
golden chain only, tooth-scarred and beslavered, which he wore about his
waist. And the belt you may see for yourselves any day if you give me
your company within the Red Tower."

Now, as may well be understood, if the Society of the White Wolf was
angry before, it was both angry and frightened now, which is a thing
infinitely more dangerous.

"Let him die straightway! Let the taunting blasphemer die!" they cried.
And again, for the third time, the hollow voice pronounced my doom.

"It is well," I shouted amid the din. "It is thrice well. But look ye to
it. By the morrow's morn there shall not be one of you in your
beds--aye, and those whose heads are rolled in the dust shall count
yourselves the fortunate ones. For they at least will escape the fate of
poor Hans Pulitz."

Now sorely do I wonder, at this distance of time, that they did not slay
me in good earnest. But I have learned from that night in the Inn of the
Swan that when defiance has to be made, it is ever best to deal in no
half-measures. And, besides, coming from the Red Tower of the Wolfsberg,
their precious Society of the White Wolf, with its mummery and flummery,
filled me with a hot contempt.

"Kneel down!" cried the judge; "lay your head on the block! It has often
been wet with the blood of traitors, never with that of a blacker traitor
than Hugo Gottfried!"

So with that those about me thrust me forward and forced my head down. I
was obliged to clasp the block with both my hands. As I did so I felt it
well all over. Then I laughed aloud, with a laugh that must have appeared
strange and mad to them.

For this their mock tribunal could not deceive one who had been brought
up within the hum of judges of life and death, and with a father who as
his daily business propounded the Greater and Lesser Questions. And their
precious block, as smooth as sawn and polished timber, with never a notch
from side to side, could not take in Hugo Gottfried, who had made a
playmate and a printed book of the worn blocks of a hundred
executions--to whom each separate chip made by the Red Axe had been a
text for Gottfried Gottfried to expatiate upon concerning his own prowess
and that of his fathers.

Nevertheless, it certainly gave me a strange turn when ice-cold steel was
laid across my neck-bone. It burned like fire, turning my very marrow to
water, and for the first time I wished myself well out of it. But only
for a moment.

For there came a loud rattling of arms without, a thunderous and
insistent knocking at the door, which disturbed the assembly.

"Open, in the name of the Duke!" cried, clamorously, many fierce voices
without. I heard the rush and scuffle of a multitude of feet. The hands
that had held me abruptly loosened their grip, and I was free. I raised
my bound wrists to my brow and tried to push the bandage back. But it was
firmly tied, and it was but dimly that I saw the hall of the White Wolf
filled with the armed men of the Duke's body-guard, boisterously
laughing, with their hands on their sides, or kicking over the mock
throne covered with white cloth, the coils of rope, the axes of painted
wood, and the other properties of this very faint-hearted Fehmgericht.

"But what have we here?" they cried, when they came upon me, bound and
helpless, with the bandage only half pushed off my eyes.

"Heave him up on his pins, and let us look at him," quoth a burly
guardsman. "I trust he is no one of any account. I want not to see
another such job done on a poor scheming knave like that last, when the
Duke Casimir settled accounts with Hans Pulitz!"

"Ha! ha!" laughed his companion; "a rare jest, i' faith; 'tis the son of
our own Red Axe--a prisoner of the White Wolf and ready for the edge. We
came not a moment too soon, youngster. What do you here?"

"Why," said I, "it chanced that I spoke slightingly of their precious
nonsense of a White Wolf. But they dared not do me harm. They were all
more frightened than a giggling maiden is of the dark, when no man is
with her."

Then I saw my father at the end of the hall. He came towards me, clad in
his black Tribunal costume.

"Well," he said, quaintly, like one that has a jest with himself
which he will not tell, "have you had enough of marching
hand-in-glove with treason? I wot this mummery of the White Wolf will
serve you for some time."

I was proceeding to tell him all that had passed, but he patted me on
the shoulder.

"I heard it all, lad, and you did well enough--save for your windiness
about liberty and the Free Cities--which, as I see it, are by far the
worst tyrannies. But, after all, you spoke as became a Gottfried, and one
day, I doubt not, you shall worthily learn the secrets, bear the burden,
and enlarge the honors of the fourteen Red Axes of the Wolfmark."




CHAPTER IX

A HERO CARRIES WATER IN THE SUN


With all which adventuring and bepraisement back and forth, as those who
know nineteen will readily be assured, I went home no little elated. For
had I not come without dishonor through a new and remarkable experience,
and even defied the Mystery of the White Wolf, at perhaps more risk to
myself than at the time I had imagined. For, as I found afterwards, there
were those among the company at the Swan that night of sterner mould and
more serious make than Michael Texel.

But, at all events, home to the Red Tower I strode, whistling, and in a
very cocksure humor.

The little Helene was going about her house duties silently and distantly
when I came down from my turret room on the forenoon of the morrow. She
did not come forward to be kissed, as had been her wont every morning
ever since I carried her, a little forlorn maid, up to mine own bed that
chill winter's night.

"A good-morrow, Little Playmate!" I bade her, gayly. For my heart was
singing a good tune, well pleased with itself and willing to be at amity
with every one else--counting indeed, as is the wont of brisk hearts, a
gloomy face little less than a personal insult.

But the maid did not answer, neither indeed did she seem to have heard
me.

"I bade you fair good-morning, Helene," said I, again, stopping in my
walk across to my breakfast platter.

But still she was silent, casting sand upon the tiled floor and sweeping
it up with great vigor, all her fair body swaying and yielding to the
grace, of movement at every stroke. Strange, it seemed she was now just
about the age when I developed those nodosities of knee and elbow which
troubled me so sore, but yet there was nothing of the kind about her,
only delicate slimness and featly rounded grace.

I went over to her, and would have set my palm affectionately on her
shoulder. But she escaped, just as a bird does when you try to put your
hand upon it. It does not seem to fly off. It simply is not there when
your hand reaches the place.

"Let be," she said, looking upon me haughtily. "By what right do you seek
to touch me, sir?"

"Sweetheart," said I, following her, and much astonished, "because I have
always done it and you never objected before."

"When I was a child, and when you loved me as a child, it was well. But
now, when I am neither a child nor yet do you love me, I would have you
cease to treat me as you have done."

"You are indeed no longer a child, but the fairest of sweet maids," I
made answer. "I will do nothing you do not wish me to do. For, hearken to
me, Helene, my heart is bound up in you, as indeed you know. But as to
the second word of accusation--that I do not love you anymore--"

"You do not--you cannot!" she interrupted, "or you would not go out with
Michael Texel all night to drinking-places, and worse, keeping your
father and those that _do_ love awake, hurting their hearts here" (she
put her hand on her side), "and all for what--that you may drink and
revel and run into danger with your true friends?"

"Sweetheart," I began--penitently.

The Little Playmate made a gesture of infinite impatience.

"Do not call me that," she said; "you have no right. I am not your
sweetheart. You have no heart at all to love any one with, or you would
not behave as you have done lately. You are naught but a silly, selfish
boy, that cares for nothing but his own applause and thinks that he has
nothing to do but to come home when his high mightiness is ready and find
us all on our knees before him, saying: 'Put your foot, great sir, on our
necks--so shall we be happy and honored.'"

Now this was so perilously near the truth that I was mightily incensed,
and I felt that I did well to be angry.

"Girl," I said, grandly, "you do not know what you say. I have been
abroad all night on the service of the State, and I have discovered a
most dangerous conspiracy at the peril of my life!"

For I thought it was as well to put the best face on the matter; and,
besides, I have never been able, all the days of me, to hide my light
under a bushel, as the clerks prate about.

But I was not yet done with my adventuring of this eventful day. And in
spite of my father setting me, like a misbehaving bairn, to the drudgery
of the water-carrying, there was more in life for me that day than merely
hauling upon a handle. For that is a thing which galls an aspiring youth
worse than any other labor, being so terribly monotonous.

As for me, I did not take kindly to it at all--not even though I could
see mine own image deep in the pails of water as they came up brimming
and cool out of the fern-grown dripping darkness of the well. Aye, and
though the image given back to me was (I say it only of that time) a
likely enough picture of a lad with short, crisped locks that curled
whenever they were wet, cheeks like apples, and skin that hath always
been a trouble to me. For I thought it unmanly and like a girl's. And
that same skin of mine is, perhaps, the reason why all my days I never
could abide your buttermilk-and-roses girls, having a supply about me
enough to serve a dozen, and therefore thinking but little of their
stock-in-trade.

Now in the Wolfmark this is the common kind of beauty--not that beauty of
any kind is over-common. For our maids--especially those of the
country--look too much as if they had been made out of wooden pillows
such as laborers use to lay their heads on of nights--one large bolster
set on the top of two other little ones, and all three well wadded with
ticking and feathers. But I hope no one will go back to the Wolfmark and
tell the maids that Hugo Gottfried said this of them, or of a surety my
left ear will tingle with the running of their tongues if there be any
truth in the old saw.

It was three of the clock and the sun was very fierce on the dusty,
unslaked yard of the Wolfsberg, glaring down upon us like the mouth of a
wide smelter's oven. Fat Fritz, the porter, in his arm-chair of a cell,
had well-nigh dissolved into lard and running out at his own door. The
Playmate's window was open, and I caught the waft of a fan to and fro. I
judged therefore that my lady knew well that I was working out there in
the heat, and was glad of it--being a spiteful pretty minx.

Then I began to wonder who had given her that fan, for it was not like my
father to do it, and she knew no other. "Ah!" I said to myself, as a
thought struck me, "could it possibly be Michael Texel? He is rich, and
Helene may have known him before. The cunning, dark-eyed little
vagabond--to take my introduction yester-even as if she had never set
eyes on the fellow before, while here it is as clear as daylight that he
had all the time been giving her presents--fans and such like."

So I raved within me, half because I believed it, and half because she
seemed so comfortable up there, with her feet on a stool and a cool jug
of curds at her elbow, while I sweated and labored in the sun.

Very decidedly it must be Texel; devil fly up with him and scratch him
among the gargoyles of the minster!

The fan wagged on. It looked distractingly cool within. But then my
father--filial obedience was very distinctly a duty, and, also, Gottfried
Gottfried, though kind, was a man not to be disobeyed--even at nineteen,
and after defying the White Wolf.

It was, as I have said, about three by the sundial on the wall, the arch
of which cast a shadow like jet on the scale, that my father came out
through the narrow door from the Judgment Hall, opening it with his own
key. For he had the right of entrance and outgoing of every door in the
palace, not even excepting the bedchamber of Duke Casimir.

"Hugo," he said, "come hither, lad. I did not mean to keep you so long at
work in the sun. You must have filled all the cisterns in the place by
this time!"

I thanked him sincerely, but did not pursue the subject. For, indeed, I
had not worked quite so hard as in his haste my father had supposed from
my appearance.

"Go within," he said; "don quickly your saint's-day dress, and betake
yourself down to the house of Master Gerard von Sturm, the city
chamberlain, and tell him all that he asks of you--readily and truly."

"But, father," said I, "suppose he asks of me that which might condemn
one who has trusted me, what am I to say?"

"Tut, boy," said my father, impatiently, "you mean young Michael Texel.
Fear not for him. He was the first to inform. He was at Master von
Sturm's by eight this morning, elbowing half a dozen others, all burning
and shining lights of the famous Society of the White Wolf. You are the
hero of the day down there, it seems."

"And lo! here I am flouted by a stripling girl, and set to carry water
by the hour in the broiling sun!" I said within myself. I possessed,
however, though without doubt a manifest hero, far too much of the
unheroic quality of discretion to say this aloud to my father.

"I thank you, sir," I said, respectfully. "I will go at once and put on
my finest coat and my shoes of silk."

My father smiled.

"You need not be particular as to the silk shoes. 'Tis to see Master von
Sturm, not to court pretty Mistress Ysolinde, that I asked you to visit
the lawyer's house by the Weiss Thor."

But I was not sorry to be able to proclaim my destination as loud as I
dared without causing suspicion.

"Hanne," I cried down the turret stairs, "I pray you bring me the silken
shoes with the ribbon bows of silk. I am going down to Master von Sturm's
house; also my gold chain and bonnet of blue velvet with the golden
feather in it which I won at the last arrow-shooting."

I saw the fluttering of the fan falter and stop. A light foot went
pattering up the stairway and a door slammed in the tower.

Then I laughed, like the vain, silly boy I was.

"Mistress Helene," I said to myself, "you will find that poor Hugo, whom
you flouted and despised, can yet pay his debts!"

So I put on the fine clothes which I wore on festal days and sallied
forth. Now, though the lower orders still hated my father and all that
came out of the Red Tower, or indeed, for the matter of that, out of the
Wolfsberg, with hardly concealed malice--yet there were many in the city,
specially among those of the upper classes, who began to think well of my
determination to try another way of life than that to which I had been
born. For I made no secret of the matter to Michael Texel and such of his
comrades as joined us in our gatherings.

Indeed, now, when I come to think of it, it seems to me that my father
was the only person of my acquaintance who did not suspect that I was
resolved never to wear either the black robe of Inquisition or the
crimson of Final Judgment.

Yet it wore round to within two years, and indeed rather less, of the
time for my initiation into the mysteries of the Red Axe, and still I
remained at home, an idle boy, playing at single-stick and fence with
the men-at-arms, drinking beer in the evening with my bosom cronies, and
in the well-grounded opinion of all honest people, likely enough to come
to no good.

But I, Hugo Gottfried, had my eyes and my books open, and knew that I was
but biding my time.

So it came about that I carried no taint of the dread associations of the
Wolfsberg about me as I went down the bustling street to the Weiss Thor
to call on that learned and well-reputed lawyer, Master Gerard von Sturm.
So great was the fame of Master Gerard that he was often called in to
settle the mercantile quarrels of the burghers among themselves, and was
even chosen as arbiter between those of other towns. For, though
accounted severe, he had universally the name of a just and wise man, who
would not rob the litigants of all their valuables and then decide in
favor of neither, as was too often the way with the "justice" of the
great nobles.

As for Duke Casimir of the Wolfmark, no man or woman went near him on any
plea whatsoever, save that of asking mercy or favor. And unless my father
chanced to be at hand, mostly they asked in vain. For, as I now knew, he
had to keep up the common bruit of himself throughout the country as a
cruel, fearless, and implacable tyrant. Besides, his fears were so
constant and so great, perhaps also so well-founded, that often he dared
not be merciful.




CHAPTER X

THE LUBBER FIEND


At five of the clock I lifted the great wolf's-head knocker of shining
brass which frowned above the door of Master Gerard von Sturm in the port
of the Weiss Thor. Hardly had I let it fall again when a small wicket,
apparently about two feet above my head, opened, and a huge round head
with enormous ears at either side peeped out. So vast was the head and so
small the aperture that one of the lateral wings of the chubby face
caught on the sill, and the owner brought it away successfully with a
jerk and a perfectly good-humored and audible "flip."

"Who are you, and what do you want?" said a wide-gashed mouth, which,
with a squat, flattened-out nose and two merry little twinkling eyes,
completed this wonderful apparition.

The words were in themselves somewhat rude. On paper I observe that they
have an appearance almost truculent. But spoken as the thing framed in
the window-sill said them, they were equal to a song of Brudershaft and
an episcopal benediction rolled in one.

"I am Hugo Gottfried of the Red Tower, come to see Master Gerard," I
replied. "Who may you be that asks so boldly?"

"I'll give you a stalk of rhubarb to suck if you can guess," was the
unexpected answer.

As I had never in my life seen anything in the least like the prodigy, it
was clearly impossible for me to earn the tart succulence of the summer
vegetable on such easy terms.

"I should say," I replied, "if the guess savor not of insolence, that one
might be forgiven for mistaking you for the Fool of the Family!"

The grin expanded till it wellnigh circumnavigated the vast head. It
seemed first of all to make straight for the ears on either side. Then,
quite suddenly, finding these obstacles insurmountable, it dodged
underneath them, and the scared observer could almost imagine its two
ends meeting with a click somewhere in the wilderness at the back of that
unseen hemisphere of hairy thatch.

"Pinked in the white, first time--no trial shot!" cried the object in the
doorway, cheerily. "I am the Fool of the Family. But not the only one!"

At this moment something happened behind--what, I could not make out
for some time. The head abruptly disappeared. There was a noise as of
floor-rugs being vigorously beaten, the door opened, and the most
extraordinary figure was shot out into the street. The head which I had
seen certainly came first, but so lengthy a body followed that it seemed
a vain thing to expect legs in addition. Yet, finally, two appeared, each
of which would have made a decent body of itself, and went whirling
across the street till the whole monstrosity came violently into
collision with the walls of the house opposite, which seemed to rock to
its very foundations under the assault.

A decent serving-man, in a semi-doctorial livery of black cloth, with a
large white collar laid far over his shoulders, and cuffs of the same
upon his wrists, stood in the open doorway and smiled apologetically at
the visitor. He was rather red in the face and panted with his exertions.

"I ask your pardon, young sir," he said. "That fool, Jan Lubber Fiend,
will ever be at his tricks. 'Tis my young mistress that encourages him,
more is the pity! For poor serving-men are held responsible for his
knavish on-goings. Why, I had just set him cross-legged in the yard with
a basket of pease to shell, seeing how he grows as much as a foot in the
night--or near by. But so soon as my back is turned he will be forever
answering the door and peeping out into the street to gather the mongrel
boys about him. 'Tis a most foul Lubber Fiend to keep about an honest
house, plaguing decent folks withal!"

By this time the great oaf had come back to the door of the house, and
now stood alternately rubbing his elbow and rear, with an expression
ludicrously penitent, at once puzzled and kindly.

"Ah, come in with you, will you?" said the man. "Certes, were it not for
Mistress Ysolinde, I would set on the little imps of the street to nip
you to pieces and eat you raw."

The angry serving-man held the door as wide as possible and stood aside,
whereat the Lubber Fiend tucked his head so far down that it seemed to
disappear into the cavity of his chest, and scurried along the passage
bent almost double. As he passed the door he drew all the latter part of
his body together, exactly like a dog that fears a kick in the by-going.
The respectable man-servant stirred not a muscle, but the gesture told a
tale of the discipline of the house by the White Gate at times when
visitors were not being admitted by the main door, and when Mistress
Ysolinde, favorer of the Fool Lubber Fiend, was not so closely at hand.

It was a grand house, too, the finest I had ever seen, with hangings of
arras everywhere, many and parti-colored--red hunters who hunted, green
foresters who shot, puff-cheeked boys blowing on hunting-horns; a house
with mysterious vistas, glimpses into dim-lit rooms, wafts of perfume,
lamps that were not extinguished even in the daytime, burning far
within. All in mighty striking contrast to the bare stark strength of our
Red Tower on the Wolfsberg with its walls fourteen feet thick.

As I followed the serving-man through the halls and stairways my feet
fell without noise on carpets never woven in our bare-floored Germany,
nor yet in England, where they still strew rushes, even (so they say) in
the very dining-rooms of the great--surely a most barbarous and
unwholesome country. Nevertheless, carpets of wondrous hue were here in
the house of Master Gerard, scarlet and blue, and so thick of ply that
the foot sank into them as if reluctant ever to rise again.

As I came to the landing place at the head of the stairway, one passed
hastily before me and above me, with a sough and a rustle like the wind
among tall poplar trees on the canal edges.

I looked up, and lo! a girl, not beautiful, but, as it were, rather
strange and fascinating. She was lithe like a serpent and undulated in
her walk. Her dress was sea-green silk of a rare loom, and clung closely
about her. It had scales upon it of dull gold, which gave back a
lustrous under-gleam of coppery red as she moved. She had a pale, eager
face, lined with precision enough, but filled more with passion than
womanly charm. Her eyes were emerald and beautiful, as the sea is when
you look down upon it from a height and the white sand shines up through
the clear depths.

Such was Ysolinde, daughter of Gerard von Sturm, favorer of Lubber Fiends
and creator of this strange paradise through which she glided like a
spangled Orient serpent.

As I made my way humbly enough across to Master Gerard's room his
daughter did not speak to me, only followed me boldly, and yet, as it
seemed to me, somewhat wistfully too, with her sea-green eyes. And as the
door was closing upon me I saw her beckon the serving-man.

But I, on the inner side of the door, and with Master Gerard von Sturm
before me, had enough to do to tell my tale and answer his questions
without troubling my head about green-eyed girls.

Master Gerard was as remarkable looking to the full as his daughter, with
the same luminously green eyes. But the orbs which in the maid shone as
steadily clear as the depths of the sea, in the father glittered
opalescent where he sat in the dusk, like the eyes of Grimalkin cornered
by dogs in some gloomy angle of the Wolfsberg wall.

As soon as I had set eyes on him I knew that I had to do with a man--not
with a walking show like my Lord Duke Casimir. It struck me that for good
or evil Master Gerard could carry through his intent to the bitter end,
and that in council he would smile when he saw my father change his black
vesture of trial for the red of beheading.

The Doctor Gerard was little seen in the streets of Thorn. Many citizens
had never so much as set eyes on him. Nevertheless his hand was in
everything. Some said he was a Jew, chiefly because none knew rightly
what he was or whence he had come. Thirty years had gone by since he had
suddenly appeared one day in the noble old house by the Weiss Thor, from
which Grätz the wizard and his wife had been burned out by the fury of
the populace. Twenty years of artistic labor had made this place what it
now was. And the little impish maid who used to break unexpectedly upon
the workmen of Thorn from behind doors, or who clapped hands upon their
shoulders in dusky recesses, scaring them out of their wits with
suggestions of witch-masters long dead and damned, had grown into this
maid of the sea-green eyes and silken draperies.

"A good-day to you, Hugo Gottfried!" said Master Gerard, quietly, looking
at me keenly across the table. He wore a skull-cap on his closely cropped
head. One or two betraying locks of gray appeared under it in front, but
did not conceal a flat forehead, which ran back at such an angle that,
with the luminous eyes beneath it, it gave him the look of a serpent
rearing his yellow head a little back in act to strike. This was a look
his daughter had also. But in her the gesture was tempered by the
free-playing curves of a beautiful throat and the forward thrust of a
rounded chin--advantages not possessed by the angular anatomy and bony
jaw of the famous doctor of law.

Master Gerard, clad in a long robe of black velvet from head to heel, sat
bending his fingers gracefully together and looking at me. His head was
thrown back, I have said, and the lights of the colored windows striking
on his gray hair and black skull-cap, caused him to look much more like
some lean ascetic ecclesiastic and prince of the church than the chief
lawyer of the ancient capital of the Wolfmark.

"You were present at this child's play yester-eve in the hostel of the
White Swan?" he asked, boring into me with his uncomfortable,
triangular eyes.

"Aye, truly," said I, "and much they made of me!"

For since my father said that I was accounted a hero in this house, I had
determined not to hide away my deeds in my leathern scrip. I had had
enough practice in playing at modesty in the Tower of the Red Axe.

Master Gerard shook his shoulders as though he would have made me believe
that he laughed.

"You were over many for thorn, I hear great silly fellows--children
playing with fire yet afraid to burn themselves. Why, since ten this
morning I have had them all here--stout burgomeister's sons, slim scions
of the Burghershaft, moist-eyed corporation children, each more anxious
than another to prove that he had nothing to do with any treason. He had
but called in at the White Swan for a draught of Frederika's famous stone
ale, and so--well, he found himself somehow in the rear, and, all
against his will, was dragged into the Lair of the White Wolf!"

He looked at me quietly, without speaking, for a while.

"And you, Master Hugo, did you go thither to distinguish yourself by
breaking up their child's folly, or, like the others, to taste the
stone ale?"

It was a question I had not expected. But it was best to be very plain
with Master Gerard.

"I went," I replied, "along with Michael Texel, because he asked me. I
knew not in the least what I was to see, but I was ready for anything."

"And you acquitted yourself on the whole extremely well," he nodded; "so
at least they are all very ready to say, hoping, I doubt not, for your
good offices with the Duke when it comes to their turn. You flouted them
right manfully and defied their mystery, they told me."

At this moment I became conscious that a door opposite me was open and
the curtain drawn a little way back. There, in the half-light, I saw
Mistress Ysolinde listening. She leaned her head aside as though it had
been heavy with its weight of locks of burned gold. She pillowed her
cheek against the door-post, and let her dreamy sea-green eyes rest upon
me. And the look that was in them gave me a sense of pleasure strange and
acute, as well as a restless uneasiness and vague desire to escape out
under the blue sky, and mingle with the throng of every-day men on the
streets of the city.

***


CHAPTER XI

THE VISION IS THE CRYSTAL


Master Gerard, however, did not seem to be aware of her presence, for he
continued his catechism steadily.

"You mocked at their terrors, did you not, and told them that you, who
had seen the teeth of the Duke's hounds, had nothing to fear from the
bare gums of the White Wolf?"

"I knew that they but played," I answered, "and that I had little to
fear."

For with Ysolinde von Sturm watching me with her eyes I could not for
very shame's sake make myself great.

"You told them more than that," the girl cried, suddenly flashing on me a
look keen as the light on a sword when it comes home from the cutler.
"You told them that you too desired a freer commonwealth!"

"I did," said I, flushing quickly, for I had thought to keep my
thumb on that.

Nevertheless I was not going back on my spoken word, even in the presence
of Duke Casimir's inquisitor. Besides which I judged that my father had
influence enough to bring me out scathless.

"That is well and bravely said!" he replied, smiling with thin lips which
in all their constant writhings showed no vestige of teeth within; "but
the sentiment itself is somewhat strange in the son of the Red Axe and
the future Executioner of Justice in the Wolfmark."

Then for the first time I permitted my eyes to rest on the lithe figure
of the girl in the doorway. Methought she inclined her head a little
forward to catch my answer as if it had been a matter of interest to her.

"I am indeed son of the Red Axe," said I, "but my own head would underlie
it rather than that I should ever be Hereditary Justicer of the Mark."

A smile that was meant for me passed over the girl's face and momently
sweetened her lips. She straightened her body and set a hand more easily
to her waist. A certain kindness dwelt in her emerald eyes.

"Never be Duke's Justicer!" cried Master Gerard, looking up with his hand
on a skull. "This is unheard of! Are not you the only son of Gottfried
Gottfried, right hand of Duke Casimir, highest in favor with his Grace?
And within two years, according to the law of the headsman, must you not
also don the Red and the Black and stand at the Duke's left hand, as your
father at his right, when he sits in judgment?"

I bowed my head for answer.

"Even so," said I; "but long before that time I shall be either in a far
country waging the wars of another lord, or in a country yet
farther--that to which the men of my race have directed so many
untimeously."

"Have you at all thought of the land or the lord to whom you would
transfer your allegiance?" said Gerard von Sturm, carelessly rapping with
his fingers on the bare white of the skull before him.

"I have not," I replied as easily.

He looked down a moment, and drew his black robe thoughtfully over his
knee as if turning the matter over in his mind. "What think you of
Plassenburg and the service of Prince Karl?" he said at last.

"The place is too near and the man a usurper," I replied, brusquely.

"I am not so sure," Master Gerard mused, slowly, "that it might not be
advantageous to bide near home. Duke Casimir is mortal, after all--long
and prosperously may he live!" (Here he inclined his head piously, while
naming his master.) "But who knows how long he may be spared to reign
over a loving people. And after that, why, there may be more usurpers.
For by the name 'usurper' the ignorant mostly mean men of the strong
heart and sure brain, who can hold that which they have with one hand and
reach out for more with the other."

While he spoke thus he looked at me with his green eyes half closed.

"But," said I, calmly enough, though my heart beat fast, "I am but a lad
untried. I may never rise beyond a private soldier. I may be killed at
the first assault of my virgin campaign."

Master Gerard looked up quickly. He beckoned to his daughter. For though
by no faintest gesture had he betrayed his knowledge of her presence, he
had yet clearly known it all the time.

"Ysolinde," he said, "bring hither thy crystal!"

The maid disappeared and presently returned with a ball in her hand of
some substance which looked like misty glass.

"I have been looking in it already," she said, "ever since Hugo Gottfried
came out of the Red Tower."

Her voice was soft and even, with the same sough in it as of the wind
among poplar-trees which I had heard in the rustle of her silken dress as
she came up the stair.

"And what," asked her father, "have you seen in the crystal, child of
my heart?"

He looked up at me with some little shamefacedness, or so I imagined.

"I am a dry old man of the law," he went on, "dusty of heart as these
black books up yonder--books not of magic but of fact, of crime and pain
and penalty. But this my daughter Ysolinde, wise from a child, solaces
herself with the white, innocent magic, such as helps man and brings him
nearer that which is unseen."

The maid knelt by her father's knee, and held the crystal ball in the
hollow of her hands against the sable of his velvet robe. She passed one
hand swiftly twice or thrice over her brow, as though to clear away some
cobwebs, gossamer thin, that had folded themselves across her vision.
Then, in the same wistful, wind-soft voice, she began to speak. And as
she spoke all that I had loved and known began to pass from before me. I
forgot my father. I forgot the Red Tower. I forgot (God forgive me, yet
help it I could not!) the little Princess Playmate and her sweetest eyes.
I forgot all else save this lithe, serpentine maiden with the massive
crown of burned and tawny gold upon her head.

"I see," she began, "a long street and many men struggling on it--the
Wolf of the Wolfmark, the Eagle of Plassenburg are face to face. I see
Red Karl the Prince. The young Wolf has the better of it. He bites his
lip and drives hard. The Prince is down. He is wounded. He is like to
die. The Wolf will drive all to destruction.

"But see--" she sighed, and paused the while as if that which she saw
next touched her--"from the swelter in the rear comes a young soldier. He
has lost his helmet. I see his head. It is a fair head with crisp curls.
He has a sword in his hand and he lays well about him. He cuts a way to
the Prince--he bestrides his body.

"Give way there, scullions, that I may see more!" she cried, impetuously,
and waved her hand before her eyes, which were fixed expressionless on
the crystal. "I see him again. Well done, young soldier! Valiantly laid
on. It is great sword-play. Bravo! The Wolf is down. The Eagle of
Plassenburg is up--I can see no more!"

And suddenly she dropped the ball, which would have rolled off her
father's knee had he not caught it as it fell.

Ysolinde kept her head on Master Gerard's lap for a long minute, as if,
after the vision of the crystal, she could not bear the common light nor
speak of meaner things. Then, without once looking at me, she rose,
gathered her skirts in her hand, and glided out of the doorway in which
she had stood.

When she was quite gone her father reached a bony hand across to me.

"That is a great fate which she has read for you--never have I seen her
so moved, nor yet her vision so clear and unmistakable. Surely the sooner
you seek the service of the Prince of Plassenburg the better."

"But," said I, "how do I know that he will accept me? He may not wish to
retain in his service the son of the Red Axe of the Wolf mark."

Master von Sturm smiled subtly at me.

"I cannot tell," he said, "why it is that I have an interest in you. But
I desire to see you other than that which you are. I have, strange as it
may seem in one of such humble degree here in the city of Thorn, whom all
may consult without fee or reward, a certain influence and place in the
councils of the reigning Prince of Plassenburg. If, therefore, you will
take service with him, I can give you such an introduction as will
guarantee you a place, not as man-at-arms, but as officer, so that your
way may lie before you clear from the first. Also in this promotion you
shall have a good sufficient reason to give those who may accuse you of
changing your service."

I could not answer him for gladness. The hope seemed so unbelievable--the
fortune too grateful to be true. I was overcome, and, as I guess, showed
it in my face. For twice I essayed to speak and could not.

So that Master Gerard rose and glided over to me, patting me kindly
enough on the shoulders and bidding me take courage, saying that he loved
to see modesty in this untoward generation, in which there was little
virtue and no gratitude at all.

So I grasped him by the hand and kissed his thin, bony fingers.

"Bide ye, bide ye," he said; "one day I may kiss yours an you be active.
The wide spaces of Destiny lie before you, though I shall not live to see
it. But you must bestir you, for I am an old man, and have not far to
travel now to the place from which one leaps off into the dark."

He conducted me to the door of his chamber and gave me his hand again
with the same inscrutable smile on his thin face, and his skull-cap
pushed farther back than ever over the flat, ophidian brow.

"When you have all things ready," he said, "come to me for the letter of
introduction, and also for that which may obtain you a worthy outfit for
your journeying to Plassenburg. Or, if you are already Sir Proud-Heart,
you can repay me one day, with usury if you will. I care not to stand on
observances with you, nor desire that you should feel any obligation to a
feeble old man."

"I am not proud," I said, "and my sense of obligation is already greater
than ever I can hope to discharge."

"I thank you, my lad," he said. "Often have I wished for a
son of the flesh like you as you passed the window with your
companions--but go, go!"

And with his hand he pushed me out upon the stair-head and shut the door.

For a space I knew not where I stood. For what with the turmoil of my
thoughts and the myriad of impressions, hopes, fears, visions, regrets to
leave the Red Tower, the city of Thorn, the hope of seeing again that
high-poised head of burned gold of the Lady Ysolinde, I paused
stock-still, moidered and dazed, till a light hand touched me on the
shoulder and the soft, even voice spoke in my ear.

"Master Hugo," said the Lady Ysolinde, bending kindly to me, "I am glad,
very glad--aye, though you have made my head ache" (here she nodded
blamefully and laid her hand upon her heart as if that ached too)--"it is
the best of fortunes, and sure to come true. Because have I seen it at
six o'clock of a Thursday in the time of full moon."

"Come hither," she said, beckoning me; "we shall try another way of it
yet, in spite of the headache. It may be that there is more that concerns
you for me to see in the ink-pool."

With this she took my hand and almost pulled me down the stairs by force.
As we went I saw the wild head and staring eyeballs of Jan the Lubber
Fiend peering at us. He was lying on the back staircase, prone on his
stomach, apparently extending from top to bottom down the swirl of it,
and with his chin poised on the topmost step. But as we came down the
stair the head seemed to be wholly detached from any body. The red ears
actually flapped with mirthful pleasure and anticipation at the sight of
the Lady Ysolinde, and no man could see both the beginning and end of
that smile.

"Lubber Jan," said she, "go and sit in the yard. The servants will be
complaining of thee again, that they cannot come up the staircase, even
as they did before."

"Then, if I do," mumbled the monster, "will you look out of window at
least once in each hour, between every stroke of the clock. Else will Jan
not stop in the yard, but come within to feast his eyes on thee."

"Yes, Jan," she said, smiling with a gentle complaisance which made me
like her somewhat better than before, "I will look out at least once in
the hour."

And turning a little she smiled again at me, still holding me by the
hand. The Lubber Fiend pulled his forelock, and reaching downward his
head, as if he had the power of stretching out his neck like an arm, he
kissed the cold pavement where her foot had rested a moment before. Then
he rather retracted himself, serpentwise, then betook him in Christian
fashion down the stair, and we heard him move out amid a babel of
servatorial recriminations into the outer yard.

"A poor innocent," said the Lady Ysolinde; "one that worships me, as you
see. He is so great of stature and so uncouth that the children persecute
him, and some day he may do one of them an injury. Years ago I rescued
him from an evil pack of them and brought him hither. So that is the
reason why he cleaves to me."

"An excellent reason, my lady," said I, "for any to cleave to you."

"Ah," she said, wistfully, "only fools think of Ysolinde in the city of
Thorn. Some are afraid and pass by, and the rest are as the dogs that
lick the garbage in the streets. Here I have no friends, save my father
only, and here or elsewhere I have never had any that truly loved me."

"But you are young--you are fair," I answered. "Many must come seeking
your favor." Thus did I begin lumpishly enough to comfort her. But at
my first words she snatched her fingers away angrily, and then in a
moment relented.

"You mean well," she said, giving her hand back to me again, "but it is
not pity Ysolinde needs nor yet desires. But that is no matter. Come in
hither and see what may abide for you in the depths of the black pool."

At the curtained doorway she turned and looked me in the eyes.

"If you were as other young men it would be easy for you to misjudge
me. This is mine own work-chamber, and I bid you come into it, having
seen you but an hour ago. Yet never a man save my father only hath set
his foot in it before. Inquire carefully of your companions in the city
of Thorn, and if any make pretension to acquaintance with the Lady
Ysolinde of the White Gate strike him in the face and call him liar,
for the sake of the favor I have shown you and the vision I saw
concerning you in the crystal."

I stooped and kissed her hand, which was burning hot--a thin little hand,
with long, supple fingers which bent in one's grasp.

"The man who would pretend to such a thing is dead even as he speaks,"
said I; and I meant it fully.

"I thank you--it is well," she answered, leading me in. "I only desired
that you should not misjudge me."

"That could I never do if I would," I made her answer. "Here my every
thought is reverence as in the oratory of a saint."

She smiled a strange smile.

"Mayhap that is rather more than I desire," she said. "Say rather in the
maiden bower of a woman who knows well whom she may trust."

Again I kissed her hand for the correction. And, as I remembered
afterwards, it was at that hour that the little Princess Playmate was
used to look within my chamber to see that all was ready for me.

And, had I known it, even that night she stooped over and kissed the
pillow where my head was to lie.

"Dear love!" she was used to say.

Alas that I heard it not then!




CHAPTER XII

EYES OF EMERALD


It was a strange little room into which the Lady Ysolinde brought me,
full of quaint, changeful scents, and all ablaze with colors the like of
which I had never seen. For not only were rugs and mats of outlandish
Eastern design scattered over the floor, but there was vividly colored
glass in the small, deeply set windows. Yet that which affected me most
powerfully was a curious, clinging, evanescent odor, which came and went
like a breeze through an open window. I liked it at first, but after a
little it went to my head like a perfumed wine of Greece, such as the men
of Venice sometimes send to our northern lands with their embassies of
merchandise.

Altogether, it was a strange enough apartment for the daughter of a
lawyer in the city of Thorn, within a mile of the bare feudal strengths
of the Red Tower and the Wolfsberg.

All this while Ysolinde had kept my hand, a thing which at once thrilled
and shamed me. For though I had never been what is called "in love" with
the Little Playmate, nor till that day had spoken a word to her my father
might not have heard, yet hitherto she had always been first and sole in
my heart whenever I thought on the things which were to be.

The Lady Ysolinde having brought me to her chamber, bade me sit upon
an oaken folding-stool beside a table on which lay weapons of curious
design--crooked knives and poisoned arrows. Then she went to an
ivory cupboard of the Orient (or, as they are called in Holy Writ,
"an ivory palace"), and opening the beautifully fitting door, she
took from it a small square bottle of red glass which she held
between her and the light.

"It is well," she said, looking long and carefully at it; "it will flow."

And coming to the table and pouring some of a shining black liquid into
the palm of her left hand, she sat down beside me on the stool and gazed
steadily into the little pool of ink.

It was strange to me to sit thus motionless beside a beautiful woman
(for such I then thought her)--so near that I could feel the warmth of
her body strike like sunshine through the silken fineness of her
sea-green gown. I glanced up at her eyes. They were fixed, and, as it
seemed, glazed also. But the emerald in them, usually dark as the
sea-depths, had opal lights in it, and her lips moved like those of a
devotee kneeling in church.

Presently she began to speak.

"Hugo--Hugo Gottfried, son of the Red Axe," she said, in the same hushed
voice as before, most like running water heard murmuring in a deep runnel
underground, "you will live to be a man fortunate, well-beloved. You will
know love--yes, more than one shall love you. But you will love one only.
I see the woman on whom your fate depends, yet not clearly--it may be,
because my desire is so great to see her face. But she is tall and moves
like a queen. She goes clad in white like a bride and her arms are held
out to you.

"But another shall love you, and between them two there is darkness and
hate, from which come bursting clouds of fire, bringing forth lightnings
and angers and deadly jealousies!

"Again I see you, great, honored, and sitting on a high seat. The
woman whose face I cannot distinguish is beside you, clothed in a
robe of purple. And, yes, she wears a crown on her head like the
coronet of a queen."

Ysolinde withdrew her eyes gradually from the ink-pool, as if it were a
pain to look yet a greater to look away. Then with a quick jerk she threw
up her head, and tears were standing in her eyes ready to overflow. But
the wetness made them beautiful, like a pebble of bright colors with the
dew upon it and shone on by the sunshine of the morning.

"You hurt me," she murmured reproachfully, looking at me more like a
child than ever I had seen her. She was very near to me.

"_I_ make you suffer!" cried I, greatly astonished. "How can Hugo
Gottfried have done this thing?"

For it seemed impossible that a poor lad, and one alien by his birth from
the hearts of ordinary folk, should yet have the power to make a great
lady suffer. For a great lady I knew Ysolinde to be even then, when her
father seemed to be no more in the city of Thorn than Master Gerard, the
fount and treasure-house of law and composer-general of quarrels.

But I might have known that he was no true lawyer to be so eager about
that last. For upon the continuance and fostering of differences the
law-men of all nations thrive and eat their bread with honey thereto.

As my father often said, "Better the stroke of the Red Axe than that of
the scrivener's goose-quill. My solution is kindlier, sooner over, hurts
less, and is all the same in the end!"

Ysolinde thought a little before she answered me.

"No man ever made me suffer thus before," she said, "though I have seen
and known many men. I am older than you, Hugo, and have travelled in many
countries, the lands from which these things came. But true love, the
pain and the pleasure of it, have I never known."

She leaned her head on her hand and her elbow on the table, turning thus
to look long and intently at me. I felt oafish and awkward, as Jan Lubber
Fiend might have done before the King. Many things I might have wished to
say and do with that slender figure and lissome waist so near me. But I
knew not how to begin. Yet I think the desire came not so much from love
or passion, but rather from a natural longing to explore those mysteries
concerning which I had read so much after Friar Laurence had done me the
service of teaching me French. But it was well that stupidity was my
friend. For rebounding like a vain, upstart young monkey from my mood of
self-depreciation, I must needs hold it for certain that all was within
my grasp, and that the Lady Ysolinde expected as much of me, which thing
would have wrought my downfall.

"Yon ride soon to Plassenburg, I hear," she said, after she had looked at
me a long time steadily with the emerald eyes shining upon me. Then it
was that I saw clearly that they were not the right emerald in hue so
much as of the shade of the stone aqua-marine, which is one not so rare,
but a better color when it comes to the matter of maiden's eyes.

"It is indeed true, my lady," I replied, disappointed at her words, and
yet somehow infinitely relieved, "that I ride soon to Plassenburg by the
favoring of your father, who has been gracious enough to promise me his
interest with the Prince."

I saw her lip curl a little with scorn--the least tilt of a rose leaf to
which the sun has been unkind.

She seemed about to speak, but presently thinking better of it,
smiled instead.

"It is like my father," she said, after a little; "but since I also go
thither, you shall be of my escort. A sufficient guard accompanies me all
the way to the city, and I dare say the arrangement may serve your
convenience as well as add to the pleasure and safety of my journeying."

"But how will your father do without your company, Lady Ysolinde?" I
asked. For it seemed strange that father and daughter should thus part
without reason in these disturbed times.

She laughed more heartily than I had heard her.

"My father has been used to missing me for months at a time, and,
moreover, is well resigned also. But you do not say that you are rejoiced
to be of a lady's escort in so long a travel."

"Indeed, I am much honored and glad to have so great a favor done to me.
I am but a mannerless, landward youth, to have been bred in the outer
courts of a palace. But that which I do not know you will teach me, and
my faults I shall be eager to amend."

"Pshaw!--psutt!" said Ysolinde, making a little face, "be not so
mock-modest. You do very well. But tell me if you have any sweetheart in
the city to leave behind you."

Now this bold question at once reddened my face and heightened my
confusion.

"Nay, lady," I stammered, conscious that I was blushing furiously, "I am
over-young to have thought much of the things of love. I know no woman in
the city save our old house-keeper Hanne, and the Little Playmate."

The Lady Ysolinde looked up quickly.

"Ah, the Little Playmate!" she said, in a low voice, curiously distinct
from that which she used when she had interpreted her visions to me. "The
Little Playmate! That sounds as though it might be interesting. Who is
the Little Playmate?"

"She is a maid whose folks were slain long ago by the Duke in a foray,
and the little one being left, my father begged her life. And she has
been brought up with me in the Red Tower."

"How old is she now?" The Lady Ysolinde's next question leaped out like
the flash of a dagger from its sheath.

"That," answered I, meditatively, "I know not exactly, because none could
tell how old she was when she came to us."

"Tut," she said, impatiently tossing her head, "do not twist your answers
to me--only wise men and courtiers have the skill to do that and hide it.
As yet you are neither. Is she ten, or is she twenty, or is she mid-way
betwixt the two?"

"I think she may be a matter of seventeen years of age."

"Is she pretty?" was the next question.

"No," said I, not knowing well what to say.

Her face cleared as she heard that, and then, in a little, her eyes being
still bent steadily on me, reading my very heart, it clouded over again.

"You think her not merely pretty, then, but beautiful?" she asked.

I nodded.

"More beautiful than I?"

'Fore God I denied not my love, though I own I have many a time been less
tempted, and yet have lied back and forth like a Frankfort Jew.

"Yes," said I, "I think so."

"You love her, then?" said the Lady Ysolinde, rising quickly to her feet;
"and you told me that you loved none in this city."

"I love her, indeed," I said. "She is my little sister. As you mean love,
I do not love her. But I love her notwithstanding. All my life I have
never thought of doing anything else. And that she is beautiful, all who
have eyes in their head may see."

This appeased her somewhat. I think it must have been looking for my
fortune in the crystal and the ink-pool that made her so eager to know
all that concerned me--which none had ever been so importunate to find
out before.

"I must come and see this Little Playmate of yours," she said. "It is an
ill-done thing that so fair a maid should be shut up in the tower of such
a pagan castle--the Wolfsberg; it is indeed well named. Word has reached
me to-day that the Princess of Plassenburg has need of a bower maiden.
Now the Princess can make her choice from many noble families. But if the
Little Playmate be as beautiful as you say, 'tis high time that she
should not be left immured in the Red Tower of the Wolfsberg. True, the
Duke, like a careful man, neither makes nor mells with womankind. 'Tis
his only virtue. But any questing Ritterling or roaring free companion
might bear her off."

"I think not," said I, smiling, "so long as the Red Axe of the Mark has a
polished edge and Gottfried Gottfried can send it sheer through an ox's
neck as he stands chewing the cud."

I hardly think that I ever boasted of my father's prowess before.
And, indeed, I had some skill in the axe-play myself, but only in the
way of sport.

"All one," said Ysolinde. "Your father, like great Caesar and Duke
Casimir, is but mortal, and may stumble across the wooden stump some day
himself and find his neck-bone in twain! None so wise that he can tell
when the Silent Rider shall meet him in the wood, leading by the bridle
the pale horse whose name is Death, and beckoning him to mount and ride."

The Lady Ysolinde paused a while, touching her lips thoughtfully with
her fingers.

"Let your Playmate come," she said. "There is room, I warrant, for her
and you both at Plassenburg. You shall keep each other company when
you have the homesickness, and on the journey she can ride with us
side by side."

Then going to the curtain she summoned the servitor who had first opened
the door for me. He bowed before the girl with infinite respect. She bade
him conduct me upon my way. I will not deny that I had hoped for a
tenderer leave-taking. But all at once she seemed to have slipped back
into the great lady again, and to be desirous of setting me in my own
sphere and station ere I went, lest perchance I should presume overmuch
upon her favors.

Yet not altogether so. For, relenting a little as I turned to leave her,
she stood holding the curtain aside for me to pass, and, as it had been
by accident, in dropping it her fingers rested a moment against my
cheek. Then the heavy curtain of blue fell into its place, and I found
myself following the eminently respectable domestic of Master Gerard
down the stairs.

At the outer door, but before he opened it, the man put a sealed packet
in my hand.

"From Doctor Gerard von Sturm," he said, bowing respectfully, yet with a
certain sense of being a party in a favor conferred.

I thrust the letter into my inner pocket and went out into the street.
The sun was still shining, yet somehow I felt that it must be another
day, another world. The houses seemed hard and dry, the details of the
architecture insufferably mean and insultingly familiar. I longed with
all my heart to get away from Thorn into the new world which had opened
to me--a world of perfumes and flowers and flower-like scents and
Oriental marvels, of low voices, too, and the touching of soft hands
upon cheeks.

In all the world of young men there was no greener or more simple Simon
than I, Hugo Gottfried, as, playing a tune on the pipe of my own conceit,
I marched up the High Street of Thorn to the entrance gate of the
Wolfsberg.

The Little Playmate was standing at the door as I approached, sweet as a
June rose. When she saw me she went into the sitting-room to show that
she had not yet forgiven me. Though I think by this time, as was often
the way with Helene, she had forgotten almost what was the original
matter of my offending.

But I pretended to be careless and heart-free. And so--God forgive
me!--I went whistling up the steps of the Red Tower to my room without
so much as looking within the chamber where my Little Playmate had
withdrawn herself.

Which thing I suffered grievously for or all was done. And an excellent
dispensation of Providence it had been if I had lost my right hand, all
for making that little heart sore, or so much as one tear drop from those
deep gray eyes.




CHAPTER XIII

CHRISTIAN'S ELSA


It was about this time, and after we had made our quarrel up, that Helene
began to call me "Great Brother." After all, there is manifest virtue in
a name, and the Little Playmate seemed to find great comfort in thus
addressing me.

And after that I had called her "Little Sister" once or twice she was
greatly assured and treated me quite differently, having ascertained that
between young men and women there is the utmost safety in such a
relationship.

And as all ways were alike to me, I was willing enough. For indeed I
loved her and none other, and so did all the days of my life. Though I
know that my actions and conceits were not always conformable to the true
love that was in my heart, neither wholly worthy of my dear maid.

But, then, what would you? Nineteen and the follies of one's youth! The
mercy of God rather than any virtue in me kept these from being not only
infinitely more numerous, but infinitely worse. Yet I had better confess
them, such as they are, in this place. For it was some such nothings as
those which follow that first brought Helene and me into one way of
thinking, though by paths very devious indeed.

To begin with the earliest. There was a maid who dwelt in the Tower of
the Wolfsberg opposite, called the Tower of the Captain of the Guard. And
the maid's name was Elsa, or, as she was ordinarily called, "Christian's
Elsa." She was a comely maid enough, and greatly taken notice of. And
when I went to my window to con over my task for Friar Laurence, there at
the opposite window would be--strange that it should always he
so--Christian's Elsa. She was a little girl, short and plump, but with
merry eyes and so bright a stain upon either cheek that it seemed as if
she had been eating raspberry conserve, and had wiped her fingers upon
the smiling plumpness there.

At any rate, as sure as ever I betook me to the window, there would be
Christian's Elsa, busy with her needles.

And to tell truth I misliked it not greatly. Why, indeed, should I? For
there is surely no harm in looking across twenty yards of space at a
maid, and as little in the maid looking at you--that is, if neither of
you come any nearer. Besides, it is much pleasanter to look at a pretty
lass than at a vacant wall and twenty yards of uneven cobble-stones.

Now the girl was harmless enough--a red and white maid, plump as a
partridge in the end of harvest. She was forever humming at songs,
singing little choruses, and inventing of new melodies, all tunefully and
prettily enough. And she would bring her dulcimer to the window and play
them over, nodding her head to the instrument as she sang.

It was pleasant to watch her. For sometimes when the music refused to run
aright, she would frown at the dulcimer, as if the discord had been
entirely its fault and it was old enough to know better. Then sometimes
she would look across abstractedly to the Red Tower, trying to recall a
strain she had forgotten, with her finger all the while making the most
bewitching dimple on her plump cheek. It was most sweet and innocent to
see. And withal so entirely unconscious that any one could possibly be
observing her.

I confess that I sat often and conned my book by the window, long after
I knew my portion by heart, in order to watch her deft fingers upon the
dulcimer sticks and the play of her dimples. But on my part also this was
in all innocence and wholly thoughtless of guile.

Then would I be taken with a spasm of desire to play upon the recorders
or the Bavarian single flute, and would pester my father to let me learn.

Now I never had any more ear for music than a deal board that has
knot-holes in it. I had ears indeed. But the clatter of the mill-wheel
and the lapper of water on the stones of the shore were ever better music
to me than singing or playing upon instruments. Nevertheless, at this
time, for some reason or other, I was in a great fret to learn.

And, curiously enough, my desire made the Little Playmate call me "Great
Brother" more assiduously than ever. Though again I knew not why.

But Christian's Elsa she could not abide either sight or mention of.
Which was passing strange in so sweet and charitable a maid as our
Helene. Also the girl at the guard-house was a good daughter, besides
being particular of her company, and in that garrison place untouched by
any breath of scandal.

But no; Helene would have none of her.

"_Feech_!" she would say, making a little grimace of disgust which she
had brought with her from her northern home; "that noisy, mewling cat,
purring and stroking her face, in the window, I cannot abide her. I know
not what some folks can see in her. There are surely more kinds of
blindness than of those that wait about kirk doors with a board hung
round their necks, saying, 'Good people, for the love of God, put a
copper in this wooden platter.'"

"Why, Little Playmate, what ails thee at the maid? She is a good maid
enough, and, I am sure, a pretty one."

So would I say to try her. Whereat the lass, being slender herself, and
with a head that sat easily on her shoulders, would walk off like the
haughty little Princess she was, and thrust her chin so far forward that
even the pretty round of it bespoke a pointed scorn. And the poutlets
would come and go on her red lips so quickly that I would come from the
window, leaving my book and Christian's Elsa, and a thousand Elsas, just
to watch them.

"So, Great Brother," Helene would say, "you think she is pretty, do you?
'Tis interesting, for sure. As for me, I see not anything pretty about
her. Now, there is Katrin Texel, she is pretty, if you like. What say
you to her?"

And this was because the minx knew well that I never could abide Katrin
Texel, a girl all running to seed like a shot stalk of rhubarb, who would
end up in the neighborhood of six foot in height, and just that "fine
figure of a woman" which I never could abide.

"_Feech_!" I would say, copying her Wendish expression. "I would as soon
set my feather bolster on end, paint it black and white, and make love to
it as to Katrin Texel."

"You do worse every day of your life," retorted Helene, with pretty
spite, tapping the floor with the point of one delicate foot.

"And, pray, what do I that is worse?" I said, knowing full well what.

The Little Playmate was silent a minute, only continuing to tap the flags
with a kind of naughtiness that became her.

"Katrin Texel would not look at you, charming as you think yourself," she
said, at last.

"Did she tell you so, Little Sister?" said I, drawing a bow at a
great venture.

The arrow struck, and I was content.

"Well," she answered, somewhat breathlessly, "what if she did? Surely
even your vanity can take nothing out of a girl saying that she cannot
abide you."

But I answered nothing to this, only stroked the mustache which was
beginning to thrive admirably on my upper lip.

"Of all the--" began Helene, looking at me fixedly. Then she stopped.

"Well," said I, pausing in the caressing of my chin, "what do I worse
every day than make love to Katrin Texel?"

Her eyes fairly sparkled fire at me. They were "sweetest eyes" no more,
but rarely worth looking into all the same.

"You go ogling and staring at that little she-cat in the window over
there, that screeches and becks and pats herself, all for showing off!
And you, Hugo Gottfried, like a great oaf, thinking all the time how
innocent and sweet and--oh, I have no patience with you!--to neglect and
think nothing of--of Katrin Texel, and--and then to go gazing and gaping
after a thing like that!"

And I declare there were tears in the Little Playmate's eyes.

"Dear Little Sister, why are you so mindful about Katrin Texel?" said I.
"Faith, my lass, wait till she comes again, and I will court her to your
heart's content. There--there--I will be a very Valentine's true lover to
your Katrin."

For all that she was not greatly cheered, but edged away, still strangely
disconsolate when I came near and tried to pet her. Mysterious and hidden
are the ways of women! For once, when I would have put my hand about her
pretty slender waist, she promptly took me by the wrist, and holding it
at arm's-length, she dropped it from her with a disgustful curl of her
lip, as if it had been an intruding spider she had perforce to put forth
out of her chamber into the garden.

Yet formerly, upon occasion when, as it might be, she was reading or
looking out of the window, if I but came behind her and called her
"Little Sister," I might even put my hand upon her shoulder, and so stand
for five minutes at a time and she never seem to notice it.




CHAPTER XIV

SIR AMOROUS IS PLEASED WITH HIMSELF


For, as I say, women have curious ways, and there are a good many of them
recorded in this book. And yet more I have observed which I cannot find
room for in a chronicle of so many sad and bad and warlike happenings.
But none of them all is more notable than this--that women, or at least
(for it is no use saying "women," every one being different in temper,
though like as pease in some things) many women, will permit that which
it suits them to be oblivious of, when if you ask them for permission or
make a favor of the matter, they will promptly flame sky-high with
indignation. So my advice to the young man who honestly goes a-courting
is to keep talking earnestly, to occupy his mistress's attention withal,
and progress in her favors during the abstractions of high discourse.

Of course in this, as in all other similar enterprises, Sir Amorous
must have a certain trading-stock of favor to start with. But if he
have this much, 'tis not difficult to increase it by honest endeavor,
and, as it were, the sweat of his brain. So at least I am told by
those who have proved it. Nevertheless, for myself, I have used no
such nice refinements, but rather taken with thankfulness such things
as came in my way.

And now when I look back over my paper--lord! what a pother of writing
about it and about! But my excuse is that many young lads and gay
bachelors will read this tale, so I desire to import what of instruction
I can into it. And not having the learning of the clerks, I must e'en
put in what wisdom I have gotten for myself in my passage through the
world. For I never could plough with another man's heifer--least of all
with that of a college-bred Mess John. Not but what Mess John knoweth
somewhat of the lear of love also among the well-favored dames of the
city. Or else, by my faith, Mess John is sorely belied.

But where was I in my tale? And if this present errant discourse be
forgiven, surely I will not transgress again, but drive my team straight
to the furrow's end and then back again, like an honest ploughman that
has his eye ever upon the guide-poles on the windy ridge.

Well, the Little Playmate lifted a toad from her waist--I mean my
hand--and dropped it as far from her as her arm would reach.

And then after that she ran up-stairs, slammed the door of her own
chamber, and came not down to our nooning, so that old Hanne had to call
her three times.

And once, when I had occasion to cross the court-yard to the guard-house,
I saw her standing pensively by the window. But so soon as she saw me she
vanished within and was seen no more.

Yet, indeed and indeed, as all may see, there was no cause for all this
fret. For I cared no more about Christian's Elsa than about Christian
himself--less, indeed, for Christian was a good soldier and
master-at-arms, and taught me how to handle the match-lock, the pistolet,
and the other new weapons that had begun to come in from France. And
often upon Saturdays and wet days he would let me spend long mornings in
the armory with him, oiling and cleaning the ordnance. Which it certainly
was a great pleasure to do.

And what if the little dumpling Elsa, with her red cheeks and her babyish
eyes, did run in and out. Her father was ever with us, and even had I
been willing there was no opportunity for more than a word or a touch of
her fingers--well, save once, when her father went himself to seek the
bottle of oil she had been sent to fetch, and was some time in finding
it. But even that was a mere nothing, and might have happened to any one.

But when I came home again that night, you would have thought that the
whole happening had been printed legibly on my face. The Little Playmate
would not let me come within a hundred miles of her. And it was "Keep
your distance, sirrah!" Not perhaps said in words, but expressed as
clearly by the warlike angle of an arm, the contumelious hitch of a
shoulder, or the scornful sweep of an adverse skirt.

And all about nothing! Mighty Hector! I never saw such things as women.

And yet in her good moments she would call me "Great Brother," and tell
me that she thought only of my future welfare, desiring that I should not
compromise myself in any entanglement with such as were not worthy of me.
Oh, a most wise and prudent counsellor was the Playmate in these days.

And I used ever to say: "Helene, when I am truly in love I will e'en
bring her here to you, and, by my faith, if you approve not--why, there
is an end of the matter. Back she goes to her mother like a parcel of
returned goods--aye, if she were the Kaiser's daughter herself!"

Whereat she pouted and was not ill-pleased.

"Ah, my man," she would reply, "after a girl hath said you nay a time or
two, it will bring you down from these high notions, and be much for your
soul's final good!"

But yet, when I could keep her in good-humor, it was exceedingly sweet to
bide quietly in the house with the Little Playmate--far better than to
gad about with Texels and meandering fools, which indeed I did
oftentimes just because it made my little lass so full of moods and
tenses--like one of Friar Laurence's irregular verbs in his cursed
Humanities. For there is nothing so variously delightful as a woman when
she is half in love and half out of it--more interesting (say some)
though less delightful than when she is all and whole in love.
Nevertheless, there are exceptions, and one woman at least I know more
various, and more delicious also, since love's ocean hath gone over her
head, than ever she was when, like a timid bather, she shivered on the
brink or made little fearful plunges, as it were knee-deep, and so ran
out again.

But I am not come to that in the story yet.

Well, on the afternoon of the next day, who should come to the house in
the Red Tower but our Helene's gossip, for this week at least her bosom
friend, Katrin Texel. She was even more impressive in manner than ever,
and also a little pleasanter to behold. For her angles were clothing
themselves into curves, and she was learning, perhaps from the Little
Playmate, to leave off bouncing into a room like a cow at the trot, and
to walk in sedately instead. By-and-by I knew she would come sailing down
the street like a towered galleon from the isles of Ind. For all that,
she looked not ill--an academic study for Juno, one might say. But to
make love to--why, as Helene was wont to remark, _Feech!_

And the curious thing about Katrin Texel was that though her corporeal
part might be a direct inheritance from her Burgomeister father and his
substantial brewery, her spirit had been designed for an artful fairy of
half her size, in order that it might go pirouetting into airy realms of
the imagination. For she was gay enough and lightsome enough in her
demeanor. She came in with a skip which would have been entrancing in
some elfish mignonne who could dance light-foot on spring flowers without
crushing them. But when this our solid Burgomagisterial Katrin tripped
in, it nearly drove me wild with mirth. For it was as if some bland
maternal cow out of the pasture had skipped with a hop and a circle of
flying skirts into a ballroom or a butterfly of two hundred pounds'
weight had taken to flitting from flower to flower.

And this Katrin talked in a quick, light voice, with ups and downs and
skips and quivers in it, as spring-heeled as a chamois goat on the
mountains of the south.

"Ah, Tiny-chen," she would cry, as she came undulating and cooing in to
our Helene, "is it you, dearest? 'Tis as sweet to see you as for birds to
kiss on bough! I have danced all day in the sunshine just to think that I
should come to see you! And tell me why you have not been to visit me.
Ah, bad one--cruelest--as cruel as she is pretty" (appealing to me), "is
she not? And there, our Michael, great oaf, sits at home desolated that
he does not hear her foot on the stairs. The foolish fellow tells me that
he listens for four little pit-a-pats every time that I come up from the
court-yard, and is disappointed when there come back only my poor two."

And Katrin becked and nodded and set her head to the side--like to the
divine Io-Cow playing at being little Jenny Wren.

And as for me, I kept my gravity--or, rather, how could I lose it,
hearing such nonsense about that great stupid beer-vat, Michael Texel.

Michael Texel, indeed! I should admire to hear of Michael Texel so much
as raising his eyes to the Little Playmate. Why, I would stave him on
the open street like a puncheon of eight, and think nothing of the
doing of it.

Michael Texel, indeed!

But I am forgetting. My business at this time was to make love to Katrin,
so that I might banish the ill impression which Helene had formed
concerning that pleasant, harmless little Christian's Elsa over there. I
never heard anything so foolish in my life. But, then, what women will
think and say passes the imagination of man.

Michael Texel indeed!

The thought of that young man of beef and beer recurred so persistently
and forcibly to me that for a time I could scarce command myself to speak
civilly to his sister. Though, of course, she was quite different, being
a woman, and informed with such a quick and dainty spirit that at times
it seemed as it had been imprisoned in her too massive frame and held "in
subjection to the flesh," as the clerics say. God wot, I never knew I had
so much religion and morality about me till I came to write. If I do not
have a care this tale of mine will turn out almost as painful as a book
of devotion which they set children to read on saints' days to keep them
from being over-happy.

But I subdued my feelings and drew up somewhat nearer to Katrin.

"My Little Sister--" so I began, cunningly, as I thought--"my sister
Helene is, indeed, fortunate to have so fair a friend, and one so
devoted--"

"As my brother Michael, yes," she twittered, with her most ponderous,
cage-bird manner; "yes, indeed, he _is_ devoted to her."

"No," said I, hastily (confound the great hulking camel!), "I mean such a
faithful friend as yourself. I, alas, have no friend. I am cut off from
all society of my kind. Often and often have I felt the weight of
loneliness press heavy upon me in this darksome tower."

I saw Helene rise, go to the window, and glance across with such a
peculiar smile that I knew as well as if I had seen her that Christian's
Elsa was at her window with her music, looking across for me between each
bar. I cannot describe the smile which hovered on the face of the Little
Playmate. But perhaps all the male beings who read my book may have seen
something like it. All that I can say is, that the smile conveyed an
almost superhuman understanding of men and their little ways, and,
curiously enough, something of contempt too.

But I was not going to be discouraged by any smile, acid or sweet.
Besides, I had something still to pay back.

Michael Texel, indeed!--faith, by St. Blaise, I will Texel him tightly an
he comes sneaking to our gate!

So again I drew yet nearer to his sister. Katrin dimpled and showed her
teeth, with a smile like the sun going about the world, till I had almost
put my hand behind her shoulders to catch the ends of it when it got
round. This illumination almost finished me, for it was not the kind of
smile I had been accustomed to from--well, that was not the business I
was on at present.




CHAPTER XV

THE LITTLE PLAYMATE SETTLES ACCOUNTS


But I admit that the smile discouraged me. Nevertheless I proceeded
gallantly.

"Ah, Jungfrau Texel," said I, "you cannot know how your presence
brightens our lives here in the Red Tower. Wherefore will you not come
oftener to our grim abode?"

I thought that, on the whole, pretty well; but, looking up at Helene, I
saw that her smile (so different from that of the Io-Cow Katrin) had
become a whole volume of scathing satire. God wot, it is not easy to make
love to a lass when your "Little Sister" is listening--especially to a
woman-mountain set on watch-springs like Katrin Texel.

But, after all, Katrin was no ways averse to love-making of any kind,
which, after all, is the main thing. And as for the Little Playmate, I
did not mind her a bonnet-tag. She had brought it upon herself.

Michael Texel indeed!

So I went on. It was excellent sport--such a jest as may not be played
every day. I would show Mistress Helene (so I said to myself) whether she
would like it any better if I made love to Katrin than if I went over on
an occasional wet day to clean pistolets and oil French musketoons in
Christian's guard-house.

So I began to tell Katrin how that woman was the sacredest influence on
the life of men, with other things as I could recollect them out of a
book of chivalry which I had been reading, the fine sentiments of which
it was a pity to waste. For our Helene would have stamped her foot and
boxed my ears for coming nigh her with such nonsense (that is, at this
time she would, doubtless--not, however, always). And as for the lass
over the way--Christian's Elsa--she knew no more of letters than her
father knew of the mathematics. Plain kissing was more in her way--as I
have been told.

So I aired my book of chivalry to Katrin Texel.

"Fair maid," said I, "have you heard the refrain of the song that I love
so well? It is like sweet music to me to hear it. I love sweet music.
This is the latest catch:

"'My true love hath my heart and I have his.'

"How goes it, Helene?" I asked, turning to her as she stood smiling
bitterly by the window. For I knew that it would annoy her to be referred
to. "Goes it not something like this?"

And I hummed fairly enough:

"'My true love hath my heart and I have his.'"
***
"And if it goes like that," said she, quickly, "it goeth like a tomcat
mollrowing on the tiles in the middle of the night."

Now this being manifestly only spiteful, I took no notice of her work.
"Helene does not love good music," said I; "'tis her only fault. But I
trust that you, dear Katrin, have a greater taste for angelic song?"

"And I trust you love to scratch upon the twangling zither as cats
sharpen their claws upon the bark of trees? You love such music, _dear_
Katrin, do you not?" cried Helene over her shoulder from the window.

But Katrin, the divine cow, knew not what to make of us. I think she was
of the opinion that Helene and I, with much study upon books, had
suddenly gone mad.

"I do indeed love music," she said at last, uncertainly, "but, Master
Hugo, not the kind of which my gossip, Helene, speaks. I love best of all
a ballad of love, sung sweetly and with a melting expression, as from a
lover by the wall to his mistress aloft in the balcony, like that of him
of Italy, who sings:

"'O words that fall like summer dew on me.'

"How goes it?

"'O breath more sweet than is the growing--the growing--'"

She paused, and waved her hand as if to summon the words from the
empty air.

"'_The growing garlic,'_ if it be a lover of Italy," cried Helene, still
more spitefully. "This is enough and to spare of chivalry, besides which
Hugo hath his lessons to learn for Friar Laurence, or else he will repent
it on the morrow. Come, sweetheart, let us be going. I will e'en convoy
thee home."

So she spoke, making great ostentation of her own superiority and
emancipation from learning, treating me as a lad that must learn his
horn-book at school.

But I was even with her for all that.

"And so farewell, then, dear Mistress Katrin," said I. "The delicate
pleasure of your presence shall be followed by the still more tender
remembrance which, when you are gone, my heart shall continue to
cherish of you."

That was indeed well-minded. A whole sentence out of my romance-book
without a single slip. Katrin bowed, with the airy grace of the Grand
Duke's monument out in the square. But the little Helene swept
majestically off, muttering to herself, but so that I could hear her: "'O
wondrous, most wondrous,' quoth our cat Mall, when she saw her Tom
betwixt her and the moon."

The application of which wise saw is indeed to seek.

So the two maids went away, and I betook me to the window to see if I
could catch a glimpse of Christian's Elsa.

But I only saw Katrin and Helene going gossiping down the street with
their heads very close together.

At first I smiled, well pleased to think how excellently I had played my
cards and how daintily I had worked in those gallant speeches out of the
book of chivalry. But by-and-by it struck me that the Little Playmate was
absent a most unconscionable time. Could it be--Michael Texel? No, that
at least was plainly impossible.

I got up and walked about. Then for a change I paused by the window.

I had stood a good while thus moodily looking out at the casement, when I
became aware of two that walked slowly up the street and halted together
before the great iron-studded door which led to the Red Tower.

By the thirty thousand virgins--Helene and Michael Texel!

And then, indeed, what a coil was I in; how blackly deceitful I called
her! How keenly I watched for any token of understanding and kindness
more than ordinary that might chance to pass between them. But I could
see none, for though the great soft lout of a ruddy beer-vat tried often
to look under the brim of her hat, yet she kept her eyes down--only once,
that I could observe, raising them, and that was more towards the Red
Tower than in the direction of Michael Texel.

I think she wished to see whether I was watching. And when she had noted
me it I wot well that she became much more animated, and laughed and
spoke quickly, with color in her cheeks and a flash of defiance on her
countenance, which were manifestly wasted on such a boastful, callow
blubber-tun as Michael Texel.

Then it was: "Adieu to you, Master Texel!" "Farewell to you, fair maid!"

And Helene dipped a courtesy to him, dainty and sweet enough to conquer
an angel, while the great jelly-bag shook himself almost to pieces in
his eagerness to achieve a masterly bow. All this made me angry, not
that I cared though Helene had coquetted with a dozen lads, an it had
liked her. It was only the poverty of taste shown in being seen in the
open High Street of Thorn along with such an oaf as Michael Texel. He
had first been my friend, it is true, but then at that time I had not
found him out.

By-and-by Helene came up the stairs, tripping light as a feather that the
wind blows. Perhaps, though, she had turned in the doorway, where I could
not see her, to throw the lout a kiss--so I thought within me, jealously.

"You have convoyed your gossip Katrin home in safety, I trust," said I,
sweetly, as she came in.

"Yes," said she; "but I fear she has left her heart behind her. So
wondrously rapid a courtship never did I see!"

"Save on the street," answered I; "and with a pale, soft jack-pudding
like Michael Texel! That was a sight, indeed."

At which Helene laughed a merry little laugh--well-pleased, too, the
minx, as I could see.

"What are courtships on the street to you, Sir Hugo," she returned,
"with your 'Twinkle-Twankle' singing-women over the way, and--Lord,
how went it?

"'My true love hath my heart and I have his.'

"Ha! ha! Sir Gallant, what need you with more? Would you have as many
loves as the Grand Turk, and invent new love-makings for each of them?
Shall we maidens petition Duke Casimir to banish the other lads of the
town and leave only Hugo Gottfried for all of us?"

And then she went on to other such silly talk that I think it not worth
reporting.

Whereupon I was about to leave the room in a transport of just
indignation, and that without speaking, when Helene called to me.

"Hugo!" she said, very softly, as she alone could speak, and that only
when it liked her to make friends.

I turned me about with some dignity, but knowing in my heart that it was
all over with me.

"Well, what may be your will, madam?" said I.

Helene came towards me with uplifted, petitionary eyes.

"You are not going to be angry with me, Hugo!" she said. And she lifted
her eyes again upon me--irresistible, compelling, solvent of dignities,
and able to break down all pride.

O all ye men who have never seen my Helene look up thus at you--but only
common other eyes, go and hang yourselves on high trees for very envy.
Well, as I say, Helene looked up at me. She kept on looking up at me.

And I--well, I hung a moment on my pride, and then--clasped her in my
arms.

"Dear minx, thrice wicked one!" I exclaimed, "wherefore do you torment
me--break my heart?"

"Because," said she, escaping as soon as she had gained her pretty,
rascal way, "you think yourself so clever, Hugo, such an irresistible
person, that you must be forever returning to this window and getting
this book of chivalry by heart. Now you are going to be cross again. Oh,
shame, and with your little sister--

"'That never did you any harm,
 But killed the mice in your father's barn.'"

With such babyish words she talked the frowns off my face, or, when they
would not go fast enough, hastened them by reaching up and smoothing them
away with her finger.

"Now," she said, setting her head to the side, "what a nice sweet Great
Brother! Let him sit down here on the great chair."

So I sat down, well pleased enough, not knowing what mischief the
pranksome maid had now in her head, but judging that the matter might
turn out well for me.

Then Helene stole round to the back of the chair, and, taking me by the
ears, she gave first one and then the other of them a pull.

"That," she said, pulling the right, "is for listening to the little cat
over the way that squalls on the tiles! And _that_" (giving the other a
sound tug) "is for being a dandiprat when my gossip Katrin was here!"

She paused a moment as if to summon courage, and then she stooped quickly
and kissed me on the neck.

"And _that_ for Michael Texel!" she cried, and ran out of the room before
I could get clear of the wide arms of the chair, and so run after and
catch her.

She turned in the doorway and wafted me a kiss from her finger-tips,
airily and a little mockingly.

"That for Hugo Gottfried!" she said, and was off to her own chamber with
the _frou-frou_ of a light skirt, the slam of a door, and the shooting
of a bolt.

And after all this, it was heart's pity that ever anything should have
come between us again, even for a moment.

Though, indeed, it was but for a moment.




CHAPTER XVI

TWO WOMEN--AND A MAN


It was the forenoon of a Sunday, a dull, sleepy time in all countries,
and one difficult to get overpast. I was as usual busy with my
accoutrement, recently bought with the loan of Master Gerard. The Little
Playmate was just returned from the cathedral, and had indeed scarcely
laid her finery aside, when there came a loud knocking at the outer gate
of the Red Tower. Then one of the guard tramped stolidly from the wicket
to the door of our dwelling.

"A lady waits you at the postern," said he, and so tramped his way
unceremoniously back to his post.

I knew without any need of telling that it was the Lady Ysolinde. So I
rose, and hastily setting my fingers through my hair, went to the gate.
There, attended by the respectable servitor, was, as I had expected, the
Lady Ysolinde.

"Good-morrow," she said very courteously to me, and I duly returned her
greeting with a low obeisance of respect and welcome.

She wore a large garment, fashioned like a man's cloak, over her festal
attire--which, with a hood for the head, wholly enveloped her figure and
descended to her feet.

"I have come, as I promised, to see the Little Playmate." These were her
first words as we paced together across the wide upper court under the
wondering eyes of the men of the Duke's body-guard.

"Pray remember, Lady Ysolinde," said I, with much eagerness, "that I
have as yet said nothing of the matter to Helene, and that my father only
knows that I am to ride to Plassenburg in order to exercise myself in the
practice of arms, before becoming his assistant here in the Red Tower and
in the Hall of Judgment across the way."

My visitor nodded a little impatiently. She who knew so many things, of a
surety might be trusted to understand so much without being told.

In the inner doorway Helene met us. And never had it been my fortune to
see the meeting of two such women. The Little Playmate had in her hands
the broidered handkerchiefs, the long Flemish gloves, and the little
illuminated Book of the Hours which I had given her. She had been about
to lay them away together, as is the fashion of women. And when she met
the Lady Ysolinde I declare that she looked almost as tall. Helene was
perhaps an inch or two less in stature than her visitor, but what she
lacked in height she more than made up in the supple erectness of her
carriage and the vivid and extraordinary alertness of all her movements.

"Lady Ysolinde," said I, as they met with the mutually level eyeshot of
women who measure one another, "this is Helene--whom, for love and
kindliness, we of the Wolfsberg call the 'Little Playmate.'"

The daughter of Master Gerard impetuously threw back the gray monk's hood
which shrouded the masses of her tawny hair. She put out both hands to
Helene, held her a moment at arm's-length to look into her eyes, even as
she had done with me, but in a different way. Then, drawing her nearer,
she leaned forward and kissed her on the brow and on both cheeks.

Now I am not ordinarily a close observer, and many things, specially
things that pertain to the acts of women, pass by me unnoticed. But I saw
in a moment that there was not, and never could be, more than the
semblance of cordial amity between these two women.

I noted the Little Playmate instinctively quiver like a taken bird
when she was thus embraced. It was, I think, the undying antipathy of
Eve for Lilith, a hatred which is mostly on the side of Eve, the
Mother-Woman--its place being taken by sharper and more dangerous envy
in the breast of Lilith-without-the wall.

There, face to face, stood the two women who were to make my life, ruling
it between them, as it were, striking it out between the impact of their
natures, as underneath the blows of two smiths upon the ringing anvil the
iron, hissing hot, becomes a sword or a ploughshare.

It was impossible to avoid contrasting them.

Helene, of a bodily beauty infinitely more full of temptation, bloomful
with radiant health, the blush of youth and conscious loveliness upon her
lips and looking out under the crisp entanglement of her hair, all simple
purity and straightness of soul in the fearless innocency of her eyes;
the Lady Ysolinde, deeper taught in the mysteries of existence, more
conscious of power, not so beautiful, but oftentimes giving the
impression of beauty more strongly than her fairer rival, compact of
swift delicate graces, half feline, half feminine (if these two be not
the same). All these passed like clouds over the unquiet sea of her
nature, reflecting the changing skies of circumstance, and were fitted to
produce a fascination ever on the verge of repulsion even when it was
strongest. Ysolinde was the more ready of speech, but her words were
touched constantly with dainty malice and clawed with subtlest spite. She
catspawed with men and things, often setting the hidden spur under the
velvet foot deeply into the very cheek which she seemed to caress. Such
as I read them then, and largely as even now I understand them, were the
two women who moulded between them my life's history.

I suppose it is because I am of this Baltic North that I must need think
things round and round, and prose of reasons and explanations--even when
I write concerning beautiful maids--forever dreaming and dividing,
instead of going straight, sword in hand, for their hearts, as is the way
of the folk from the English land over-seas, or, more simply still, lying
about their favors, which, I hear, is mostly the Frenchman's way.

But enough of intolerable theory.

Instinctively the Lady Ysolinde spoke to our maid of the Red Tower in a
manner and tone very different from that which I had ever before heard
her employ, at once more equal and more guarded.

"I was told by Master Hugo Gottfried here (whose acquaintance I made at
my father's house on the day after his foolish boy's prank of the White
Swan) that in the Red Tower of the Wolfsberg dwelt one of mine own age,
like myself a maid solitary among men. So to-day I have come to solicit
her acquaintance, and to ask her to be kind to me, who have ever been in
this city and country as a stranger in a strange land."

It was prettily enough said, and our Helene, easily touched, and perhaps
a little ashamed of her first stiffness, put out a hand which the other
quickly and securely clasped. Then those two sat down together. Ysolinde
von Sturm kept her eyes fixed on the Playmate, but our shy and slender
Helene looked steadily past her out over the tumbled red roofs and peaked
gables of the city of Thorn to the gray Wolfmark plains which lay spread
beneath our windows like a picture in a book.

At intervals, as it came near the hour of their mid-day meal, the
blood-hounds howled in the kennels, and by their tone I knew that my
father had left the Hall of Judgment where he had been detained all the
morning. Also I knew very well that the Lady Ysolinde wished me to find
an errand elsewhere, in order that she might talk alone with her
companion. But I saw also the appeal in the eyes of the Playmate, and I
was resolved not to give her the chance.

"Are you never weary in this dull tower?" asked the lawyer's daughter,
still holding the Playmate's hand.

"It is not dull," replied Helene. "I have my work. There are two men as
shiftless and helpless as babes to attend to, and none to help me but
old Hanne."

"Let men attend to themselves," cried Ysolinde; "that is ever my motto.
They ought to be our servants, not we theirs."

It was said smilingly, yet there was bitterness under the words as well.

"But," said Helene, smiling back at her with a fresh directness all her
own, "one of the men saved my life and brought me up as his own daughter,
and the other is--is Hugo, here."

And as she spoke of my father and of me I saw the eyes of the Lady
Ysolinde fixed upon her, as it had been to read her inner soul.

"And, by-the-way," she said, at last, after a long pause, "you have heard
how this same Master Hugo proposes to himself to escape from the
prison-house of this city, for a season to exercise himself in arms, and
so in roving adventure fulfil that which is not granted to a maid, his
'wandering years.' He goes (so my father tells me) to the Court of the
Prince of Plassenburg, with the promise of a company to command. And I am
glad, for I shall ride thither under his escort. Indeed, and in truth, my
home is far more there than here in Thorn. But I would fain have a
companion of my own sex. So I have come to beg of you, Mistress Helene,
that you will accompany me. The Princess, I know, has great need of a
maid of honor near her person, and will gladly welcome a friend of mine
for the post."

The Little Playmate looked up astonished, as well she might, at this
direct assault, which was moreover spoken with a pretty shamefacedness
and the air of asking almost too great a favor. And, indeed, if there was
any patronage in the thing offered, it was at least carefully kept out of
the manner of asking.

"Lady Ysolinde, I cannot accept your too overpowering favor," said
Helene, after a pause, "but your kindness in thinking at all of me will
always warm my heart."

At this critical moment came my father in, looking more than grave and
severe, so that I judged at once that he had been talking to the Duke
Casimir and had found his post of chief adviser both thankless and
difficult. I knew it could be no matter of his office which worried him,
for that day he wore his holiday attire of white Friesland cloth, and the
broad bonnet in which I loved best to see him. There was no mark of his
calling about him anywhere, save a little Red Axe sewed upon his left
breast like a war veteran's decoration.




CHAPTER XVII

THE RED AXE IS LEFT ALONE


Gottfried Gottfried bowed to the guest of his house with the noble manner
which comes to every serious-minded man who deals habitually in the high
matters of life and death. I made his introductions to the Lady Ysolinde,
and as readily and gracefully he returned his acknowledgments. For the
rest I allowed Master Gerard's daughter to develop her own projects to
him, which, indeed, she was no long time in doing.

As she proceeded I saw my father change color and become as to his face
almost as white as the Friesland cloth in which he was dressed.
Presently, however, as if struck with the sound of a well-known name, he
looked up quickly.

"Plassenburg, said you, my lady?" he inquired.

The Lady Ysolinde nodded.

"Yes, to Plassenburg, where the Princess has great need of a maid
of honor."

"Her Highness is often upon her travels, I hear it reported," said my
father, "while the Prince keeps himself much at home."

"He esteems his armies more than all the marvels of strange countries,"
replied Ysolinde, "and thus he holds the land and folk in great quiet."

"And your father, Master Gerard, would have my son engage with this
Prince Karl for a space. Well, I think it may be good for the lad. For I
know well that the shadow of the Red Tower stalks after him through this
city of Thorn, and there is no need that he should lie down under it too
soon. But this of my little maid is a matter apart, and means a longer
and a sorer parting."

"Fear not, my father," cried the Playmate, eagerly, "I would not leave
you alone, even to be the Princess of Plassenburg herself."

My father took another strange look from one to the other of the two
women, the import of which I understood not then.

"I know not," said he; "I think this thing also might be for the best. As
I see it, there are strange times coming upon us in Thorn. And the town
of Plassenburg under Karl the Prince is a defenced city, set in a strong
province, content and united. It might be wisest that you also should go,
little one."

"I cannot go," said Helene, "and leave you alone."

Gottfried Gottfried smiled a sad smile, wistfully pleasant.

"Already I am wellnigh an old man, and it is the nature of my profession
that I should be alone. I work among the issues of life and death. Every
man must be lonely when he dies, and I, who have lived most with dying
men, am perforce already lonely while I live. It is well--a clearer air
for the young bird! But yet it will be lonesome to miss you when I come
in--the empty pot wanting the flower; the case without the jewel; silence
above and below; your voice and Hugo's, that have changed the sombre Red
Tower with your young folks' pleasantries, heard no more. Ah, God wot, I
had thought--I had dreamed far other things."

He stopped and looked from one to the other of us, and I saw that
Ysolinde of the White Gate read his thought. Whereat right suddenly the
Little Playmate blushed, and as for me I kept watching the dull gold
flash on the spangles of our guest's waist-belt, which was in form like
a live serpent, with changeful scales and eyes of ruby red.

My father went over to where Helene sat. She rose to meet him and cast
her arms about his neck. He laid his right hand on her head--that
terrible hand that was yet not dreadful to us-who loved him.

"Little flower," he said, in his simple way, "God be good to you in the
transplanting! It is not fair to your young life that my red stain should
lie upon your lot. I have given you a quiet hermitage while you needed
it. But now it is right that my house should again be left unto me
desolate. It is already late summer with Gottfried Gottfried, and high
time that the young brood should fly away."

He turned to me.

"With you, Hugo, it is a thing different; you were born to that to which
you are born. And to that, as I read your horoscope, you must one day
return. But in the mean time care well for the maid. I lend her to you. I
give her into your hand. Cherish her as your chiefest treasure. Let her
enemies be yours, and if harm come to her through your neglect, slay
yourself ere you come again before me. For, by the Lord God of all
Righteous Judgment, I will have no mercy!"

I saw the eyes of the Lady Ysolinde glitter like those of the snake in
her belt as thus my father delivered Helene over to me.

But my father had yet more to say.

"And if any," he went on, in a deep, still voice, keeping his hand upon
the downcast head of the Little Playmate--"if any, great or small,
prince or pauper, harm so much as a hair of this fair head, by the great
God who wields His Axe over the universe and sits in the highest Halls of
Judgment, whose servant I am--I, Gottfried Gottfried, swear that he shall
taste the vengeance of the Red Axe and drink to the dregs the cup of
agony in his own blood!"

So saying, he kissed Helene and stalked out without turning his head or
making any further obeisance or farewell.

We sat mazed and confounded after his departure.

The Lady Ysolinde it was who first recovered herself. She put out a
kindly hand to Helene, who stood wet-eyed and drooping by the window,
looking out upon the roofs of Thorn, though well I wot she saw nothing of
spire, roof, or pinnacle.

"God do so to me and more also," she said, in a low, solemn voice, "if I
too keep not this charge."

And I think for the moment she meant it. The trouble was that the Lady
Ysolinde could not mean one thing for very long at a time. As, indeed,
shall afterwards appear.

So it was arranged that within the week Helene and I should say our
farewells to the Red Tower which had sheltered us so long, as well as to
Gottfried Gottfried, who had ever been my kind father, and to the little
Helene more than any father.

But in spite of all we wearied day by day to be gone. For, indeed,
Gottfried Gottfried said right. The shadow of the Red Tower, the stain of
the Red Axe, was over us both so long as we abode on the Wolfsberg. Yet
what it cost us to depart--at least till we were out of the gates of the
city--I cannot write down, for to both of us the first waygoing seemed
bitter as death.

I remember it well. My father had been busy all the morning with his grim
work on the day when we were to ride away. A gang of malefactors who had
wasted a whole country-side with their cruelty had been brought in. And,
as it was suspected that other more important villains were yet to be
caught, there had been the repeated pain of the Extreme Question, and now
there remained but the falling of the Red Axe to settle all accounts. So
that when he came to bid us farewell he had but brief time to spare. And
of necessity he wore the fearful crimson, which fitted his tall, spare
figure like a glove.

"Fare thee well, little one!" he said, first to Helene. "Not thus, had
the choice lain with me, would I have bidden thee farewell. But when it
shall be that I meet you again I will surely wear the white of the festa
day. I commit you to Him whose mistakes are better than our good deeds,
whose judgments are kinder than our tenderest mercies."

So he kissed her, and reached a hand over her shoulder to me.

"Son Hugo," he said, "go in peace. You must return to succeed me. I see
it like a picture--on the day when I lie dead you shall stand with the
Red Axe in your hand waiting to do judgment. It is well. Keep this maid
more sacred than your life--and, meantime, fare you well!"

So saying he left us abruptly.

Our horses were saddled in the court-yard, and as I rode last through the
rarely opened gateway, I saw Duke Casimir looking out from his window
upon the lower enclosure, as was his pleasure upon the days of execution.
I heard the dull thud, which was the meeting of the Red Axe and the
redder block as that which had been between fell apart. And for the last
time I heard the blood-hounds leap and the pattering of their eager feet
upon the barriers as they leaped up scenting the Duke's carrion.

Thus the latest I heard of the place of my nativity was fitting and
dreadful. I was mortally glad to ride away into the clear air and the
invigorating silence. But on my heart there still lay heavy the
twice-repeated prediction of my father and of the Lady Ysolinde, that I
should yet return and hold the Red Axe in his place.

But I resolved rather to die in the honest front of battle.
Nevertheless, had I known the future, I would have seen that they and not
I were right.

I was indeed fated to return and stand ready to execute doom, with the
Red Axe in my hand and my father lying dead near by.




CHAPTER XVIII

THE PRIME OF THE MORNING


Now so strange a thing is woman that, so soon as we were started down the
High Street of the city of Thorn, the Little Playmate dried her eyes,
turned towards me in her saddle, and straightway began to take me to task
as though I had been to blame.

"I have left," said she, "the only home I ever knew, and the only man
that ever truly loved me, to accompany a young man that cares not for
me, and a woman whom I have seen but once, to a far land and an
unkindly folk."

"It is not fair," I said, "to say that I love you not. For, as God sees
me, I have ever loved you--loved you best and loved you only, little
Helenchen! And though you are angered with me now, I know not why--still
till now you have never doubted it."

"I doubt it sorely enough now, I know," she said, bitterly; "yet, indeed,
I care not whether you or any love me at all."

And this saying I was greatly sorry for. It seemed a sad wayfaring from
our old Red Tower and out of my native city of Thorn.

"Helene, little one," said I, "believe me, I love none in the whole world
but my father and you. Trust me, for I am to keep you safe with my life
in the far land to which we go. Do not let us quarrel, littlest. There
are only the two of us here that remember the old man my father and the
little room to which you came as a babe, all in white."

So presently she was somewhat pacified, and reached me a hand from the
back of her beast, on pretence of leaning over to avoid a swinging sign
in one of the narrow streets near by the White Gate, where we were to
meet the Lady Ysolinde.

"And yet more, Little Playmate," said I, keeping her hand when I had it;
"do not begin by distrusting the noble lady with whom we are to travel.
For she means well to us both, and in the strange country to which we go
we may be wholly in her power."

"You are sure that you do not love that woman, then?" said Helene,
without looking at me. For, indeed, in many things she was but a child,
and ever spoke more freely than other maids--perhaps with being brought
up in the Red Tower in the company of my father, who on all occasions
spoke his mind just as it came to him.

"Nay," said I, "believe me, little love, I do not love her at all."

And now on horseback Helene looked all charming, and what with the
exercise, the unknown adventure, and my reassurance, she had a glow of
rose color in her cheeks. She had never before been so far away from the
precincts of the Wolfsberg. I had even taught her to ride in the
court-yard of a summer evening, on a horse borrowed from one of the
Duke's squires.

We found the Lady Ysolinde waiting for us at her house, Master Gerard
talking to her in the doorway, earnestly and apart. Both of them had a
look of much solemnity, as though the matter of their discourse were some
very weighty one.

Presently her father kissed her and she came down the steps. I leaped
from my horse to help her to the saddle, but the respectable serving-man
was before me. So that instead I went about and looked to the buckles and
girths, which were all in order, and patted the arching neck of the
beautiful milk-white palfrey whereon she rode. Then Master Gerard waved a
hand and went within.

And as we fared forth out of the Weiss Thor into the keener air of the
country, I thought what a charge I had--to squire two ladies so
surpassingly fair, each in her own several graces, as our Helene and the
Lady Ysolinde.

No sooner, however, were we past the outer barriers, at which the
soldiers of the Duke Casimir kept guard, than a vast, ungainly wight
started up from the road-side.

"Jan Lubber Fiend!" cried the Lady Ysolinde; "what do you here?"

The oaf grinned his awful, writhed smile and wriggled his great body
after the manner of a puppy desirous of the milk-platter.

"Think you, my lady," said he, cunningly, "that your poor Jan would abide
within the precincts of the city house with that funeral ape bidding me
do this and do that, sit here and sit there, come in and go out at his
pleasure? A thing of dough that I could twist into knots as easily as I
can crack my joints."

And of this latter accomplishment he proceeded to give us certain
examples which sounded like cannon-shots delivered at close quarters.

"Get home with you!" cried Ysolinde; "I cannot have thee following
us. There are two men presently to meet us, to guard us to
Plassenburg, and we do not need you, Jan Lubber Fiend. Get back and
take care of my father."

"Oh, as for him," said the monster, sitting down squat upon the plain
road in the dust, "he is a tough old cock, and will come to no harm. We
can e'en leave him with a good cook, a prime cellar, and an easy mind.
But this young man is not to trust to with so many pretty maids. Jan will
come and look after him."

And with that he nodded his hay-stack of a head three times at me, and
going to the hedge-root he laid hold of the top of a young poplar and
turned him about, keeping the stem of it over his shoulder. Then he set
himself to pull like a horse that starts a load, and presently, without
apparently distressing himself in the least, he walked away with the
young tree, roots and all.

Having shaken off the earth roughly, he pulled out a sheath-knife and
trimmed the branches till he had made him a kind of club, with which he
threatened me, saying, "If I catch that young man at any tricks, with
this club will Jan Lubber Fiend break every bone in his skin, like the
shells of so many broken eggs."

Then laughing a little, and seeing that nothing could be made of the
fellow, the Lady Ysolinde rode on and we followed her. We thought that
surely there would be no difficulty in shaking him off long ere we
reached our lodging-place of the evening, and that he would find his way
back to the city of Thorn.

But even though we set our horses to their speed, it seemed to make no
difference to the unwieldy giant. He merely stretched his legs a little
farther, and caused his great gaskined feet to pass each other as fast as
if they had been shod with seven-league boots. So he not only kept up
with us easily, but oftentimes made a détour through the fields and over
the wild country on either side, as a questing dog does, ever returning
to us with some quaint vagrant fancy or quip of childish simplicity.

But what pleased me better than the appearance of the Lubber Fiend was
that ere we had gone quite two miles out of the city we found two
well-armed and s

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