The Mercenary: A Tale of The Thirty Years' War
by W. J. Eccott · English · Gutenberg #40567 · 552,506 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Mercenary: A Tale of The Thirty Years' War
Author: W. J. Eccott
Release date: August 23, 2012 [eBook #40567]
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Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MERCENARY: A TALE OF THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR ***
The Mercenary
_WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR._
Crown 8vo, 6s.
FORTUNE'S CASTAWAY.
Crown 8vo, 6s.
HIS INDOLENCE OF ARRAS.
Popular Edition, 6d.
Crown 8vo, 6s.
THE HEARTH OF HUTTON.
Crown 8vo, 6s.
THE RED NEIGHBOUR.
Popular Edition, 1s.
Crown 8vo, 6s.
THE BACKGROUND.
Crown 8vo, 6s.
A DEMOISELLE OF FRANCE.
Crown 8vo, 6s.
THE SECOND CITY.
WILLIAM BLACKWOOD & SONS,
EDINBURGH AND LONDON.
The Mercenary
A Tale of
The Thirty Years' War
BY
W. J. ECCOTT
AUTHOR OF 'HIS INDOLENCE OF ARRAS,'
'THE RED NEIGHBOUR,' ETC.
William Blackwood and Sons
Edinburgh and London
1913
_ALL RIGHTS RESERVED_
CONTENTS.
CHAP. PAGE
I. IN SEARCH OF BOOTY 1
II. NIGEL COLLECTS HIS DUES 10
III. TILLY, COUNT OF TZERCLAËS 17
IV. ON THE ROAD TO ERFURT 24
V. TWO OF THE CATHOLIC FAITH 32
VI. AT THE CASTLE OF HRADSCHIN 42
VII. THE ROAD TO EGER 53
VIII. INTERLACING DESTINIES 61
IX. AN ITALIAN AND A SPANIARD 73
X. FATHER LAMORMAIN 81
XI. THE LOST DESPATCHES FOUND 92
XII. NIGEL MEETS FATHER LAMORMAIN 99
XIII. A FATHER, A CONFESSOR, AND A DAUGHTER 107
XIV. IN THE CIRCLE OF THE EMPEROR 114
XV. THE ARCHDUCHESS AND WALLENSTEIN 125
XVI. NIGEL'S NEW REGIMENT 133
XVII. FAREWELL TO THE ARCHDUCHESS 140
XVIII. NIGEL'S INSTRUCTIONS, WRITTEN AND UNWRITTEN 149
XIX. THE GUESTS OF THE ABBOT OF FULDA 156
XX. CASTING OUT A DEVIL 165
XXI. INTO THE FOREST'S HEART 176
XXII. THE DRAGON'S GORGE 184
XXIII. A CLASH OF HEARTS 190
XXIV. MISTRESS AND ENEMY 198
XXV. BREITENFELD 206
XXVI. AT HALBERSTADT 214
XXVII. THE RESTLESSNESS OF STEPHANIE 223
XXVIII. PREPARES THE GROUND 232
XXIX. ORBIT AND FOCUS 239
XXX. LOVE AND A LOCKSMITH 249
XXXI. AN ASSIGNATION 256
XXXII. PASTOR RAD AGAIN 263
XXXIII. THE PASTOR'S PILGRIMAGE 270
XXXIV. LUTHERAN AND JESUIT 278
XXXV. AN EMBASSY FOR STEPHANIE 286
XXXVI. A RECONNAISSANCE 293
XXXVII. THE DEFENCE OF THE LECH 301
XXXVIII. A SURPRISE AT RATISBON 307
XXXIX. THE CLOUDS AND SERGEANT BLICK 314
XL. RIDE, RIDE TOGETHER 320
XLI. A LATE ARRIVAL AT NICHOLAS KRAFT'S 329
XLII. IN THE ABBEY CHURCH 336
THE MERCENARY:
A TALE OF THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER I.
IN SEARCH OF BOOTY.
It was the evening of the second day of the sack of Magdeburg. Nigel
Charteris, soldier of fortune by profession and in rank captain of
musketeers, sought a certain house in the Kloster Strasse, if haply it
were still standing.
It troubled the captain little that Magdeburg should be sacked. He was
of the Catholic faith. And Magdeburg had proved herself malignantly
Protestant. She had flouted the Edict of Restitution. The Emperor
Ferdinand II., Habsburger by race, Catholic to the marrow, had
proclaimed that the possessions, wrenched from the grasp of the
Catholics a hundred years before by the Lutherans and Calvinists, should
be restored to Catholic hands, that the mass bell should tinkle in every
chancel, and all be as if that pestilent monk, that Junker Georg of the
Wartburg, had never been. Rome had bided her time, as Rome can always
bide her time, and seize her opportunity. The Emperor found himself
with a right good flail and a stout husbandman, Count Tilly, to wield
it. The husbandman with his flail had arrived before the
threshing-floors of Magdeburg in bleak March. It had taken him to jocund
May to force an entrance, and then the threshing and the winnowing
began.
It was a question if the house in the Kloster Strasse still stood, for
even before the turbulent entry of the Emperor's troops fires had broken
out, and still burned furiously. It was a city of shards and carcases.
Here and there streets still stood, as a patch of corn stands, left for
to-morrow's cutting, amid the prone swathes. Nigel wondered if he would
be able to recognise the street that he had left as the dawn broke that
morning.
"This is the street, Captain. The spire's had a shake!" said Sergeant
Blick.
Nigel nodded, and strode over the stones, and the sheet-lead, and the
broken images of stone and of human flesh that lay in his path. But for
the loss of its church-tower the street was still passably whole.
Clambering over the barrier of ruins, a half company of musketeers
followed in loose order, expectant of more plunder. All day they had
spent in camp, and were now let out for their share in the ruthless
harvesting. There was method too in their captain's gleaning.
He halted his men, and addressed Sergeant Blick in the tone of a man
used to command and accustomed to be obeyed.
"Now, Sergeant, you and two men come with me. The rest may help
themselves in this street. It is now seven o'clock. At nine they will
fall in, and march back to camp. No throat-cutting! No drunkenness! And
no mishandling of women!"
Sergeant Blick wheeled about, marched three paces to the front, and
repeated the orders in a fine sonorous voice. By way of making them more
intelligible, he called his men "drunken pigs" and "little calves" and
"blunderheads," and added a few very personal admonitions to the more
wilfully or weakly inclined of the flock. Then he wheeled about again,
his two picked men followed, and Nigel, in front of the three, marched
up the street till he came to a tall house which stood with projecting
upper storeys and an almost magisterial aspect amid its smaller fellows.
The massive door yielded to a push, admitting them to a stone-paved
hall, on either side of which there were some very meagrely furnished
rooms, and behind it kitchens, larders, and servants' quarters equally
bare. Nothing of potable or eatable was to be seen. Nor was there a
single kitchen wench.
Having made this reconnaissance, Nigel mounted the wide open staircase
with Sergeant Blick at his heels, and the two musketeers, two steps
behind, to preserve the distance prescribed by the sergeant's rank.
They halted at the first landing. From behind the first door came the
stifled cry of a woman, and a dull sound of a fall. Sergeant Blick
essayed to open it in vain.
Nigel Charteris rapped upon it with the hilt of his sword.
"Open in the name of the Emperor!" he demanded.
A key turned in the lock.
"I warn you!" said a haughty voice, the voice of a woman of rank, rich
and full. "You enter at your own peril!"
For answer Nigel thrust his foot and his steel cap into the opening as
the door gave way a span, and a dagger descended with the breathless
fury of a woman's onset, only to glance off the casque, while the
assailed swung round and seized the wrist of the thruster. The dagger
fell to the floor. Blick stooped and picked it up and thrust it into his
belt, where it had company of the same sort. It was worth a guilder, he
reflected; and stood waiting just inside the door, his men without.
The soldier of fortune was a tall man, and she who faced him, flushed
and disappointed, was a tall woman. The soldier of fortune was a
handsome fellow of a dark russet upon olive complexion, with a crisp
curl to his moustaches and his hair, though little of that emerged from
the steel cap inlaid with gold that had so well protected him. Her eyes
ran over him and said to her "Lineage." His eyes in turn told him that
the woman was sprung of a ruling race, incapable of fear, unused to any
domination: told him also that she had dark hair in abundance, dark
mist-laden eyes, a clear paleness of complexion which was neither white
nor yellow nor pink nor olive; told him that her carriage was that of a
queen, and that she was as virginal as the dawn.
If the eagle in her held his eyes in its imperious clutch, hers
encountered a spirit just as much an eagle's. High lineage and high
poverty had been his portion, and no Charteris had ever feared to look a
haughty beauty in the eyes.
It was the matter of an instant. Nigel looked round.
In the embrasure of the principal window, seated in a great chair, was
the figure of an old man, whose dress denoted a Lutheran pastor. His
head was fallen helplessly sidelong on the pillows that had but a few
moments ago supported it. He was dead. At his feet, half on the dais of
the window, lay a golden-haired girl. The great white kerchief that
covered her shoulders and bosom showed a red spot over the heart, and a
little dagger was still enclosed by the listless fingers that lay quiet
in her lap. She too looked like one that is dead.
"Your handiwork, brave captain!" said the dark lady bitterly. "Pastor
Reinheit died of shock as you halted without. Elspeth stabbed herself to
save her honour as soon as she heard your footsteps on the stair. It was
well done!"
"Count Tilly does not make war upon girls!" said Nigel angrily, striding
across and kneeling beside the girl. "Bring water, linen, and salve!"
Gently he laid her flat upon the floor with a cushion beneath her head.
Quickly he unfastened the neckerchief and staunched the blood till he
could see the wound, of what width it was, and how the blood welled up
into its mouth. Then he looked at the dagger.
"Blick! Look you here! A flesh wound! A thumbnail's depth? What say
you?"
Sergeant Blick gently pinched the wound.
"Aye, is it! More fright than hurt! A barber's stitch of a silk thread.
A bandage and salve! 'Tis all she needs."
Nigel looked up. The lady of the misty eyes looked down.
"She lives!" said he. "You have but to wash the wound, put in three
stitches, lay salve upon it and a bandage of linen. She will not bleed
to death this time."
The woman knelt down and did as she was bidden with deft long fingers
and without a word.
Before the bandage was made secure the girl Elspeth opened her eyes and
her gaze fell first upon Nigel. A red flush came to her cheek, perhaps
because of her neck lying so uncovered before a man, perhaps by reason
of other thoughts. And as the colour natural to her face, a healthy rosy
hue, came back, Nigel on his part gave a little start of surprise and
turned away. He wondered that he had not known her again. Yesterday she
had worn a healthy ruddiness in her cheeks and a white dress upon her
jolly plump form. To-day with the absolute pallor of her swoon and her
sombre grey clothes his eyes had been cheated, or was it that his eyes
had lost something of their natural sharpness in the duello with those
others of the race of eagles?
The service rendered to her golden-haired friend, the snowy neck once
more shrouded in its covering kerchief, the dark lady resumed her
haughty aloofness. A flash had broken through the mists of her eyes, as
a passing gleam of the moon breaks for an instant through fast scudding
clouds, when she saw the recognition pass. Perhaps she wondered. Elspeth
was of the burgher-class, well-to-do it might be, and she who looked was
noble by every outward token, and might well disregard such affairs as
brought a poor gentleman of the sword, and an outlander to boot, into
contact with a burgher-maiden at the sack of Magdeburg.
Nigel Charteris was indifferent. He concerned himself as little with the
thoughts of either girl. His present business was the gathering of
booty. No man became soldier or officer in Tilly's army for his pay. Pay
was a mighty uncertain thing. So was the sack of a town. So many were
the avenues to perdition, or to salvation, according to one's views of
the future state, and of one's own destination in it. A shot from a
window, a tile from a roof, a stab in a dark corner, any of the three
might "his quietus make." It was only common justice in the soldier's
rough code that, when Dame Fortune came his way and opened a town's
gates to him, he should fill his pockets, and any odd sack he could bear
with him on his march. How should he pay Peter for the ultimate repose
of his soul if not by relieving Paul of those riches that were an actual
impediment to Paul's salvation?
Nigel took a brief survey of the room, and his eyes rested upon the
motionless figure of the dead pastor, unreal-looking in posture and in
face. He frowned and crossed himself.
The proud lady followed his glance.
"A brave piece of work your Edict of Restitution! Is it not time to get
on with your trade?" she taunted.
"In good time!" he said curtly. "Call in two men!" was his order to
Sergeant Blick.
The two men came in, muskets at the ready.
"This lady will show you where to lay the old man!" he said.
As before she obeyed, stepping across the room to a door which opened
into a small bedchamber. The two men-at-arms at a sign from the sergeant
lifted the body and laid it on the bed. Elspeth of the golden-hair made
an effort to rise, bent on following, but her strength had not yet
returned. She lay back again on her cushion and wept silently.
"Peace! Lie still, dear heart!" said the dark lady, kneeling beside her
and holding her hand, raising about her the bulwark of her own
compassion, as who should say to Nigel Charteris that he was without the
pale.
When the door of the dead man's chamber closed and the musketeers stood
once more to command he bade them make ready their weapons. Without a
look at the women he strode across the chamber to another door at the
opposite side of the room to that which he had entered and flung it
open.
In the doorway stood three very determined-looking men armed with pikes,
and behind them a motley assembly of burghers, some armed, some not.
A curiously interested expression came upon the face of her who knelt.
To her mind Tilly's captain was in the toils.
But Tilly's captain had quick ears. He had divined something of what lay
behind the door. When he stepped backward three paces and drew his
sword, there stood covering the door with their muskets his two men.
The three men looked at one another. It was certain death for two out of
the three. Which two? Would the others, their comrades, face it out and
cut down the hated Catholics? There was a certain disadvantage in
knowing their fellows. They were not sure of them. They were quite sure
about the musketeers and Tilly's captain. Nigel Charteris had led a
round dozen of storming parties.
"Come you!" said he with the short stern note of command.
The man indicated came sullenly forward, laid his weapon in a corner and
stood upright against the wall. One by one the rest did the same as he
did.
One of them was a young pastor whose thick, coarse, straw-coloured hair,
heavy brow and lower jaw, companioned by two cold blue eyes, proclaimed
physical energy and dour obstinacy to be his, whatever theology he
carried in his wallet.
"My Bible is my weapon," he said, looking his captor in the face. "Woe
unto you who wound maidens and spoil the houses of the true faith! Woe
to the Edict of Restitution, edict of robbery and murder in the name of
which you come! Woe to the Emperor, rightly named of Rome, for from Rome
he has his orders, and from Rome his monstrous superstitions!"
His intention was to kneel beside Elspeth, but Nigel pointed to the
wall.
It was a medley of weapons; an old halbert or two, some ancient bows,
swords of divers patterns, daggers not a few, pikes and hunting knives,
two heavy smith's hammers, and half a dozen pistols and firelocks of
ponderous make and uncertain utility. These made up the tale of them.
It was a medley of men who surrendered them. Some of their belts and
other accoutrements proclaimed them the organised defenders of the city,
other than the Swedish soldiery that Gustavus had thrown into the place
together with his devoted officer Falkenburg. The rest were merchants,
artificers, apprentices, of whom some had doubtless assisted in the
defence of the city, and others probably had continued to ply their
callings with what peace they could.
Why they had mustered in this house round their old pastor, and with
what hope remained, Nigel could only guess. In fact he cared nothing to
know. It was but a nest of hornets to destroy.
Sergeant Blick whistled from the window. Two more men appeared to guard
the door. Then he went off to gather the rest of his half company.
CHAPTER II.
NIGEL COLLECTS HIS DUES.
Nigel's quick eye roved over the throng.
"Now, Master Scrivener!" he said, picking out a lean-faced worthy who
shrank behind a burly citizen. "Sit you at this table and write down the
names and conditions of the prisoners!"
The scrivener drew forth pen and inkhorn.
"Now, madame! Yours!"
"Ottilie of Thüringen!" She had risen to make the reply, and again their
eyes met in silent combat.
"It would be as well, your Highness, if you carried your friend to
another room! What is her name and condition?"
"Elspeth Reinheit, daughter of Andreas Reinheit, farmer, of Eisenach in
Thüringen!"
Then she motioned to the young pastor, who came forward with an air of
defiance which sat ill upon him, and together they lifted the girl. At
the mention of her name she had opened her still tear-laden eyes and let
them seek those of Nigel, who appeared not to see; but the young pastor,
as he and the dark lady lifted their charge, knitted his brows as if a
spasm of jealousy had waylaid him, who had some right to the feeling
where the sick girl was concerned. They passed out by the door of the
room which had harboured the Magdeburgers.
"Now, sirs, step hither to the scrivener one by one; let him write your
name and calling. And whatever of money or money's worth you carry on
your persons place it here on the table."
There was a low murmuring, but no open dispute of his will.
A grim smile relaxed the features of the musketeers.
A grave portly merchant came forward and announced himself as "Ulrich
Pfeifer, silk mercer," and deposited a gold chain and a purse of money.
The eyes of the soldiers glistened as they heard the clink of the good
metal. If they had thought their captain was, though a hearty fighter, a
somewhat indifferent gatherer of the spoils, they were ready to retract
their opinion. As for Nigel's face, it showed no eagerness or greed.
The merchant of silk was followed by a tanner, a hosier, an armourer, a
shoemaker, and a maker of gloves. There were a few gold chains in the
company, and the money was in purses of divers kinds and conditions, and
of all the currencies of Europe. After the merchants came the craftsmen
and artisans, who made but meagre contributions: and not a few lips
trembled as the hard-earned and hardly-kept florins rattled on the
table. Then came the apprentices, shamefaced, turning out their pockets
in proof that they had none but a few copper coins, which Nigel
Charteris bade them pick up again.
The scrivener's task being completed, together with the heaping of the
spoil, Nigel called for Sergeant Blick and bade him conduct the
prisoners to the camp and set a guard over them, till he should come to
take Count Tilly's instructions for their disposal. At which order they
one and all looked more crestfallen than before, for it portended they
knew not what. Two months' leaguer with all its hardships, its alarms,
its hunger; a week's storming with its perils from without, two days of
horrors within, had left them all with a lively sense of the power of
the Emperor to enforce his edicts. And in their ears the name of Count
Tilly was a synonym for an incarnation of the powers and practices of
the Evil One.
But there was no appeal from the Catholic captain. The young pastor, who
had returned, and the scrivener headed the procession. The soldiers
below received them. Sergeant Blick gave the orders, and the noise of
their retreating feet came through the open window to the ears of Nigel.
"Now," said he to the two men-at-arms, who had been with him from the
beginning of the episode, "you can search the house for yourselves.
Touch nothing of that which belongs to the ladies who were here; nor
load yourselves with that which is heavy to carry and of no certain
worth. Say to the Lady Ottilie of Thüringen that I crave her presence
here in a quarter of an hour. The other two of you remain on guard
without."
The order obeyed, he poured out his booty into a heap, picked out the
gold pieces and the chain, that had been so cherished an adornment of
the silk weaver, and put them in a purse of leather, which he fastened
securely and disposed with equal care about him; then the silver pieces,
which were far more numerous and bulky, he divided into four parts, two
for Sergeant Blick, and one each for the musketeers, in case their
ransacking of the house under the conditions laid down should provide
them with but a meagre reward. These three weighty and bulky parcels,
tied in separate purses, he fastened beneath his cloak to his
sword-belt, and he had scarcely done so before the haughty Ottilie made
her entry. Her bearing was serene and high.
He rose from the chair and bade her be seated. She accepted the offer
without thanks but without any show of disdain. She seemed to have
allowed herself to enter upon a softer mood.
"I have asked for an audience, your Highness----"
"Why Highness?" she asked. "In German lands that is for princesses."
"It accords with your bearing! The grades of rank in these countries are
bewildering. What would you be called?"
"In Thüringen I am styled plainly, madame!"
"Madame, be it then! Are you the daughter of the Landgrave of
Thüringen?"
"In what way does that concern one of Tilly's captains of musketeers? I
go where I choose, and own no man for my master."
Nigel smiled at her petulance.
"It concerns me in this way. Magdeburg is a heap of ruins. It is true a
few streets remain, but I have no mind to leave you and your friend
Elspeth Reinheit to be the chance prey of fire, or of plunder-seeking
cut-throats."
"You describe your soldiery with admirable precision!" she interrupted.
"I was referring to the human vermin that swarm from their haunts in
cities whenever order gives way to disorder, and to camp-followers who
are like unto them." His voice took on a deeper seriousness. "Come to
the window, it is beginning to get dusk, you will see them."
She rose and moved across in her stately way to the casement. He pointed
to the street.
"Do you see those?"
Three nondescript tattered ruffians and a woman with half-naked breasts,
clad in remnants, gave vent to raucous laughter, and each man fingered a
long knife at his girdle. On the back of each was a stuffed wallet, and
at the sight of the lady they raised a shrill cry of glee, and made
across. The lady shuddered.
"I have men outside," he said. "But if they were not, do you think your
puny dagger-play, or your proud tongue, would save you? They would hack
off your slender fingers for their rings, strip you for your fine linen,
and if they left you your life...."
The girl's face blanched.
"You need not go on! I understand. What are we to do?"
"Your friend Elspeth Reinheit dwells at Eisenach? And you, madame, at
some castle near by? Is it not so?"
"I have friends at the castle of the Wartburg!" she said.
"Good! I will arrange an escort and send you both to your friends. It is
about three days' journey."
"Elspeth will not be able to ride!"
"Then she must have a coach, if one can be found."
"And the pastor?"
"I cannot answer for him. There are too many of them as it is."
"As to that," she said, "it depends on one's faith. But there is talk of
a betrothal between them." The girl watched his face with a close
scrutiny as she said it.
"I do not know what Count Tilly may order concerning him. She is quite
welcome to her pastor," he said with indifference. "As I said, there are
far too many pastors, and priests too for that matter, for quiet living.
If they would baptise the children, marry the youths and maidens,
administer the sacraments, and amuse you women in between without
interfering with the other business of the world, it would be far
better."
"We had better make ready!" she said. "And the dead pastor?"
"He must be left to his flock. Count Tilly will dismiss the poorest
prisoners. Do you, madame, get your charge ready at once for her journey
to the camp. The men shall make a litter!"
"You are more an officer of Wallenstein than of Tilly!" she said. "Were
I you, I should seek employment with the former."
"Wallenstein! I was with Wallenstein till the Emperor accepted his
resignation!"
"The Emperor will recall him!" she said confidently.
Nigel sprang towards her eagerly.
"Is this true? And if true, how do you know it? Who are you?"
She smiled a lofty, condescending, tantalising smile and left him.
Wallenstein! Wallenstein in chief command again! Wallenstein the supreme
general of generals, the man who could pick men, place them in the exact
rank they could fill, caring nothing for archdukes or landgraves, only
for soldiers,--the man who could make war itself an orderly thing, not
quartering rough soldiers promiscuously upon quiet burgher families, but
levying contributions and spending them in pay and provisions like any
merchant, getting good value for them. Wallenstein appealed to the Scot
in Nigel as a thorough man, no less brave than Tilly, but a genius for
organising armies, a good Catholic, but no fanatic. It was like a shrill
summons to Nigel to hear that Wallenstein might take the field again.
But how could this proud damsel of Thüringen know? Who was she?
To be the daughter of the Landgrave of Thüringen was to be almost the
daughter of a prince. She had not admitted it, but that she came of very
noble birth he was sure. She must be steeped in Lutheranism to be in
Magdeburg during the siege. Yet she seemed not to regard either the dead
pastor or the living with the respect that one who was strong in the
faith would be likely to show.
His men-at-arms came in, doublets and pockets stuffed. They had found no
wine at all events.
He bade them take two of the old pikes from the pile of arms, tear down
a curtain, and with them make a rough litter.
"I must take one more look at my uncle," Elspeth murmured when her
companion returned with her, and Nigel opened the door. She paid her
last dues of affection, loth to leave her dead to a possibly
unceremonious burial at strange hands. But Ottilie had explained the
matter to her. Then she came out and lay down upon the litter.
The two musketeers lifted her as if she had weighed but a few pounds,
and tramped towards the door.
Her friend walked just beside her. Nigel cast one look round and
followed.
Then they made their way to the outskirts of the town beyond the
ramparts and the fosses.
When Nigel had with infinite trouble found them privacy and housing for
the night, the lady of Thüringen responded graciously enough to his
"good night!" adding, "I am glad my dagger failed me, Sir Captain. You
are too courteous to die by a woman's hand."
CHAPTER III.
TILLY, COUNT OF TZERCLAËS.
"So, sir, you would leave me for Wallenstein!" said the dry, wiry old
man with the short grey beard resting on a charger of ruff, looking
keenly out of a pair of very sharp eyes, which were the eyes of General
Tilly, Count of Tzerclaës. "What in thunder made you think Wallenstein
was in favour again?"
"It is true then, General?"
"It may prove true in time. It depends on Gustavus, on Magdeburg, on
Saxony. Are you by chance a necromancer? Your calf country has produced
a brood of them at times. And your King Jamie, who was father-in-law to
our famous Winter King by the way, made rather a name for himself
rooting out the witches, didn't he?"
Nigel Charteris knew Count Tilly's predilection for a gird at foreign
officers. But as the old general was in a good vein he made no attempt
to defend the memory of King Jamie, who was dead, and had died a
Protestant, to Nigel in itself a proof of something lacking in his
intelligence.
"Not I, General! I had it from a haughty damsel I found in the same
house with the nest of Magdeburgers I brought you."
"Who was she, captain?"
"She gave herself out to be the Lady Ottilie of Thüringen! She is of a
surety highly-born. But I didn't know what to make of her. She is not
given to much speech, and what there is is tart in flavour. Would she by
chance be a daughter of the Landgrave? She hinted at the Wartburg."
"Not she! The Landgrave has no daughter. I should like to see this
damsel. She may tell an old man more than she would tell a young one
like yourself. Send for her!"
Nigel gave an order to a soldier.
"As for Wallenstein, it may well be later on. At present it behoves me
to let the Emperor know fully about Magdeburg, what men we have lost and
what dispositions I am making, for, look you, this matter must needs
rouse Gustavus and bring him about my ears. I can well spare you for a
matter of ten days to ride to Vienna to bring me word again. What say
you? Will you be the messenger?"
"With the greatest goodwill, General!" There was no mistaking the
sentiments of the younger man. He was a soldier, and knew that this way
leads to advancement.
"It should serve your turn. I know a soldier when I see one, and you
have quitted yourself manfully."
"Thanks, General!" Nigel glowed all over with his commendation.
At this moment the unknown lady made her entrance. Count Tilly signed to
Nigel to stay: raising his fine eyebrows with a movement that gave him a
quizzical air, and a slightly amused look crept into his face. He rose
and bowed politely--
"The Lady Ottilie of Thüringen?"
A look flashed from her eyes to Count Tilly's as she bowed in return.
"It is the name by which I am known to your officer here!"
"There is a singular likeness between your face and that of a lady I
once met at the court of Vienna," said Count Tilly, as if it were a
matter of no moment.
"Indeed!" she said unmovedly. "At the present moment I am seeking a
safe-conduct to Thüringen, for myself and two persons in whom I am
interested."
"To what part?"
"To Eisenach, or, if not, then to any point on the frontiers!"
"And your business, madame?"
"To restore my friends to their families, and rest, after the horrors to
which you have subjected us, Count."
Tilly made no sign of displeasure. The air of amused courtesy still sat
in his eyes, in his manner.
"How long have you been in Magdeburg?" he asked.
"Ten days, reckoned by time," she said with meaning.
"You must have changed into a cat, or an owl, to get into the city ten
days ago!" he said, surveying her calmly. "Yes. It was possible to
_you_. Now, are you ready to start at once?"
"Within an hour, Count!"
"Good! Captain Charteris here will escort you and your party as far as
Erfurt. After that you must make your own plans!"
The Lady Ottilie von Thüringen did not look overjoyed at the news. She
stole a glance at the captain, who on his side evinced no rejoicing, and
then at the general. One might have supposed that she suspected some
design on the part of the elder man.
"It is the utmost I can hope for, I suppose," she said grudgingly.
"Women should stay at home!" said the Count. "Especially girls of your
age and condition," he added, waving his hand in token of dismissal.
The lady's lips curled as she bowed and withdrew. It was plain she was
accustomed to having her own way, and not accustomed to being rebuked by
generals, however eminent.
"My young friend," the Count went on to Nigel, "you will have a curious
convoy as far as Erfurt. When you leave them at Erfurt, see that some
trustworthy men are to accompany them. I seldom forget faces, and more
rarely voices. Be careful. Look closely after her. Find out what you
can! Don't make love to her! It is of no importance to you what I think.
I may be misled by a resemblance. It is a thousand chances that I am.
But for you, the less you know at the outset the better for you. It is a
great protection sometimes not to know anything. Here is an order for a
lieutenant and twenty troopers. Take any travelling carriage and four
horses you can lay hands on. And stay, here are a hundred gold crowns
for your expenses. On leaving Erfurt you will go as fast as possible to
Vienna, after which, God be with you till we meet again!"
Nigel pocketed the crowns and the blessing with a good grace, thanked
Count Tilly, and saluted. It was not often that an officer found such
favour with the dry old general.
He was too busy during the next hour with his preparations to trouble
his head with the speculations of Count Tilly as to the identity of
"dark Ottilie," as he called her to himself. In point of fact he was
rather disappointed to be called upon to act as escort even as far as
Erfurt. He would so much more willingly have ridden by the shortest road
to Vienna, where his ambition was already, if we may speak of a man's
desire outstripping his body by three days or so.
For his secret heart sang "Wallenstein," and not "Ottilie" dark or fair.
Yet Wallenstein, for the little that Nigel Charteris had seen of him, or
knew of him through others, was not a man to be beloved of men. He had
been twice married, which might prove that he was beloved of women, or
not, according to the side the pleader took. Nigel could recall without
difficulty the long narrow face with the large ears set close back
against the head, the high deeply-furrowed brow, the thoughtful
scrutinising eyes from which all laughter was absent, the plain linen
collar turned flatly down over his cuirass, the little tuft on his chin,
the look of solid power about the face as a whole, a face dominated by
resolution rather than pride.
What was it then that drew Nigel Charteris to him? It was perhaps the
sense of the orderliness and discipline that prevailed about the famous
general and emanated from him. It was perhaps the audacity that had led
him to offer, in the dark days of the empire, to raise an army of twenty
thousand men which should cost the Emperor nothing but his mandate, or
the sound foresight that in fact provided thirty thousand for the war of
'26. Nigel Charteris had marched with him as a mere subaltern to the
crushing defeat of Mansfeld at Dessau on the Elbe, had joined in the
resistless pursuit through Silesia, through Mähren into Hungary, where
Mansfeld was striving to unite with Bethlem Gabor of Siebenbürgen, most
turbulent of Electors. Nigel had seen the army of thirty thousand grow
into seventy thousand, and the Emperor able to dictate in the affairs of
Europe. There had been nothing to equal Wallenstein's army in the world.
And then the Habsburger, listening to jealousies, to his own fears
perhaps, to the Jesuits certainly, to Maximilian of Bavaria, had bidden
Wallenstein, laden as he was with honours and riches, lay down his
baton. Wallenstein had made no demur, raised no standard of rebellion,
had gone into retirement. The army mouldered away regiment by regiment.
Some had joined Tilly, like Nigel. More had become idlers in the great
cities. It had been Wallenstein's army. Without him to command even the
Emperor could not keep the snows from melting.
And now came this mysterious message that Wallenstein would be summoned
again. His old officers would be flocking back. Nigel felt it in his
bones. Loyalty to a great leader is one of the strongest engines in the
world, least visible to the eye, most potent in effect.
A travelling carriage was found, the body hung by leathern straps,
steadied by light chains, to the solid box and hinder seats, which were
just above the axles. From somewhere had sprung two serving maids, the
one a plump, wide-chested, short Saxon girl, evidently a retainer of
Elspeth Reinheit; the other, an older, slightly-wizened woman of dark
complexion, with a certain air about her of one accustomed to the
chambers of great ladies, of one above the common herd of waiting women,
and as plainly the attendant of Ottilie of Thüringen. The two had
probably been hidden in some garret of the house in Magdeburg, and
followed their mistresses, having no other goal to make for, to the
outskirts of the camp. The Saxon girl was already on terms of
familiarity with the troopers. The other held herself pursed up and
aloof.
Nigel mounted the two on the hinder seat of the coach, their mistresses
within, and presently gave the order to the lieutenant, who sent on two
men in advance. Nigel and the lieutenant followed at the head of ten
troopers. The other eight rode behind as a rearguard.
They gave a glance back at the smoking ruins of Magdeburg, out of which
still rose some spires of churches which had successfully defied the
conflagration, and were no longer the objective of Tilly's cannon, and
rode along the level road towards Strassfurt, comparing their military
experiences of the last three days.
The young pastor had been mounted on a horse of indifferent mettle, and
rode as well as he was able behind the coach just in front of the
rearguard. It was clear that he was not in a grateful frame of mind,
notwithstanding his freedom. Nor had he any great reason to be, for was
not the fall of this great city of Magdeburg, this stronghold of
Protestantism, an open and visible sign of the hated Edict?
CHAPTER IV.
ON THE ROAD TO ERFURT.
Let your journeying be never so brief, it need not be tedious. The road
was as flat from Magdeburg to Strassfurt, and that was twenty miles, as
is the great plain that stretches from the Zuider Zee to Warsaw and on
and on. There were undulations. It was not as flat as a backgammon
board, nor had it a hill that would have made an old horse out of
breath.
It was a sunshiny morning towards the end of May, and the sun rises
early over the German lands in May, and shines hotly towards noon on the
great plain. There was little or no shelter, but horses and men, even
the pastor, though he came from the pine forests of Thüringen, thought
little of the heat and the dust. To the men it was a holiday jaunt after
the military turmoils of the past two months. To the pastor it was a
return to his flock with a wallet full, not of indulgences like that of
Johann Tetzel, the Dominican, of Luther's day, but of doings and
sufferings. How he would be able to point his sermons with what he had
seen and heard! How he would inflame the whole forest with it! The
fires, the murders, the even blacker horrors of the sack of Magdeburg,
should be caught up into the trumpet of his prophecy and belched forth
in his own sonorous, if not altogether silvery voice, till every valley
of Thüringen and every hamlet in the hills rang with the fame and the
shame of the Edict. He conceived himself as a brand plucked from a
literal burning. As he rode, innumerable texts rose to his remembrance;
and pathways of thought, full of intricacies, opened out therefrom, till
his head almost ached by reason of the fixity with which he gazed upon
the hinder seat of the coach, while in his imagination he saw a mass of
upturned faces on the hillside upturned to _him_. The beauty of the
morning and the monotony or interest of the road were not for him.
Nor did they affect the Saxon maid-servant, who from her high perch
behind the coach could see every now and then the steel caps of the
troopers in front glancing in the sun, and, when she felt sure the Herr
Pastor was not thinking about her, she twisted her stout body about and
twisted her short neck till she could win a good satisfying look at the
foremost couple of horsemen behind him. As for her companion, the
high-born lady's tiring woman, the Saxon girl could make nothing of her.
She belonged to the east, she said. The Saxon girl had once been to
Dresden. Further east was a mystery of all manner of strange peoples.
The woman spoke German, but she did not look German, and she did not
chatter, an unhealthy sign to the mind of the Saxon girl. She had not a
look for the troopers nor for the country-side. She was thinking of the
little hoard of florins and kreuzers she had left in the hands of a
respectable goldsmith before she set out on this ridiculous journey with
the highly-born lady, who, subject to the god of greed, owned her body
and soul. The writings relative to the hoard were in a little bag, which
she wore in a secure place beneath her outward and visible garments.
Every now and again she pinched the spot to make sure they were there: a
fact the Saxon girl noticed, but forbore to question for the reason.
For the lady and the farmer's daughter the road had different messages.
Both in their ways felt the loveliness of the morning and the welling up
of Spring in the blood. To the lowlier-born a little farmstead with its
yellowish clayed walls and great black beams, its thatch of many
seasons' straw, spoke of men and women and babes and kine. Then she
remembered, and called softly out of the window "Pastor Rad," and the
pastor urged his horse beside her and said a few words, but soon dropped
behind again. She could make nothing of him. He did not even ask after
her wound.
And "dark Ottilie" of Thüringen? The beauty of the morning set her
pulses thrilling, and chanted in her ears a song of freedom. She knew
well that she was not free, that she was playing the rebel against all
orthodoxy of courts and the rule of princes for their women-folk. She
had but these few weeks essayed the game of freedom, which had already
led her into strange accidents, but danger and Spring and pride made a
heady mixture. She loved this flat open road because it was new to her,
and led to strange little towns. "Did that stupid old General Tilly
recognise her?" She asked herself the question, and answered that these
old generals and statesmen were all full of craft and ruse, and it was
impossible to say. Why, if he did, should he let her go? Then her
thoughts evidently fell upon the Scot: and, since he showed no sign of
coming to her of his own accord, she had the word passed to him. Nigel
wheeled his horse and waited till the coach was abreast. The coach was
high and he needed not to bend. He saluted and said--
"Madame?"
"What is the name of this place we make for?"
"Strassfurt!"
"Is it much farther?"
"A league or so, madame!"
"And then?"
"We shall dine and proceed to Aschersleben. Then, if you are not too
fatigued, we shall go on to Sangershausen." Then he looked across to
Elspeth and a look of friendliness came into his eyes. "How is your
wound to-day, Fräulein?"
"Better! Much better, captain!" Elspeth had another access of blushes.
"Of a truth," said "dark Ottilie" to herself, "there must have been some
passages between this gentleman and our pastor's niece;" and she herself
began to observe him more closely, how well he sat his horse, what a
figure he had, as gallant a soldier as she remembered to have seen.
"Captain!" She threw aside her haughtiness for a moment as she would
have dropped a cloak when she had loosed the clasp. "Whence came you?"
"From Scotland, madame!"
"The country of Marie Stuart?"
"She was the grandmother of our present king, Charles!"
"And what brought you here?"
"A younger son's lack of fortune, and a taste for sword-play!"
"But surely at the English court!"
"There were already too many Scots, too many younger sons, and a king
who had no taste for sword-play, madame!"
"They say the English ladies are rich and beautiful! Were there none who
would keep a Scottish gentleman from crossing the seas to find a
fortune, when she held one in her lap?"
"I would not have looked beyond her face, madame, and, wanting a fortune
of my own, would never have looked her in the face to ask for hers."
"You are too proud, sir! And how long have you plied the trade of a
soldier?"
"Since Wallenstein raised his army and fought with Mansfeld. Five years,
madame!"
A strange rapt gleam came into her eyes at the name of Wallenstein.
"And the fortune?" she asked.
"My Lord Verulam in his book tells us 'if a man look sharply and
attentively he shall see Fortune: for though she be blind yet she is not
invisible,'" said the Scot. "I am still looking for her."
"It is a good saying: and your Lord Verulam plainly had a shrewd notion
that Fortune walks abroad in petticoats as often as she hides herself in
the treasure-house of a king."
Nigel Charteris looked into her face, wondering exactly what she meant
by her commentary, and the dark eyes held a lurking demon of laughter
somewhere about them for an instant, but the mist came over the twin
lakes and her face resumed its lofty repose.
They were not the only wayfarers: though the little groups were getting
more and more infrequent. For the final attack on Magdeburg, which had
let loose into its streets and places thousands of soldiery on plunder
intent, careless of violence to women and to babes, had also opened its
gates for the egress of fugitives. Those who had friends or relatives in
the country made such haste as was possible in the deadly hubbub of the
sack to steal out with their bare lives on to the roads and walk fast
and far.
Many were the glances of hate at the troopers, and of wonder at Elspeth
Reinheit, who was known to many as the "pastor's niece." As for the
young pastor, the fugitives bowed or curtsied to him, and pitied him
because they supposed him a prisoner; whereas they themselves possessed
a precarious freedom, won out of the press of death that had confronted
them in so many forms on the grisly days of the sack.
The pastor, buried in his indignation, and in his thoughts of stirring
themes for congregations not yet assembled, sometimes acknowledged their
salutations, sometimes missed seeing them. One question in the intervals
of his professional wrath came into his mind every now and again, and he
was indignant at the intrusion. It was this: What had happened that
Elspeth should have had any dealings with Tilly's captain? He had seen
how her eyes had sought the captain's, the eyes of an accursed Catholic,
accursed in that his hands were imbrued, actually or vicariously, in the
bloody wine-presses of the wrath of man, still more accursed that he had
done what he had in furtherance of the policy of Rome. And Elspeth
Reinheit, though not formally betrothed to him, Pastor Rad, was looked
upon as his by others than himself or herself. How was it possible that
the soldier and she could have met, and he the pastor and lover not know
it? How could there be a look of understanding or of gentle inquiry pass
from her to him to his own exclusion? It filled him with vague
uneasiness. It hurt his pride of possession. It raised suspicion of her
integrity.
No doubt Pastor Rad would have been still more surprised had he known
that the highly-born sympathiser--he was not sure enough of her
spiritual leanings to call her adherent,--Ottilie of Thüringen, was at
this moment questioning Elspeth on that very matter.
"Dearest Elspeth, you have met yonder captain before yesterday? I am
sure of it." She nodded towards his back as he trotted forward to the
head of his men after the little conversation.
"That is true!" said Elspeth. "There is no need to keep it secret from
you, though I dare not tell Melchior Rad. He would never understand."
"As to that," said her companion, "I cannot advise you. You know the
pastor. But your eyes have a most eloquent speech of their own, and are
not easily veiled, and, when he and I carried you to your chamber, your
eyes sought the captain's, and I could have sworn your pastor marked
it."
"Oh dear!" said Elspeth. "And he is so harsh; well, not exactly harsh,
but you know what I mean."
"These good men are hard in judgment!" said the other. "Like diamonds
for rarity and hardness. As for sparkle ... well, I should not say
Pastor Rad sparkles, but never mind."
"This is Thursday!" said Elspeth. "Well, it was on Tuesday night and
nearly midnight. I had been sitting watching my uncle in too great
anxiety to leave the dear old man, and went down into the kitchen to
make him a warm posset.
"As I crept into the kitchen in my night-rail and slippers, my hair down
even, imagine, Ottilie, with a candle in my hand, a man stood there in
the outer doorway. He seized my hands in his and looked me straight in
the face, the candle-light between us.
"'No word, maiden!' he said in a low tone. 'Give me food! Give me a
couch to lie upon! I am wearied to death!'
"His face was blackened with smoke and streaked with sweat. His cloak
and doublet and gauntlets were stained with I know not what. His voice
was hoarse and weak. He was clearly wellnigh done for. I was frightened
out of my life, but not out of all pity. And he was young and had fine
eyes, Ottilie. What could I do?"
"And what did you do?"
"'If thine enemy hunger, feed him,'" said Elspeth. "I did not ask him on
which side he fought. I gave him bread and meat and drink, and took him
by the little stairs to my own chamber. It was the only safe place, and
I bade him sleep there till I wakened him in the morning.
"I spent the night watching my uncle and dozing by his bedside. In the
morning, when it was an hour past dawn, I thought of my other charge and
went to my chamber. He was gone."
"God in heaven!" said Ottilie. "And that was the captain there?"
"I could not swear to it!" said Elspeth, blushing again. "I think it
was."
"It is possible also that he came back to the house to see what had
happened to you on the second day of the sack!"
"I wonder if he did," said Elspeth. "I should like to think so!"
CHAPTER V.
TWO OF THE CATHOLIC FAITH.
Strassfurt gave the travellers too poor an entertainment to make them
tarry by it. They got a change of horses and pushed on another ten
miles, the ground rising steadily as they began to leave the plains and
cross the eastern spurs of the Harz mountains. At Aschersleben the air
was noticeably purer and laden with the resinous smell of the pines.
They made a long rest here for the evening meal and then rode slowly,
for the troopers' horses were tired and sore with the weight of men and
mail. The lieutenant made his men walk up the steep hills, but it was
late when they clattered and rumbled into little Sangershausen and came
to a good inn in the shadow of St Ulrich.
The inn was not large but the stables were spacious enough to take in
all the troopers as well as their horses: a fortunate thing, since, at
the late hour it was, to have made any endeavour to quarter them on the
inhabitants would have been a possible cause of tumult. They were
already sufficiently near to Thüringen, a Protestant state in the main,
for Protestant feeling to be uppermost. Some news of the vengeance
executed on Protestant Magdeburg would have preceded the travellers even
at this remote town on the borders of the Harz, and Nigel and the
lieutenant were both aware of the danger they ran, peaceful as their
errand was.
Despite their fatigue they set off again early, covering the ten miles
to Frankenhausen with ease. Then the road began to wind in and out among
the hills, which lay across their path to Erfurt. The lower slopes of
the hills already showed corn ripening; the grass stood knee-deep in the
valleys, but above the cornlands on every hillside rose the forest.
There were a few woodcutters in the forest, a labourer or two here and
there in the fields, and at long intervals tiny hamlets, with perhaps a
mill or an indifferent inn. To the travellers one and all, the
continuous ascents to high ground, the long forest roads, the descents
into new valleys, became monotonous and seemingly interminable. They
made no haste. It was no countryside for haste. At the best Nigel
expected to reach Erfurt at sundown: for the horses had not thrown off
the weariness of yesterday, and they could not expect to get a relay for
the coach. At the inn where they made what midday meal the place was
capable of they could get nothing but smoked ham, little tough cheeses,
rye-bread and beer. Fortunately there was plenty of the latter, and the
troopers made no grumbling at its quality. Elspeth Reinheit appeared to
be blessed with a good appetite, and found ham and rye-bread and cheese
to her liking, for she did well by them. The other and more highly-born
girl ate little and drank goat's milk, which has a sustaining quality
for those who can put up with its richness. Pastor Rad was no more
talkative than he had been the day before, and brooded alike in valley
and on hill-top with a morose perseverance that foreboded a wealth of
prophetic outburst, whenever he should come to his opportunity and to
his flock. He watched Nigel in all his approaches and conversation with
Elspeth, which the chance or the tedium of the journey brought about.
Nigel was on his side quite natural and unconstrained in his behaviour
to the girl, who had done him a vital service which he had in his turn
requited. There was no feeling except that of human kindness, which
perhaps runs a little thicker as between man and woman, more so still if
the man be comely and the woman not less well-seeming than a woman
should be.
The longest day of travel comes to an end: and at last they spied the
cathedral and the sister church of Saint Severus perched on its
eminence. Then the spires of St Martin, St Michael, St Laurence, and
later on the walls of Erfurt, rose to view. There were gates to pass,
two waterways to cross by little bridges, which let one see a wilderness
of little streets, and then they drew rein at a demure hostelry in the
Prediger Strasse, well thought of by the Protestant community of Erfurt.
Nigel and the lieutenant having seen their charges safely housed, rode
on with their escort, and readily found quarters for them with the
soldiers of the garrison; for Erfurt, if it showed no active
partisanship at this time, was passively more for the Emperor than for
the cause of Gustavus. Originally one of the free cities of the
Hanseatic League, it had become annexed by some threads of service to
the Electorate of Mainz, the Elector being the Archbishop, and so able
to exercise influence, if not precisely dominion, by the spiritual arm
as well as by his considerable secular forces. Despite Luther, Erfurt
was still to be reckoned as a Catholic city, and not many months after
this very day Gustavus treated it accordingly in the swift foray that
followed his victory of Breitenfeld.
The lieutenant being by habit a good companion and a great man at a
bottle, where he could find both company and bottle, having once sat
down with the officers of the garrison, was in no mood to leave them.
Nigel Charteris, on the other hand, like many of his fellow-countrymen,
was prone to content himself with his own company rather than make
himself profoundly uncomfortable for the sake of being sociable. Wine,
Woman, and Song, as the triune object of German idolatry, especially in
garrisons, camps, and universities, did not evoke any enthusiasm in him.
He drank wine for good cheer. Song he could bear rather than love, so it
had a lilt in it. As for woman, as she followed the camp, or in the
character of the helpless quarry of the licentious chase of officers and
soldiers alike, or again as the fat helpmeet of the German burgher,
redundant with all the virtues but lacking equally all the graces, Nigel
Charteris paid her no heed. His gorge rose from one cause or another at
all three. Through all the coarse scenes of camp life, the brutalities
of the sack of cities, he had preserved with religious fervour the
memory of his mother, and of the maidens of gentle quality whom he had
known in his own land, tall, straight-limbed women with broad foreheads
and blue-grey or dark-brown eyes, looking boldly out upon a world that
dared not asperse them.
In Ottilie von Thüringen he had recognised at a glance one of their
peers, with less of their frankness, with more of their pride of race, a
woman of rare beauty, mysterious, tangible yet intangible. For the first
time in his prime of manhood did he feel troubled in spirit by the
consciousness that something in him strove towards the infinite that is
the spirit of woman.
But whether it was this, or the consciousness that of late he had been
remiss in his devotions, he stole out beneath the intense blue of a
starlit sky towards the cathedral, in the precincts of which he trusted
to find a priest to hear his confession.
The builders in their desire to set their holy city on a little hill,
and the only hill having a steep declivity to more mundane levels, had
constructed a series of under-buildings, called _cavaten_, till they got
a continuous level on which to build the cathedral. And a penitent who
has to mount a matter of fifty steps, and does so, certainly deserves
well of Mother Church. So at least thought Nigel Charteris, as, somewhat
breathless, he peered in and found it almost dark. A lantern standing on
the floor in a corner announced the presence of some one, who proved to
be the sacristan coming out of the sacristy.
By the aid of a few small coins the sacristan remembered that Father
Felix lodged at the priest's house close by, and offered to fetch him.
While he was gone Nigel made the round of the nave, the side-aisles, and
the chancel. So lofty was the roof his eye could not pierce the gloom,
but the cathedral was of no great extent, the chancel being in fact very
nearly as large as the nave. The faint rays of the lantern lit up the
carved and polished ages-old woodwork of the choir seats. Beyond was a
shadowy land round which he walked in the space of a few minutes.
From the still deeper shadow of a group of pillars Nigel was startled by
a woman's sobbing. Out of the great silence of the place it was audible,
when his own footfall ceased for an instant, and then it ceased
suddenly, as if the woman, learning that she was not alone, had regained
command of herself. There ensued a soft murmur as of a recited prayer,
one long familiar to her who prayed, and then as of some concluding
personal petition, in which Nigel was almost certain that he heard the
name of Albrecht von Waldstein. His mind being intent upon this name,
that he should think to hear it even in this solemn environment was not
in itself strange, but Nigel was inclined to regard the fancied
recognition as having something of a supernatural significance.
At this moment the priest and the sacristan entered, and the holy
father and his soldier penitent entered the confessional.
When Nigel came out he walked slowly to the door, where he was joined by
the priest, who, his office performed, was cheerfully curious as any
layman to hear the latest details from Magdeburg. News of the victory of
the Church, as every Catholic was bound to esteem it, had reached him.
He was willing to hear more, but made no comment. His sympathies, it
appeared, were mainly confined to his own surroundings, his personal
charge in Erfurt, and did not travel outward to the greater world. He
was curious to hear whether the Jesuits were jubilant over the new phase
in politics. It was clear that he at least was no Jesuit. The priest
_secular_ has always had a certain jealousy of the priest _regular_.
Nigel received his "Pax vobiscum," and turned away to make for his
quarters. A few, and those feeble, lights burned at a distance from the
cathedral. There was the blue sky, starlit as when he had entered.
Standing still a moment or two to make sure of his direction in this
solitary part of the city, he heard a light step beside him, and a tall
closely-veiled lady asked him to set her on her way to the Prediger
Strasse.
Muffled as the tones were, Nigel recognised them.
"Then it was your ladyship in the cathedral a while ago?"
"Sir! I do not know of what you speak! Can you not point me to the
Prediger Strasse?"
"It is useless to pretend! You are she who calls herself Ottilie of
Thüringen! And you are of the Holy Catholic faith! I am Nigel
Charteris!"
"Had the night been lighter," she said in a tone of vexation, "I should
have asked no man! Now I am forced to confide what I wished not to tell;
I _am_ of your faith."
"You may trust me!" said Nigel, taking her by the arm and making across
the Mainzerhof bridge over the Bergstrom, a branch of the main waterway
that threads the town as a string does a row of paunchy beads from
Leipzig Fair.
"'Tis not the shortest way, but it is the least lonely. Tell me why you
consorted with Protestants even to the risk of death or worse in
Magdeburg?"
"Captain Charteris!" She spoke in low clear tones which could reach his
ear alone. "It is no article of our compact to tell you these things. It
is just as well for you to know nothing. It is a great protection
sometimes not to know anything."
"Count Tilly said that same thing!" said Nigel. "Is it a password of the
Rosicrucians?"
"Then he warned you against me!" she said in a tone of triumph.
Nigel bit his lip for its indiscretion.
"He gave it as a piece of general advice," he said. "But what is in our
compact?"
"Merely this!" she replied. "You were to conduct us to Erfurt. You were
to put us into the company of trustworthy people so that we might pursue
our way to Eisenach."
"That is true!" said Nigel. "Yet it is not to be wondered at if I cast
about to know more of a noble lady who first tries to stab me with a
dagger, then takes a passing interest in my parentage, whom next I find
by an extraordinary chance sobbing in a dark corner of a cathedral,
whom, finally, I have the honour of conducting to her lodging at an hour
when most noble ladies are glad to be within doors." There was a vein of
humour in his tone rather than in what he said.
"You think I owe it to you, sir?"
"Does woman ever owe anything to man that she does not pay a
thousand-fold? I count no woman my debtor!" He said it in a tone of
tenderness she had not heard before from this soldier of fortune.
"Trust me then in turn! I tell you nothing! Believe me, there are things
I dare not tell my confessor that I _could_ tell you; only it is better
not."
"Let it be so, madame! 'Trust me all in all or not at all' is a proverb
of my country."
They had reached the further end of the street called Fischersand and
turned on to the Long Bridge, from which it was but the length of a
small side street to the Prediger Strasse.
They halted on the bridge and looked over the balustrade, up the
waterway. There was candlelight here and there in the back windows of
the houses that abutted on the water. Their gaze could only penetrate a
little way along the dark space between the houses. A few stars
reflected themselves in the water at their feet. The Lady Ottilie of
Thüringen was in a restless mood, in that mood when a woman wants
everything and nothing, when she is eager to reveal and careful to hide
everything but her eagerness. To an older man perhaps there would have
been no puzzle, but to Nigel Charteris, who had never known the spell of
woman, she was a mysterious child following her own phantasies.
She gazed into the dark vista for a full minute or so of silence--a
silence only broken by the tramp of the guard going its rounds. Then she
said--
"Have you ever known what love is?"
Nigel started at the question, for he was conscious of the exaltation of
spirit that he felt at being alone with this mysterious child, who was a
woman who had proud eyes, that he felt at being her protector in this
old garrisoned city that was strange to both of them.
"No, lady!" He spoke truth, and she knew it.
"It is like this!" she said, and pointed downwards. "It is dark and in
movement, and you see stars in it glittering,--wavy stars that you know
are not real, though they look so near. You know that it would be cold
to plunge in, and that you would not get your stars. There are the stars
above in the blue at an immense distance.... It's like that too!" She
pointed up the waterway into the darkness. "You can see a little of the
way, and then it is all dark, all a mystery, and yet you know that you
are eager to go, and that if you go far enough you will expect to reach
the stars."
Nigel listened and was troubled--troubled because he was not by nature a
poet, and could not well follow her thought, and troubled because he
felt that her note was impersonal as relating to himself. If she was
referring to a particular man it was not himself.
"To think," she went on, "that a woman could be so stirred, so set above
herself by any man that she would become even as his slave in return for
nothing but his barest thanks, that her mind could be full of him day
and night, that all he might do or say, were it to her own injury, would
be right in her eyes!"
"And yours--your mind is full of Albrecht von Waldstein, if I guess
rightly?" Nigel asked.
"Sir!" She flashed upon him, turning towards the pathway. "Go you and
seek your Wallenstein! What think you that Ottilie von Thüringen can
have in common with that cold seeker after power, with him who would use
the Habsburgs for a stepping-stone, and play the Cæsar?"
Nigel was silent. He was confident that he had struck the keynote of her
meditation, but refrained from placing his finger upon it with
insistence, as he might have done, from fear that he should find that
she resounded to none other. For he began willy-nilly to desire that
this harpsichord of hers should give forth melody beneath his own
fingers. But after a moment or two, with the directness of the Scot,
without irony, stating a fact, he said--
"Lady, I would gladly be the man you spoke of!"
She turned towards him, hurling him a look through her veil.
"My tall captain! You would be a fool even to dream of it!"
"So be it!" he said in his plain way. "Here is your inn. To-morrow your
escort will be here. At what hour?"
"At eight, sir, if you can so contrive."
CHAPTER VI.
AT THE CASTLE OF HRADSCHIN.
It was not difficult to find at the sign of the Lily a couple of worthy
merchants who were returning on the morrow to Gotha, and they readily
promised Nigel to act as escort so far. From Gotha it would go hard if
the girls did not get a safe journey to Eisenach.
The parting was brief. Some tears sprang to the ready eyes of Elspeth.
Ottilie's eyes showed nothing. Her lips repeated, "Till we meet again,
captain!" The pastor nodded sulkily. No sooner had the coach rumbled off
than Nigel sprang to his saddle, and together with his comrade, the
lieutenant, and the escort, trotted to the merry jingle of the
accoutrements and the clash of hoofs out of Erfurt over Steiger Hill on
the road for Rudolfstadt. In consultation with some of the garrison he
had planned to ride through the forest to Rudolfstadt, thence to Plauen,
pass the night there, cross the Erzgebirge on the next day, and push
into Bohemia as far as Pilsen; by good fortune they might be at Budweis
on the evening of the third day and in Vienna by the afternoon of the
fourth.
After surmounting Steiger the road lay straight enough across a broad
valley through a round dozen of hamlets, and at the tenth mile they
crossed the Ilm and began to ascend a more winding road, which, six
miles farther, brought them to Rudolfstadt. Here they made their midday
meal, and without delaying over the wine-pot, made good speed into the
hills that lay between them and Plauen, the chief city of the Vogtland.
The Vogt had been careful to choose a high country for his dwelling, and
so the horses found it no easy finish to their day's work to climb as
they had to do to bed and fodder.
So far Nigel had paid little heed to any demonstrations of Lutheran
spirit. Erfurt, for all it had nursed Luther out of monkhood into flat
heresy, was still Catholic. Rudolfstadt was towards the outskirts of the
Thüringer Wald and a mere hamlet, though it bore a kingly name. The
other villages that lay between it and Plauen were inconsiderable, and
Nigel did not let his men linger when traversing them. It was quite
possible that the news of the sack of Magdeburg had preceded him, but it
was unlikely that any force of the soldiers of Gustavus or of his allies
were in the neighbourhood, and against any undisciplined throng of
turbulent Protestants Nigel felt secure, if he were not greatly
outnumbered.
But as soon as the gates closed behind him and his men, he became aware
from the looks of the people and their answers to his questions that he
had come into a very hornet's nest. Arms seemed to be the customary
wear, and in at least two of the squares he noticed stout burghers and
apprentices practising drill under the guidance of men of martial
bearing.
Instead of making, as he would have done, for an inn, he rode right
through the town to the castle of Hradschin, which was the one place
inside the town that promised security, if not good cheer, and was held
on behalf of the Emperor by an officer who represented in a shadowy way
the ancient dignity and function of the Vogt of long ago.
There he found the drawbridge up and the sentinels on guard, but he was
admitted without much parley to find that the officer in question was an
old comrade of his Wallenstein days, one Hildebrand von Hohendorf, who
received him with open arms and a full flagon, and whose eyes roamed
over the twenty well-appointed troopers with much satisfaction.
The burly Commandant's eye, as he sat back in his great chair after the
first part of the supper was despatched, lit upon Nigel with great
good-humour.
"So you are a captain of Tilly's, my boy! And I warrant you get another
step if you carry despatches safely to Vienna! Some people have all the
luck. And I wager you've a good round bag of golden crowns in your
wallet as it is."
"As to that," said Nigel, "I left a few odd thalers with an honest
banker at Erfurt. I know better than to carry much gold about me."
"Sly fellows, you Scots! Ha! ha! ha! A few odd thalers! Why, the sack of
miserly Madgeburg must have been like drawing water in a bucket from a
brimming well! And here I sit cooped up in Hradschin, and draw a few
groschen a day for running the risk of a Lutheran bullet, or a crack
from a sledge-hammer every time I go into the town, and the saints above
know when I shall be able to get back to the wars."
"Why didn't you do the same as the others, and join Tilly?"
"In the first place, I got the offer of Hradschin, and in the second
place, my own little estate of Hohendorf is but a few miles to the
north, over by Elsterberg, and I can keep a better eye upon it than if I
were wandering about with Tilly. And in the third place, when one has
served with Wallenstein, it isn't the same thing to serve with Tilly."
"And in the fourth place, Hildebrand, you seem to have a good larder and
a good cellar!"
Hildebrand laughed a hearty contented laugh.
"I like them better than your Restitution Edict! Well, Hendrick?"
A soldier had come in and stood at attention.
"There is a tumult in the town, Commandant. They have assembled on the
other side of the moat with torches and weapons."
"Bid them all go to the devil and come back to-morrow morning!"
"Yes, Commandant!"
The soldier returned in a few minutes.
"They will have speech with you, Commandant!"
"Confound them all for disturbers of the peace! I am coming. This is a
new caper!"
The Commandant donned his corselet and headpiece, and accompanied by
Nigel came out on the roof of a small tower that overlooked the
drawbridge.
There was the moat below and a narrow one at that. But it was a
sufficient barrier.
"Silence for the Commandant!" shouted the sergeant of the guard. There
was silence in the grim-looking crowd that stood many deep on the other
side, torches and lanterns lighting up the faces of some and leaving
others mere shadowy patches, lighting up, too, the faces of many steel
weapons and the barrels of many firelocks.
"Now Johann Pfarrer! In God's name tell us what this is all about, and
let a man get back to his supper!"
"Magdeburg!" shouted Johann Pfarrer with a voice like a deep-toned
trumpet.
"Aye! Magdeburg!" The crowed echoed and roared it lustily with a curious
note of wild anger in the throat.
"Well, friends? What have I to do with Magdeburg?"
"Just this!" said Johann Pfarrer. "To-night we have heard an exact
relation of the sack of Magdeburg. You have with you one of Tilly's
captains and twenty of his hell-born riders."
"Faith, Johann! you may be right! I don't know where they were born.
They are all good Germans!"
"The more shame!" growled Johann. "Now, Commandant, we are not joking.
Deliver them all up to us, officers and men!"
"For what? Who ever heard of a German delivering up his guests? Tut!
tut! man!"
"There is no 'Tut! tut!' about it," retorted Johann. "We are going to
hang them. Blood for blood! Vengeance for Magdeburg!"
"What nonsense you talk," said Hildebrand in his jolly cajoling fashion.
"Why should you or I trouble about Magdeburg? Let the Brandenburgers
look after themselves. You don't owe them anything!"
"They are our brothers in the faith," said another voice, and a Lutheran
pastor stood out from the throng.
"Yes! Yes! Our brothers in the faith." The bystanders took up the cry
till it reached the outskirts of the throng, seemingly a long way back.
"Well! I take my orders from the Emperor!" said Hildebrand. "You had
better go and ask him! I give up my guests for no one. Now go away home
to your suppers and your wives and don't trouble your heads with
politics!"
"You hear, friends?" shouted Johann, turning to his comrades. "You hear
what Commandant von Hohendorf tells us. Shall we?"
"No! A thousand noes!" was the reply from hundreds of throats, and the
ominous rattle of weapons gave it emphasis. "Storm the castle! Burn
down old Hradschin! Death to the hell-riders," came from all sides.
Nigel, standing on the battlements in the rear of the Commandant, was
not recognisable from below, but could very well distinguish the faces
of most of those who stood in the front of the throng. They were drawn
from all classes in the town, which, it was clear, was stirred to its
depths. There were few women, and only two of these had ventured near to
the leaders. Nigel surveyed the assembly with the indifference of the
soldier to the execrations of a crowd of citizens, and the added feeling
of detachment from the exasperation which they felt at the slaughter of
some of their own countrymen by others of their own countrymen in the
pay of the Emperor, who was far on the other side of the mountains. His
curiosity was alert, however, and when his eyes rested on the two women,
whose heads were enveloped in hoods that left most of the face in
impenetrable shadow, he strove to estimate their condition, whether
gentle or simple. In bearing they both seemed apart from the burghers
with whom they mingled. One of them was tall for a woman, and, when she
moved, did so with a gesture that marked her at least as no housewife.
The other's movements were quick, and reminded Nigel of a hen moving and
pecking with sudden jerks of fussiness. Then for a moment, as the
Commandant was speaking, the tall woman looked upward and the ruddy
light from a neighbouring torch fell upon her face for a mere instant,
but it was long enough. Nigel drew his cloak about him with a shiver.
The woman appeared to have the eyes and mouth of Ottilie von Thüringen.
He was sure it was not she. She had started for Gotha. He had seen her
in the coach, and at the head of his men had ridden, not, it was true,
at breakneck speed, but at a good pace, wasting no time.
Some one, it was clear, had arrived in the town who had witnessed the
sack of Magdeburg, and striven to and contrived to inflame the
townspeople to a fever point. But even supposing, what was impossible,
that the mysterious Ottilie had ridden by other roads and reached Plauen
at his heels, what could her errand be? She was a Catholic. It was
unthinkable to believe that she could be seeking to inflame the minds of
Protestants to the butchery of a score of troopers in the service of the
Emperor out upon a peaceful task of escort duty.
It passed through his mind and was dismissed. Hildebrand turned to him.
"The pigs! They will be less noisy in the morning. Let us go in and
finish our wine. Hradschin can stand a few hard words and even a few
knocks such as they can give, unless Gustavus sends them a few cannon."
As they went in the tumult grew in volume, but it was soon lost to their
ears as they once more resumed their wine within the thick walls.
"The devil of it is," said the Commandant, "that there will be no
getting out of the place while they are in this mind. They will guard
all the roads. And your men are all needed here if they make an attack
in force to-morrow."
"The despatches do not admit of delay," said Nigel, who had no mind to
be cooped up in Hradschin for a week. "If I cannot leave with the men, I
must leave without them."
"But how are you going to get out of the town? You must cross the river,
and the bridge will be guarded. There's your horse, too. Still, as you
say, there are the despatches."
"Surely, if I start two hours before dawn, I can get the gates open
after overpowering the guard. My twenty troopers ought to manage that.
How far is it from here to the bridge?"
"Four hundred yards! But four hundred yards, of which at least a hundred
are down a narrow street to the bridge-head, supposing the pigs are on
the watch, are as bad as four miles. You know what it is to ride through
a press of people. You and your troopers would be pulled from your
horses in no time. We must think! Pass the flagon, comrade!"
"Lieutenant! Make the round of the ramparts with one of the Commandant's
soldiers and see what the dispositions are, whether one can leave the
castle and how. One cannot make one's plans for leaving the town if one
cannot first leave the castle."
"True!" said Hildebrand, who was secretly desirous of retaining the
twenty troopers to defend Hradschin. "And sound your men as to whether
they will risk a rope with Captain Charteris or remain here with me."
Nigel would have been inclined to resent this, but as Hildebrand was his
host he said nothing, only being quite resolved that in the end his men
should obey orders, hanging or no hanging.
Then they fell to discuss the road Nigel should take.
"Pilsen is a long journey through the hills!" said the Commandant. "Why
not make for Eger? There is a strong garrison at Eger. If you reach
there in safety you can get another escort to Vienna, and when things
are quiet your men can slip out and go there to await your return." In
this way the Commandant made it a more familiar idea to Nigel's mind
that he should go alone. And Nigel, on his part, resolved that alone, or
accompanied, it would be easier to escape that night, when the citizens
would be drowsy with their unwonted watching, say two hours before dawn,
than on the morrow when the threatened attack began. The heart of the
difficulty to his mind would be the gate at the bridge-head. Even if
the guard were overcome there would still be delay, and delay would be
fatal.
The lieutenant returned and reported that watch-fires were lit and
burning at all the four avenues which gave egress from the neighbourhood
of the castle, and at each was a strong guard, all armed with muskets.
Any one coming from the castle could be seen. The crowd had dispersed.
The three soldiers put their heads together over a plan of the town, and
Nigel asked question after question till he had extracted all the facts
he could from the Commandant. Then he asked the Commandant for the
quickest-witted of his men, and sent for Sergeant Blick, one of the
escort, by special request of Nigel, who had great confidence in his
fidelity.
In a quarter of an hour the two men dropped into a flat-bottomed boat
kept at a small back gate of the castle for the convenience of the
kitchens. And mooring it carefully on the other side, they stood
half-way between the fires and the guards to the north and those to the
south. The soldier belonging to the castle tapped at a window in the
street which faced the castle again and again. Presently the knock was
answered. The casement opened. The soldier got through, and burly
Sergeant Blick waited for the door to open. Then he entered too. A few
words with the goodwife, who supplied the soldiers of the garrison with
spiced sausages, and they departed through a door at the back of the
house into a darkness that could scarcely have been bettered.
As the clock of the Rathhaus struck one past midnight there gathered in
its shadows a knot of men. By a quarter past there were twenty, and at
half-past there were forty. Every man came by himself and stealthily,
and every man came armed, and was surprised to find so many others
there before him, except only the first three, and they were very old in
comradeship. As each man came up he murmured "Waldstein," and waited in
the gloom in silence.
As the clock of the Rathhaus struck one past midnight Sergeant Blick and
two or three men who, like him, knew something about horses, were as
silently as possible yoking horses, and in some cases oxen, which had
complacently folded their legs and gone to sleep chewing the cud as
industriously as usual, to the waggons that stood in the market street
and market-place. The noise of horses and waggons clattering or creaking
was nothing to the dwellers in that part of the town.
One of the ostlers led away a waggon creaking and rumbling. The ostler
was a good Catholic, and had a solid crown piece in his breeches. Then
the other led away a waggon. Then when the first ostler had returned,
Sergeant Blick started, and by half-past one eight waggons were disposed
across the streets that led to the castle and not far from the men round
the watch-fires. The horses were brought back again.
At half-past one the men in the shadows of the Rathhaus saw one who
walked like a soldier come towards them, and as he halted just outside
the shadows they could see the glint of his casque and heard him call
them sharply to attention. In a trice they had arranged themselves in
two lines as they had been used to do in Wallenstein's army. They had no
doubt it was one of Wallenstein's officers, and one or two thought they
remembered the voice.
They marched without hesitation towards the castle, and creeping past
the waggons ranged up again in order. One or two of the guard not so
overcome with sleep as the others--for your watch-fire, especially if it
be smoky, as it can easily be, is a monstrous soporific--glanced round
uneasily at the clink of arms and peered into the shadows and saw
nothing. Then came a word of command, and, before they could all spring
to their weapons, Nigel and his levy were upon them, had beaten every
man to the earth, scattered the watch-fire where it would, and then,
re-forming, passed on. They halted in front of the drawbridge of the
castle. It was let down, and nineteen troopers and the lieutenant came
over the moat and formed up. Nigel said a word to the lieutenant and
passed on with his footmen till he sighted the second watch-fire. Once
again his besom of men swept the watchers, and this time they were
caught by the barricade of waggons, and every man, who was not laid flat
and helpless by sword or pike or stave, was trussed up till further
need. The waggons were dragged aside, and the horsemen trotted towards
the narrow street that led to the bridge-head and the old soldiers
marched behind as a rearguard, still led by Nigel. When they got within
bowshot of the gate the horsemen rode down upon the guard and made them
deliver up the keys.
The gates were opened. Nigel sprang to the spare horse, and said a
thankful farewell to the old soldiers and to Plauen.
His last words to the old soldiers had been--
"If Wallenstein wants you again, will you come?"
And every man had growled out, "Aye, with a will!"
CHAPTER VII.
THE ROAD TO EGER.
Once clear of the town and on the open road to Olsnitz Nigel's immediate
anxiety was ended. He did not fear the pursuit of the townspeople. Not
despicable in quality is the valour which rouses and fills a man, and a
man's fellows, in sight of their common hearthstone at the Rathhaus, or
of that, possibly dearer, rallying-place the Rathskeller, where the
favoured vintages of the burghers lie snug in cobwebs, only to be
brought forth from the complete darkness of their resting-places to the
still dim and broken daylight of the afternoon, or to the lantern-light
cloven by the massive pillars of the low arches into patches of ruddy
glow and pools of shadow. Not despicable in quality is it, but it
carries a mighty stroke only within the town's walls. To pursue with
success a troop, however small, of trained mounted men, one must have
the like. Nigel and his men rode on into the darkness, which was just
sufficiently permeated by the faint light of stars to let them see the
road at their horses' feet and a few yards ahead; they rode sleepily,
but feeling secure. The road they followed was the road to Hof, which a
few miles out throws out a branch to Olsnitz, and this again at Olsnitz
fathers two younglings, the road to Graslitz and Pilsen, and the road to
Eger.
Nigel meant to bivouac by the roadside, beneath the pine-trees, where
the bed was soft with the pine-needles and dry, and horses and men alike
could sleep till an hour after dawn. He was not in the mind to lock
himself in any more walled cities till he was in safer country. He had
also resolved to make for Eger rather than Pilsen, because, from Eger,
which was a frontier post of some quality, he could perhaps send
Hildebrand von Hohendorf some assistance.
So having put an hour's riding between his troops and Plauen he called a
halt, and the men led their horses up the sloping banks into the forest,
where they unsaddled, tethered their horses, and lay down quite
contentedly. Nigel, with his head on his saddle-bags and two sentries
within hail, was asleep in a few seconds. A few seconds of sleep, so it
seemed to the sleep-hungered soldier, and the persistent twittering of
the birds, that outburst that hails the almost imperceptible rolling up
of the night clouds, awoke him. The birds could see up there in the
branches. Where he lay it was dark enough to swear it was still night.
Out of the darkness he heard the voice of Sergeant Blick drowsily
calling the birds "fools and heretics" for waking him, and he fell
asleep again. Another two or three seconds, which were an hour by the
clock at Olsnitz, and the birds, after their last nap, were again
calling one another to the duty of seeing after breakfast. Nigel rose
and stamped his feet and shook himself, listened for the trickle of a
spring, and went off to salute it. Then he returned to his saddle and
called for his horse. While this was being brought he put his hand into
his saddle-bags where he carried the bulky despatches of Count Tilly:
first the left, and then the right, then he searched his doublet, his
holsters. There were no despatches. Sleep had played him traitor,
delivered him bound into the enemy's hand. Into whose?
Nigel was possessed of common-sense, but when common-sense could give
but a flimsy explanation, he was not disinclined to allow that the
powers of darkness and witchcraft might, notwithstanding King Jamie and
his pronouncements, be of some potency. He was cautious too. While not
suspecting any of his men, he thought that to keep the loss to himself
was the surest way to discover the culprit, if he was among them. So he
made no inquiry of the sentries. He had a sure memory, so clear and
flawless, that he could repicture himself as in a mirror placing the
papers in his saddle-bag. They were there when he placed his head upon
the saddle. They were not there now. He searched his lair for any sign
that it might give. There was still the impress where he had lain upon
the pine-needles but nothing else. The loss was inexplicable as it was
irreparable. His professional honour was in jeopardy. His reputation as
an officer of approved sagacity was gone. He must go on. There was no
help. He must go on and carry to the Emperor the tale of his misfortune,
which would sound but a sorry one in the light of Vienna, and, instead
of the despatches, such details as he could remember; wherein his
excellent memory would doubtless replace all that Count Tilly could have
set down. But Tilly's foreshadowed plans? Tilly's recommendation of
himself? Into whose hands had they fallen?
If witches had stolen the despatches, were they Protestant witches? No
Catholic could be a witch. That was an incompatibility.
The men paraded in the road, and he and the lieutenant looked them over
to see that every man was there and in marching order. And Nigel scanned
every face and pair of hands.
No! They were as respectable a lot of ruffians in leather and headpiece
as one could pick. The order was given to ride, and they rode clanking
into Olsnitz, where at the first inn they demanded beer and sausages and
bread with the clamour born of a fast of eight hours and a night in the
forest.
Nigel and his comrade were hungry too, and having satisfied the hunger
for food, he summoned the ostler, taking him inside and questioning him
if travellers had passed that way earlier in the morning.
"Three! Two stayed on the road. The third came for a small truss of hay
and paid for it and went away again. He was not of these parts."
"Which road did he take?"
"The road to Eger."
Nigel asked other questions, but the answer told him nothing except that
he got a minute description of the man and of the horse, the latter more
particularly being the ostler's business. It was a sorrel with one black
hoof and three white. There were other marks, but that was enough.
Evidently the travellers were going far, and wished to go fast, and not
to call at any inn for the space of a horse's feed and watering.
Nigel wasted no time getting to horse again. One of those three had the
despatches. He must overtake them. So he rode on briskly, wondering who
would steal them and why. To the first question he answered: "The
Protestants! For they would be in communication with Gustavus, and would
wish to be beforehand in the matter of Tilly's plans."
But why should they take the road to Eger when Gustavus was far to the
north? Rather should they ride north to Saxony. The road, however, was
plain enough along the valley of the Elster, always rising a little, and
steep hillsides on either bank. Of bridle-tracks there were many
without doubt, for those who knew the intricacies of the pine-covered
hills. But it was not likely the three unknown would take to them.
At Adorf, Nigel learned that three horsemen had passed an hour before.
He was gaining upon them then. His men were somewhat surprised that the
march was being forced, but they scented rest and a German trooper's
welcome at Eger. Ten miles farther they had gained another half-hour.
Either the three had become careless, or their horses were tired, or
they were poor horsemen. Nigel would have them in the net at Eger, and
rode at a great pace. At one point, where the road took a wide bend, he
even caught sight of three horses, mere little black spots on the white
line of the road, and then he lost them. Trees intervened. At the long
last he saw them clearly enough pass through the gate of Eger, and in a
few minutes he and his troop clattered through the archway, and saw only
that the town had swallowed them up. There was still a sorrel horse with
one black hoof and three white ones for a clue.
Nigel bade the lieutenant find quarters for the night, and let the men
eat and enjoy themselves. He also privately instructed Sergeant Blick to
find the sorrel horse and not miss getting into converse with its rider,
nor let him go before he could see him. Then he rode up to the castle,
the citadel of the town. He sought the commandant, and was surprised to
find in him a fellow-countryman, one David Gordon, a lean, lantern-jawed
fellow, whose uniform bespoke the professional soldier, but whose talk
reminded Nigel of the ultra-sanctimonious burghers of Edinburgh, on whom
the spirit of Knox in its narrowness had descended, but not the fire of
his conviction, while gaining a smoky stubbornness and sourness of which
Knox would have been little proud.
"Sae yer Coont Tilly has warstled through into Magdeburg, Meester
Charteris?"
"Aye, has he!" said Nigel, watching the cold glint of the little eyes
beneath the heavy brows.
"And ye'll be carrying the despatches to the Emperor!"
"Yes!"
"Hooch aye!" The commandant rubbed a bristly chin, and watched Nigel's
face. "Did ye have a peaceful journey?"
"Not exactly! I had trouble to get out of Plauen, and I think you should
send Commandant von Hohendorf a couple of companies. The townsfolk are
out of hand."
"Ah! ha!" said the other. "Tis the working of God's wrath at the sinful
deeds at Magdeburg!"
If David Gordon had been weighing out spices in a little shop in the
Canongate, the speech would have had its right surroundings. As it was,
issuing from the mouth of one of the Emperor's officers, it sounded out
of place.
"Master Gordon! That's a queer speech!" said Nigel. "Count Tilly's been
carrying out the Edict."
"Aye! That's just it, the most abominable Edict. Save us, mebbe ye're a
Papist yersel'!"
"Yes! Or I should not be doing the Emperor's service!" Nigel retorted
with some heat.
"Whisht! Whisht! man! A man must look to the bawbees, ye ken; but he
should aye hould fast to his opeenions!"
"'Tis not for me to say what Mr Gordon should do, or not do," said Nigel
dryly. "My creed is where I take my pay, there I fight, and as for the
cause I say nothing."
"Aye!" said Commandant Gordon with something like a sigh. "And what
brought ye to Eger, when it was a wheen shorter by Pilsen?"
He scrutinised Nigel with a long careful scrutiny.
"That I might tell you how matters stood with Hohendorf. Yours is the
nearest garrison."
"Hooch aye!" The commandant appeared to be relieved of some anticipated
trouble. "I dinna think I can spare ony, but ye've done your duty in
reporting it. I thocht ye were maybe paying a veesit to yon warlock the
new Duke keeps at his hoose!"
"What new Duke?"
"Waldstein! Man! Waldstein! Duke of Friedland and the haill rickmatick!"
"Waldstein!" said Nigel. "Here? Waldstein?"
"Aye! He's studying the stars, he and his warlock. He's naething else to
do. He's just a spent cannon-ball: good iron but useless. Speiring at
the stars will he come back again or no, and speiring at Gustavus of
Sweden whether he'll give him all the kingdoms of the earth and the
glory of them, if he falls doon and worships him."
"How do you know that he sends letters to Gustavus? Or what is in them?"
"Is it sae unlikely?" the other questioned cunningly. "I could believe
onything of a Popish recusant! Waldstein was born a Protestant of good
Lutheran parents, and ganged to a Protestant University--Altdorf--and
then he wins clean over to the Papists. Noo I'm not saying onything
against Papistry, though I dinna believe in it mysel', but _ye_ come of
a Catholic family and have never known the truth. I peety but I dinna
blame!"
"I am your very humble servant, Mr Gordon," said Nigel, bowing. "I am in
need of food and lodgment. Good-bye!"
Nigel took horse again and rode down into the town, pondering many
things.
At the foot of the hill he met Sergeant Blick.
"The sorrel horse, captain, is in a stable at the White Lamb."
"Good. We start to-morrow morning at dawn. Therefore have every man
ready!"
"Yes, captain!"
"The man who rides the sorrel horse will ride northward before dawn. By
whichever gate he passes, he must be caught and made to ride with us,
whether he likes it or not, without noise or fuss."
"Yes, captain!"
"Where is the lieutenant?"
"He is at the Blue Angel, captain!"
"Good! To-morrow at dawn!"
Nigel found the lieutenant sitting down to a dish of scrambled eggs with
a plentiful dressing of chopped ham.
"There is veal to follow, and then a couple of ducks!" said the
lieutenant, concluding the remark with a great gurgle of beer in the
recesses of a huge tankard.
Nigel made haste to catch up with the lieutenant.
He had travelled with his comrade through the egg country, the calf
country, and had reached duckland. Two legs, a slice of the broad brown
back, and some delicate spinach loaded up his plate, when the door
opened and a man-servant with the bearing of a soldier entered.
"Captain Charteris!"
"That is I!" said Nigel.
"The Count Albrecht von Waldstein desires the favour of your company for
an hour."
CHAPTER VIII.
INTERLACING DESTINIES.
Nigel looked ruefully at the duck.
"Stay and eat it, comrade!" said the lieutenant.
"I must leave it! One does not keep Waldstein waiting! I bequeath it to
you. See that you give a good account of it."
"That I can promise you!" said the still hungry lieutenant. "At dawn,
you said?"
"At dawn! And give a good look at the horses before you turn in!"
Then casting his cloak about him Nigel went out into the deepening
twilight.
* * * * *
Nigel Charteris had once, and only once, spoken to Wallenstein face to
face. For although Nigel served as a subaltern all through the great
campaign, the large armies commanded by the great general operated over
tracts of country often miles apart, and months elapsed between one
glimpse of him and the next. Little by little, as the great game of war
had come to mean something to Nigel's mind, for at the first it had
seemed but a sadly confused business, it came to him that Albrecht von
Waldstein was a great player. Since his experience with Count Tilly,
Nigel had been able to agree that he also was no mean antagonist, but
not the equal of Wallenstein. In that curious welter of the Thirty
Years' War it wanted but little shaking of the dice-box for Tilly and
Wallenstein to have been pitted against one another. As the dice fell,
they never were so pitted, and by consequence what then might have
happened is left to those skilful in conjecture, and not for us the
chroniclers of what did happen.
Nigel, ushered by one servant to another, and finally by some great one
to the presence of the great man, felt the awe that one does in meeting
the supremely great in one's own profession; but as to his being a Count
of the Holy Roman Empire, which the Emperor had made him, a Duke of
Friedland, which by comparison was a mere proclamation of landed
nobility, Nigel Charteris of Pencaitland in the Lothians cared little.
The man was gentle by birth as he himself was. Whether he was a degree
higher or lower was naught to a gentle Scot, for the Scot yields to no
man in the pride of race.
The house was a great house, rather deep than wide, with gardens full of
trees behind. At some time it had belonged to the King of Bohemia, but
had been bestowed on one of the great nobles, and in the general
disturbance of things ensuing upon the Winter King's invasion of
Bohemia, Albrecht von Waldstein had bought it for a small part of its
value. It was not the only instance of that faculty the exercise of
which by the Jews has gained them the contemptuous names of brokers and
Lombarders. In other words, Wallenstein became rich, had become rich,
not because he was a great and successful general, but because the same
talents which enabled him to plan and organise his armies, enabled him
also to plan his own fortunes in matters of estate.
Wallenstein received Nigel in a spacious chamber, which had been an
audience-chamber in older days. It was panelled with wood all round the
walls, and the flat ceiling was also of wood, but painted with the
royal arms of Bohemia and those of the chief vassals, much of them faded
and blackened. There was a great open fireplace with a goodly fire of
logs blazing in it, and at a convenient distance from it was a small
table, curiously carved as to the legs, a couple of flagons of wine, and
two tall goblets of fine glass curiously wrought.
In a great chair sat Wallenstein, and at the door by which Nigel entered
stood two serving-men.
Nigel saluted his old commander-in-chief. Wallenstein nodded, and bade a
servant bring a chair.
"You were with me in the late wars?" was his question, not in the abrupt
military fashion, though there were no more words, but in a tone which
bespoke a certain graciousness and a certain distance.
"I was, your Grace--lieutenant, then captain of musketeers!"
"And are now with Count Tilly? You were at Magdeburg?"
"Yes! I am now riding with despatches to the Emperor!"
This was the second time he had implied that he had the despatches to
deliver, knowing in fact that he had none. He had lied boldly to Gordon,
the commandant who should have been a shopkeeper, and thought nothing of
it. Besides, Gordon was a Protestant. He did not like lying even by
implication to Wallenstein, but he had the wish not to give the great
commander an ill opinion of his capacity.
"It is well!" said Wallenstein. "I do not ask you to show them to me.
But I should like to know something of Count Tilly's dispositions. I am
out of harness. I am enriched and decorated with titles, and put aside.
The Jesuits would like to use me as a flail to beat the Protestants, but
they do not want the flail for itself, or to beat them. The flail is a
passably good flail, and will not wear out yet. How many men has Count
Tilly?"
"Twenty thousand foot; two thousand horse!" said Nigel promptly.
"And artillery?"
"Fifty pieces of all kinds!"
"And powder and ball and matches?"
"Sufficient store!"
"Ah!" said Wallenstein. "If Saxony and Brandenburg together make up
their minds they can find work for Count Tilly. And then there is
Gustavus! Who is to oppose him, and with what? Where do they say
Gustavus is?"
"In Pomerania, your Grace!"
"So I have heard, and is negotiating a treaty with France! If the
Protestants but knew it, they could beset Tilly and ruin the Emperor."
"But you forget the Elector Maximilian?"
"He is forgettable! He is a Jesuit, who should have been a priest, but
was unhappily born a prince. He has an arm, and that arm is Pappenheim.
With men enough Pappenheim could face Gustavus. But Pappenheim is with
Tilly. An army can have but one head."
"When the Emperor's advisers grow frightened they will send again for
your Grace!" said Nigel.
"They must pay dearly!" was Wallenstein's grim remark, with a curl of
his thick lower lip. Then he asked abruptly, in a tone which suggested
an amused contempt for such toys, "Do you believe in the stars?"
Had Nigel been sitting over a flagon with Hildebrand von Hohendorf
instead of with Albrecht von Waldstein he would have laughed out a "No."
But two experiences, the sudden apparition of Ottilie outside Hradschin,
a possible delusion of the sense of sight, and the disappearance of his
despatches from beneath his head in defiance of sentries and all his
senses, which was no delusion, had shaken his hitherto light esteem for
witchcraft, star-gazing, horoscopes, alchemy, and all the other
ingenious paltering with past and future. It had been whispered too
among the armies that Wallenstein had commanded that he, like many other
great ones of the time, devout Catholics all, consulted necromancers,
and this came to Nigel's mind. He made a cautious reply.
"I have never had my horoscope cast. Nor do I know anything of the
science of the stars. It is an old belief that the stars affect the
destinies of the great ones of the earth, and it would be a presumption
in me, who am nobody but a poor Scots gentleman, to treat it lightly."
"Destiny? What is it?" Wallenstein asked. "Man makes his own path out of
the best materials to his hand or lets others buffet him into
nothingness. There is no third way. But every man who carves his own
pathway would fain learn by what implements he can arrive at the summit,
so that he may use them at the earliest."
"And suppose," said the other, "the end be a cannon-ball that cuts one
in two, what better is a man for knowing it two years before?"
"In truth," and into the eyes of Wallenstein came a strange look, "I
know not, but there is always the grim feeling that one may stumble upon
a most exact presage of fatality. It draws one on."
"Then you have made some experiments, your Grace?"
"One must do something when one has too much leisure. There is a learned
master, a Jew, I think, but he tells little of his origin, who is to be
found sometimes at Vienna, sometimes elsewhere, who calls himself Pietro
Bramante. He commended himself to me because he hates the Jesuits. He
showed skill in casting my horoscope, and has on several occasions given
me good intelligence. He is here now."
Nigel involuntarily made the sign of the Cross.
Wallenstein noticed it.
"He does not traffic in devils, nor meddle with holy things. But he
professes great skill in the mathematics, which he says are the root of
all divination. He is learned in the Cabal, the unwritten tradition of
the Jews, whereby Solomon came to know the beginning, mediety, and
consummation of times."
The chamberlain of the household now came in, and bowing low said, "The
learned Pietro Bramante bids me to acquaint you, my lord, that the
constellations are in a favourable aspect for you to enter the House of
Knowledge, but that the stranger must enter also, for the orbit of his
star conjoins with your lordship's."
"Come!" said Wallenstein, his eyes lighting up into a curious eagerness,
curious that is, in a man of his years, and more so to a Scot such as
Nigel Charteris was, for the Scots are not given to appearing
eager,--even of good fortune. And if the Scot were forty-eight, which
was the tale of Wallenstein's years, and he were told that some one was
ready to give him good news or bad, he would say, "Weel! weel! it'll no
lose in the tellin'," and never move his legs an inch faster.
"Come! Let us see what this diviner has to say!"
Nigel was in truth by no means pleased. For he was a devout Catholic,
and hated alike Jews and witchcraft, and thought little of horoscopes.
The stars were a good guide on a clear night crossing a moor or in a
strange country. That was all. But Wallenstein had once held all the
German lands in his hands, and might again. It was a waste of
opportunity not to second his whimsies: and if there was nothing in
divination but hocus-pocus, why, there was no harm could come of it.
So he rose to his feet and followed: and Wallenstein led him upstairs to
a long gallery, and at the farther end was a curtain drawn across.
Portraits of many kings and princesses were ranged along the one wall,
and upon the other where the windows were not. The windows looked out
upon a balcony and the balcony upon a pleasaunce, but of this, it being
now night, Nigel could see little. At long intervals were lighted
candles, and many unlit between. And their footfalls, soldier-like and
decided, echoed by walls and ceiling, made a great noise in Nigel's ear.
So they came to the curtain and a voice bade draw, and Pietro Bramante
stood there and moved not a whit. There were no candles alight near him,
and all the light that was came from a copper bowl in which he burned
some tow with a blue and now a green flame.
The sage began a recitation in which he made much mention of the seventh
house and divers stars and constellations being in opposition or in
conjunction, and of this Abracadabra Nigel made nothing. The blue and
green flame played upon his naturally brownish face and it was grey, and
from Wallenstein's all colour seemed to be gone; instead was his face
like a parchment full of lines, all but the eyes, which glittered
blackly, never losing gaze upon the sage's face. Except for the latter's
utterances there was deep silence, and the three seemed to be alone, for
the chamberlain had retired, having ushered them into the gallery.
Then the sage blew out the flame, and his finger faintly glowing began
to be visible writing on a wall, or some flat upright surface, and the
figure he made was a circle, as truly drawn an O as Messire Michelangelo
Buonarrotti might have made. And the circle was of light and glowed
through more strongly in one part than another.
"Behold the orbit of the life of Albrecht von Waldstein, a perfect
circle. Those lines are perfect circles that make a multiple of ten. It
is in every tenth year that great causes may affect them--great
upliftings of Fortune, or great fatalities.
"Now regard truly this orbit of another life, which passeth through the
centre of the first," and again with unerring finger he drew another
curve, which may have been a section of a greater circle, or of an
elliptical figure, or of a parabola, but it was a true curve, and cut
the circle at its centre. "This orbit passeth through the field of Mars
and ariseth beyond the plane of the first orbit, and this signifieth
that it is the life of a stranger by blood and nation."
So the original glowed upon the void darkness, and the new line that
came from afar and passed through the centre of the circle glowed; and
yet another line Pietro Bramante drew, and this time it was an oval.
"Behold now the orbit of yet another life. It is an oval and signifieth
the life of a woman. An oval hath two foci, and the one is the centre of
the orbit of Albrecht von Wallenstein and the other is upon the
circumference of the same circle. Now the actions of woman proceed from
two foci, the heart and the intelligence, and the heart focus is upon
the centre of the circle and the other focus of the mind is upon the
circumference or pathway of the same circle. Wherefore I deduce that
this woman, whoever she be, hath her affections firmly set upon the very
essence which is the spirit of Albrecht von Wallenstein, and her
intelligence is set steadfastly on the orbit of his destiny so that it
may go fast or slow as she willeth.
"Now, sir!" he addressed Nigel, "what was the day and hour of your
birth?"
"The year 1603. The month July. The day the 7th, and the hour 7!"
"Behold figures full of portent," said Pietro. "The year's numerals
added together give ten, which is a complete number. Sixteen hundred
and three is a multiple of seven. The month is the seventh month. The
day is the seventh. The hour is the seventh. They are propitious times
and should give a favourable horoscope. Now I will cast it, and
calculate the orbit."
Pietro turned to his copper vessel, and by means which neither of his
onlookers could guess the flame sprang up again, and taking a sheet of
parchment he made calculations, and set down the fixed points his
calculations showed. As the light burned, so the geometrical figures he
had drawn before faded from sight.
The two sat silently. Nigel thus far was impressed against his will by
the mathematical methods of the learned doctor. He stole a swift glance
now and again at Wallenstein, who sat stiffly, absorbed in the doings.
Nigel was more interested in the figures of the circle and of the
ellipse as they applied to Wallenstein, for Wallenstein of all men was
as little to be swayed by any feminine influence as any man. He had
married twice. In both cases he had married a woman of noble birth, and
of moderate, almost of great, fortune. But no one called Wallenstein
uxorious or accused him of careless living in the article of women. No
one had imputed to him that he had mistresses, or that either of his
wives had ruled him. His face betrayed no tendency to passion. The eyes
had no amorousness. As to the lips, if the lower lip spoke of the
senses, it was rather of good living. The many lines upon his brow spoke
of thought and ambition.
A smile or the semblance of a smile, and that sardonical, had passed
across his face when the doctor had spoken of the mysterious woman who
was to influence his life.
At last Pietro looked up from his calculations. There was a slight gleam
in his worn eyes as of satisfaction, and he brought them his parchment.
"The line of this life, sirs, from the figures of the birth, when
affected by the influences which the constellations exercise, must pass
through these points," and he showed points upon the parchment marked
with Greek letters. "Now if I join these points," and he did so with the
point of his pen, "a curve is produced." Again he extinguished the flame
of his lamp.
"Now, compare it with the curve I have just shown to you," and it was
visible on the extinction of the other flame. "It is the same curve
without doubt!"
Nigel was aware of some extraordinary exaltation of mind he could in no
wise account for. With his colder intelligence he yet seemed incapable
of resisting the belief that the conclusions of the reader of horoscopes
were true, that his own path of life was in some momentous way linked up
with that of Wallenstein, the idol of his professional admiration, and
that now and here that part of his earthly path had begun.
"It seems," said Wallenstein, turning to Nigel, "that by all the rules
of divination as practised by the learned doctors of these times, and in
particular by Pietro Bramante, who has at divers times made notable
experiments at the court of Vienna and elsewhere, you are one of those
whose birth is fortunate, and that you are destined to cross my orbit at
its zenith and its nadir, and to pass through the very centre of my
intelligence for good or ill."
"You read aright, sir!" said Pietro. "It is beyond my power to say if
for good or for ill."
"I would fain know," said Wallenstein, "if you are a good Catholic."
"I am!" said Nigel.
"And have no dealings with the Jesuits?"
"No! I have had no commerce with them at any time!"
"It is well!" said Wallenstein. "For the rest you are a soldier of
fortune, and your greatest desire----"
"Is to become a trusted officer in your Grace's service, whenever it
shall please the Emperor to recall you!" said Nigel heartily.
"Then let us read the presage as a fortunate one!" said Wallenstein,
"and God speed the fulfilment of your desires! And now, most learned
doctor, surely your powers of divination do not end here. You have
spoken of some unknown lady or perchance some uncouth beldame, whom the
stars have chosen to become a benign power in my life. Does not your art
enable you to disclose at least her name? Tell me at least whether she
is of a dark and melancholic disposition, or of a sanguine inclination."
Nigel could not tell from the dry passionless utterance of the speaker
whether irony lay at the root of his tongue: but he was at least as
eager as Wallenstein appeared to be indifferent as to the outcome. It
was the difference between youth and maturity. If it had been permitted
to look into the mind of that inscrutable man, one might have expected
to find that on a stage where strode so many principal and, in their
several parts, renowned actors, where war and high policy and ambition
were the themes, Wallenstein should count as nothing the staying or
speeding of his actions by any woman.
Pietro Bramante turned again to his lamp, which he relighted, and,
drawing a curtain aside, the light fell upon a tall mirror of the height
of a man set at such an angle that at the present it reflected nothing.
At two paces from it he set a chafing-dish wherein burned glowing
charcoal, and upon it sprinkled some powder from a little box of ebony;
and from the dish rose up a white smoke of a sweet savour. And then
Pietro recited some Latin verses, which to Nigel, unversed in such
incantations, bore no meaning.
Then, before they were aware, though both gazed intently upon the smoke,
the form of a majestic woman appeared to gather substance, and at length
her face in all its lineaments became plain to view. The eyes gazed in a
kind of ecstasy fixedly, gravely benignant, towards Wallenstein.
Nigel leaped up, spurred by his astonishment, even in opposition to the
awe which the moment enjoined upon him, exclaiming "Ottilie von
Thüringen!"
And Wallenstein, as if Nigel had not been there, still in his seat, but
filled with amaze, exclaimed under his breath--
"Ferdinand's Stephanie!" And then, "Let me have speech of her! Dost
hear! Pietro Bramante?"
But the vision had disappeared. Pietro's voice made itself audible.
"This that you saw was but a vision called up by my art. I must confirm
it by my mathematics."
CHAPTER IX.
AN ITALIAN AND A SPANIARD.
An hour before dawn came Sergeant Blick to awaken Nigel with the news,
"We have the man on the sorrel horse!"
Nigel awoke completely, sprang out of bed, and was attired, even to his
jack-boots and spurs, in a few minutes. Then getting astride his horse
he was out of Eger and a mile on the road to Pilsen in a very few more.
"A kind of accursed Jew fellow! Some dark Moorish infidel of a heretic!"
was Sergeant Blick's summing up.
Sure enough it was that learned Doctor Pietro Bramante himself.
But this was not the field of prophecy or of divination. This was the
atmosphere of dawn, the kingdom of cold fact. Nigel nodded and said in
his brief military manner--
"Doctor! You must please turn out your saddle-bags and your pockets for
some papers which are lost. Sergeant, assist the doctor!"
The learned doctor began to protest, as might have been expected, but
Nigel merely vouchsafed that it was "in the service of the Emperor." He
himself searched the prisoner, whose multifarious garments made the
matter one of difficulty. And the fact that, if not an Israelite, he
was a very near relation, did not make the operation to Nigel a pleasant
one. But when he had finished, he was sure that nothing so bulky as
Count Tilly's despatches were upon him.
Sergeant Blick produced in his turn many curious vessels and books and
bottles from the saddle-bags, crossing himself at sight of anything
unusual, for he had no doubt that he was dealing, if not with the Evil
One, with one of his familiars. Nothing was found. Nigel with no excess
of courtesy bade him pack up his belongings.
"From what town came you to Eger?"
"Even from Hof by Olsnitz!"
"And for what reason got you half a truss of hay?"
"To save the inn charges and time!"
"And your companions?"
"They rest in Eger, being bound for Gräslitz. I know them not. We did
but join company for protection."
"At what inn did they rest?"
"I did not ask! Neither did I tell them that I had business with the
Duke."
"Enough!" said Nigel, and wheeled his horse.
With a rueful countenance the diviner began to replace his utensils,
carefully and patiently. He had at least learned two virtues.
Nigel, gravelled, rode back into the town in an ill-humour and called
for his breakfast. By the time that was finished the troopers were at
the door.
There was no help but to go forward, and one may be assured that neither
hill nor stream nor any wayside beauty of Bohemia could do aught to
bring his mind back to a calm mood. He suspected the "Jew," as he called
him. He suspected Gordon, and as for the phantasmagoria of last night,
he could make nothing of it. His tendency was to disbelieve, only his
respect for Wallenstein's powers of thought diminished his disbelief to
something approaching mere doubt. The one thing that stood out was the
vision of Ottilie von Thüringen.
Surely it was her "wraith." And if it had by chance been that of some
familiar friend in Scotland, or of some one of his blood relations, he
would have been awed, but he would have regarded it, in accord with
tradition, as portending or announcing some stroke of fate.
He had been carried too much out of himself to hear what Wallenstein had
muttered, to observe closely how that great one received the vision.
This at least he had garnered, that Wallenstein also recognised her.
But who then was she? There was another feeling that sprang up in his
heart, an uneasy half-born pang, which he dismissed only to find it
knocking at the door again. The "wraith" of Ottilie had gazed at
Wallenstein, not with eyes of speculation, as the playwright Shakespeare
had it, but as one might gaze with open eyes in dream at some beloved
object limned only in the brain behind.
But she had gazed at Wallenstein with a benignity which had softened the
whole countenance, a benignity which he himself in his two days' contact
with her had never surprised upon it. And this the geometrical
hocus-pocus of the vile Jew had foreshadowed when he contrived that the
right focus of her orbit should also be the centre of Wallenstein's. As
Nigel had no knowledge of geometry, and regarded it as a cabalistic
invention, though he had heard of telescopes, and of Columbus, and
vessel charts, he esteemed this part of the diviner's doings as mere
trickery, akin to the old devices of the magicians before Pharaoh. But
by no explanation of mere artifice could he doubt that he saw the
"wraith" of Ottilie, and that Wallenstein also saw. While recognising
her as some one he knew, had Wallenstein thought of her in any close
relation to himself? His attitude of surprise said no. But was it
possible that Wallenstein could forget so mysterious an occurrence,
dismiss it as a mere dream?
Nigel had had five or six years of close companionship with men. There
are men who, from their cradle to their grave, are attended and
companioned by women, and shrink from the rough and, on the whole,
kindly and bracing contact with their kind. Nigel had thrust himself
into the world of man at the dawn of manhood, and in the fellowship of
arms he had found as mixed a chance-medley as the world of men could
show, free from the namby-pamby of the courts, free from the court's
petty chicane, free from the emulous avarice of the mart; not in some
corners destitute of scholarship, though scholarship was rare; rejoicing
in bodily strength and skill in arms, in hearty eating, in wine, and
beer, and song, in which they honoured women much more than they ever
did in such commerce of love or licence as the fortune of war or the
conditions of the camp afforded.
From his study of manhood this Nigel had observed, that whereas among
the younger men the talk of doings in the lists of love was as frequent
as their flagons, it was almost entirely to seek among the older
officers, as among the older soldiers, giving place to criticism of
their professional doings, the appraising of the abilities of those more
advanced in rank, to politics, to affairs more akin to those of that
world without, that in some shape or form paid the reckoning.
He reasoned from the general to the particular, from those who had
failed to become Wallensteins to him who had not failed. He was
forty-eight, and if any man could find his interest in affairs of state
or war that man was Wallenstein. But the diviner had declared that
Wallenstein's future was bound up with a woman--had raised up, by what
witchcraft or geometry Nigel could give no guess, a vision of her with
rapt eyes bent on Wallenstein. Was Wallenstein at forty-eight proof
against the lure, proof against the charm of a majestic lovely woman, in
whom was nothing of Circe, nothing of that Helen of Troy, whose face, so
Kit Marlowe had phrased it, had
"... launched a thousand ships,
And burned the topless towers of Ilium,"
yet whose bodily presence had left Nigel with a hunger of the heart and
an unrest unaccustomed, as it was unsought, and unappeasable?
He knew it when he saw the vision, and he feared lest Wallenstein should
feel it, and, feeling it, stretch out his lion paw for the lioness
Destiny had offered.
These thoughts occupied much of his time as he journeyed to Pilsen, and,
with the exception that a well equipped and horsed light travelling
carriage passed them on the road with curtains closely drawn, no
traveller had passed or met them. But nearing Pilsen a pair of cavaliers
on very excellent beasts overtook them, and, saluting Nigel, made as if
they would fain keep him company. He could not profess to be travelling
faster seeing they had overtaken him, and a look at their horses showed
that they were better-bred animals and in better condition than his own.
Their politeness was marked, and one of them appeared to be an Italian
and one a Spaniard by his accent, though they addressed Nigel and his
lieutenant in good German. This they presently confirmed, for the
Italian gave his name as the Cavalier Marco Strozzi and introduced the
other as Don Phillipo di Tortaugas. They were travelling to Vienna, and
their valets were coming behind, having been outstripped by their
masters, who were eager to reach that city.
Nigel was bound to reciprocate their confidences by giving his own and
his companion's names and conditions, mentioning that a military errand
was taking him also to Vienna.
They were well-bred men and well travelled, for they spoke with
assurance of many towns and cities and princes and gentlemen of repute
of their acquaintance. They were curious to know of this Edict of
Restitution, of which every one spoke, and displayed some measure of
sympathy with the Emperor, who was the instrument of the Pope in the
enforcing of it. In their countries they were thankful to say heresy was
practically non-existent. In them the Church was powerful and paramount,
and they had no doubt of the ultimate success of the Church in Germany.
They spoke of Wallenstein, of whom they had heard much, and asked Nigel
if he thought Wallenstein was well affected towards the Edict. If so,
why had he been requested by the Emperor to give up his command? Nigel
cautiously answered that Wallenstein was before all things a
professional soldier, and had laid down his baton when the Emperor had
no more present need of him.
By the time they arrived at Pilsen the four gentlemen were on good terms
and sat down together to the evening meal. The two cavaliers insisted on
ordering the wine, whereof they themselves drank but sparingly, and made
merry with numerous tales of Italy and Spain, so that Nigel and his
lieutenant thought that they had never spent a more sociable evening. At
length the two cavaliers professed themselves sleepy and called for
candles, and Nigel and his comrade, not only professing, but most
indubitably inclined the same way, also made for their night quarters.
Now it was Nigel's custom to have his saddle-bags and holsters brought
to his own chamber, and this had been done. Sergeant Blick had always
this service to do, and Nigel dismissed him to a final quart of beer,
and was himself very soon asleep. In two hours he awoke,--a fact he set
down to the account of the unusual quality of the wine he had taken,
which was costly beyond his own purse limits, and some wines have the
nature to be greatly soporific, yet the effect is of somewhat brief
lasting.
He turned on his side, and, as he did so, he thought he heard the
creaking of a leathern strap, for his saddle-bags and holsters were new
and did not easily open. Then he took a deep audible breath and made as
if he sank into sleep again. But his ears were fully alert, and he made
sure that the noise was real. Very silently he turned again upon his
right side, meaning to possess himself of his sword, which was always
placed near his right hand, stretching out to take it. In an instant his
hand was caught in a noose and fastened to the bedpost. Springing up to
release it, his left ankle was seized and tied to another bedpost, and a
very effective bandage pushed into his mouth. The rest of him was
secured very quickly, and, as he could not cry out, he had the felicity
of knowing that his possessions were being thoroughly ransacked by the
two marauders, whoever they were.
Not a word was said. The room was in pitch darkness, and presently the
thieves stole away. For long he could not release himself by as much as
a single knot, but by infinite workings of his neck and chin and ankles
and wrists, till all were sore alike, he wore some fastening loose. And
just as he had attacked the last one, which bound his left leg, he heard
the sound of horses below in the courtyard, and presently the great
gates closed with a clang, and the hoofs of four horses sounded on the
cobblestones of the street.
He struck a light. All that he carried was on the floor, and saddle-bags
and holsters were empty. Nothing had been taken. His money, his clothes,
his weapons were all there. It had not then been for these.
It was a search for something, and that something was the despatches.
And these had been already stolen. It was evident that the first
plotters and the second were of diverse parties. The first might
conceivably be men who served the Protestant cause; but who were the
second? It was to the interest of the Protestant cause that their
leaders throughout Germany should know what forces they had to meet,
what Tilly was going to do next. But of whom else?
CHAPTER X.
FATHER LAMORMAIN.
Ferdinand of Habsburg, King of Austria by heirship, King of Hungary by
default of a better, rather than by force of arms, was in the ears of
the world Emperor of Rome. Considering that he neither owned nor
governed a rood of land south of the Po, that the title signified the
headship of the German-speaking states, and that he had been elected to
the high office by his fellow princes, who were each and all supreme and
independent rulers over their own territories, and each and all eligible
for the same high office, the name seems something misplaced; but it is
not convenient to enter here into a historical dissertation showing how
it came to be so.
Several generations of Habsburgs in turn had been elected Emperor, and
doubtless there was good enough reason. It was perhaps more easy not to
be jealous of a family which had borne the office for a century or two,
than of a new one, however deserving in other respects. And there was
this in addition, that Austria and Hungary were the outer wall of all
the German-speaking states against the Turk, and must in any case bear
the first brunt of his activities. In that connection too, whatever
dissensions might be rife, and there were always dissensions between
German-speaking states, it is evident that there must be some
organisation approaching to a mutual league against the Turk. Christians
have always possessed the privilege of and the instinct for fighting
amongst themselves, but a Christian, however black in his theology, is
still fairer than an infidel, and the infidels for very shame had to be
kept out of Christian German states at all costs. For one thing, they
would have ruined the trade in spices.
So, as the Emperor resided at Vienna, he was very sure to exercise his
authority and demand aids for his own army from the others in sufficient
time to present a stout front to the Ottoman power, though on more than
one occasion he was rather late in doing so. But if the Emperor, who
alone could call out the quotas of men from all the states, had happened
to have lived, say, at Mainz, half of the German lands might have been
overrun before his army was collected. So on the whole the Habsburgs,
having begun to perform and got used to the exalted functions of the
Emperor of Rome, might, so the Electoral Princes seemed to think at
election after election, just as well continue to exercise them, and to
be the outer wall against the Paynim hosts.
Ferdinand was a good son of Rome. Brought up at the Jesuit seminary of
Ingolstadt he had grown up strong in the faith, and had wasted no time,
on coming to man's estate and the enjoyment of dominion as an elector,
in purging his chief town of Gratz, and all the Habsburger land
committed to his charge, of all pastors, Lutheran or Calvinist. He went
to the root of the matter, and in all things deferred to his advisers,
the Jesuits, who went further than the root, and to Maximilian of
Bavaria, who had also imbibed the milk of the learning of Ingolstadt,
and was if anything of a deeper shade of Jesuitry, if that were
possible, than the Jesuits.
But as Ferdinand was a good son of Rome, that meant in his case son of
the General of the Jesuits, the mysterious personality that even the
Holy Father might bless or ban as he would, but never reduce to that
exact degree of submission to his authority which is implied in any rank
of the hierarchy below that of Pontiff.
Like a good father, the General of the Jesuits had no notion of allowing
so intelligent and obedient a son to run wild after his own conceits. So
he had wisely installed at the Court of Vienna Father Lamormain, one of
the order, to keep a watchful eye upon the steps of Ferdinand.
Father Lamormain had that perfect confidence in Ferdinand which is built
upon a perfect understanding of character, with this reservation, that
he preferred to know everything that had happened at least a little
while, even if it were but a day, an hour, or even less, before his
august pupil, so that whereas the Emperor came to the subject ready to
be actuated by surprise, alarm, soreness, vindictiveness, or any other
human quality, Father Lamormain, who, if he ever felt these undesirable
emotions, had got over them, and already bent his brilliant intellect to
what was at issue, could at once gently and firmly insinuate a counsel
carefully considered, a counsel which Ferdinand would presently make his
own.
Father Lamormain had as usual heard the Emperor's confession and retired
to his own suite of apartments. There he found awaiting him two brethren
of the order, who asked and received his blessing. Their manners were as
fine as Father Lamormain's. They exhibited just the shade of deference
due from a gentleman, who is an officer, to another gentleman who is his
superior officer.
The reverend Father and his visitors sat down. He did not toy with his
correspondence, or his plans, or any other object. He sat reposeful in
his chair and embraced both his guests at the same time in his pleasant
smile, and his changes of bodily attitude were slight.
"And you say he is really on his way?"
"He cannot be many leagues away now!" said one.
"And his name is Nigel Charteris?" In his mouth it sounded like
"Chartaire."
"A Catholic family of the south of Scotland!"
"Like this?" asking Father Lamormain, writing the name on his tablets
and erasing it.
"Yes!"
"Ah! Very interesting! He is not a recent convert?"
"No, Father!" said the other one, catching his eye and smiling. "It is a
pity even to seem to discourage a loyal son in the faith!" His tone
conveyed a real regret.
"You were obliged to resort to some slight measure of force? I trust it
was slight?"
The two exchanged glances and smiled in their fine ingenious way,
showing their beautiful teeth.
"We did nothing to disable him or to deface his coinage!" said the
first.
"But we certainly had to use effectual force!" said the other.
"He is a gentleman, handsome, and of good manners?"
"He is all three! And a veritable Scot for caution! And for a soldier
quite free from the prevailing laxities."
"You make me quite solicitous to see him! And you found nothing?"
"Absolutely nothing! A few purely private papers, but no despatches!"
"It is curious all the same that Count Tilly should send merely verbal
messages by the mouth of a captain of musketeers to the Emperor."
"It is not likely that he had entrusted the writings to any of his
troopers!" said one of the visitors.
Father Lamormain thanked them for their good intentions and the pains
they had been at, then dismissed them. There was no suggestion of blame
for failure. Infinite patience was the rule and practice of the
order,--infinite polishing of weapons. Subordinates are not polished by
rancour. Blame roughens the edge of service more often than it sharpens.
The Society of Jesuits, founded by an enthusiast who was almost a
fanatic, eschewed fanaticism, and provided channels for its enthusiasm
of such fine workmanship as ensured that that precious fluid should
reach the precise spot that was to be watered. The best that could be
found in birth, the best that could be nurtured of scholarship, the best
exponents of the social arts that make men charming companions for their
fellows, were enrolled in the ranks after years of youthful training.
Implicit faith in their leaders, implicit obedience, became not so much
a part of the rule of the order as a habit of the mind. No task was too
rough or too delicate but that the order could somewhere place its
finger on the man to execute it. And straightway he would rise and set
about it. Truly the Society of Jesus was an inspired engine which
possessed powers far exceeding the knowledge of its founder and
inventor.
Being by himself, the Jesuit drew from a drawer a sheet of parchment
which had evidently been folded and sealed. It was in cipher, but it may
be held as certain that Father Lamormain possessed the keys of all the
ciphers in use among the politicians of Europe; and this was of no
surprising intricacy. His secretary had unravelled it in a few minutes.
He rang for him. He was a man of middle age, having the look of a
recluse and a priest rather than a man of affairs.
"This purports to be a copy of Count Tilly's despatch which the Emperor
expects?"
"Yes, Father, or rather a short summary of it. It gives you, as you see,
the numbers of all his troops and the disposition of them; indications
of his next movements, and some other details."
"And it accords nearly with what we know from our own sources?"
"Yes, Father!"
"It was taken from a messenger who left Eger for the north?"
"Yes, Father! The messenger was unfortunately killed!"
Father Lamormain's lips moved in silence. He was offering up a prayer
for this poor adversary's soul, for this poor fellow who had come
unwittingly into contact with the engine invented by Ignatius Loyola,
and been broken.
"It might have been a false document intended to deceive Gustavus and
the Protestants," said the Father again meditatively. Then he placed the
parchment on one side as if for further perusal and proceeded to read
over and sign a number of letters his secretary had brought him.
The secretary having gathered up the papers, said--
"You were to have audience of the Archduchess Stephanie this morning!"
"Oh yes! I remember! The time is nearly due. See that no one enters in
the interim."
Even as he spoke a servant called the secretary and he returned
presently, ushering in with profound bows the Archduchess.
Father Lamormain had again spread out the supposed summary of Tilly's
despatch before him in a good light. There was nothing else on his table
but the inkstand to distract attention.
The Archduchess, who was young and tall and slender with wonderful dark
eyes, knelt and kissed the holy father's hand.
As a good Catholic she was bound to reverence her father's confessor.
But Father Lamormain stood for more than that. He had held the same
position when she was a mere poppet, marching about with an endless
company of gouvernantes and ladies, in an absurd stiff brocade dress,
which trailed on the ground just as theirs did, and her little neck
surrounded by a ruff, a sweet monstrous epitome of queendom. There had
been court functionaries in plenty, great officers of state then as now.
But it was Father Lamormain who reigned supreme as the confidential
counsellor of the family in all that pertained to the welfare of the
house of Habsburg; so that every member of the family of the Emperor
understood that Father Lamormain was a benevolent despot, who had always
smoothed over all kinds of family troubles. Dimly too they understood
that the Emperor himself, though a man by no means deficient in any
particular quality of kingship, respected the Jesuit's advice on matters
of state.
The Archduchess seated herself. The secretary had withdrawn.
"I should have craved audience of your Highness in your own apartments,"
said Father Lamormain with great gentleness, "but what I had to say was
for your own ears, and I wished not to excite curiosity nor to gratify
it."
The Archduchess inclined her head, and with just a perceptible pause
said, "Your secretary?"
For answer Father Lamormain rose, opened the door by which she had
entered, a thick door, over which fell a heavy curtain of leather, and
pointed to a farther door, ten feet along the passage, beyond which was
the room where the secretary worked.
She saw that they were indeed cut off from human earshot, for the room,
in which they were, projected, at a considerable height, beyond the
walls of the main building, and had nothing to right or left.
Her eyes seemed to sweep casually over the table and incidentally over
the unsealed parchment, but with indifference. "Was that to be the
subject of the interview?" she asked herself.
Apparently not.
"It behoves princes," said the priest, "to strengthen their families as
well by alliances as by leagues and treaties, and especially by the
marriages of their sons and daughters. And whereas the son of a prince,
if he be a good son, will always be a stay and support to his father's
kingdom, whomsoever he marry, a daughter may, by bringing him a stout
son-in-law, who is also a prince, in a measure add that princedom and
its power to her father's. Contrariwise she may, if she be ill-advised
or rash in her own choice, out of waywardness bring trouble to the
prince her father, and no measure of help to her husband, as was the
case of the Princess Elizabeth of England when she married the Elector
Palatine, the Pfalsgrave, whose dominion being but petty led him into
dangerous enterprises to gain others, and being too far distant from his
father-in-law, the King of England, was not afforded sufficient aid in
the time of his undertakings to ensure success."
"A very wise homily, Father, and a most pertinent example!" the
Archduchess observed. "And now the application?"
"Your Highness is of a ripe age for marriage!" said the priest gravely.
"And has been," she rejoined, "these several years, according to the
custom of princes. My cousin of Spain was but sixteen when the King of
England was agog for her to wed his son, who is now King Charles, and
it was through no unwillingness of hers that the match fell through. But
I have had the more years of freedom. I am in no mind to be tied to any
beardless boy, and sit a-tapestry-sewing for the rest of my life."
The priest pursued his way without comment.
"The dangers that environ the empire make it necessary beyond the
ordinary to knit our friends to it by every means in our power."
"The dangers would melt like the morning mist if the Emperor recalled
Albrecht von Walstein," she said with great decision.
"It is for the Emperor to choose his captains," the priest rejoined
gently. "He is a possible servant, not a friend of the Emperor. When I
say 'knit our friends together,' I mean the princes, who are our peers
in blood and of our faith."
The Archduchess was for a moment puzzled.
"Is it of France or Spain you speak, Father?" She said it wonderingly,
because she knew of no princes of or nearly her own age in either
kingdom.
"Of neither, your Highness, but of those houses that are equal with your
own in the right to be elected to the empire."
"There are six electors! There are three archbishops--Mainz, Köln,
Trier--two are Protestants, the Palatine, the Saxon,... you cannot mean
the Wittelsbacher!" The disgust that she felt showed itself
unmistakably.
"Who is a greater friend to the Habsburgs than Maximilian of Bavaria?"
Father Lamormain dwelt almost affectionately on the syllables.
"Or a greater friend to your order?" the Archduchess asked.
This was a sharp thrust, and showed that the lady was well aware of the
terms on which Maximilian and the Jesuits stood.
Father Lamormain made a little gentle deprecating shrug.
"Let me remind your Highness that, at the last election of the Roman
Emperor, Maximilian held the election in his hand, but he exercised his
own vote in favour of your father. Was this not proving himself a friend
to whom any gratitude is due? And this was not the last or greatest of
his services."
"Indeed?" said the Archduchess. "What were the other services?"
"Did he not defeat, nay crush, the Palatine on the white hills of
Prague?"
"It was the work of General Pappenheim, was it not?"
"The merit was his! Again I say, Pappenheim was merely his captain. The
Elector Maximilian found men and money for the campaign,--money which
the Emperor owes him to this day."
"It has been sufficiently bruited about," the Archduchess commented.
"There is something of the Jew about your Maximilian."
"He is a most noble worthy prince," said Father Lamormain, "and he is a
widower!"
"It is time he was done with wiving. He must be sixty years old." She
gave a little shiver of disgust.
"He is not so old as you think, your Highness, neither is his vigour of
mind and body much abated, but it is not becoming of me to discourse of
these things to your Highness. The Elector Maximilian desires to wed
again, and to one of the Emperor's daughters...."
"And you wish me, the Archduchess Stephanie of Austria, to listen to a
proposal of marriage with Maximilian of Bavaria, whose grandson were a
more fitting match. Understand! I cannot and I will not. The Emperor may
assert his will, if he has any, apart from your order. But as for me I
will go into a nunnery, or marry a private gentleman, or turn
Protestant."
"As to the first," said the priest, "you would thereby run the risk of
losing your soul instead of saving it, for you would be doing it out of
frowardness. As for the second, your pride would never brook the
extinction that would follow it. _As for the third, your Highness, it is
mooted that you have already strange leanings towards heretics if not
heresy._"
The Archduchess flushed angrily. Her eyes flashed. Her whole face and
form, as she rose to her feet, took on an aspect of terrible majesty.
"Enough, Father Lamormain! You trespass beyond your proper functions!"
"No!" said the priest humbly enough. "Your soul is dearer to me than my
own. I can only pray that you do not jeopardise it."
As if unconsciously his eyes fell from her own, which he had met with
calm benignity, to the papers on the table, and then he suddenly lifted
them and met her glance again. Again came the rush of crimson to her
cheeks, then pallor.
She turned, and, sweeping aside the leathern curtain, passed out of the
chamber.
CHAPTER XI.
THE LOST DESPATCHES FOUND.
It was evening when Nigel at length passed with his escort through the
gates of Vienna, and on arriving at the palace was received with
abundance of courtesies by some officer of the household, who ushered
him to a suite of apartments in the wing allotted to the gentlemen in
attendance on his Imperial Majesty. The Emperor was at dinner, and would
expect him at his audience at an early hour on the morrow. A sumptuous
supper was set before him, and he was assiduously waited on by two
pages. Dinner ended, the same officer appeared again, and asked if he
desired to deliver his despatches to the Emperor's secretaries, who
would wait upon him, but Nigel made excuse that his commission was to
deliver them to the Emperor. This answer the gentleman received civilly
enough, and saying he would send some officers to bear him company,
wished him a good night's rest after his journey.
Presently three gentlemen came in and joined him at the table, where,
the remains of supper being cleared away and fresh wine set down, they
sat and played Skat, a game of cards which was then in great vogue among
all the people of the eastern part of Germany, and had wiled away the
tedium of many a long evening in camp for Nigel. With this and talk of
Magdeburg a couple of hours passed pleasantly, and then the party broke
up. Nigel was not sorry to be free to go to bed.
It was a room of comfortable aspect. The walls were hung with embossed
leather in the Flemish manner; the bed was a wide and high four-poster,
and the other furniture consisted of a great chest, a chair or two and
some other necessaries. It looked out upon the courtyard of the palace,
a large open space surrounded on four sides by piles of building. Nigel
could dimly see so much. The rest he left till morning.
Having performed his devotions he stretched himself out upon the bed,
drew up the heavy quilted counterpane and prepared to sleep.
But sleep was not to be wooed easily; for what was to happen on the
morrow he could not foresee. The profound humiliation of having to
confess in open audience to the Emperor the loss of his despatches was
perhaps the most poignant of his anticipations. And this he had passed
through so often in his mind already that he could not imagine that any
worse pang than he had already experienced could arise out of the
reality. From this his mind roved to the punishment that might be
inflicted. He expected that some military penalty would be his lot,
confinement perhaps for a time, the loss of his rank as captain. The
worst would be dismissal from the Emperor's service; for like a true
Scot he had learned to love his profession, and the service he had
chosen had become that which commanded all his loyalty. As a soldier of
fortune, who had fought with Wallenstein, he could make his way in any
of the armies of Europe, but he was not by nature a mercenary. Dismissal
would be the heaviest punishment of all. And then his thoughts, tired of
dwelling on these painful themes, flew away to Erfurt and to Ottilie von
Thüringen, that mysterious high-born lady whose history was entwined
with his own and Wallenstein's.
He had laughed scornfully as he rode to Vienna, thinking of the poor
figure Pietro Bramante had cut on the roadside among his pots and
phials, wondered how Wallenstein could ever have paid the attention to
his hocus-pocus that he had. He had blamed himself for his credulity
when the sunlight and the matter-of-fact incidents of his journey had
made the doings at Eger seem unreal.
But Ottilie was real. Ottilie had left an abiding impression. For
Ottilie Nigel felt he could abandon even the service of the Emperor.
Could he but gain one look of rapt intentness, such as the vision of her
had cast upon Wallenstein, then all the world might go. The surprising
softness of her cheek, the great dark liquid eyes laden with mist or
charged with lightning, the rich tones of her proud voice,--he recalled
them and dwelt upon them one by one, and his whole being was full of the
delight of his contemplation. And then, bathed in a warm glow, he fell
asleep.
In the morning he was awakened by Sergeant Blick bringing him his
holiday suit, or court suit, if it could be called so, for one who had
never been at court before, with its freshly laundered lace collar and
cuffs, its handsome doublet and breeches of dark-blue and silver, its
fine Spanish leathern boots with tiny gold spurs, its plumed hat to
carry out the vain conceit of one having come off a journey. Beneath the
collar he wore a silver gorget and his sword, with its silver-tipped
sheath burnished to the utmost, hung at his side.
Sergeant Blick was determined that, as far as in him lay, his own
captain of musketeers should make a comely gallant show before the
Emperor. He stayed till the last strap was secure and in its place.
"Now, captain, you look brave enough as far as outward fripperies go.
But the devil snatch me, captain, bear yourself less like a man that is
going to be hung. A little smack of the Italian would not be amiss. It
must not be said that Tilly's men cannot prank it with these Austrian
rascals."
Then he stood back to see the effect, and even Nigel, whose
anticipations of evil had again possessed him but a whit less than they
had the night before, was forced to laugh.
"You're like an old hen with one chicken, Blick. Call for a pint of
Tokay and you shall see how I will outdo Captain Bobadillo!"
A brace of pages and a servant appeared at the same time.
The servant led away Sergeant Blick, not unwilling, to the buttery.
The pages conducted Nigel to his _salle à manger_, and furnished not
only the needful flagon of Tokay, but a substantial breakfast of smoked
ham and sausages, a cold capon and dried fish. By the time he had
finished he would have faced the Emperor and the whole Reichstag to
boot.
Then the pages brought him scented water and soft linen to remove the
traces of breakfast, and asked if he were ready.
They led him down the stairs, across the courtyard, in which the guard
of the palace were exercising, and Nigel's eyes roved over their
headpieces and corslets and muskets with the approval an officer must
always bestow on a well-accoutred and disciplined troop. The pages
crossed the courtyard and entered another door, again leading to some
stairs, and pushing open two high doors, they led him into another long
gallery, the walls of which were hung with many portraits of bygone
Habsburgs and of many grand dukes and princes with whom they had
contracted alliances.
He cast a glance here and there, asking the pages questions as he went.
They told him that the hall of audience was at the other end, and that
he would be summoned presently. There being no need of haste, he
sauntered, giving more heed and indeed coming to a stand before a newly
painted canvas of a princess.
"The Archduchess Stephanie!" exclaimed both pages.
Nigel stood gazing at it.
"By Signor Pourbus, a Spaniard, who has but just painted the Emperor!"
they went on.
"Wondrous like!" was Nigel's exclamation.
"Very like!" said the pages. "Here comes Her Highness. She walks here a
little while most mornings."
And out of a chamber at the side the Archduchess Stephanie came, and
Nigel and the pages awaited her approach. She came with no hurried pace,
and as she came Nigel grew pale and red by turns, for here, if any one,
was Ottilie von Thüringen, gloriously apparelled, her hair framing her
face in a multitude of curling locks of raven hues, rows of pearls about
her neck, suspending against the whiteness of her throat a jewelled
dragon.
The Archduchess stayed in her walk, and having cast a look at Nigel,
said gently to one of the pages--
"Hermann! Who is this gentleman who waits for audience?"
"If it please your Highness," said the page, "it is Captain Nigel
Charteris, bearer of despatches from Magdeburg!"
"Ah! I had forgotten." Then she turned to Nigel, who dropped upon his
knees, extending him her hand to kiss, and he accomplished the obeisance
with good grace, notwithstanding his lively emotion.
"You are welcome to Vienna, sir!"
Nigel was now uncertain. The tones of her voice seemed familiar, but not
convincing.
"You have doubtless had a troublous journey?"
"In some measure, your Highness!" He had gained courage to look straight
into her eyes, but there was no look or sign of recognition.
She made a little gesture to the page, who withdrew to wait at the end
of the gallery.
"Tell me, sir, did you pass through Eger on your way?"
"Yes, your Highness!"
"Count Albrecht von Waldstein, is he not there?"
"Yes, your Highness!"
"Did you see him?"
"I did, your Highness! He is my old commander. He wearies for a renewal
of his service!"
"Ah!" It was almost a sigh. "It will come again. It was but yesterday I
had a message from him asking me to use my offices with the Emperor. He
spoke of you and sent me a packet to give you."
There was a cabinet much inlaid with ivory, from Milan, as the pages had
told him, which stood near by, and the Archduchess brought a little key
from her chatelaine wallet and opened it, as if to show him the curious
work within.
In one of the drawers which she pulled out was a leathern wallet.
Nigel's eye fastened greedily upon it. For it was the wallet in which he
had carried the despatches.
"It looks," said Nigel, "as if it and I, your Highness, were old
acquaintances thrust apart by circumstance. May I look within?"
The Archduchess said, without any sign of interest, "It is for you, sir;
open it."
Inside was the precious packet. Nigel could not restrain his eyes from
glowing, his face from flushing, or his fingers from a little tremor. He
turned it round. It was intact as he had lost it. The seal of Count
Tilly was perfect.
"Your Highness is surely my good angel," he said gratefully, forgetting
for the moment the old Ottilie von Thüringen in the new and glorious
Archduchess Stephanie. "This that Wallenstein has sent me will justify
my coming hither. Without it I had been dubbed, and rightly, a
blundering knave, for your Highness should know I was robbed of it in a
forest while I slept, and with two sentries on guard."
"It was a fault Albrecht von Waldstein would have borne hardly, had he
been Captain-General. But in this case Fortune has been kind to you."
Nigel bowed. "I would that your Highness would continue to represent the
Goddess in my regard."
She said nothing but some word of adieu, and passed on her way solitary,
gliding like a swan.
And before Nigel could form any opinion on this strange rencontre with
the proud princess, one of the gentlemen-in-waiting came and begged his
attendance in the audience-chamber.
CHAPTER XII.
NIGEL MEETS FATHER LAMORMAIN.
As Nigel passed out of the gallery and crossed the landing at the top of
another staircase, a door to the left of him opened from another gallery
at right angles to the one he had just left, and two Jesuit priests came
out in the dress of their order, shaven and tonsured. He saluted, and
they acknowledged his salutation with a brief benediction in the Latin
tongue and passed on. The eyes of both seemed familiar to him, though
for the moment, being bent upon his errand, he could not have told why.
The doors of the audience-chamber opened, and an officer of the
household announced in a loud voice--
"Sire! The noble and high-born Captain Nigel Charteris with despatches
from Tilly, Count of Tzerclaës!"
Nigel advanced, preceded by the gentleman-in-waiting, bowed three times
as he did so, following the example set him, and presently stood at the
Emperor's left hand, where stood the principal secretary, who received
the despatches, and, having glanced at the seal, handed it to the
Emperor, who, giving it to the Chancellor of the Empire, at his right
hand, commanded him to break the seals.
The Emperor had acknowledged Nigel's presence at the side of his
secretary with a slight but perceptible movement of the eyes, which
rested upon him for a few seconds, and of the head, and then relapsed
into an austere aloofness. Nigel, standing alert and ready for further
business, if it should concern him, observed that Ferdinand was a man to
all appearance of some fifty odd years, lean, of yellowish complexion,
with eyes of a bluish tinge, dark-brown hair, a moustache twisted
fiercely upwards, a short pointed beard with strands of grey in it, and
dark scanty eyebrows. He wore a large stiff ruff about his neck. His
doublet was of dark Genoese velvet, and a single gold chain suspended a
medallion or badge of some order of knighthood. He sat in an easy
attitude, attentive, but as a man wearied of affairs, yet of that fixity
of will that lets nothing go by him that he should set his hand to. The
long, slightly aquiline nose, fleshy towards the point, together with
the projecting tufted lower lip, proclaimed him Habsburg. His chair was
raised upon a dais, so that he sat on a higher level by some inches than
the great officers of the council who sat at the table.
Nigel could not help noticing the slenderness of his hands and the
length of the tapering fingers, which were beyond the common measure of
men's hands, and reminded him of the hands of Ottilie von Thüringen.
From the Emperor his gaze fell upon a familiar figure that of a man who
sat back from the table, as if to give more play to his long legs, and
at the Emperor's right hand.
It needed but a glance at the face, ennobled by its fine expanse of
forehead from which the hair had receded, and the flowing black locks,
still making a brave show of plenty, which fell to his deep lace collar,
to recognise Maximilian of Bavaria. The fine delicate dark brows, the
large humorous dark eyes, the aquiline nose, the pointed chin decked
with a pointed and unmistakably grey beard, the short upper lip with a
soft flowing moustache, composed a face easy to remember, and somewhat
suggestive of a life spent in thought and deep designs rather than in
the field, where, however, he had borne no mean nor infrequent burden.
The Chancellor proceeded to read Count Tilly's despatch, which set forth
with a brevity worthy of his reputation as a general the final
operations before Magdeburg, the taking of the city, the number of men
killed and wounded on both sides. Count Tilly here strongly commended
the Bavarian General Pappenheim, who had rendered very notable
assistance in the siege and storm. Then followed the roster of the army
as it was on the morning of Nigel's departure, and an intimation that it
was not possible to quarter the troops in the town itself on account of
the destruction of the houses, and of the fear of pestilence. Pending
further instructions, Count Tilly intimated that he should form a
fortified camp not far from the city, making such excursions into the
neighbouring country as might be necessary to continue the enforcement
of the Edict, or to oppose the operations of Gustavus. In the event of
the Electors of Saxony and Brandenburg, or either of them, declaring
openly for Gustavus, he proposed to enter Saxony and endeavour to bring
the Elector to submission.
The Emperor questioned Nigel as to the extent of the destruction of
Magdeburg and the cause of it; and Nigel gave such answer as he was
able, saying that, no quarter being given on either side, the entrance
into the city was the cause of much bloodshed, owing to the tenacity of
the burghers, many of whom set fire to their houses to entrap the
soldiery and frustrate the sacking.
"You passed through Erfurt, Plauen, and Eger?" the Emperor asked. "How
was the Edict being received?"
"Erfurt and Eger, sire, are mainly of the Catholic faith, and have
strong garrisons. Plauen would willingly have hung me and my escort,
incited to rebellion by the news from Magdeburg!"
"But you escaped hanging, Captain?" the Emperor asked without a smile.
"I took the burghers unawares, and escaped by night!" said Nigel.
"You have our thanks, Captain! You will remain at Vienna some days till
our plans are made, when you will receive our further orders. We shall
recommend Count Tilly to advance you in rank for your services."
Nigel murmured a few words of thanks, and again bowing three times as he
retreated, found himself outside the audience-chamber in company with
the friendly gentleman-in-waiting who had ushered him in, very well
pleased to have had such a favourable interview, and, where he had
expected so lately as that very morning at least disgrace, to have
received the promise of promotion, than which nothing could be more
grateful to his ambition as a soldier.
The more he thought of the miraculous recovery of his wallet the less
could he understand it. It must have been brought to Wallenstein by some
emissary who had intercepted the robber. Or was it the man on the sorrel
horse, that man of pots and phials and orbits and horoscopes, after all?
Had he sought to propitiate Wallenstein, and had Wallenstein,
recognising his duty to the Emperor, taken this circuitous way of
returning it to the messenger, knowing full well what penalty he might
otherwise expect? Yes! That was the solution without doubt. His old
admiration of Wallenstein as a commander was now strengthened by
gratitude towards him as a man.
And the Archduchess? Pietro Bramante's conjuration was, if as
inexplicable as ever, of the Archduchess. Hence Wallenstein's
exclamation, which he had only faintly heard in the midst of his own
excitement. Some curious resemblance, no doubt, there must have been
between the unknown Ottilie and the Archduchess, but the method of
sending the wallet proved that Wallenstein accepted the prediction in
the faith that it was the Archduchess Stephanie, who on her part had at
least fulfilled the commission with a tact and secrecy that spoke of a
willingness to respond to the wish of the sender.
He had, whilst working out this satisfactory conclusion, accompanied the
gentleman aforesaid to the gardens of the palace, where, said his guide,
he would probably find sufficient to amuse him for an hour or so, when
he could easily find his way back to his quarters, and further
arrangements would be made to entertain him.
There was a profusion of statuary. There were peacocks. There were
flowers arranged in precise beds, and short clipped hedges of green
shrubs in the Italian fashion. The morning was sunny, and in his elation
he found everything exceeding well. It was a golden day. He sauntered
here and there.
And so by the merest chance did Father Lamormain, that peaceful refined
priest, in a cassock which did credit to the tailor who fashioned it,
though it was cut strictly according to the rule of the Jesuits.
Nigel had never set eyes on Father Lamormain, and, if he had heard of
him, it was in the vague way in which people of middle station hear the
name of the king's physician, or of the king's barber, and forget it.
Father Lamormain had not been at the audience. His duty was best done in
the Emperor's private apartment, or in his own, to which even the
Emperor repaired on occasions. But Father Lamormain knew quite well what
had taken place, all that the Chancellor had read aloud and as much of
it as the Chancellor had kept to himself. For Father Lamormain was not
for nothing the most trusted Jesuit in the country east of the Rhine.
At first Nigel passed the priest, who was to all appearance a Jesuit,
with a bow. The priest desisted from telling his beads and bowed also.
In their saunter they bowed again, and the priest very gently expressed
a hope that Nigel was "enjoying the beauty of the morning."
"Father," said Nigel, "it is indeed a fair morning, but good news makes
the worst of mornings joyous!"
"Ah, youth! Ah, youth, the beautiful!" said the Father. "Youth is the
season when one has good news! In after years the news never seems
wholly good. There is always some little drawback."
Nigel inclined his head deferentially. Middle-aged men always spoke in
this way. They were jealous of youth. But being in great spirits he
thought to humour the priest, and said--
"There speaks a wide experience and a wide knowledge!"
"Surely," said the priest, "you are of the Scottish nation, and a
soldier! Am I right, sir?"
"What makes you think so?" said Nigel, much amused.
"In the first place, the Scottish gentlemen are amongst the most
courteous of men, and pronounce German very well; and as to the second,
one could not miss that you were a soldier by your bearing."
There being at least two compliments wrapped up along with a
commonplace, Nigel took another look at the priest and saw that the
priest was a man of benign countenance, very courtly, and that his face
was lined with many fine lines about the brow and eyes, which themselves
were very penetrating. Nigel reflected on the Latin poet who feared
Greeks and people bringing gifts. So he asked--
"Is there a college of your order in Vienna?"
"What makes you think so, sir? Does one swallow make a summer?"
"Would not three in succession lead one to imagine it was near?" Nigel
asked again.
"See how the Scotsman answers a question by asking another!" the priest
observed with a smile, which was very becoming to his countenance.
"Is that the way of my nation?" Nigel asked.
"In the parts about Haddington!" the priest replied very gently, and
Nigel was very much perplexed at the reply. "But did you say just now
that you had seen three swallows, or was it three brethren of my order,
this morning?"
"I met two on the staircase of the palace this morning, and you are the
third!" said Nigel.
"It will have been Father George and Father John. There is a small
hostel of our order in Vienna."
"They resembled two gentlemen I met a few days back, two cavaliers!"
"Ah?" said the priest, inviting confidence.
"But _they_ were cavaliers!" said Nigel. "So there was nothing in the
resemblance. There seem a good many people in the world who resemble one
another!" he added.
Father Lamormain was a little disappointed in this exuberant young
officer, who went off into mere platitudes. But there was an element of
persistence in his nature.
"You have doubtless come some distance to Vienna?" he went on. "I
inferred from what you said just now that you had business in the
palace, and I happened to notice that one of the Emperor's gentlemen
brought you hither; and I know, I think I may say, all the people who
dwell therein." He indicated the palace with his hand. "So I judged you
to be a stranger. Did you have a peaceful journey?"
"On the whole it was so!" said the Scot.
"You had peradventure an encounter with robbers?"
"If it could be called so, an encounter! Two men set upon me in the dark
as I slept, and having bound and gagged me, ransacked my holsters, my
saddle-bags, my clothes, and went away having taken nothing."
"And did you not see their faces, hear their voices?"
"Neither sight nor sound!"
"And you accomplished your errand successfully?"
"Quite, Father!"
"You were either very astute or very fortunate! You will doubtless be
employed again. Now let me introduce myself. I am Father Lamormain, the
Emperor's confessor."
"I am much honoured by your company," said Nigel. "My name is Nigel
Charteris, Captain of Musketeers."
"From Magdeburg, is it not?" The priest smiled.
CHAPTER XIII.
A FATHER, A CONFESSOR, AND A DAUGHTER.
The Emperor Ferdinand and Father Lamormain were together in the
Emperor's private apartments.
"She was always Stephanie the intractable!" said the Emperor, with
something like a smile on his grave face. After all he had many memories
of her that Father Lamormain could never have of any child.
"Yes!" said Father Lamormain. "But in this case your Imperial Majesty
should permit itself to use its parental authority."
"Even to harshness?"
"Even to harshness!" said the priest in a gentle voice. "Your Majesty
knows that the Elector Maximilian still claims that the Empire owes him
thirteen millions of crowns for his aid in the war against the Elector
Palatine, and that he wanted the Palatinate, and would have had it but
for the opposition of Brandenburg and Saxony. Now if Brandenburg and
Saxony join Gustavus, as they must, what can we say to Maximilian if he
prefers his claim again?"
"He must have it, I suppose!" said the Emperor in a tone that suggested
that he was rather tired.
"Then he will ask for Bohemia as the price for allowing his army to
support Tilly against Gustavus."
"Bohemia is another affair!" said the Emperor more briskly.
"Now if her Highness the Archduchess would only consent to marry the
Elector Maximilian, we should hear nothing more of the thirteen
millions, or of the Palatinate, or of Bohemia," reflected Father
Lamormain aloud.
"She is very young!" objected his Majesty.
"Not too young for mischief, sire."
"What new freak have you discovered, Father?"
"This!" said the Father, producing the letter he had had before him on
the previous day. "It is a summary of the roll of Tilly's army, and it
was found upon a messenger, who was unfortunately killed on his way to
the north _before he could be questioned_."
"But what has this to do with the Archduchess Stephanie?"
"It is marvellously like her handwriting! It is in cipher, of course;
but look for yourself, sire." The Emperor looked at it.
"It appears to be a woman's, and it is a most unclerkly scrawl. I should
hesitate to attribute it to Stephanie! And, if it were hers, what
possible object could she have in obtaining it, and how could she have
obtained it?"
"It was in my hands, your Majesty, before the despatches arrived."
"But the seal on the despatches was intact. It was Count Tilly's seal.
The Chancellor was satisfied?"
"Yes, sire!" The tone signified that Chancellors as a rule were easily
satisfied.
"Come, Father, do you seriously suggest that the officer who brought it
allowed the despatches to leave his hands?"
Father Lamormain had every cause to suppose so, but was unable for
reasons of his own to state so.
"I merely infer from this cipher!"
"But it was not impossible that the roll of Tilly's army should be known
to others, within a little!"
"Your Majesty's remark would be just if the messenger had been
intercepted riding from Magdeburg. But from Eger, by which the officer
passed? What then?"
"That would be to doubt the officer's fidelity. To begin with, he is a
Scottish gentleman! He is of our faith! He is selected by Tilly, who has
a good eye for a man."
"Then your Majesty does not wish the matter pursued in that direction."
Father Lamormain was quite pleasant about it. He went on--
"I may say that I had a little talk with this young officer this morning
in the gardens, and he appears to be a gentleman of good breeding, and
of an ancient family, very well mannered, and wary withal. Your Majesty
would be the better judge how far he is to be trusted if he were bidden
to your reception after supper to-night. For the orders your Majesty
will send to Tilly will be still more secret!" The Father seemed full of
the most paternal feelings towards this young man, at the same time very
desirous that the young man should not prove a prodigal son.
"As to the Archduchess Stephanie," said the Emperor, "I will speak to
her on the subject of Maximilian. It is an ill time to consider
marriages when there is so much at stake, but our faithful Elector can
scarcely be bidden to wait _at his age_!" The Emperor had then a dry
kind of humour. "You may send for her, Father, on my behalf!"
Father Lamormain pocketed his letter and retired. In a short time the
Archduchess made her entry into her father's presence.
Her face wore the softness that is the outcome of an affectionate
nature. The fine meshes of the veil of rank that fell between her and
the rest of the world, obscuring the expression, were absent.
Ferdinand's eye swept over her tall gracious form as she approached, and
as she bent her knee to kiss his hand. He approved, but it made no
difference. He was not a prince to be swayed by womanly beauty. Some
princes have spent their lives toying with women; some have made women
their pastimes in the brief intervals of strenuous attention to war and
to affairs; but Ferdinand was a prince of affairs in which women had no
place. As a father, however, he was not wanting in affection.
"My Stephanie!" he said, when he had kissed her upon the cheek.
"Politics are a very troublous thing, and all kinds of considerations
come into play. The alliances in marriage between princes and princesses
are dictated by the necessities of their States rather than by any
inclination of their own."
The Emperor felt, because Stephanie, sitting on a low stool at his side,
had her hands upon her father's, that the blood stirred very palpably,
and he knew that she listened.
"The turn of events has brought your name into question. The Elector
Maximilian has put forward a project of marriage. He asks for you."
A crimson flush overspread those pale clear cheeks. So much Ferdinand
saw. She kept her gaze steadily away from him.
"What do you think of it, little one?"
She turned her head and looked up at her father, her eyes widely open.
"I think it monstrous! That old man! A man who has already lived a
thousand lives to make his last mumbling meal of me who am just newly
come into my womanhood! Monstrous! Unspeakably monstrous!"
"He is of a ripe age, certainly, is my cousin Maximilian. He is in fact
fifty-eight, as I am. But he is still full of vigour, a leader of men, a
great and renowned prince, and our most trusty ally. Once at least we
had been in grave jeopardy but for his counsel and for his armies. Even
now we are employing his men and generals in support of our Edicts."
"To slay peaceable burghers, burn their goods, throw down their houses,
ravish their daughters! Say this rather!"
"My daughter!" said Ferdinand, and his voice became cold and haughty,
"you forget! As a good son of the Church I am bound to extirpate that
most pernicious root of heresy from all German lands. There can be no
peace till this is done."
The Archduchess Stephanie had gauged her father's religious fanaticism
and found it deep, deeper than any measuring-stick of hers. She did not
sympathise with it. Like most women she was herself prone to the
practices of religion, and in the conduct of life a pagan. She saw no
benefit that could come out of the Edict of Restitution. To her mind,
money, or goods, or lands were to pass out of the hands of very worthy
industrious burghers to maintain lazy and often very dirty priests and
monks. She thought it was barely possible, but still possible, for
people to get to heaven somehow without them. The Emperor was quite
satisfied that they could not. His intentions were sincere, and the
Archduchess knew that it was useless to pursue the attack along this
line.
"The fall of Magdeburg," she said, "might bring about some sort of
alliance of all the Protestant powers. Brandenburg and Saxony at least
must join Gustavus. Denmark, the United Provinces, may follow."
"The more reason have we to keep hold of such friends as we have by what
entertainment we may."
"Have you so little faith in Maximilian that you should judge him
capable of drawing off his men when he learns that I will not wed him?"
"I have always found Maximilian loyal to the Empire. But a friendship
such as his should be requited."
"Then let him be requited with gold or with lands, but not with me. Let
him draw off his men, his Pappenheim. Then send for the man who shall
sweep Gustavus back to his ships, him for whom the Empire waits, him who
alone can create armies at a word and lead them."
"Who _is_ this Achilles?" was the faintly ironical question of the
Emperor.
"Who but Albrecht von Waldstein?" was the instant, almost triumphant,
answer of the Archduchess. She had risen to her feet and faced him with
it, voice and gesture and eyes aglow with a conviction that betrayed an
intense energy of desire behind it. The Emperor gazed at her with his
pale scrutinising eyes, in which was no enthusiasm.
"My dear Stephanie," he said in his half-wearied tone, "if Wallenstein
were not a man of middle age, who has married a second wife, one might
almost suspect that you were enamoured of him."
She held herself erect, looking at the Emperor, but her eyes were upon a
vision far beyond. She said nothing, for the Emperor had not made an
end. He had dealt her this thrust of scorn. Now he assailed her with
reason.
"It is a year since, on the Elector's day at Regensburg, they clamoured
one and all for Wallenstein's dismissal. They urged that he was become
too powerful for a subject."
"Maximilian's jealousy!" she interposed.
"Maximilian was one amongst many! I judged the advice sound. I dismissed
Wallenstein. My foes were beaten down. There was no need to maintain an
army of seventy thousand men in the field to nourish the ambition of a
general. It is enough, Stephanie. No good can come of princesses
meddling in politics. Look to it that you entreat not our cousin
Maximilian slightingly, or even with less than the graciousness that
becomes a princess. I am too indulgent. The affair can wait till it be
considered further. You would not be the first princess of the house of
Habsburg to wed without love. Therefore make no grievance of it!"
He held out his hand, which the Archduchess bent over and kissed, and
she left the Emperor once more alone.
CHAPTER XIV.
IN THE CIRCLE OF THE EMPEROR.
That evening Nigel was not left to eat his meal in the little _salle à
manger_ adjoining his bedchamber, but was invited by the officers of the
guard to join them, a compliment that was worth the paying, seeing that
the officers of the guard were drawn from the oldest families in Austria
and Hungary, and that a mere sub-lieutenant in the guard ranked as a
regimental captain in the army, and a captain was equal to a colonel, if
not higher, in the point of distinction.
Notwithstanding that he was a regimental officer bearing the rank of
captain, and an outlander, a fact which emphasised another fact, that he
was a soldier of fortune, or, if we prefer it, a soldier without a
fortune, whereas his hosts were men of high family and fortunes who
happened to be soldiers, they received him with that perfection of
politeness which already characterised the Austrian nobility in so far
as it came into daily contact with the court. Something there was of the
ceremony and grandiosity of Spain, which the intermarriages of princes
and princesses had brought about, mingled with the brightness and gaiety
that sprung of a northern race and northern air, and of a greater
activity of body and alertness of mind.
They regarded the sack of Magdeburg as a mere incident, but sufficiently
interesting to men who professed the art of war to make them put to
their guest a perfect array of questions as to the tactics employed, the
relative value of the weapons, and Tilly's projected movements. He had
to tell at full length his adventure at Plauen, and they contrived to
let him know that he was more fortunate than they in having enjoyed such
experiences.
When the supper had proceeded to a pleasant length, if it were not quite
so prolonged as that famous meal which Mr Howell, who was secretary to
an embassy to Denmark, has related in his letters, consisting as it did
of forty courses and thirty-five toasts, the Captain-General of the
guard, a venerable officer, who wore the orders of half the kingdoms of
Europe, suspended by gold chains and gold brooches, giving almost the
similitude of a cuirass, rose, and in the name of the Emperor
complimented their guest on the services he had rendered and the signal
bravery he had shown at the siege and the storm of Magdeburg. He ended
by presenting him with a Colonel's commission under the Emperor's own
hand and seal, and drank his health in the most handsome fashion--an
example which the whole corps of officers followed with much zest and
the draining of many flagons of Tokay.
Nigel was taken indeed by surprise. His blushes testified at once to his
habitual modesty, and to his youth. But for the honour of his race and
country he regained his self-command in a short space, and made a speech
of thanks which, for fluency in the German tongue and the spirit of
loyalty to his chosen standard which infused it, gained him an even
greater credit in the minds of his hearers. Scotland was to most of them
a far-off country, and being far was esteemed uncivilised, and they
marvelled that a Scottish gentleman could without effort assume the ease
of manner and the air of compliment in the banqueting-hall of Vienna as
well as lead an attacking party, which any officer of proper valour and
skill should be able to do.
Just as the supper had concluded and the tables had been cleared for
wine and the dice-box, or whatever other pastime was forward, a page
arrived to tell him that the Emperor commanded his attendance at his
card-party in half an hour. Nigel would perhaps have more willingly sat
over his wine with these jovial gallants of the guard. But there was no
choice. So that he took leave of the Captain-General and of his other
hosts, some of whom had their military rounds to make, and hastened to
refresh himself, and make what change in his dress he could for the
ordeal of the court reception.
On reaching his bedchamber he was amazed to find it lit up with many
candles, and a court suit lying upon his bed, new and of rich stuffs.
Everything he needed was there, and a barber was in attendance together
with a valet to assist him to make his outward appearance worthy of the
occasion.
Nigel had heard of the lavish generosity of Italian princes towards
their friends. He knew of favourites both in Spain and in Britain who
had been plentifully rewarded by the bestowal of public office or of
pension. In France the King's cash-box, which was also the State's, was
frequently opened to reward the deserving and undeserving. But it had
never before happened to him that he was invited to be of the company of
a prince and provided with a new court suit in the bargain. Monarchs
were often unmindful of these petty but costly trivialities. But since
in his own case the Emperor Ferdinand had expended so much
thoughtfulness and a goodly purse of crowns on his wedding garment,
Nigel was not disposed to blame him for departing from the usual rule.
It was difficult besides not to feel uncommonly elated when Fortune
persisted in making him so avowedly her favourite. And if, while he was
being dealt with by the barber, he did wonder how that slightly dry,
tired-eyed Emperor had contrived to think two consecutive thoughts about
his, Nigel's, wearing apparel, and fell back upon the Archduchess
Stephanie as the possible donor, he dismissed the latter suggestion
because he was not sufficiently full of conceit to credit it, and
accepted the first as a very natural explanation, because his opinion of
his own services unconsciously coincided with the sense of them he
imputed to the Emperor. It must not be forgotten that Tokay in unstinted
measure has a tendency to make a man reflect in the first instance what
a really fine fellow he is. It is doubtless one of the first qualities
of good wine to enhance in the man who drinks it the estimation of his
own vintage. Had the page, who as a fact knew nothing, or the barber, or
the valet, breathed the name of Father Lamormain, of a surety Nigel
would have regarded the idea as humorous, and even at that rather
wanting in point. If he had been solemnly assured that Father Lamormain,
that very benign Jesuit he had met for the first and only time in his
life in the palace garden, was the donor of the suit, he would probably
have worn it, but, as the gentleman in one of Shakespeare's plays wore
his rue, with a difference.
Not that Nigel Charteris in his braveries was one whit more a braggart
or a fop or one iota less a Scottish gentleman than when, stained with
blood and smoke, begrimed and weary, he had taken shelter at the hands
of Elspeth Reinheit in the old house at Magdeburg. But that evening he
did feel that the world was at his feet, and he did make a gallant
figure as the doors flew open and the pages, announcing the "high-born
and noble Colonel Nigel von Charteris," admitted him to the presence of
his Emperor and the brilliant circle of the court.
The Emperor and his consort alone were seated. The guests were not yet
all assembled, and stood about in groups within reach of the royal
voices. There were perhaps eight or ten ladies, amongst whom, when his
eyes had grown used to the numerous candles and the glitter of jewels,
reflected and multiplied by the mirrors of Venetian glass that hung upon
the walls, Nigel recognised the Archduchess Stephanie and a younger
sister who more resembled the Emperor.
The Archduchess shot him a swift glance of recognition, and the smile,
which rather accompanied than followed it, bestowed not upon him but
upon some chance-favoured auditor with whom she talked, seemed to imply
approval of his choice of a court dress. That swift glance of hers was
enough to tell him that their rencontre of the morning was, if it could
not be swept from remembrance, at least to be treated as if it had not
been.
It was Father Lamormain who, gliding to his side, assumed the gracious
part of cicerone.
"And are you still pleased with your good news, colonel?" he asked with
his benevolent smile of universal fatherhood.
"More and more, Father! This morning there was the promise. This evening
it is in flower!"
"The blossom," said the priest, looking at the court suit, "becomes the
tree if the tree yield good fruit." A saying which left Nigel puzzled,
intimating as it did that his reward was not so much for service done as
for services to do. He had no time to ponder it, for Father Lamormain
had led him to the Archduchess Stephanie and was presenting him.
"Your Highness! may I present to you the youngest Colonel of Musketeers
in the Imperial armies, Mr Nigel Charteris, who has had the honour and
the peril of bearing Count Tilly's despatches from Magdeburg!"
"I am pleased to greet you!" said the Archduchess, giving him her hand
to kiss. "I trust your journey was as pleasant as the issue was
successful."
As Nigel had bent to kiss the long slender fingers that were so like the
Emperor's, he seemed to see again those of Ottilie von Thüringen binding
up the wound of Elspeth Reinheit. He answered her--
"The journey was not so perilous, your Highness, as the reward is great
in your Highness's gracious welcome!" And greatly daring he gazed for a
moment with unfeigned admiration at the eyes of the Archduchess.
"Count Tilly's captains are swift to learn, Father?" she said, smiling.
"They are more teachable than princesses!" said Father Lamormain, with
such banter in his tone as the privileged spiritual director of the
family might employ. "And princesses," he added, "are swift to teach."
A saying which the Archduchess and Nigel alike felt might be innocent or
barbed with irony.
Father Lamormain did not leave him till he had made the round of the
guests. Nigel's brain was becoming clearer as he became used to the
scene, and the effects of the excellent Tokay were wellnigh spent. He
learned by observation in what very real respect the whole court held
the Jesuit father. This polished and witty priest had something in the
way of compliment for all the ladies, something flattering for the great
lords and lordlings. But for the Father there was no covert sneer, or
half attention, or sign of fear. There was real respect, and something
that resembled the perfect confidence of friendship.
Last of all, the Elector Maximilian, with his eternal half-smile, left
the Emperor's immediate group and accosted Nigel.
"So Father Lamormain has taken you in hand, Colonel! They say that this
is a greater mark of honour than even the Emperor can bestow. Beware,
however, of any love secrets. He will worm them out of you!"
"He does not wear them upon his sleeve, your Highness!" said the priest,
with a glance over in the direction of the Archduchess Stephanie, which
was not understood by Nigel.
"And in what plight are my Bavarians?" the Elector went on.
Father Lamormain beat a retreat. They would find much to talk about, and
if the fathoming of Nigel's leanings were necessary Maximilian was as
astute as himself. Luckily Nigel held a high opinion of Pappenheim, whom
many regarded as the foremost general in Germany, even before
Wallenstein, but who was a soldier and nothing more, no politician or
ambitious seeker after power.
"You were with Tilly before?"
"No, sire! With Wallenstein from the campaign against Mansfeld to the
end of his command!"
To the "Ah" with which this was received Nigel attached the significance
it bore.
"Have you seen him since his ... resignation?"
"Yes, sire; at Eger on my journey here."
"And how does he bear his retirement?"
"In truth I know almost nothing, sire. When I was under him I rarely saw
him, and was not of his familiar circle, if indeed he had such. I do not
know. He asked for my company at Eger to divide a bottle of wine with
him. He seems to occupy himself with astronomy and the mathematics."
"I have heard," rejoined Maximilian, "that he had great acquaintance
and much controversy with a learned doctor, one Paracelsus, but these
matters are beyond my ken. Men and women are more to me than the stars."
Several gentlemen of the court had gathered round the Elector, and it
was the hearing of the name of Wallenstein that drew them, for it was
well known that the Elector and he were on terms of discord. In the days
of the Winter King it had been Maximilian and his armies who had been in
fact the Emperor's legions, then as a counterpoise the Emperor had
raised up Wallenstein. When Wallenstein had made Maximilian the pale
shadow of an armed power, Maximilian had plotted till Wallenstein was
deposed and his army scattered to the ten thousand hamlets of Germany.
"A veritable Cincinnatus!" said an elderly gentleman.
"He raised cabbages for sauerkraut, did he not?" a younger man asked.
"Your Cincinnatus," said the Elector, "raiseth weeds of a poisonous and
rebellious nature."
"Such as, sire?" a staid and solemn-faced minister of state inquired.
"Ambition, my Lord! It brought Cæsar to the ground, and Cæsar was a
greater man. When Wallenstein, then a rich Bohemian landlord, discovered
that he had the genius of organising an army, he began to think he had
discovered in himself another Cæsar. He thought that to command a great
army, to find its food and pay, was absolute power. He forgot that that
consent of the Emperor, which alone had made it possible, was the real
source of power, and that the consent might be withdrawn. You all know
what happened in fact. He has no patriotism. His country, his Emperor,
his creed, is Wallenstein; and he would as soon serve Gustavus, if
Gustavus would promise him a kingdom, as serve the Emperor."
The Elector Maximilian had raised his voice a little as he spoke his
last sentences. The Emperor, turning in his chair from his cards not far
away, said--
"Your favourite topic, cousin! He did us good service in our need."
"In truth, sire!" said the Archduchess Stephanie, also addressing
Maximilian. "Age should be more lenient to age and honourable service."
Nigel wondered why the Elector showed so much the symptoms of a frown
when his mouth, so much of it as was visible, essayed a smile as he
turned towards the Archduchess.
The Emperor and Father Lamormain, who was of his party at cards,
exchanged a guarded glance.
"You remind me of that, Stephanie, which in your presence I had
forgotten."
With which saying he strode to her side with an air of gallantry, which
had sat well upon a younger man, and engaged her in a conversation out
of earshot, as he meant, of the rest of the company.
At this point a page came to the Emperor and gave him a message in a low
tone. The page went out, and in a moment the doors opened.
"His Grace the Duke of Friedland" was announced; and instantly the
company sat or stood as if petrified.
Albrecht von Walstein entered, attired not plainly, but as became a
magnifico of the Empire. There was violet velvet slashed with green silk
and sewn with pearls, and all point devise. He made three obeisances as
he approached the Emperor, and kissed his hand, then that of his
consort. The Emperor bade him be seated.
"You have been long coming to Vienna, Duke, but seeing that you are here
you are well-come. You have news?"
"Sire! I was but a few days since at Eger, where I have a poor
dwelling-place, when I heard that the King of Sweden has left Frankfort,
has marched to Werben, where the river Havel pours into the Elbe, and
has there entrenched his army in a fortified camp. Brandenburg has given
up Spandau and Custrin. We are shut off from the North."
The Emperor's face became a thought graver than usual. So did those of
Father Lamormain and of Maximilian, who, leaving the Archduchess, drew
near at a sign from the Emperor.
"How many men hath he?"
"My report says forty thousand, all veteran troops. Saxony and
Brandenburg can raise another forty thousand between them."
"With a few reinforcements, Tilly and Pappenheim should be able to stay
his march," said Maximilian.
To which Wallenstein said nothing. His _rôle_ was the disinterested
friend, the wealthy noble to whom war was of no moment.
For a moment there was a curious silence.
Wallenstein would not ask for a command. To offer him a subordinate one
was to invite a cold refusal. Father Lamormain and Maximilian were
resolutely opposed to any offer being made, and the Emperor knew it. Yet
he felt by no means sure that Tilly and Pappenheim could stem the
Swedish tide, and he was the head and front and citadel of the Empire,
fully aware of his responsibilities towards the state and towards the
church, especially the latter.
At Maximilian's words the Archduchess Stephanie made an involuntary
movement forward, but checked herself and stood where she was. Nigel,
from the place where he stood amid a knot of courtiers, could see her
face.
It bore that strange rapt expression of the eyes that he had seen in the
vision of Bramante's conjuring, and the eyes were fixed on Wallenstein.
Indeed, Wallenstein looked up for an instant and saw them. Nigel could
have sworn that a flush swept below the swarthy and much-lined skin of
the great commander; but the face with its high cheek-bones and small
bright eyes had recovered its bronze composure in the instant.
CHAPTER XV.
THE ARCHDUCHESS AND WALLENSTEIN.
The persons who witnessed the unexpected arrival of Wallenstein asked
themselves why he had come; Nigel because to his reflective mind the
ostensible reason, anxiety to impart the news of Gustavus to the
Emperor, was insufficient; the Archduchess Stephanie because she desired
with all the intensity of woman that another cause might be at work.
Nigel in the camp with Tilly had heard accounts, more or less garbled,
of the famous meeting of the Electors with the Emperor at Ratisbon a
year before. Reichstag, the Diet, or Day of the State, was the name of
such meetings, and that had been a momentous one for Wallenstein, for
the world. All the Electors were there save only the Elector Palatine,
the Winter-King, who was a wanderer over the face of Europe. And without
the conclave were Friar Joseph, "His grey Eminence," the familiar of
Cardinal Richelieu, and Cardinal Caraffa, the Pope's nuncio. France and
Italy alike on this occasion were pulling at the Electoral
puppet-strings, and making them hold up hands for the dismissal of
Wallenstein, the "insolent Wallenstein." And when a captain-general, for
four years in the field, has set all the Electors of Germany, Catholic
and Protestant, against him, it may be deduced that he has shown
himself careless of giving offence, and has forgotten the respect due to
princes. The Emperor had wished to retain him. He knew that he had been
well served, and in so far as his extreme religious views would allow
him, he was a just and certainly courageous prince. But he had been
forced to defer to the Electors who had chosen him to be Emperor.
Nigel agreed that a man as great as Wallenstein would never have ridden
from Eger to Vienna to bring this news to the Emperor, notwithstanding
that, if Wallenstein had ever shown anything approaching to personal
affection and deference to man, it had been to the Emperor. He would
have sent a swift messenger, or allowed the Emperor to learn the news in
his own way, as he would have learned it in a day or two at the most.
And Nigel was right in his conjecture.
The following afternoon the Archduchess Stephanie, with two ladies in
demure attendance, took the air in a light carriage, which, for its
elegance, was still an object of admir
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