Joan of the Sword Hand
by S. R. Crockett · English · Gutenberg #41803 · 691,462 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Joan of the Sword Hand
Author: S. R. Crockett
Illustrator: Frank Richards
Release date: January 8, 2013 [eBook #41803]
Most recently updated: October 23, 2024
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/41803
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JOAN OF THE SWORD HAND ***
JOAN OF THE SWORD HAND
_WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR._
THE STICKIT MINISTER.
THE RAIDERS.
THE PLAYACTRESS.
THE LILAC SUNBONNET.
BOG-MYRTLE AND PEAT.
THE MEN OF THE MOSS HAGS.
CLEG KELLY.
THE GREY MAN.
LADS' LOVE.
LOCHINVAR.
THE STANDARD BEARER.
THE RED AXE.
THE BLACK DOUGLAS.
IONE MARCH.
KIT KENNEDY.
SWEETHEART TRAVELLERS.
SIR TOADY LION.
[Illustration: "She met on the middle flight a grey-bearded man."
(Page 25.) _Frontispiece_]
JOAN OF THE SWORD HAND
BY
S. R. CROCKETT
LONDON
WARD, LOCK & CO., LIMITED
NEW YORK AND MELBOURNE
1900
_The Illustrations to this edition of
"Joan of the Sword Hand" are by
FRANK RICHARDS._
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I. THE HALL OF THE GUARD 7
II. THE BAITING OF THE SPARHAWK 14
III. JOAN DRAWS FIRST BLOOD 19
IV. THE COZENING OF THE AMBASSADOR 25
V. JOHANN THE SECRETARY 30
VI. AN AMBASSADOR'S AMBASSADOR 38
VII. H.R.H. THE PRINCESS IMPETUOSITY 47
VIII. JOHANN IN THE SUMMER PALACE 52
IX. THE ROSE GARDEN 59
X. PRINCE WASP 64
XI. THE KISS OF THE PRINCESS MARGARET 70
XII. JOAN FORSWEARS THE SWORD 79
XIII. THE SPARHAWK IN THE TOILS 84
XIV. AT THE HIGH ALTAR 90
XV. WHAT JOAN LEFT BEHIND 99
XVI. PRINCE WASP'S COMPACT 105
XVII. WOMAN'S WILFULNESS 111
XVIII. CAPTAINS BORIS AND JORIAN PROMOTE PEACE 120
XIX. JOAN STANDS WITHIN HER DANGER 126
XX. THE CHIEF CAPTAIN'S TREACHERY 131
XXI. ISLE RUGEN 139
XXII. THE HOUSE ON THE DUNES 144
XXIII. THE FACE THAT LOOKED INTO JOAN'S 150
XXIV. THE SECRET OF THERESA VON LYNAR 156
XXV. BORNE ON THE GREAT WAVE 163
XXVI. THE GIRL BENEATH THE LAMP 169
XXVII. WIFE AND PRIEST 175
XXVIII. THE RED LION FLIES AT KERNSBERG 182
XXIX. THE GREETING OF THE PRINCESS MARGARET 191
XXX. LOVE'S CLEAR EYE 197
XXXI. THE ROYAL MINX 204
XXXII. THE PRINCESS MARGARET IS IN A HURRY 212
XXXIII. A WEDDING WITHOUT A BRIDEGROOM 217
XXXIV. LITTLE JOHANNES RODE 222
XXXV. A PERILOUS HONEYMOON 229
XXXVI. THE BLACK DEATH 236
XXXVII. THE DROPPING OF A CLOAK 245
XXXVIII. THE RETURN OF THE BRIDE 251
XXXIX. PRINCE WASP STINGS 258
XL. THE LOVES OF PRIEST AND WIFE 266
XLI. THERESA KEEPS TROTH 277
XLII. THE WORDLESS MAN TAKES A PRISONER 287
XLIII. TO THE RESCUE 295
XLIV. THE UKRAINE CROSS 301
XLV. THE TRUTH-SPEAKING OF BORIS AND JORIAN 310
XLVI. THE FEAR THAT IS IN LOVE 315
XLVII. THE BROKEN BOND 324
XLVIII. JOAN GOVERNS THE CITY 332
XLIX. THE WOOING OF BORIS AND JORIAN 338
L. THE DIN OF BATTLE 345
LI. THERESA'S TREACHERY 355
LII. THE MARGRAF'S POWDER CHESTS 366
LIII. THE HEAD OF THE CHURCH VISIBLE 380
EPILOGUE OF EXPLICATION 388
CHAPTER I
THE HALL OF THE GUARD
Loud rang the laughter in the hall of the men-at-arms at Castle
Kernsberg. There had come an embassy from the hereditary Princess of
Plassenburg, recently established upon the throne of her ancestors, to
the Duchess Joan of Hohenstein, ruler of that cluster of hill statelets
which is called collectively Masurenland, and which includes, besides
Hohenstein the original Eagle's Eyrie, Kernsberg also, and Marienfield.
Above, in the hall of audience, the ambassador, one Leopold von
Dessauer, a great lord and most learned councillor of state, sat alone
with the young Duchess. They were eating of the baked meats and drinking
the good Rhenish up there. But, after all, it was much merrier down
below with Werner von Orseln, Alt Pikker, Peter Balta, and John of
Thorn, though what they ate was mostly but plain ox-flesh, and their
drink the strong ale native to the hill lands, which is called Wendish
mead.
"Get you down, Captains Jorian and Boris," the young Duchess had
commanded, looking very handsome and haughty in the pride of her twenty
years, her eight strong castles, and her two thousand men ready to rise
at her word; "down to the hall of guard, where my officers send round
the wassail. If they do not treat you well, e'en come up and tell it to
me."
"Good!" responded the two soldiers of the Princess of Plassenburg,
turning them about as if they had been hinged on the same stick, and
starting forward with precisely the same stiff hitch from the halt, they
made for the door.
"But stay," Joan of Hohenstein had said, ere they reached it, "here are
a couple of rings. My father left me one or two such. Fit them upon your
fingers, and when you return give them to the maidens of your choice. Is
there by chance such an one, Captain Jorian, left behind you at
Plassenburg?"
"Aye, madam," said Jorian, directing his left eye, as he stood at
attention, a little slantwise in the direction of his companion.
"What is her name?"
"Gretchen is her name," quoth the soldier.
"And yours, Captain Boris?"
The second automaton, a little slower of tongue than his companion,
hesitated a moment.
"Speak up," said his comrade, in an undergrowl; "say 'Katrin.'"
"Katrin!" thundered Captain Boris, with bluff apparent honesty.
"It is well," said the Duchess Joan; "I think no less of a sturdy
soldier for being somewhat shamefaced as to the name of his sweetheart.
Here is a ring apiece which will not shame your maidens in far
Plassenburg, as you walk with them under the lime-trees, or buy ribbons
for them in the booths that cluster about the Minster walls."
The donor looked at the rings again. She espied the letters of a posy
upon them.
"Ha!" she cried, "Captain Boris, what said you was the name of your
betrothed?"
"Good Lord!" muttered Boris lowly to himself, "did I not tell the woman
even now?--Gretchen!"
"Hut, you fool!" Jorian's undergrowl came to his ear, "Katrin--not
Gretchen; Gretchen is mine."
"I mean Katrin, my Lady Duchess," said Boris, putting a bold face on the
mistake.
The young mistress of the castle smiled. "Thou art a strange lover," she
said, "thus to forget the name of thy mistress. But here is a ring with
a K writ large upon it, which will serve for thy Katherina. And here,
Captain Jorian, is one with a G scrolled in Gothic, which thou wilt
doubtless place with pride upon the finger of Mistress Gretchen among
the rose gardens of Plassenburg."
"Good!" said Jorian and Boris, making their bows together; "we thank
your most gracious highness."
"Back out, you hulking brute!" the undertone came again from Jorian;
"she will be asking us for their surnames if we bide a moment longer.
Now then, we are safe through the door; right about, Boris, and thank
Heaven she had not time for another question, or we were men undone!"
And with their rings upon their little fingers the two burly captains
went down the narrow stair of Castle Kernsberg, nudging each other
jovially in the dark places as if they had again been men-at-arms and no
captains, as in the old days before the death of Karl the Usurper and
the coming back of the legitimate Princess Helene into her rights.
Being arrived at the hall beneath they soon found themselves the centre
of a hospitable circle. Gruff, bearded Wendish men were these officers
of the young Duchess; not a butterfly youngling or a courtly carpet
knight among them, but men tanned like shipmen of the Baltic, soldiers
mostly who had served under her father Henry, foraging upon occasion as
far as the Mark in one direction and into Bor-Russia in the other, men
grounded and compacted after the hearts of Jorian and Boris.
It was small wonder that amid such congenial society the ex-men-at-arms
found themselves presently very much at home. Scarcely were they seated
when Jorian began to brag of the gift the Duchess had given him for the
maiden of his troth.
"And Boris here, that hulking cobold, that Hans Klapper upon the
housetops, had well-nigh spoiled the jest; for when her ladyship asked
him a second time in her sweet voice for the name of his 'betrothed,'
he must needs lay his tongue to 'Gretchen,' instead of 'Katrin,' as he
had done at the first!"
Then all suddenly the bearded, burly officers of the Duchess Joan looked
at each other with a little scared expression on their faces, through
which gradually glimmered up a certain grim amusement. Werner von
Orseln, the eldest and gravest of all, glanced round the full circle of
his mess. Then he looked back at the two captains of the embassy guard
of Plassenburg with a pitying glance.
"And you lied about your sweethearts to the Duchess Joan?" he said.
"Ha, ha! Yes! I trow yes," quoth Jorian jovially. "Wine may be dear, but
this ring will pay the sweets of many a night!"
"Ha, ha! It will, will it?" said Werner, the chief captain, grimly.
"Aye, truly," echoed Boris, the mead beginning to work nuttily under his
steel cap, "when we melt this--ha, ha!--Katrin's jewel, we'll quaff many
a beaker. The Rhenish shall flow-ow-ow! And Peg and Moll and Elisabet
shall be there--yes, and many a good fellow-ow-ow----"
"Shut the door!" quoth Werner, the chief captain, at this point. "Sit
down, gentlemen!"
But Jorian and Boris were not to be so easily turned aside.
"Call in the ale-drawer--the tapster, the pottler, the over-cellarer,
whatever you call him. For we would have more of his vintage. Why, is
this a night of jewels, and shall we not melt them? We may chance to get
another for a second mouthful of lies to-morrow morning. A good duchess
as ever was--a soft princess, a princess most gullible is this of yours,
gentlemen of the Eagle's Nest, kerns of Kernsberg!"
"Sit down," said Werner yet more gravely. "Captains Jorian and Boris,
you do not seem to know that you are no longer in Plassenburg. The broom
bush does not keep the cow betwixt Kernsberg and Hohenstein. Here are no
Tables of Karl the Miller's Son to hamper our liege mistress. Do you
know that you have lied to her and made a jest of it?"
"Aye," cried Jorian, holding his ring high; "a sweet, easy maid, this of
yours, as ever was cozened. An easy service yours must be. Lord! I could
feather my nest well inside a year--one short year with such a mistress
would do the business. Why, she will believe anything!"
"So," said Werner von Orseln grimly, "you think so, do you, Captains
Boris and Jorian, of the embassy staff? Well, listen!"
He spoke very slowly, leaning towards them and punctuating his meaning
upon the palm of his left hand with the fingers of his right. "If I,
Werner of Orseln, were now to walk upstairs, and in so many words tell
my lady, 'the sweet, easy princess,' as you name her, Joan of the Sword
Hand, as we are proud----"
"_Joan of the Sword Hand! Hoch!_"
The men-at-arms at the lower table, the bearded captains at the high
board, the very page boys lounging and scuffling in the niches, rose to
their feet at the name, pronounced in a voice of thunder-pride by Chief
Captain Werner.
"Joan of the Sword Hand! _Hoch!_ Hent yourselves up, Wends! Up,
Plassenburg! Joan of the Sword Hand! Our Lady Joan! _Hoch!_ And three
times _hoch_!"
The hurrahs ran round the oak-panelled hall. Jorian and Boris looked at
each other with surprise, but they were stout fellows, and took matters,
even when most serious, pretty much as they came.
"I thank you, gentlemen, on behalf of my lady, in whose name I command
here," said Werner, bowing ceremoniously to all around, while the others
settled themselves to listen. "Now, worthy soldiers of Plassenburg," he
went on, "be it known to you that if (to suppose a case which will not
happen) I were to tell our Lady Joan what you have confessed to us here
and boasted of--that you lied and double lied to her--I lay my life and
the lives of these good fellows that the pair of you would be aswing
from the corner gallery of the Lion's Tower in something under five
minutes."
"Aye, and a good deed it were, too!" chorussed the round table of the
guard hall. "Heaven send it, the jackanapes! To rail at our Duchess!"
Jorian rose to his feet. "Up, Boris!" he cried; "no Bor-Russian, no kern
of Hohenstein that ever lived, shall overcrow a captain of the armies of
Plassenburg and a soldier of the Princess Helene--Heaven bless her! Take
your ring in your hand, Boris, for we will go up straightway, you and I.
And we will tell the Lady Duchess Joan that, having no sweetheart of
legal standing, and no desire for any, we choused her into the belief
that we would bestow her rings upon our betrothed in the rose-gardens of
Plassenburg. Then will we see if indeed we shall be aswing in five
minutes. Ready, Boris?"
"Aye, thrice ready, Jorian!"
"About, then! Quick march!"
A great noise of clapping rose all round the hall as the two stout
soldiers set themselves to march up the staircase by which they had just
descended.
"Stand to the doors!" cried Werner, the chief captain; "do not let them
pass. Up and drink a deep cup to them, rather! To Captains Jorian and
Boris of Plassenburg, brave fellows both! Charge your tankards. The mead
of Wendishland shall not run dry. Fill them to the brim. A caraway seed
in each for health's sake. There! Now to the honour and long lives of
our guests. Jorian and Boris--_hoch_!"
"_Jorian and Boris--hoch!_"
The toast was drunk amid multitudinous shoutings and handshakings. The
two men had stopped, perforce, for the doors were in the hands of the
soldiers of the guard, and the pike points clustered thick in their
path. They turned now in the direction of the high table from which they
had risen.
"Deal you so with your guests who come on embassy?" said Jorian,
smiling. "First you threaten them with hanging, and then you would make
them drunk with mead as long in the head as the devil of Trier that
deceived the Archbishop-Elector and gat the holy coat for a
foot-warmer!"
"Sit down, gentlemen, and I also will sit. Now, hearken well," said
Werner; "these honest fellows of mine will bear me out that I lie not.
You have done bravely and spoken up like good men taken in a fault. But
we will not permit you to go to your deaths. For our Lady Joan--God
bless her!--would not take a false word from any--no, not if it were on
Twelfth Night or after a Christmas merry-making. She would not forgive
it from your old Longbeard upstairs, whose business it is--that is, if
she found it out. 'To the gallows!' she would say, and we--why then we
should sorrow for having to hasten the stretching of two good men. But
what would you, gentlemen? We are her servants and we should be obliged
to do her will. Keep your rings, lads, and keep also your wits about you
when the Duchess questions you again. Nay, when you return to
Plassenburg, be wise, seek out a Gretchen and a Katrin and bestow the
rings upon them--that is, if ever you mean again to stand within the
danger of Joan of the Sword Hand in this her castle of Kernsberg."
"Gretchens are none so scarce in Plassenburg," muttered Jorian. "I think
we can satisfy a pair of them--but at a cheaper price than a ring of
rubies set in gold!"
CHAPTER II
THE BAITING OF THE SPARHAWK
"Bring in the Danish Sparhawk, and we will bait him!" said Werner. "We
have shown our guests but a poor entertainment. Bring in the Sparhawk, I
say!"
At this there ensued unyoked merriment. Each stout lad, from one end of
the hall to the other, undid his belt as before a nobler course and
nudged his fellow.
"'Ware, I say, stand clear! Here comes the Wild Boar of the Ardennes,
the Wolf of Thuringia, the Bear from the Forests of Bor-Russia! Stand
clear--stand clear!" cried Werner von Orseln, laughing and pretending to
draw a dagger to provide for his own safety.
The inner door which led from the hall of the men-at-arms to the
dungeons of the castle was opened, and all looked towards it with an air
of great amusement and expectation.
"Now we shall have some rare sport," each man said to his neighbour, and
nodded.
"The baiting of the Sparhawk! The Sparhawk comes!"
Jorian and Boris looked with interest in the direction of the door
through which such a remarkable bird was to arrive. They could not
understand what all the pother could be about.
"What the devil----?" said Jorian.
And, not to be behindhand, "What the devil----?" echoed Boris. For
mostly these two ran neck and neck from drop of flag to winning-post.
Through the black oblong of the dungeon doorway there came a lad of
seventeen or eighteen, tall, slim, dark-browed, limber. He walked
between a pair of men-at-arms, who held his wrists firmly at either
side. His hands were chained together, and from between them dangled a
spiked ball that clanked heavily on the floor as he stumbled forward
rather than walked into the room. He had black hair that waved from his
forehead in a backward sweep, a nose of slightly Roman shape, which,
together with his bold eagle's eyes, had obtained him the name of the
Spar or Sparrow-hawk. And on his face, handsome enough though pale,
there was a look of haughty disdain and fierce indignation such as one
may see in the demeanour of a newly prisoned bird of prey, which hath
not yet had time to forget the blue empyrean spaces and the stoop with
half-closed wings upon the quarry trembling in the vale.
"Ha, Sparhawk!" cried Werner, "how goes it, Sparhawk? Any less bold and
peremptory than when last we met? Your servant, Count Maurice von Lynar!
We pray you dance for us the Danish dance of shuffle-board, Count
Maurice, if so your Excellency pleases!"
The lad looked up the table and down with haughty eyes that deigned no
answer.
Werner von Orseln turned to his guests and said, "This Sparhawk is a
little Dane we took on our last excursion to the north. It is only in
that direction we can lead the foray, since you have grown so
law-abiding and strong in Plassenburg and the Mark. His uncles and
kinsfolk were all killed in the defence of Castle Lynar, on the Northern
Haff. We know not which of these had also the claim of fatherhood upon
him. At all events, his grandad had a manor there, and came from the
Jutland sand-dunes to build a castle upon the Baltic shores. But he had
better have stayed at home, for he would not pay the Peace Geld to our
Henry. So the Lion roared, and we went to Castle Lynar and made an
end--save of this spitting Sparhawk, whom our master would not let us
kill, and whom now we keep with clipped wings for our sport."
The lad listened with erected head and haughty eyes to the tale, but
answered not a word.
"Now," cried Werner, with his cup in his hand and his brows bent upon
the youth, "dance for us as you used to do upon the Baltic, when the
maids came in fresh from their tiring and the newest kirtles were
donned. Dance, I say! Foot it for your life!"
The lad Maurice von Lynar stood with his bold eyes upon his tormentors.
"Curs of Bor-Russia," he said at last, in speech that trembled with
anger, "you may vex the soul of a Danish gentleman with your aspersions,
you may wound his body, but you will never be able to stand up to him in
battle. You will never be worthy to eat or drink with him, to take his
hand in comradeship, or to ride a tilt with him. Pigs of the sty you
are, man by man of you--Wends and boors, and no king's gentlemen."
"Bravo!" said Boris, under his breath, "that is none so dustily said for
a junker!"
"Silence with that tongue of yours!" muttered his mate. "Dost want to be
yawing out of that window presently, with the wind spinning you about
and about like a capon on a jack-spit? They are uncanny folk, these of
the woman's castle--not to trust to. One knows not what they may do, nor
where their jest may end."
"Hans Trenck, lift this springald's pretty wrist-bauble!" said Werner.
A laughing man-at-arms went up, his partisan still over his shoulder,
and laying his hand upon the chain which depended between the manacled
wrists of the boy Maurice, he strove to lift the spiked ball.
"What!" cried Werner, "canst thou, pap-backed babe, not lift that which
the noble Count Maurice of Lynar has perforce to carry about with him
all day long? Down with your weapon, man, and to it like an apothecary
compounding some blister for stale fly-blown rogues!"
At the word the man laid down his partisan and lifted the ball high
between his two hands.
"Now dance!" commanded Werner von Orseln, "dance the Danish milkmaid's
coranto, or I will bid him drop it on your toes. Dost want them jellied,
man?"
"Drop, and be damned in your low-born souls!" cried the lad fiercely.
"Untruss my hands and let me loose with a sword, and ten yards clear on
the floor, and, by Saint Magnus of the Isles, I will disembowel any
three of you!"
"You will not dance?" said Werner, nodding at him.
"I will see you fry in hell fire first!"
"Down with the ball, Hans Trenck!" cried Werner. "He that will not dance
at Castle Kernsberg must learn at least to jump."
The man-at-arms, still grinning, lifted the ball a little higher,
balancing it in one hand to give it more force. He prepared to plump it
heavily upon the undefended feet of young Maurice.
"'Ware toes, Sparhawk!" cried the soldiers in chorus, but at that
moment, suddenly kicking out as far as his chains allowed, the boy took
the stooping lout on the face, and incontinently widened the superficial
area of his mouth. He went over on his back amid the uproarious laughter
of his fellows.
"Ha! Hans Trenck, the Sparhawk hath spurred you, indeed! A brave
Sparhawk! Down went poor Hans Trenck like a barndoor fowl!"
The fellow rose, spluttering angrily.
"Hold his legs, some one," he said, "I'll mark his pretty feet for him.
He shall not kick so free another time."
A couple of his companions took hold of the boy on either side, so that
he could not move his limbs, and Hans again lifted high the ball.
"Shall we stand this? They call this sport!" said Boris; "shall I pink
the brutes?"
"Sit down and shut your eyes. Our Prince Hugo will harry this nest of
thieves anon. For the present we must bear their devilry if we want to
escape hanging!"
"Now then, for marrow and mashed trotters!" cried Hans, spitting the
blood from the split corners of his mouth.
"_Halt!_"
CHAPTER III
JOAN DRAWS FIRST BLOOD
The word of command came full and strong from
the open doorway of the hall.
Hans Trenck came instantly to the salute with the ball in his hand. He
had no difficulty in lifting it now. In fact, he did not seem able to
let it down. Every man in the hall except the two captains of
Plassenburg had risen to his feet and stood as if carved in marble.
For there in the doorway, her slim figure erect and exceedingly
commanding, and her beautiful eyes shining with indignation, stood the
Duchess Joan of Hohenstein.
"Joan of the Sword Hand!" said Jorian, enraptured. "Gott, what a wench!"
In stern silence she advanced into the hall, every man standing fixed at
attention.
"Good discipline!" said Boris.
"Shut your mouth!" responded Jorian.
"Keep your hand so, Hans Trenck," said their mistress; "give me your
sword, Werner! You shall see whether I am called Joan of the Sword Hand
for naught. You would torture prisoners, would you, after what I have
said? Hold up, I say, Hans Trenck!"
And so, no man saying her nay, the girl took the shining blade and, with
a preliminary swish through the air and a balancing shake to feel the
elastic return, she looked at the poor knave fixed before her in the
centre of the hall with his wrist strained to hold the prisoner's ball
aloft at the stretch of his arm. What wonder if it wavered like a
branch in an uncertain wind?
"Steady there!" said Joan.
And she drew back her arm for the stroke.
The young Dane, who, since her entrance, had looked at nothing save the
radiant beauty of the figure before him, now cried out, "For Heaven's
sake, lady, do not soil the skirts of your dress with his villain blood.
He but obeyed his orders. Let me be set free, and I will fight him or
any man in the castle. And if I am beaten, let them torture me till I am
carrion fit only to be thrown into the castle ditch."
The Duchess paused and leaned on the sword, holding it point to the
floor.
"By whose orders was this thing done?" she demanded.
The lad was silent. He disdained to tell tales even on his enemies. Was
he not a gentleman and a Dane?
"By mine, my lady!" said Werner von Orseln, a deep flush upon his manly
brow.
The girl looked severely at him. She seemed to waver. "Good, then!" she
said, "the Dane shall fight Werner for his life. Loose him and chafe his
wrists. Ho! there--bring a dozen swords from the armoury!"
The flush was now rising to the boy's cheek.
"I thank you, Duchess," he said. "I ask no more than this."
"Faith, the Sparhawk is not tamed yet," said Boris; "we shall see better
sport ere all be done!"
"Hold thy peace," growled Jorian, "and look."
* * * * *
"Out into the light!" cried the young Duchess Joan, pointing the way
with Werner's sword, which she still held in her hand. And going first
she went forth from the hall of the soldiery, down the broad stairs, and
soon through a low-arched door with a sculptured coat-of-arms over it,
out into the quadrangle of the courtyard.
"And now we will see this prisoner of ours, this cock of the Danish
marches, make good his words. That, surely, is better sport than to
drop caltrops upon the toes of manacled men."
Werner followed unwillingly and with deep flush of shame upon his brow.
"My lady," he said, going up to his mistress, "I do not need to prove my
courage after I have served Kernsberg and Hohenstein for thirty-eight
years--or well-nigh twice the years you have lived--fought for you and
your father and shed my blood in a score of pitched battles, to say
nothing of forays. Of course I will fight, but surely this young
cockerel might be satisfied to have his comb cut by younger hands."
"Was yours the order concerning the dropping of the ball?" asked the
Duchess Joan.
The grey-headed soldier nodded grimly.
"I gave the order," he said briefly.
"Then by St. Ursula and her boneyard, you must stand to it!" cried this
fiery young woman. "Else will I drub you with the flat of your own
sword!"
Werner bowed with a slightly ironic smile on his grizzled face.
"As your ladyship wills," he said; "I do not give you half obedience. If
you say that I am to get down on my knees and play cat's cradle with the
Kernsberg bairns, I will do it!"
Joan of the Sword here looked calmly at him with a certain austerity in
her glance.
"Why, of course you would!" she said simply.
Meanwhile the lad had been freed from his bonds and stood with a sword
in his hand suppling himself for the work before him with quick little
guards and feints and attacks. There was a proud look in his eyes, and
as his glance left the Duchess and roved round the circle of his foes,
it flashed full, bold, and defiant.
Werner turned to a palish lean Bohemian who stood a little apart.
"Peter Balta," he said, "will you be my second? Agreed! And who will
care for my honourable opponent?"
"Do not trouble yourself--that will arrange itself!" said Joan to her
chief captain.
With that she flashed lightfoot into one of the low doors which led into
the flanking turrets of the quadrangle, and in a tierce of seconds she
was out again, in a forester's dress of green doublet and broad pleated
kirtle that came to her knee.
"I myself," she said, challenging them with her eyes, "will be this
young man's second, in this place where he has so many enemies and no
friends."
As the forester in green and the prisoner stood up together, the guards
murmured in astonishment at the likeness between them.
"Had this Dane and our Joan been brother and sister, they could not have
favoured each other more," they said.
A deep blush rose to the youth's swarthy face.
"I am not worthy," he said, and kept his eyes upon the lithe figure of
the girl in its array of well-fitting velvet. "I cannot thank you!" he
said again.
"Tut," she answered, "worthy--unworthy--thank--unthank--what avail these
upon the mountains of Kernsberg and in the Castle of Joan of the Sword
Hand? A good heart, a merry fight, a quick death! These are more to the
purpose than many thanks and compliments. Peter Balta, are you seconding
Werner? Come hither. Let us try the swords, you and I. Will not these
two serve? Guard! Well smitten! There, enough. What, you are touched on
the sword arm? Faith, man, for the moment I forgot that it was not you
and I who were to drum. This tickling of steel goes to my head like wine
and I am bound to forget. I am sorry--but, after all, a day or two in a
sling will put your arm to rights again, Peter. These are good swords.
Now then, Maurice von Lynar--Werner. At the salute! Ready! Fall to!"
The burly figure of the Captain Werner von Orseln and the slim arrowy
swiftness of Maurice the Dane were opposed in the clear shadow of the
quadrangle, where neither had any advantage of light, and the swords of
their seconds kept them at proper distance according to the fighting
rules of the time.
"I give the Sparhawk five minutes," said Boris to Jorian, after the
first parry. It was little more than formal and gave no token of what
was to follow. Yet for full twenty minutes Werner von Orseln, the oldest
sworder of all the north, from the marshes of Wilna to the hills of
Silesia, could do nothing but stand on the defensive, so fierce and
incessant were the attacks of the young Dane.
But Werner did not give back. He stood his ground, warily, steadfastly,
with a half smile on his face, a wall of quick steel in front of him,
and the point of his adversary's blade ever missing him an inch at this
side, and coming an inch short upon that other. The Dane kept as
steadily to the attack, and made his points as much by his remarkable
nimbleness upon his feet as by the lightning rapidity of his sword-play.
"The Kernsberger is playing with him!" said Boris, under his breath.
Jorian nodded. He had no breath to waste.
"But he is not going to kill him. He has not the Death in his eye!"
Boris spoke with judgment, for so it proved. Werner lifted an eyebrow
for the fraction of a second towards his mistress. And then at the end
of the next rally his sword just touched his young adversary on the
shoulder and the blood answered the thrust, staining the white
underdoublet of the Dane.
Then Werner threw down his sword and held out his hand.
"A well-fought rally," he said; "let us be friends. We need lads of such
metal to ride the forays from the hills of Kernsberg. I am sorry I
baited you, Sparhawk!"
"A good fight clears all scores!" replied the youth, smiling in his
turn.
"Bring a bandage for his shoulder, Peter Balta!" cried Joan. "Mine was
the cleaner stroke which went so near your great muscle, but Werner's is
somewhat the deeper. You can keep each other company at the dice-box
these next days. And, as I warrant neither of you has a Lübeck guilder
to bless yourself with, you can e'en play for love till you wear out the
pips with throwing."
"Then I am not to go back to the dungeon?" said the lad, one reason of
whose wounding had been that he also lifted his eyes for a moment to
those of his second.
"To prison--no," said Joan; "you are one of us now. We have blooded you.
Do you take service with me?"
"I have no choice--your father left me none!" the lad replied, quickly
altering his phrase. "Castle Lynar is no more. My grandfather, my
father, and my uncles are all dead, and there is small service in going
back to Denmark, where there are more than enough of hungry gentlemen
with no wealth but their swords and no living but their gentility. If
you will let me serve in the ranks, Duchess Joan, I shall be well
content!"
"I also," said Joan heartily. "We are all free in Kernsberg, even if we
are not all equal. We will try you in the ranks first. Go to the men's
quarters. George the Hussite, I deliver him to you. See that he does not
get into any more quarrels till his arm is better, and curb my rascals'
tongues as far as you can. Remember who meddles with the principal must
reckon with the second."
CHAPTER IV
THE COZENING OF THE AMBASSADOR
The next moment Joan had disappeared, and when she was seen again she
had assumed the skirt she had previously worn over her dress of
forester, and was again the sedate lady of the castle, ready to lead the
dance, grace the banquet, or entertain the High State's Councillor of
Plassenburg, Leopold von Dessauer.
But when she went upstairs she met on the middle flight a grey-bearded
man with a skull cap of black velvet upon his head. His dress also was
of black, of a distinguishing plain richness and dignity.
"Whither away, Ambassador?" she cried gaily at the sight of him.
"To see to your principal's wound and that of the other whom your sword
countered in the trial bout!"
"What? You saw?" said the Duchess, with a quick flush.
"I am indeed privileged not to be blind," said Dessauer; "and never did
I see a sight that contented me more."
"And you stood at the window saying in your heart (nay, do not deny it)
'unwomanly--bold--not like my lady the Princess of Plassenburg. She
would not thus ruffle in the courtyard with the men-at-arms!'"
"I said no such thing," said the High Councillor. "I am an old man and
have seen many fair women, many sweet princesses, each perfect to their
lovers, some of them even perfect to their lords. But I have never
before seen a Duchess Joan of Hohenstein."
"Ambassador," cried the girl, "if you speak thus and with that flash of
the eye, I shall have to bethink me whether you come not as an
ambassador for your own cause."
"I would that I were forty years younger and a prince in my own right,
instead of a penniless old baron. Why, then, I would not come on any
man's errand--no, nor take a refusal even from your fair lips!"
"I declare," said the Duchess Joan impetuously, "you should have no
refusal from me. You are the only man I have ever met who can speak of
love and yet be tolerable. It is a pity that my father left me the evil
heritage that I must wed the Prince of Courtland or lose my dominions!"
At the sound of the name of her predestined husband a sudden flashing
thought seemed to wake in the girl's breast.
"My lord," she said, "is it true that you go to Courtland after leaving
our poor eagle's nest up here on the cliffs of the Kernsberg?"
Von Dessauer bowed, smiling at her. He was not too old to love beauty
and frankness in women. "It is true that I have a mission from my Prince
and Princess to the Prince of Courtland and Wilna. But----"
Joan of the Sword clasped her hands and drew a long breath.
"I would not ask it of any man in the world but yourself," she said,
"but will you let me go with you?"
"My dear lady," said Dessauer, with swift deprecation, "to go with the
ambassador of another power to the court and palace of the man you are
to marry--that were a tale indeed, salt enough even for the Princes of
Ritterdom. As it is----"
The Duchess looked across at Dessauer with great haughtiness. "As it is,
they talk more than enough about me already," she said. "Well--I know,
and care not. I am no puling maid that waits till she is authorised by
a conclave of the empire before she dares wipe her nose when she hath a
cold in the head. Joan of the Sword Hand cares not what any prince may
say--from yours of Plassenburg, him of the Red Axe, to the fat Margraf
George."
"Oh, our Prince, he says naught, but does much," said Dessauer. "He hath
been a rough blade in his time, but Karl the Miller's son mellowed him,
and by now his own Princess hath fairly civilised him."
"Well," said Joan of the Sword, with determination, "then it is settled.
I am coming with you to Courtland."
A shade of anxiety passed over Dessauer's countenance. "My lady," he
answered, "you let me use many freedoms of speech with you. It is the
privilege of age and frailty. But let me tell you that the thing is
plainly foolish. Hardly under the escort of the Empress herself would it
be possible for you to visit, without scandal, the court of the Prince
of Courtland and Wilna. But in the train of an envoy of Plassenburg,
even if that ambassador be poor old Leopold von Dessauer, the thing, I
must tell you, is frankly impossible."
"Well, I am coming, at any rate!" said Joan, as usual rejecting argument
and falling back upon assertion. "Make your count with that, friend of
mine, whether you are shocked or no. It is the penalty a respectable
diplomatist has to pay for cultivating the friendship of lone females
like Joan of Hohenstein."
Von Dessauer held up his hands in horror that was more than half
affected.
"My girl," he said, "I might be your grandfather, it is true, but do not
remind me of it too often. But if I were your great-great-grandfather
the thing you propose is still impossible. Think of what the Margraf
George and his chattering train would say!"
"Think of what every fathead princeling and beer-swilling ritter from
here to Basel would say!" cried Joan, with her pretty nose in the air.
"Let them say! They will not say anything that I care the snap of my
finger for. And in their hearts they will envy you the experience--shall
we say the privilege?"
"Nay, I thought not of myself, my lady," said Dessauer, "for an old man,
a mere anatomy of bones and parchment, I take strange pleasure in your
society--more than I ought, I tell you frankly. You are to me more than
a daughter, though I am but a poor baron of Plassenburg and the faithful
servant of the Princess Helene. It is for your own sake that I say you
cannot come to Wilna with me. Shall the future Princess of Courtland and
Wilna ride in the train of an ambassador of Plassenburg to the palace in
which she is soon to reign as queen?"
"I said not that I would go as the Duchess," Joan replied, speaking low.
"You say that you saw me at the fight in the courtyard out there. If you
will not have the Duchess Joan von Hohenstein, what say you to the
Sparhawk's second, Johann the Squire?"
Dessauer started.
"You dare not," he said; "why, there is not a lady in the German land,
from Bohemia to the Baltic, that dares do as much."
"Ladies," flashed Joan--"I am sick for ever of hearing that a lady must
not do this or that, go here or there, because of her so fragile
reputation. She may do needlework or embroider altar-cloths, but she
must not shoot with a pistolet or play with a sword. Well, I am a lady;
let him counter it who durst. And I cannot broider altar-cloths and I
will not try--but I can shoot with any man at the flying mark. She must
have a care for her honour, which (poor, feckless wretch!) will be
smirched if she speaks to any as a man speaks to his fellows. Faith! For
me I would rather die than have such an egg-shell reputation. I can care
for mine own. I need none to take up my quarrel. If any have a word to
say upon the repute of Joan of the Sword Hand--why, let him say it at
the point of her rapier."
The girl stood up, tall and straight, her head thrown back as it were
at the world, with an exact and striking counterpart of the defiance of
the young Dane in the presence of his enemies an hour before. Dessauer
stood wavering. With quick tact she altered her tone, and with a soft
accent and in a melting voice she added, "Ah, let me come. I will make
such a creditable squire all in a suit of blue and silver, with just a
touch of nutty juice upon my face that my old nurse knows the secret
of."
Still Dessauer stood silent, weighing difficulties and chances.
"I tell you what," she cried, pursuing her advantage, "I will see the
man I am to marry as men see him, without trappings and furbelows. And
if you will not take me, by my faith! I will send Werner there, whom you
saw fight the Dane, as my own envoy, and go with him as a page. On the
honour of Henry the Lion, my father, I will do it!"
Von Dessauer capitulated. "A wilful woman"--he smiled--"a wilful, wilful
woman. Well, I am not responsible for aught of this, save for my own
weakness in permitting it. It is a madcap freak, and no good will come
of it."
"But you will like it!" she said. "Oh, yes, you will like it very much.
For, you see, you are fond of madcaps."
CHAPTER V
JOHANN THE SECRETARY
Ten miles outside the boundary of the little hill state of Kernsberg,
the embassage of Plassenburg was met by another cavalcade bearing
additional instructions from the Princess Helene. The leader was a
slender youth of middle height, the accuracy of whose form gave evidence
of much agility. He was dark-skinned, of an olive complexion, and with
closely cropped black hair which curled crisply about his small head.
His eyes were dark and fine, looking straightly and boldly out upon all
comers.
With him, as chiefs of his escort, were those two silent men Jorian and
Boris, who had, as it was reported, ridden to Plassenburg for
instructions. None of those who followed Dessauer had ever before set
eyes upon this youth, who came with fresh despatches, and, in
consequence, great was the consternation and many the surmises as to who
he might be who stood so high in favour with the Prince and Princess.
But his very first words made the matter clear.
"Your Excellency," he said to the Ambassador, "I bring you the most
recent instructions from their Highnesses Hugo and Helene of
Plassenburg. They sojourn for the time being in the city of Thorn, where
they build a new palace for themselves. I was brought from Hamburg to be
one of the master-builders. I have skill in plans, and I bring you these
for your approval and in order to go over the rates of cost with you,
as Treasurer of Plassenburg and the Wolfsmark."
Dessauer took, with every token of deference, the sheaf of papers so
carefully enwrapt and sealed with the seal of Plassenburg.
"I thank you for your diligence, good master architect," he said; "I
shall peruse these at my leisure, and, I doubt not, call upon you
frequently for explanations."
The young man rode on at his side, modestly waiting to be questioned.
"What is your name, sir?" asked Dessauer, so that all the escort might
hear.
"I am called Johann Pyrmont," said the youth promptly, and with engaging
frankness; "my father is a Hamburg merchant, trading to the Spanish
ports for oil and wine, but I follow him not. I had ever a turn for
drawing and the art of design!"
"Also for having your own way, as is common with the young," said the
Ambassador, smiling shrewdly. "So, against your father's will, you
apprenticed yourself to an architect?"
The young man bowed.
"Nay, sir," he said, "but my good father could deny me nothing on which
I had set my mind."
"Not he," muttered Dessauer under his breath; "no, nor any one else
either!"
So, bridle by jingling bridle, they rode on over the interminable plain
till Kernsberg, with its noble crown of towers, became first grey and
afterwards pale blue in the utmost distance. Then, like a tall ship at
sea, it sank altogether out of sight. And still they rode on through the
marshy hollows, round innumerable little wildfowl-haunted lakelets, and
so over the sandy, rolling dunes to the city of Courtland, where was
abiding the Prince of that rich and noble principality.
It had been a favourite scheme of dead princes of Courtland to unite to
their fat acres and populous mercantile cities the hardy mountaineers
and pastoral uplands of Kernsberg. But though Wilna and Courtland were
infinitely more populous, the Eagle's Nest was ill to pull down, and
hitherto the best laid plans for their union had invariably fallen
through. But there had come to Joan's father, Henry called the Lion, and
the late Prince Michael of Courtland a better thought. One had a
daughter, the other a son. Neither was burdened with any law of
succession, Salic or other. They held their domains by the free tenure
of the sword. They could leave their powers to whomsoever they would,
not even the Emperor having the right to say, "What doest thou?" So with
that frank carelessness of the private feelings of the individual which
has ever distinguished great politicians, they decreed that, as a
condition of succession, their male and female heirs should marry each
other.
This bond of Heritage-brotherhood, as it was called, had received the
sanction of the Emperor in full Diet, and now it wanted only that the
Duchess Joan of Hohenstein should be of age, in order that the provinces
might at last be united and the long wars of highland and lowland make
an end.
The scheme had taken everything into consideration except the private
character of the persons principally affected, Prince Louis of Courtland
and the young Duchess Joan.
As they came nearer to the ancient city of Courtland, it spread like a
metropolis before the eyes of the embassy of the Prince and Princess of
Plassenburg. The city stretched from the rock whereon the
fortress-palace was built, along a windy, irregular ridge. Innumerable
crow-stepped gables were set at right angles to the street. The towers
of the minster rose against the sky at the lower end, and far to the
southward the palace of the Cardinal Archbishop cast peaked shadows from
its many towers, walled and cinctured like a city within a city.
It was a far-seen town this of Courtland, populous, prosperous,
defenced. Its clear and broad river was navigable for any craft of the
time, and already it threatened to equal if not to outstrip in
importance the free cities of the Hanseatic League--so far, at least,
as the trade of the Baltic was concerned.
Courtland had long been considered too strong to be attacked, save from
the Polish border, while the adhesion of Kernsberg, and the drafting of
the Duchess's hardy fighting mountaineers into the lowland armies would
render the princedom safe for many generations.
Pity it was that plans so far-reaching and purposes so politic should be
dependent upon the whims of a girl!
But then it is just such whims that make the world interesting.
* * * * *
It was the last day of the famous tournament of the Black Eagle in the
princely city of Courtland. Prince Louis had sent out an escort to bring
in the travellers and conduct them with honour to the seats reserved for
them. The Ambassador and High Councillor of Plassenburg must be received
with all observance. He had, he gave notice, brought a secretary with
him. For so the young architect was now styled, in order to give him an
official position in the mission.
The Prince had also sent a request that, as this was the day upon which
all combatants wore plain armour and jousted unknown, for that time
being the Ambassador should accept other escort and excuse him coming to
receive him in person. They would meet at dinner on the morrow, in the
great hall of the palace.
The city was arrayed in flaming banners, some streaming high from the
lofty towers of the cathedral, while others (in streets into which the
wind came only in puffs) more languidly and luxuriously unfolded
themselves, as the Black Eagle on its ground of white everywhere took
the air. All over the city a galaxy of lighter silk and bunting,
pennons, bannerettes, parti-coloured streamers of the national colours
danced becking and bowing from window and roof-tree.
Yet there was a curious silence too in the streets, as they rode towards
the lists of the Black Eagle, and when at last they came within hearing
of the hum of the thousands gathered there, they understood why the city
had seemed so unwontedly deserted. The Courtlanders surrounded the great
oval space of the lists in clustered myriads, and their eyes were bent
inwards. It was the crisis of the great _mêlée_. Scarcely an eye in all
that assembly was turned towards the strangers, who passed quite
unobserved to their reserved places in the Prince's empty box. Only his
sister Margaret, throned on high as Queen of Beauty, looked down upon
them with interest, seeing that they were men who came, and that one at
least was young.
It was a gay and changeful scene. In the brilliant daylight of the lists
a hundred knights charged and recharged. Those who had been unhorsed
drew their swords and attacked with fury others of the enemy in like
case. The air resounded with the clashing of steel on steel.
Fifty knights with white plumes on their helmets had charged fifty
wearing black, and the combat still raged. The shouts of the people rang
in the ears of the ambassador of Plassenburg and his secretary, as they
seated themselves and looked down upon the tide of combat over the
flower-draped balustrades of their box.
"The blacks have it!" said Dessauer after regarding the _mêlée_ with
interest. "We have come in time to see the end of the fray. Would that
we had also seen the shock!"
And indeed the Blacks seemed to have carried all before them. They were
mostly bigger and stronger built men, knights of the landward provinces,
and their horses, great solid-boned Saxon chargers, had by sheer weight
borne their way through the lighter ranks of the Baltic knights on the
white horses.
Not more than half a dozen of these were now in saddle, and all over the
field were to be seen black knights receiving the submission of knights
whose broken spears and tarnished plumes showed that they had succumbed
in the charge to superior weight of metal. For, so soon as a knight
yielded, his steed became the property of his victorious foe, and he
himself was either carried or limped as best he could to the pavilion of
his party, there to remove his armour and send it also to the victor--to
whom, in literal fact, belonged the spoils.
Of the half-dozen white knights who still kept up the struggle, one
shone pre-eminent for dashing valour. His charger surged hither and
thither through the crowd, his spear was victorious and unbroken, and
the boldest opponent thought it politic to turn aside out of his path.
Set upon by more than a score of riders, he still managed to evade them,
and even when all his side had submitted and he alone remained--at the
end of the lists to which he had been driven, he made him ready for a
final charge into the scarce broken array of his foes, of whom more than
twenty remained still on horseback in the field.
But though his spear struck true in the middle of his immediate
antagonist's shield and his opponent went down, it availed the brave
white knight nothing. For at the same moment half a score of lances
struck him on the shield, on the breastplate, on the vizor bars of his
helmet, and he fell heavily to the earth. Nevertheless, scarcely had he
touched the ground when he was again on his feet. Sword in hand, he
stood for a moment unscathed and undaunted, while his foes, momentarily
disordered by the energy of the charge, reined in their steeds ere they
could return to the attack.
"Oh, well ridden!" "Greatly done!" "A most noble knight!" These were the
exclamations which came from all parts of the crowd which surged about
the barriers on this great day.
"I would that I were down beside him with a sword in my hand also!" said
the young architect, Master Johann Pyrmont, secretary of the embassage
of Plassenburg.
"'Tis well you are where you are, madcap, sitting by an old man's side,
instead of fighting by that of a young one," growled Dessauer. "Else
then, indeed, the bent would be on fire."
But at this moment the Princess Margaret, sister of the reigning Prince,
rose in her place and threw down the truncheon, which in such cases
stops the combat.
"The black knights have won," so she gave her verdict, "but there is no
need to humiliate or injure a knight who has fought so well against so
many. Let the white knight come hither--though he be of the losing side.
His is the reward of highest honour. Give him a steed, that he may come
and receive the meed of bravest in the tourney!"
The knights of the black were manifestly a little disappointed that
after their victory one of their opponents should be selected for
honour. But there was no appeal from the decision of the Queen of Love
and Beauty. For that day she reigned alone, without council or diet
imperial.
The black riders had therefore to be contented with their general
victory, which, indeed, was indisputable enough.
The white knight came near and said something in a low voice, unheard by
the general crowd, to the Princess.
"I insist," she said aloud; "you must unhelm, that all may see the face
of him who has won the prize."
Whereat the knight bowed and undid his helmet. A closely-cropped
fair-haired head was revealed, the features clearly chiselled and yet of
a grave and massive beauty, the head of a marble emperor.
"My brother--you!" cried Margaret of Courtland in astonishment.
The voice of the Princess had also something of disappointment in it.
Clearly she had wished for some other to receive the honour, and the
event did not please her. But it was otherwise with the populace.
"The young Prince! The young Prince!" cried the people, surging
impetuously about the barriers. "Glory to the noble house of Courtland
and to the brave Prince."
The Ambassador looked curiously at his secretary. That youth was
standing with eyes brilliant as those of a man in fever. His face had
paled even under its dusky tan. His lips quivered. He straightened
himself up as brave and generous men do when they see a deed of bravery
done by another, or like a woman who sees the man she loves publicly
honoured.
"The Prince!" said Johann Pyrmont, in a voice hoarse and broken; "it is
the Prince himself."
And on his high seat the State's Councillor, Leopold von Dessauer,
smiled well pleased.
"This turns out better than I had expected," he muttered. "God Himself
favours the drunkard and the madcap. Only wise men suffer for their
sins--aye, and often for those of other people as well."
CHAPTER VI
AN AMBASSADOR'S AMBASSADOR
After the tourney of the Black Eagle, Leopold von Dessauer had gone to
bed early, feeling younger and lighter than he had done for years. Part
of his scheme for these northern provinces of his fatherland consisted
in gradual substitution of a few strong states for many weak ones. For
this reason he smiled when he saw the eyes of his secretary shining like
stars.
It would yet more have rejoiced him had he known how uneasy lay that
handsome head on its pillow. Aye, even in pain it would have pleasured
him. For Von Dessauer was lying awake and thinking of the strange
chances which help or mar the lives of men and women, when a sudden
sense of shock, a numbness spreading upwards through his limbs, the
rising of rheum to his eyes, and a humming in his ears, announced the
approach of one of those attacks to which he had been subject ever since
he had been wounded in a duel some years before--a duel in which his
present Prince and his late master, Karl the Miller's Son, had both been
engaged.
The Ambassador called for Jorian in a feeble voice. That light-sleeping
soldier immediately answered him. He had stretched himself out, wrapped
in a blanket for all covering, on the floor of the antechamber in
Dessauer's lodging. In a moment, therefore, he presented himself at the
door completely dressed. A shake and a half-checked yawn completed his
inexpensive toilet, for Jorian prided himself on not being what he
called "a pretty-pretty captainet."
"Your Excellency needs me?" he said, standing at the salute as if it had
been the morning guard changing at the palace gate.
"Give me my case of medicine," said the old man; "that in the bag of
rough Silesian leather. So! I feel my old attack coming upon me. It will
be three days before I can stir. Yet must these papers be put in the
hands of the Prince early this morning. Ah, there is my little Johann; I
was thinking about her--him, I mean. Well, he shall have his chance.
This foul easterly wind may yet blow us all good!"
He made a wry face as a twinge of pain caught him. It passed and he
resumed.
"Go, Jorian," he said, "tap light upon his chamber door. If he chance to
be in the deep sleep of youth and health--not yet distempered by thought
and love, by old age and the eating of many suppers--rap louder, for I
must see him forthwith. There is much to set in order ere at nine
o'clock he must adjourn to the summer palace to meet the Prince."
So in a trice Jorian was gone and at the door of the
architect-secretary, he of the brown skin and Greekish profile.
Johann Pyrmont was, it appeared, neither in bed nor yet asleep. Instead,
he had been standing at the window watching the brighter stars swim up
one by one out of the east. The thoughts of the young man were happy
thoughts. At last he was in the capital city of the Princes of
Courtland. His many days' journey had not been in vain. Almost in the
first moment he had seen the noble youthful Prince and his sister, and
he was prepared to like them both. Life held more than the preparation
of plans and the ordering of bricklayers at their tasks. There was in
it, strangely enough, a young man with closely cropped head whom Johann
had seen storm through the ranks of the fighting-men that day, and
afterwards receive the guerdon of the bravest.
Though what difference these things made to an architect of Hamburg town
it was difficult (on the face of things) to perceive. Nevertheless, he
stood and watched the east. It was five of a clear autumnal morning, and
a light chill breath blew from the point at which the sun would rise.
A pale moon in her last quarter was tossed high among the stars, as if
upborne upon the ebbing tide of night. Translucent greyness filled the
wide plain of Courtland, and in the scattered farms all about the
lights, which signified early horse-tending and the milking of kine,
were already beginning to outrival the waning stars. Orion, with his
guardian four set wide about him, tingled against the face of the east,
and the electric lamp of Sirius burnt blue above the horizon. The
lightness and the hope of breathing morn, the scent of fields half
reaped, the cool salt wind from off the sea, filled the channels of the
youth's life. It was good to be alive, thought Johann Pyrmont, architect
of Hamburg, or otherwise.
Jorian rapped low, with more reverence than is common from captains to
secretaries of legations. The young man was leaning out of the window
and did not hear. The ex-man-at-arms rapped louder. At the sound Johann
Pyrmont clapped his hand to the hip where his sword should have been.
"Who is there?" he asked, turning about with keen alertness, and in a
voice which seemed at once sweeter and more commanding than even the
most imperious master-builder would naturally use to his underlings.
"I--Jorian! His Excellency is taken suddenly ill and bade me come for
you."
Immediately the secretary opened the door, and in a few seconds stood at
the old man's bedside.
Here they talked low to each other, the young man with his hand laid
tenderly on the forehead of his elder. Only their last words concern us
at present.
"This will serve to begin my business and to finish yours. Thereafter
the sooner you return to Kernsberg the better. Remember the moon cannot
long be lost out of the sky without causing remark."
The young man received the Ambassador's papers and went out. Dessauer
took a composing draught and lay back with a sigh.
"It is humbling," he said to Jorian, "that to compose young wits you
must do it through the heart, but in the case of the old through the
stomach."
"'Tis a strange draught _he_ hath gotten," said the soldier, indicating
the door by which the secretary had gone forth. "If I be not mistaken,
much water shall flow under bridge ere his sickness be cured."
As soon as he had reached his own chamber Johann laid the papers upon
the table without glancing at them. He went again to the window and
looked across the city. During his brief absence the stars had thinned
out. Even the moon was now no brighter than so much grey ash. But the
east had grown red and burned a glorious arch of cool brightness, with
all its cloud edges teased loosely into fretted wisps and flakes of
changeful fire. The wind began to blow more largely and statedly before
the coming of the sun. Johann drew a long breath and opened wide both
halves of the casement.
"To-day I shall see the Prince!" he said.
It was exactly nine of the clock when he set out for the palace. He was
attired in the plain black dress of a secretary, with only the narrowest
corded edge and collar of rough-scrolled gold. The slimness of his waist
was filled in so well that he looked no more than a well-grown,
clean-limbed stripling of twenty. A plain sword in a scabbard of black
leather was belted to his side, and he carried his papers in his hand
sealed with seals and wrapped carefully about with silken ties. Yet, for
all this simplicity, the eyes of Johann Pyrmont were so full of light,
and his beauty of face so surprising, that all turned to look after him
as he went by with a free carriage and a swing to his gait.
Even the market girls ran together to gaze after the young stranger.
Maids of higher degree called sharply to each other and crowded the
balconies to look down upon him. But through the busy morning tumult of
the streets Johann Pyrmont walked serene and unconscious. Was not he
going to the summer palace to see the Prince?
At the great door of the outer pavilion he intimated his desire to the
officer in charge of the guard.
"Which Prince?" said the officer curtly.
"Why," answered the secretary, with a glad heart, "there is but one--he
who won the prize yesterday at the tilting!"
"God's truth!--And you say true!" ejaculated the guardsman, starting.
"But who are you who dares blurt out on the steps of the palace of
Courtland that which ordinary men--aye, even good soldiers--durst
scarcely think in their own hearts?"
"I am secretary of the noble Ambassador of Plassenburg, and I come to
see the Prince!"
"You are a limber slip to be so outspoken," said the man; "but remember
that you could be right easily broken on the wheel. So have a care of
those slender limbs of yours. Keep them for the maids of your
Plassenburg!"
And with the freedom of a soldier he put his hand about the neck of
Johann Pyrmont, laying it upon his far shoulder with the easy
familiarity of an elder, who has it in his power to do a kindness to a
younger. Instinctively Johann slipped aside his shoulder, and the
officer's hand after hanging a moment suspended in the air, fell to his
side. The Courtlander laughed aloud.
"What!" he cried, "is my young cock of Plassenburg so mightily
particular that he cannot have an honest soldier's hand upon his
shoulder?"
"I am not accustomed," said Johann Pyrmont, with dignity, "to have men's
hands upon my shoulder. It is not our Plassenburg custom!"
The soldier laughed a huge earth-shaking laugh of merriment.
"Faith!" he cried, "you are early begun, my lad, that men's hands are
so debarred. 'Not our custom!' says he. Why, I warrant, by the fashion
of your countenance, that the hands of ladies are not so unwelcome. Ha!
you blush! Here, Paul Strelitz, come hither and see a young gallant that
blushes at a word, and owns that he is more at home with ladies than
with rough soldiers."
A great bearded Bor-Russian came out of the guard-room, stretching
himself and yawning like one whose night has been irregular.
"What's ado?--what is't, that you fret a man in his beauty-sleep?" he
said. "Oh, this young gentleman! Yes, I saw him yesterday, and the
Princess Margaret saw him yesterday, too. Does he go to visit her so
early this morning? He loses no time, i' faith! But he had better keep
out of the way of the Wasp, if the Princess gives him many of those
glances of hers, half over her shoulder--you know her way, Otto."
At this the first officer reiterated his jest about his hand on Johann's
shoulder, being of that mighty faction which cannot originate the
smallest joke without immediately wearing it to the bone.
The secretary began to be angry. His temper was not long at the longest.
He had not thought of having to submit to this when he became a
secretary.
"I am quite willing, sir captain," he said, with haughty reserve, "that
your hand should be--where it ought to be--on your sword handle. For in
that case my hand will also be on mine, and very much at your service.
But in my country such liberties are not taken between strangers!"
"What?" cried Otto the guardsman, "do men not embrace one another when
they meet, and kiss each other on either cheek at parting? How then, so
mighty particular about hands on shoulders? Answer me that, my young
secretary."
"For me," said Johann, instantly losing his head in the hotness of his
indignation, "I would have you know that I only kiss ladies, or permit
them to kiss me!"
The Courtlander and the Bor-Russian roared unanimously.
"Is he not precious beyond words, this youngling, eh, Paul Strelitz?"
cried the first. "I would we had him at our table of mess. What would
our commander say to that? How he would gobble and glower? 'As for me, I
only kiss ladies!' Can you imagine it, Paul?"
But just then there came a clatter of horse's hoofs across the wide
spaces of the palace front, into which the bright forenoon sun was now
beating, and a lady of tall figure and a head all a-ripple with sunny,
golden curls dashed up at a canter, the stones spraying forward and
outward as she reined her horse sharply with her hands low.
"The Princess Margaret!" said the first officer. "Stand to it, Paul. Be
a man, secretary, and hold your tongue."
The two officers saluted stiffly, and the lady looked about for some one
to help her to descend. She observed Johann standing, still haughtily
indignant, by the gate.
"Come hither!" she said, beckoning with her finger.
"Give me your hand!" she commanded.
The secretary gave it awkwardly, and the Princess plumped rather sharply
to the ground.
"What! Do they not teach you how to help ladies to alight in
Plassenburg?" queried the Princess. "You accompany the new ambassador,
do you not?"
"You are the first I ever helped in my life," said Johann simply.
"Mostly----"
"What! I am the first? You jest. It is not possible. There are many
ladies in Plassenburg, and I doubt not they have noted and distinguished
a handsome youth like you."
The secretary shook his head.
"Not so," he said, smiling; "I have never been so remarked by any lady
in Plassenburg in my life."
The Courtlander, standing stiff at the salute, turned his head the
least fraction of an inch towards Paul Strelitz the Bor-Russian.
"He sticks to it. Lord! I wish that I could lie like that! I would make
my fortune in a trice," he muttered. "'As for me, I only kiss ladies!'
Did you hear him, Paul?"
"I hear him. He lies like an archbishop--a divine liar," muttered the
Bor-Russian under his breath.
"Well, at any rate," said the Princess, never taking her eyes off the
young man's face, "you will be good enough to escort me to the Prince's
room."
"I am going there myself," said the secretary curtly.
"Certainly they do not teach you to say pretty things to ladies,"
answered the Princess. "I know many that could have bettered that speech
without stressing themselves. Yet, after all, I know not but I like your
blunt way best!" she added, after a pause, again smiling upon him.
As she took the young man's arm, a cavalier suddenly dashed up on a
smoking horse, which had evidently been ridden to his limit. He was of
middle size, of a figure exceedingly elegant, and dressed in the highest
fashion. He wore a suit of black velvet with yellow points and narrow
braidings also of yellow, a broad golden sash girt his waist, his face
was handsome, and his mustachios long, fierce, and curling. His eye
glittered like that of a snake, with a steady chill sheen, unpleasant to
linger upon. He swung from his horse, casting the reins to the nearest
soldier, who happened to be our Courtland officer Otto, and sprang up
the steps after the Princess and her young escort.
"Princess," he said hastily, "Princess Margaret, I beg your pardon most
humbly that I have been so unfortunate as to be late in my attendance
upon you. The Prince sent for me at the critical moment, and I was bound
to obey. May I now have the honour of conducting you to the summer
parlour?"
The Princess turned carelessly, or rather, to tell it exactly, she
turned her head a little back over her shoulder with a beautiful gesture
peculiar to herself.
"I thank you," she said coldly, "I have already requested this gentleman
to escort me. I shall not need you, Prince Ivan."
And she went in, bending graciously and even confidingly towards the
secretary, on whose arm her hand reposed.
The cavalier in banded yellow stood a moment with an expression on his
face at once humorous and malevolent.
He gazed after the pair till the door swung to and they disappeared.
Then he turned bitterly towards the nearest officer.
"Tell me," he said, "who is the lout in black, that looks like a
priest-cub out for a holiday?"
"He is the secretary of the embassy of Plassenburg," said Otto the
guardsman, restraining a desire to put his information in another form.
He did not love this imperious cavalier; he was a Courtlander and
holding a Muscovite's horse. The conjunction brought something into his
throat.
"Ha," said the young man in black and yellow, still gazing at the closed
door, "I think I shall go into the rose-garden; I may have something
further to say to the most honourable the secretary of the embassy of
Plassenburg!" And summoning the officer with a curt monosyllable to
bring his horse, he mounted and rode off.
"I wonder he did not give me a silver groat," said the Courtlander. "The
secretary sparrow may be dainty and kiss only ladies, but this Prince of
Muscovy has not pretty manners. I hope he does not marry the Princess
after all."
"Not with her goodwill, I warrant," said Paul Strelitz; "either you or I
would have a better chance, unless our Prince Ludwig compel her to it
for the good of the State!"
"Prince Wasp seemed somewhat disturbed in his mind," said the
Courtlander, chuckling. "I wish I were on guard in the rose-garden to
see the meeting of Master Prettyman and his Royal Highness the Hornet of
Muscovy!"
[Illustration: "He gazed after the pair till the door swung to."
[_Page 46_]]
CHAPTER VII
H.R.H. THE PRINCESS IMPETUOSITY
The Princess Margaret spoke low and confidentially to the secretary of
embassy as they paced along. Johann Pyrmont felt correspondingly
awkward. For one thing, the pressure of the Princess's hand upon his arm
distracted him. He longed to have her on his other side.
"You are noble?" she said, with a look down at him.
"Of course!" said the secretary quickly. The opposite had never occurred
to him. He had not considered the pedigree of travelling merchants or
Hamburg architects.
The Princess thought it was not at all of course, but continued--
"I understand--you would learn diplomacy under a man so wise as the High
Councillor von Dessauer. I have heard of such sacrifices. My brother,
who is very learned, went to Italy, and they say (though he only laughs
when I ask him) worked with his hands in one of the places where they
print the new sort of books instead of writing them. Is it not
wonderful?"
"And he is so brave," said the secretary, whose interest suddenly
increased; "he won the tournament yesterday, did he not? I saw you give
him the crown of bay. I had not thought so brave a man could be learned
also."
"Oh, my brother has all the perfections, yet thinks more of every
shaveling monk and unfledged chorister than of himself. I will introduce
you to him now. I am a pet of his. You will love him, too--when you
know him, that is!"
"Devoutly do I hope so!" said the secretary under his breath.
But the Princess heard him.
"Of course you will," she said gaily; "I love him, therefore so will
you!"
"An agreeable princess--I shall get on well with her!" thought Johann
Pyrmont. Then the attention of his companion flagged and she was silent
and distrait for a little, as they paced through courts and colonnades
which to the secretary seemed interminable. The Princess silently
indicated the way by a pressure upon his arm which was almost more than
friendly.
"We walk well together," she said presently, rousing herself from her
reverie.
"Yes," answered the secretary, who was thinking that surely it was a
long way to the summer parlour, where he was to meet the Prince.
"I fear," said the Princess Margaret quaintly, "that you are often in
the habit of walking with ladies! Your step agrees so well with mine!"
"I never walk with any others," the secretary answered without thought.
"What?" cried the Princess, quickly taking away her hand, "and you swore
to me even now that you never helped a lady from her horse in your
life!"
It was an _impasse_, and the secretary, recalled to himself, blushed
deeply.
"I see so few ladies," he stammered, in a tremor lest he should have
betrayed himself. "I live in the country--only my maid----"
"Heaven's own sunshine!" cried the Princess. "Have the pretty young men
of Plassenburg maids and tirewomen? Small wonder that so few of them
ever visit us! No blame that you stay in that happy country!"
The secretary recovered his presence of mind rapidly.
"I mean," he explained, "the old woman Bette, my nurse, who, though now
I am grown up, comes every night to see that I have all I want and to
fold my clothes. I have no other women about me."
"You are sure that Bette, who comes for your clothes and to see that you
have all you want, is old?" persisted the Princess, keeping her eyes
sharply upon her companion.
"She is so old that I never remember her to have been any younger,"
replied the secretary, with an air of engaging candour.
"I believe you," cried the outspoken Princess; "no one can lie with such
eyes. Strange that I should have liked you from the first. Stranger that
in an hour I should tell you so. Your arm!"
The secretary immediately put his hand within the arm of the Princess
Margaret, who turned upon him instantly in great astonishment.
"Is that also a Plassenburg custom?" she said sharply. "Was it old Bette
who taught you thus to take a lady's arm? It is otherwise thought of in
our ignorant Courtland!"
The young man blushed and looked down.
"I am sorry," he said; "it is a common fashion with us. I crave your
pardon if in aught I have offended."
The Princess Margaret looked quizzically at her companion.
"I' faith," she said, "I have ever had a curiosity about foreign
customs. This one I find not amiss. Do it again!"
And with her own princessly hand she took Johann's slender brown fingers
and placed them upon her arm.
"These are fitter for the pen than for the sword!" she said, a saying
which pleased the owner of them but little.
The Courtlander Otto, who had been on guard at the gate, had meantime
been relieved, and now followed the pair through the corridors to the
summer palace upon an errand which he had speciously invented.
At this point he stood astonished.
"I would that Prince Wasp were here. We should see his sting. He is
indeed a marvel, this fellow of Plassenburg. Glad am I that he does not
know little Lenchen up in the Kaiser Platz. No one of us would have a
maid to his name, if this gamester abode in Courtland long and made the
running in this style!"
The Princess and her squire now went out into the open air. For she had
led him by devious ways almost round the entire square of the palace
buildings. They passed into a thick avenue of acacias and yews, through
the arcades of which they walked silently.
For the Princess was content, and the secretary afraid of making any
more mistakes. So he let the foreign custom go at what it might be
worth, knowing that if he tried to better it, ten to one a worse thing
might befall.
"I have changed my mind," said the Princess, suddenly stopping and
turning upon her companion; "I shall not introduce you to my brother. If
you come from the Ambassador, you must have matters of importance to
speak of. I will rest me here in an arbour and come in later. Then, if
you are good, you shall perhaps be permitted to reconduct me to my
lodging, and as we go, teach me any other pleasant foreign customs!"
The secretary bowed, but kept his eyes on the ground.
"You do not say that you are glad," cried the Princess, coming
impulsively a step nearer. "I tell you there is not one youth----but no
matter. I see that it is your innocence, and I am not sure that I do not
like you the better for it."
Behind an evergreen, Otto the Courtlander nearly discovered himself at
this declaration.
"His innocence--magnificent Karl the Great! His Plassenburger's
innocence--God wot! He will not die of it, but he may be the death of
me. Oh, for the opinion of Prince Wasp of Muscovy upon such innocence."
"Come," said the Princess, holding out her hands, "bid me goodbye as you
do in your country. There is the Prince my brother's horse at the door.
You must hasten, or he will be gone ere you do your message."
At this the heart of the youth gave a great leap.
"The Prince!" he cried, "he will be gone!" And would have bolted off
without a word.
"Never mind the Prince--think of me," commanded the Princess, stamping
her foot. "Give me your hand. I am not accustomed to ask twice. Bid me
goodbye."
With his eyes on the white charger by the door the secretary hastily
took the Princess by both hands. Then, with his mind still upon the
departing Prince, he drew her impulsively towards him, kissed her
swiftly upon both cheeks, and finished by imprinting his lips heartily
upon her mouth!
Then, still with swift impulse and an ardent glance upward at the palace
front, he ran in the direction of the steps of the summer palace.
The Princess Margaret stood rooted to the ground. A flush of shame,
anger, or some other violent emotion rose to her brow and stayed there.
Then she called to mind the straightforward unclouded eyes, the clear
innocence of the youth's brow, and the smile came back to her lips.
"After all, it is doubtless only his foreign custom," she mused. Then,
after a pause, "I like foreign customs," she added, "they are
interesting to learn!"
Behind his tree the Courtlander stood gasping with astonishment, as well
he might.
"God never made such a fellow," he said to himself. "Well might he say
he never kissed any but ladies. Such abilities were lost upon mere men.
An hour's acquaintance--nay, less--and he hath kissed the Princess
Margaret upon the mouth. And she, instead of shrieking and calling the
guard to have the insulter thrust into the darkest dungeon, falls to
musing and smiling. A devil of a secretary this! Of a certainty I must
have little Lenchen out of town!"
CHAPTER VIII
JOHANN IN THE SUMMER PALACE
At the door of the summer palace not a soul was on guard. A great quiet
surrounded it. The secretary could hear the gentle lapping of the river
over the parapet, for the little pavilion had been erected overhanging
the water, and the leaves of the linden-trees rustled above. These last
were still clamorous with the hum of bees, whose busy wings gave forth a
sort of dull booming roar, comparable only to the distant noise of
breakers when a roller curls slowly over and runs league-long down the
sandy beach.
It was with a beating heart that Johann Pyrmont knocked.
"Enter!" said a voice within, with startling suddenness.
And opening the door and grasping his papers, the secretary suddenly
found himself in the presence of the hero of the tournament.
The Prince was standing by a desk covered with books and papers. In his
hand he held a quill, wherewith he had been writing in a great book
which lay on a shelf at his elbow. For a moment the secretary could not
reconcile this monkish occupation with his idea of the gallant
white-plumed knight whom he had seen flash athwart the lists, driving a
clean furrow through the hostile ranks with his single spear.
But he remembered his sister's description, and looked at him with the
reverence of the time for one to whom all knowledge was open.
"You have business with me, young sir?" said the Prince courteously,
turning upon the youth a regard full of dignity and condescension. The
knees of Johann Pyrmont trembled. For a full score of moments his tongue
refused its office.
"I come," he said at last, "to convey these documents to the noble
Prince of Courtland and Wilna." He gained courage as he spoke, for he
had carefully rehearsed this speech to Dessauer. "I am acting as
secretary to the Ambassador--in lieu of a better. These are the
proposals concerning alliance between the realms proposed by our late
master, the Prince Karl, before his death; and now, it is hoped, to be
ratified and carried out between Courtland and Plassenburg under his
successors, the Princess Helene and her husband."
The tall fair-haired Prince listened carefully. His luminous and steady
eyes seemed to pierce through every disguise and to read the truth in
the heart of the young architect-secretary. He took the papers from the
hand of Johann Pyrmont, and laid them on a desk beside him, without,
however, breaking the seals.
"I will gladly take charge of such proposals. They do as much credit, I
doubt not, to the sagacity of the late Prince, your great master, as to
the kindness and good-feeling of our present noble rulers. But where is
the Ambassador? I had hoped to see High Councillor von Dessauer for my
own sake, as well as because of the ancient kindliness and
correspondence that there was between him and my brother."
"His brother," thought the secretary. "I did not know he had a
brother--a lad, I suppose, in whom Dessauer hath an interest. He is ever
considerate to the young!" But aloud he answered, "I grieve to tell you,
my lord, that the High Councillor von Dessauer is not able to leave his
bed this morning. He caught a chill yesterday, either riding hither or
at the tourney, and it hath induced an old trouble which no leech has
hitherto been skilful enough to heal entirely. He will, I fear, be kept
close in his room for several days."
"I also am grieved," said the Prince, with grave regret, seeing the
youth's agitation, and liking him for it. "I am glad he keeps the art to
make himself so beloved. It is one as useful as it is unusual in a
diplomatist!"
Then with a quick change of subject habitual to the man, he said, "How
found you your way hither? The corridors are both confusing and
intricate, and the guards ordinarily somewhat exacting."
The tall youth smiled.
"I was in the best hands," he said. "Your sister, the Princess Margaret,
was good enough to direct me, being on her way to her own apartment."
"Ah!" muttered the Prince, smiling as if he knew his sister, "this is
the way to the Princess's apartments, is it? The Moscow road to Rome, I
wot!"
He said no more, but stood regarding the youth, whose blushes came and
went as he stood irresolute before him.
"A modest lad," said the Prince to himself; "this ingenuousness is
particularly charming in a secretary of legation. I must see more of
him."
Suddenly a thought crossed his mind.
"Why, did I not hear that you came to us by way of Kernsberg?" he said.
The blushes ceased and a certain pallor showed under the tan which
overspread the young man's face as the Prince continued to gaze fixedly
at him. He could only bow in assent.
"Then, doubtless, you would see the Duchess Joan?" he continued. "Is she
very beautiful? They say so."
"I do not think so. I never thought about it at all!" answered the
secretary. Suddenly he found himself plunged into deep waters, just as
he had seen the port of safety before him.
The Prince laughed, throwing back his head a little.
"That is surely a strange story to bring here to Courtland," he said,
"whither the lady is to come as a bride ere long! Especially strange to
tell to me, who----"
"I ask your pardon," said Johann Pyrmont; "your Highness must bear with
me. I have never done an errand of such moment before, having mostly
spent my life among soldiers and ("he was on his guard now") in a
fortress. For diplomacy and word-play I have no skill--no, nor any
liking!"
"You have chosen your trade strangely, then," smiled the Prince, "to
proclaim such tastes. Wherefore are you not a soldier?"
"I am! I am!" cried Johann eagerly; "at least, as much as it is allowed
to one of my--of my strength to be."
"Can you fence?" asked the Prince, "or play with the broad blade?"
"I can do both!"
"Then," continued his inquisitor, "you must surely have tried yourself
against the Duchess Joan. They say she has wonderful skill. Joan of the
Sword Hand, I have heard her called. You have often fenced with her?"
"No," said the secretary, truthfully, "I have never fenced with the
Duchess Joan."
"So," said the Prince, evidently in considerable surprise; "then you
have certainly often seen her fence?"
"I have never seen the Duchess fence, but I have often seen others fence
with her."
"You practise casuistry, surely," cried the Prince. "I do not quite
follow the distinction."
But, nevertheless, the secretary knew that the difference existed. He
would have given all the proceeds and emoluments of his office to escape
at this moment, but the eye of the Prince was too steady.
"I doubt not, young sir," he continued, "that you were one of the army
of admirers which, they say, continually surrounds the Duchess of
Hohenstein!"
"Indeed, you are in great error, my lord," said Johann Pyrmont, with
much earnestness and obvious sincerity; "I never said one single word of
love to the Lady Joan--no, nor to any other woman!"
"No," said a new voice from the doorway, that of the Princess Margaret,
"but doubtless you took great pleasure in teaching them foreign customs.
And I am persuaded you did it very well, too!"
The Prince left his desk for the first time and came smilingly towards
his sister. As he stooped to kiss her hand, Johann observed that his
hair seemed already to be thin upon the top of his head.
"He is young to be growing bald," he said to himself; "but, after all"
(with a sigh), "that does not matter in a man so noble of mien and in
every way so great a prince."
The impulsive Princess Margaret scarcely permitted her hand to be
kissed. She threw her arms warmly about her brother's neck, and then as
quickly releasing him, she turned to the secretary, who stood
deferentially looking out at the window, that he might not observe the
meeting of brother and sister.
"I told you he was my favourite brother, and that you would love him,
too," she said. "You must leave your dull Plassenburg and come to
Courtland. I, the Princess, ask you. Do you promise?"
"I think I shall come again to Courtland," answered the secretary very
gravely.
"This young man knows the Duchess Joan of Hohenstein," said the Prince,
still smiling quietly; "but I do not think he admires her very
greatly--an opinion he had better keep to himself if he would have a
quiet life of it in Courtland!"
"Indeed," said the Princess brusquely. "I wonder not at it. I hear she
is a forward minx, and at any rate she shall never lord it over me. I
will run away with a dog-whipper first."
"Your husband would have occasion for the exercise of his art, sister
mine!" said the Prince. "But, indeed, you must not begin by misliking
the poor young maid that will find herself so far from home."
"Oh," cried the Princess, laughing outright, "I mislike her not a whit.
But there is no reason in the world why, because you are all ready to
fall down and worship, this young man or any other should be compelled
to do likewise."
And right princess-like she looked as she pouted her proud little lips
and with her foot patted the polished oak.
"But," she went on again to her brother, "your poor beast out there hath
almost fretted himself into ribands by this time. If you have done with
this noble youth, I have a fancy to hear him tell of the countries
wherein he has sojourned. And, in addition, I have promised to show him
the carp in the ponds. You have surely given him a great enough dose of
diplomatics and canon law by this time. You have, it seems to me, spent
half the day in each other's society."
"On the contrary," returned the Prince, smiling again, but going towards
the desk to put away the papers which Dessauer's secretary had
brought--"on the contrary, we talked almost solely about women--a
subject not uncommon when man meets man."
"But somewhat out of keeping with the dignity of your calling, my
brother!" said the Princess pointedly.
"And wherefore?" he said, turning quickly with the papers still in his
hand. "If to guide, to advise, to rule, are of my profession, surely to
speak of women, who are the more important half of the human race,
cannot be foreign to my calling!"
"Come," she said, hearing the words without attending to the sense, "I
also like things foreign. The noble secretary has promised to teach me
some more of them!"
The tolerant Prince laughed. He was evidently accustomed to his sister's
whims, and, knowing how perfectly harmless they were, he never
interfered with them.
"A good day to you," he said to the young man, by way of dismissal. "If
I do not see you again before you leave, you must promise me to come
back to the wedding of the Duchess Johanna. In that event you must do
me the honour to be my guest on that occasion."
The red flooded back to Johann's cheek.
"I thank you," he said, bowing; "I _will_ come back to the wedding of
the Duchess Joan."
"And you promise to be my guest? I insist upon it," continued the kindly
Prince, willing to gratify his sister, who was smiling approval, "I
insist that you shall let me be your host."
"I hope to be your guest, most noble Prince," said the secretary,
looking up at him quickly as he went through the door.
It was a singular look. For a moment it checked and astonished the
Prince so much that he stood still on the threshold.
"Where have I seen a look like that before?" he mused, as he cast his
memory back into the past without success. "Surely never on any man's
face?"
Which, after all, was likely enough.
Then putting the matter aside as curious, but of no consequence, the
Prince rode away towards that part of the city from which the towers of
the minster loomed up. A couple of priests bowed low before him as he
passed, and the people standing still to watch his broad shoulders and
erect carriage, said one to the other, "Alas! alas! the truest Prince of
them all--to be thus thrown away!"
And these were the words which the secretary heard from a couple of
guards who talked at the gate of the rose-garden, as they, too, stood
looking after the Prince.
"Wait," said Johann Pyrmont to himself; "wait, I will yet show them
whether he is thrown away or not."
CHAPTER IX
THE ROSE GARDEN
The rose garden of the summer palace of Courtland was a paradise made
for lovers' whisperings. Even now, when the chills of autumn had begun
to blow through its bowers, it was over-clambered with late-blooming
flowers. Its bowers were creeper-tangled. Trees met over paths bedded
with fallen petals, making a shade in sunshine, a shelter in rain, and
delightful in both.
It was natural that so fair a Princess, taking such a sudden fancy to a
young man, should find her way where the shade was deepest and the
labyrinth most entangled.
But this secretary Johann of ours, being creditably hard of heart, would
far rather have hied him straight back to old Dessauer with his news.
More than anything he desired to be alone, that he might think over the
events of the morning.
But the Princess Margaret had quite other intentions.
"Do you know," she began, "that I might well have lodged you in a
dungeon cell for that which in another had been dire insolence?"
They were pacing a long dusky avenue of tall yew-trees. The secretary
turned towards her the blank look of one whose thoughts have been far
away. But the Princess rattled on, heedless of his mood.
"Nevertheless, I forgive you," she said; "after all, I myself asked you
to teach me your foreign customs. If any one be to blame, it is I. But
one thing I would impress upon you, sir secretary: do not practise
these outland peculiarities before my brothers. Either of them might
look with prejudice upon such customs being observed generally
throughout the city. I came back chiefly to warn you. We do not want
that handsome head of yours (which I admit is well enough in its way,
as, being a man, you are doubtless aware) to be taken off and stuck on a
pole over the Strasburg Gate!"
It was with an effort that the secretary detached himself sufficiently
from his reveries upon the interview in the summer palace to understand
what the Princess was driving at.
"All this mighty pother, just because I kissed her on the cheek," he
thought. "A Princess of Courtland is no such mighty thing--and why
should I not?--Oh, of course, I had forgotten again. I am not now the
person I was."
But how can we tell with what infinite condescension the Princess took
the young man's hand and read his fortune, dwelling frowningly on the
lines of love and life?
"You have too pretty a hand for a man," she said; "why is it hard here
and here?"
"That is from the sword grip," said the secretary, with no small pride.
"Do you, then, fence well? I wish I could see you," she cried, clapping
her hands. "How splendid it would be to see a bout between you and
Prince Wasp--that is, the Prince Ivan of Muscovy, I mean. He is a great
fencer, and also desires to be a great friend of mine. He would give
something to be sitting here teaching me how they take hands and bid
each other goodbye in Bearland. They rub noses, I have heard say, a
custom which, to my thinking, would be more provocative than
satisfactory. I like your Plassenburg fashion better."
Whereat, of course there was nothing for it but that the secretary
should arouse himself out of his reverie and do his part. If the
Princess of Courtland chose to amuse herself with him, well, it was
harmless on either side--even more so than she knew. Soon he would be
far away. Meanwhile he must not comport himself like a puking fool.
"I think in somewise it were possible to improve upon the customs even
of Plassenburg," said the Princess Margaret, after certain experiments;
"but tell me, since you say that we are to be friends, and I have
admitted your plea, what is your fortune? Nay, do you know that I do not
even know your name--at least, not from your own lips."
For, headlong as she had proved herself in making love, yet a vein of
Baltic practicality was hidden beneath the princess's impetuosity.
"My father was the Count von Löen, and I am his heir!" said the
secretary carefully; "but I do not usually call myself so. There are
reasons why I should not."
Which there were, indeed--grave reasons, too.
"Then you are the Count von Löen?" said the Princess. "I seem to have
heard that name somewhere before. Tell me, are you the Count von Löen?"
"I am certainly the heir to that title," said the secretary, grilling
within and wishing himself a thousand miles away.
"I must go directly and tell my brother. He will be back from the
cathedral by this time. I am sure he did not know. And the estates--a
little involved, doubtless, like those of most well-born folk in these
ill days? Are they in your sole right?"
"The estates are extensive. They are not encumbered so far as I know.
They are all in my own right," explained the newly styled Count with
perfect truth. But within he was saying, "God help me! I get deeper and
deeper. What a whirling chaos a single lie leads one into! Heaven give
me speedy succour out of this!" And as he thought of his troubles, the
noble count, the swordsman, the learned secretary, could scarce restrain
a desire to break out into hysterical sobbing.
A new thought seemed to strike the Princess as he was speaking.
"But so young, so handsome," she murmured, "so apt a pupil at love!"
Then aloud she said, "You are not deceiving me? You are not already
betrothed?"
"Not to any woman!" said the deceitful Count, picking his words with
exactness.
The gay laugh of the Princess rang out prompt as an echo.
"I did not expect you to be engaged to a man!" she cried. "But now
conduct me to the entrance of my chambers" (here she reached him her
hand). "I like you," she added frankly, looking at him with unflinching
eyes. "I am of the house of Courtland, and we are accustomed to say what
we think--the women of us especially. And sooner than carry out this
wretched contract and marry the Prince Wasp, I will do even as I said to
my brother, I will run away and wed a dog-whipper! But perhaps I may do
better than either!" she said in her heart, nodding determinedly as she
looked at the handsome youth before her, who now stood with his eyes
downcast upon the ground.
They were almost out of the yew-tree walk, and the voice of the Princess
carried far, like that of most very impulsive persons. It reached the
ears of a gay young fashionable, who had just dismounted at the gate
which led from the rose garden into the wing of the palace inhabited by
the Princess Margaret and her suite.
"Now," said the Princess, "I will show you how apt a pupil I make. Tell
me whether this is according to the best traditions of Plassenburg!" And
taking his face between her hands she kissed him rapidly upon either
cheek and then upon the lips.
"There!" she said, "I wonder what my noble brothers would say to that! I
will show them that Margaret of Courtland can choose both whom she will
kiss and whom she will marry!"
And flashing away from him like a bright-winged bird she fled upward
into her chambers. Then, somewhat dazed by the rapid succession of
emotions, Johann the Secretary stepped out of the green gloom of the
yew-tree walk into the broad glare of the September sun and found
himself face to face with Prince Wasp.
CHAPTER X
PRINCE WASP
Now Ivan, Prince of Muscovy, had business in Courtland very clear and
distinct. He came to woo the Princess Margaret, which being done, he
wished to be gone. There was on his side the certainty of an excellent
fortune, a possible succession, and, in any case, a pretty and wilful
wife. But as he thought on that last the Wasp smiled to himself. In
Moscow there were many ways, once he had her there, of taming the most
wilful of wives.
As to the inheritance--well, it was true there were two lives between;
but one of these, in Prince Ivan's mind, was as good as nought, and the
other----In addition, the marriage had been arranged by their several
fathers, though not under the same penalty as that which threatened the
Prince of Courtland and Joan Duchess of Hohenstein.
Prince Wasp had not favourably impressed the family at the palace. His
manners had the strident edge and blatant self-assertion of one who,
unlicensed at home, has been flattered abroad, deferred to everywhere,
and accustomed to his own way in all things. Nevertheless, Ivan had
managed to make himself popular with the townsfolk, on account of the
largesse which he lavished and the custom which his numerous suite
brought to the city. Specially, he had been successful in attaching the
rabble of the place to his cause; and already he had headed off two
other wooers who had come from the south to solicit the smiles of the
Princess Margaret.
"So," he said, as he faced the secretary, now somewhat compositely
styled--Johann, Count von Löen, "so, young springald, you think to court
a foolish princess. You play upon her with your pretty words and
graceful compliments. That is an agreeable relaxation enough. It passes
the time better than fumbling with papers in front of an escritoire.
Only--you have in addition to reckon with me, Ivan, hereditary Prince of
Muscovy."
And with a sweep of his hand across his body he drew his sword from its
sheath.
The sword of the young secretary came into his hand with equal
swiftness. But he answered nothing. A curious feeling of detachment
crept over him. He had held the bare sword before in presence of an
enemy, but never till now unsupported.
"I do you the honour to suppose you noble," said Prince Wasp, "otherwise
I should have you flogged by my lacqueys and thrown into the town ditch.
I have informed you of my name and pretensions to the hand of the
Princess Margaret, whom you have insulted. I pray you give me yours in
return."
"I am called Johann, Count von Löen," answered the secretary as curtly
as possible.
"Pardon the doubt which is in my mind," said the Prince of Muscovy, with
a black sneering bitterness characteristic of him, "but though I am well
versed in all the noble families of the north, and especially in those
of Plassenburg, where I resided a full year in the late Prince's time, I
am not acquainted with any such title."
"Nevertheless, it is mine by right and by birthright," retorted the
secretary, "as I am well prepared to maintain with my sword in the
meantime. And, after, you can assure yourself from the mouth of the High
State's Councillor Dessauer that the name and style are mine. Your
ignorance, however, need not defer your chastisement."
"Follow me, Count von Löen," said the Prince; "I am too anxious to deal
with your insolence as it deserves to quarrel as to names or titles,
legal or illegitimate. My quarrel is with your fascinating body and
prettyish face, the beauty of which I will presently improve with some
good Northland steel."
And with his lithe and springy walk the Prince of Muscovy passed again
along the alleys of the rose garden till he reached the first open
space, where he turned upon the secretary.
"We are arrived," he said; "our business is so pressing, and will be so
quickly finished, that there is no need for the formality of seconds.
Though I honour you by crossing my sword with yours, it is a mere
formality. I have such skill of the weapon, as I daresay report has told
you, that you may consider yourself dead already. I look upon your
chastisement no more seriously than I might the killing of a fly that
has vexed me with its buzzing. Guard!"
But Johann Pyrmont had been trained in a school which permitted no such
windy preludes, and with the fencer's smile on his face he kept his
silence. His sword would answer all such boastings, and that in good
time.
And so it fell out.
From the very first crossing of the swords Prince Wasp found himself
opposed by a quicker eye, a firmer wrist, a method and science
infinitely superior to his own. His most dashing attack was repelled
with apparent ease, yet with a subtlety which interposed nothing but the
most delicate of guards and parries between Prince Ivan and victory.
This gradually infuriated the Prince, till suddenly losing his temper he
stamped his foot in anger and rushed upon his foe with the true
Muscovite fire.
Then, indeed, had Johann need of all his most constant practice with the
sword, for the sting of the Wasp flashed to kill as he struck straight
at the heart of his foe.
[Illustration: "The Prince staggered." [_Page 67_]]
But lo! the blade was turned aside, the long-delayed answering thrust
glittered out, and the secretary's sword stood a couple of handbreadths
in the boaster's shoulder.
With an effort Johann recovered his blade and stood ready for the
ripost; but the wound was more than enough. The Prince staggered, cried
out some unintelligible words in the Muscovite language, and pitched
forward slowly on his face among the trampled leaves and blown rose
petals of the palace garden.
The secretary grew paler than his wont, and ran to lift his fallen
enemy. But, all unseen, other eyes had watched the combat, and from the
door by which they had entered, and from behind the trees of the
surrounding glade, there came the noise of pounding footsteps and fierce
cries of "Seize him! Kill him! Tear him to pieces! He has slain the good
Prince, the friend of the people! The Prince Ivan is dead!"
And ere the secretary could touch the body of his unconscious foe, or
assure himself concerning his wound, he found himself surrounded by a
yelling crowd of city loafers and gallows'-rats, many of them rag-clad,
others habited in heterogeneous scraps of cast-off clothing, or articles
snatched from clothes-lines and bleaching greens--long-mourned,
doubtless, by the good wives of Courtland.
The secretary eyed this unkempt horde with haughty scorn, and his
fearless attitude, as he striped his stained sword through his
handkerchief and threw the linen away, had something to do with the fact
that the rabble halted at the distance of half-a-dozen yards and for
many minutes contented themselves with hurling oaths and imprecations at
him. Johann Pyrmont kept his sword in his hand and stood by the body of
his fallen foe in disdainful silence till the arrival of fresh
contingents through the gate aroused the halting spirit of the crowd.
Knives and sword-blades began to gleam here and there in grimy hands
where at first there had been only staves and chance-snatched gauds of
iron.
"At him! Down with him! He can only strike once!" These and similar
cries inspirited the rabble of Courtland, great haters of the
Plassenburg and the Teutonic west, to rush in and make an end.
At last they did come on, not all together, but in irregular
undisciplined rushes. Johann's sword streaked out this way and that.
There was an answering cry of pain, a turmoil among the assailants as a
wounded man whirled his way backward out of the press. But this could
not last for long. The odds were too great. The droning roar of hate
from the edges of the crowd grew louder as new and ever newer accretions
joined themselves to its changing fringes.
Then suddenly came a voice. "Back, on your lives, dogs and traitors!
Germans to the rescue! Danes, Teuts, Northmen to the rescue!"
Following the direction of the sound, Johann saw a young man drive
through the press, his sword bare in his hand, his eyes glittering with
excitement. It was the Danish prisoner of the guard-hall at Kernsberg,
that same Sparhawk who had fought with Werner von Orseln.
The crowd stared back and forth betwixt him and that other whom he came
to succour. Far more than ever his extraordinary likeness to the
secretary appeared. Apparent enough at any time, it was accentuated now
by similarity of clothing. For, like Johann Pyrmont, the Sparhawk was
attired in a black doublet and trunk hose of scholastic cut, and as they
stood back to back, little difference could be noted between them, save
that the newcomer was a trifle the taller.
"Saint Michael and all holy angels!" cried the leader of the crowd, "can
it be that there are scores of these Plassenburg black crows in
Courtland, slaying whom they will? Here be two of them as like as two
peas, or a couple of earthen pipkins from the same potter's wheel!"
The Dane flung a word over his shoulder to his companion.
"Pardon me, your grace," said the Sparhawk, "if I stand back to back
with you. They are dangerous. We must watch well for any chance of
escape."
The secretary did not answer to this strange style of address, but
placed himself back to back with his ally, and their two bright blades
waved every way. Only that of Johann Pyrmont was already reddened
well-nigh half its length.
A second time the courage of the crowd worked itself up, and they came
on.
"Death to the Russ, to the lovers of Russians!" cried the Sparhawk, and
his blade dealt thrusts right and left. But the pressure increased every
moment. Those behind cried, "Kill them!" For they were out of reach of
those two shining streaks of steel. Those before would gladly have
fallen behind, but could not for the forward thrust of their friends.
Still the ring narrowed, and the pair of gallant fighters would
doubtlessly have been swept away had not a diversion come to alter the
face of things.
Out of the gate which led to the wing of the palace occupied by the
Princess Margaret burst a little company of halberdiers, at sight of
whom the crowd gave suddenly back. The Princess herself was with them.
"Take all prisoners, and bring them within," she cried. "Well you know
that my brother is from home, or you dare not thus brawl in the very
precincts of the palace!"
And at her words the soldiers advanced rapidly. A further diversion was
caused by the Sparhawk suddenly cleaving a way through the crowd and
setting off at full speed in the direction of the river. Whereupon the
rabble, glad to combine personal safety with the pleasures of the chase,
took to their heels after him. But, light and unexpected in motion as
his namesake, the Sparhawk skimmed down the alleys, darted sideways
through gates which he shut behind him with a clash of iron, and finally
plunged into the green rush of the Alla, swimming safe and unhurt to the
further shore, whither, in the absence of boats at this particular spot,
none could pursue him.
CHAPTER XI
THE KISS OF THE PRINCESS MARGARET
The Princess and her guard were left alone with the secretary and the
unconscious body of the Prince of Muscovy.
"Sirrah," she cried severely to the former, "is this the first use you
make of our hospitality, thus to brawl in the street underneath my very
windows with our noble guest the Prince Ivan? Take him to my brother's
room, and keep him safely there to await our lord's return. We shall see
what the Prince will say to this. And as for this wounded man, take him
to his own apartments, and let a surgeon be sent to him. Only not in too
great a hurry!" she added as an afterthought to the commander of her
little company of palace guards.
So, merely detailing half a dozen to carry the Prince to his chambers,
the captain of the guard conducted the secretary to the very room in
which an hour before he had met the brother of the Princess. Here he was
confined, with a couple of guards at the door. Nor had he been long shut
up before he heard the quick step of the Princess coming along the
passage-way. He could distinguish it a long way off, for the summer
palace was built mostly of wood, and every sound was clearly audible.
"So," she said, as soon as the door was shut, "you have killed Prince
Wasp!"
"I trust not," said the secretary gravely; "I meant only to wound him.
But as he attacked me I could not do otherwise than defend myself."
"Tut," cried the Princess, "I hope you have killed him. It will be good
riddance, and most like the Muscovites will send an army--which, with
your Plassenburg to help us, will make a pretty fight. It serves him
right, in any event, for Prince Wasp must always be thrusting his sting
into honest folk. He will be none the worse for some of his own poison
applied at a rapier's point to keep him quiet for some few days."
But Johann was not in a mood to relish the jubilation of the Princess.
He grew markedly uneasy in his mind. Every moment he anticipated that
the Prince would return. A trial would take place, and he did not know
what might not be discovered.
The Princess Margaret delivered him from his anxiety.
"The laws are strict against duelling," she continued. "The Prince Ivan
is in high favour with my elder brother, and it will be well that you
should be seen no more in Courtland--for the present, that is. But in a
little the Prince Wasp will die or he will recover. In either case the
affair will blow over. Then you will come back to teach me more foreign
customs."
She smiled and held out her hand. Johann kissed it, perhaps without the
fervour which might have been expected from a brisk young man thus
highly favoured by the fairest and sprightliest of princesses.
"To-night," she went on, "there will be a boat beneath that window. It
will be manned by those whom I can trust. A ladder of rope will be
thrown to your casement. By it you will descend, and with a good horse
and a sufficient escort you can ride either to Plassenburg--or to
Kernsberg, which is nearer, and tell Joan of the Sword Hand that her
sister the Princess Margaret sends you to her. I will give you a letter
to the minx, though I am sure I shall not like her. She is so forward,
they say. But be ready at the hour of midnight. Who was that youth who
fled as we came up?"
"A Danish knight who came hither in our train from Kernsberg," replied
Johann. "But for him I should have been lost indeed!"
"I must have a horse also for him!" cried the Princess. "He will surely
be on the watch and join you, knowing that his danger is as great as
yours. Hearken--they are mourning for their precious Prince Wasp.
To-morrow they will howl louder if by good hap he goes home
to--purgatory!"
And through the open windows came a sound of distant shoutings as they
carried the wounded Prince to his lodgings.
"Now," said the Princess, "for the present fare you well--in the colder
fashion of Courtland this time, for the sake of the guards at the door.
But remember that you are more than ever plighted to me to be my
instructor, dear Count von Löen!"
She went to the door, and with her fingers on the handle she turned her
about with a pretty vixenish expression. "I am so glad you stung the
Wasp. I love you for it!" she said.
But after she had vanished with these words the secretary grew more and
more downcast in spirit. Even this naïve declaration of affection failed
to cheer him. He sat down and gave himself up to the most melancholy
anticipations.
At six a servitor silently entered with a well-chosen and beautifully
cooked meal, of which the secretary partook sparingly. At seven it grew
dark, and at ten all was quiet in the city. The river rushed swiftly
beneath, and the noise of it, as the water lapped against the
foundations of the summer palace, helped to disguise the sound of oars,
as the boat, a dark shadow upon greyish water, detached itself from the
opposite shore and approached the window from whose open casement Johann
Pyrmont looked out.
[Illustration: "The Secretary found himself swaying over the dark
water." [_Page 75_]]
A low whistle came from underneath, and presently followed the soft
reeving _whisk_ of a coil of rope as it passed through the window and
fell at his feet. The secretary looked about for something to fasten
it to, and finally decided upon the iron uprights of the great desk at
which the Prince had stood earlier in the day.
No sooner was this done than Johann set his foot on the top round and
began to descend. It was with a sudden emptiness at the pit of the
stomach and a great desire to cry out for some one to hold the ladder
steady that the secretary found himself swaying over the dark water. The
boat seemed very far away, a mere spot of blackness upon the river's
face.
But presently, and while making up his mind to practise the gymnastic of
rope ladders quietly at home, he made out a man holding the ladder,
while two others with grappled boat-hooks kept the boat steady fore and
aft.
A shrouded figure sat in the stern. The secretary seemed rather to find
himself in a boat which rose swiftly to meet him than to descend into
it. He was handed from one to the other of the rowers till he reached
the shrouded figure in the stern, out of the folds of whose enveloping
cloak a small warm hand shot forth and pulled him down upon the seat.
"Draw this corner about you, Count," a low voice whispered; and in
another moment Johann found himself under the shelter of one cloak with
that daring slip of nobility, the Princess Margaret of Courtland.
"I was obliged to come; there is no danger. These fellows are of my
household and devoted to me. I did not dare to risk anything going
wrong. Besides, I am a princess, and--why need not I say it?--I wanted
to come. I wanted to see you again, though, indeed, there is small
chance of that in such a night. And 'tis as well, for I am sure my hair
is blown every way about my face."
"The horses are over there," she added after a pause; "we are almost at
the shore now--alas, too quickly! But I must not keep you. I want you to
come back the sooner. And remember, if Prince Wasp gets better and
worries me too much, or my brother is unkind and insists upon marrying
me to the Bear, I will take one or two of these fellows and come to seek
you at Plassenburg, so make your reckoning with that, Sir Count von
Löen. As I said, what is the use of being a princess if you cannot marry
whom you will? Most, I know, marry whom they are told; but then they
have not the spirit of a Baltic weevil, let alone that of Margaret of
Courtland."
They touched the shore almost at the place where the Sparhawk had landed
in the morning when he escaped from the city rabble, and a stone's-throw
further up the bank they found the horses waiting, ready caparisoned for
the journey.
Two men were, by the Princess's orders, to accompany Johann.
But with great thoughtfulness she had provided a fourth horse for the
companion who, equally with himself, was under the ban of the law for
wounding the lieges of the Prince of Courtland within the precincts of
the palace.
"He cannot have gone far," said the Princess. "He would certainly
conceal himself till nightfall in the first convenient hiding-place. He
will be on the look-out for any chance to release you."
And the event proved the wisdom of her prophecy. For as soon as he had
distinguished the slim figure of the secretary landing from the boat the
Sparhawk appeared on the crest of the hill, though for the moment he was
still unseen by those below.
"Goodbye! For the present, goodbye, dear Princess," said Johann, with
his heart in his voice. "God knows, I can never thank or repay you. My
heart is heavy for that. I am unworthy of all your goodness. It is not
as you think----"
He paused for words which might warn without revealing his secret; but
the Princess, never long silent, struck in.
"Let there be no talk of parting except for the moment," she said. "Go,
you are my knight. Perhaps one day, if you do not forget me, I may be
yet far kinder to you!"
And with a most tender kiss and a little sob the Princess sent her
lover, more and more downcast and discouraged by reason of her very
kindness, upon his way. So much did his obvious depression affect
Margaret of Courtland, that after the secretary, with one of the
men-at-arms leading the spare horse, had reached the top of the river
bank, she suddenly bade the rowers wait a moment before casting loose
from the land.
"Your sword! Your sword!" she called aloud, risking any listener in her
eagerness; "you have forgotten your sword."
Now it chanced that the Sparhawk had already come up with the little
party of travellers. He kissed the hand of Johann Pyrmont, placed him on
his beast, and was preparing to mount his steed with a glad heart, when
the voice from beneath startled him.
"Do not trouble, I will bring the sword," said the Sparhawk to Johann,
with his usual impetuosity, putting the reins into the secretary's
hands. And without a moment's hesitation he flung himself down the bank.
The Princess had leaped nimbly ashore, and was standing with the
sheathed sword in her hand.
When she saw the figure came bounding towards her down the pebbly bank,
she gave a little cry, and dropping the scabbard, threw her arms
impulsively about the Sparhawk's neck.
"I could not let you go like that--without ever telling you that I loved
you--really, I mean," she whispered, while the youth stood petrified
with astonishment, without sound or motion. "I will marry none but
you--neither Prince Ivan nor another. A woman should not tell a man
that, I know, lest he despise her; but a princess may, if the man dare
not tell her."
* * * * *
"And what answered you?" asked the secretary of his companion, as they
rode together through the night out on their road to Kernsberg.
"Why, I said nothing--speech was not needed," quoth the Dane coolly.
"She kissed you?"
"Well," said the Sparhawk, "I could not help that, could I?"
"But what said you to that?"
"Why, of course, I kissed her back again, as a man ought!" he made
answer.
"Poor Princess," mused the secretary; "it is more than I could ever have
done for her!" Aloud he said, "But you do not love her--you had not seen
her before! Why then did you kiss her?"
For these things are hidden from women.
The Dane shrugged his shoulders in the dark.
"Well, I take what the gods send," he replied. "She was a pretty girl,
and her Princess-ship made no difference in her kissing so far as I
could see. I serve you to the death, my Lady Duchess; but if a princess
loves me by the way--why, I am ready to indulge her to the limit of her
desirings!"
"You are indeed an accommodating youth," sighed the secretary, and
forthwith returned to his own melancholy thoughts.
And ever as they rode westward they heard all around them the rustle of
corn in the night wind. Stacks of hay shed a sweet scent momently
athwart their path, and more than once fruit-laden branches swept across
their faces. For they were passing through the garden of the Baltic, and
its fresh beauty was never fresher than on that September night when
these four rode out of Courtland towards the distant blue hills on which
was perched Kernsberg, built like an eagle's nest on a crag overfrowning
the wealthier plain.
At the first boundaries of the group of little hill principalities the
two soldiers were dismissed, suitably rewarded by Johann, to carry the
news of safety back to their wayward and impulsive mistress. And
thence-forward the Sparhawk and the secretary rode on alone.
At the little châlet among the hills where the Duchess Joan had so
suddenly disappeared they found two of her tire-maidens and an aged
nurse impatiently awaiting their mistress. To them entered that
composite and puzzling youth the ex-architect and secretary of the
embassy of Plassenburg, Johann, Count von Löen. And wonder of wonders,
in an hour afterwards Joan of the Sword Hand was riding eagerly towards
her capital city with her due retinue, as if she had merely been taking
a little summer breathing space at a country seat.
Her entrance created as little surprise as her exit. For as to her exits
and entrances alike the Duchess consulted no man, much less any woman.
Werner von Orseln saluted as impassively as if he had seen his mistress
an hour before, and the acclamations of the guard rang out as cheerfully
as ever.
Joan felt her spirits rise to be once more in her own land and among her
own folk. Nevertheless, there was a new feeling in her heart as she
thought of the day of her marriage, when the long-planned bond of
brotherhood-heritage should at last be carried out, and she should
indeed become the mistress of that great land into which she had
ventured so strangely, and the bride of the Prince--her Prince, the most
noble man on whom her eyes had ever rested.
Then her thoughts flew to the Princess who had delivered her out of
peril so deadly, and her soul grew sick and sad within her, not at all
lest her adventure should be known. She cared not so much about that
now. (Perhaps some day she would even tell him herself when--well,
_after_!)
But since she had ridden to Courtland, Joan, all untouched before, had
grown suddenly very tender to the smarting of another woman's heart.
"It is in no wise my fault," she told herself, which in a sense was
true.
But conscience, being a thing not subject to reason, dealt not a whit
the more easily with her on that account.
It was six months afterwards that the Sparhawk, who had been given the
command of a troop of good Hohenstein lancers, asked permission to go
on a journey.
He had been palpably restless and uneasy ever since his return, and in
spite of immediate favour and the prospect of yet further promotion, he
could not settle to his work.
"Whither would you go?" asked his mistress.
"To Courtland," he confessed, somewhat reluctantly, looking down at the
peaked toe of his tanned leather riding-boot.
"And what takes you to Courtland?" said Joan; "you are in danger there.
Besides, even if you could, would you leave my service and engage with
some other?"
"Nay, my lady," he burst out, "that will not I, so long as life lasts.
But--but the truth is"--he hesitated as he spoke--"I cannot get out of
my mind the Princess who kissed me in the dark. The like never happened
before to any man. I cannot forget her, do what I will. No, nor rest
till I have looked upon her face."
"Wait," said Joan. "Only wait till the spring and it is my hap to ride
to Courtland for my marriage day. Then I promise you you shall see
somewhat of her--the Lord send that it be not more than enough!"
So through many bitter winter days the Sparhawk abode at the castle of
Kernsberg, ill content.
CHAPTER XII
JOAN FORSWEARS THE SWORD
It was not in accordance with etiquette that two such nobly born
betrothed persons, to be allied for reasons of high State policy, should
visit each other openly before the day of marriage; but many letters and
presents had at various times come to Kernsberg, all bearing witness to
the lover-like eagerness of the Prince of Courtland and of his desire to
possess so fair a bride, especially one who was to bring him so coveted
a possession as the hill provinces of Kernsberg and Hohenstein.
Amongst other things he had forwarded portraits of himself, drawn with
such skill as the artists of the Baltic at that time possessed, of a man
in armour, with a countenance of such wooden severity that it might
stand (as the Duchess openly declared) just as well for Werner, her
chief captain, or any other man of war in full panoply.
"But," said Joan within herself, "what care I for armour black or armour
white? Mine eyes have seen--and my heart does not forget."
Then she smiled and for a while forgot the coming inevitable
disappointment of the Princess Margaret, which troubled her much at
other times.
The winter was unusually long and fierce in the mountains of Kernsberg
that year, and even along the Baltic shores the ice packed thicker and
the snow lay longer by a full month than usual.
It was the end of May, and the full bursting glory of a northern
spring, when at last the bridal cavalcade wound down from the towers of
the Castle of Kernsberg. Four hundred riders there were, every man
arrayed like a prince in the colours of Hohenstein--four fairest maids
to be bridesmaids to their Duchess, and as many matrons of rank and
years to bring their mistress with dignity and discretion to her new
home. But the people and the rough soldiers openly mourned for Joan of
the Sword Hand. "The Princess of Courtland will not be the same thing!"
they said.
And they were right, for since the last time she rode out Joan had
thought many thoughts. Could it be that she was indeed that reckless
maid who once had vowed that she would go and look once at the man her
father had bidden her marry, and then, if she did not like him, would
carry him off and clap him into a dungeon till he had paid a swinging
ransom? But the knight of the white plume, and the interview she had had
with a certain Prince in the summer palace of Courtland, had changed all
that.
Now she would be sober, grave--a fit mate for such a man. Almost she
blushed to recall her madcap feats of only a year ago.
As they approached the city, and each night brought them closer to the
great day, Joan rode more by herself, or talked with the young Dane,
Maurice von Lynar, of the Princess Margaret--without, however, telling
him aught of the rose garden or the expositions of foreign customs which
had preceded the duel with the Wasp.
The heart of the Duchess beat yet faster when at last the day of their
entry arrived. As they rode toward the gate of Courtland they were aware
of a splendid cavalcade which came out to receive them in the name of
the Prince, and to conduct them with honour to the palace prepared for
them.
In the centre of a brilliant company rode the Princess Margaret, in a
well-fitting robe of pale blue broidered with crimson, while behind and
about her was such a galaxy of the fashion and beauty of a court, that
had not Joan remembered and thought on the summer parlour and the man
who was waiting for her in the city, she had almost bidden her four
hundred riders wheel to the right about, and gallop straight back to
Kernsberg and the heights of rustic Hohenstein.
At sight of the Duchess's party the Princess alighted from off her steed
with the help of a cavalier. At the same moment Joan of the Sword Hand
leaped down of her own accord and came forward to meet her new sister.
The two women kissed, and then held each other at arm's length for the
luxury of a long look.
The face of the Princess showed a trace of emotion. She appeared to be
struggling with some recollection she was unable to locate with
precision.
"I hope you will be very happy with my brother," she faltered; then
after a moment she added, "Have you not perchance a brother of your
own?"
But before Joan could reply the representative of the Prince had come
forward to conduct the bride-elect to her rooms, and the Princess gave
place to him.
But all the same she kept her eyes keenly about her, and presently they
rested with a sudden brightness upon the young Dane, Maurice von Lynar,
at the head of his troop of horse. He was near enough for her to see his
face, and it was with a curious sense of strangeness that she saw his
eyes fixed upon herself.
"He is different--he is changed," she said to herself; "but how--wait
till we get to the palace, and I shall soon find out!"
And immediately she caused it to be intimated that all the captains of
troops and the superior officers of the escort of the Duchess Joan were
to be entertained at the palace of the Princess Margaret.
So that at the moment when Joan was taking a first survey of her
chambers, which occupied one entire wing of the Palace of the Princes of
Courtland, Margaret the impetuous had already commanded the presence of
the Count von Löen, one of the commanders of the bridal escort.
The young officer entrusted with the message returned almost
immediately, to find his mistress impatiently pacing up and down.
"Well?" she said, halting at the upper end of the reception-room and
looking at him.
"Your Highness," he said, "there is no Count von Löen among the officers
of Kernsberg!"
Margaret of Courtland stamped her foot.
"I expected as much," she said. "He shall pay for this. Why, man, I saw
him with my own eyes an hour ago--a young man, slender, sits erect in
his saddle, of a dark allure, and with eyes like those of an eagle."
A flush came over the youth's face.
"Does he look like the brother of the Duchess Joan?" he said.
"That is the man--Count von Löen or no. That is the man, I tell you.
Bring him immediately to me."
The young officer smiled.
"Methinks he will come readily enough. He started forward as if to
follow me when first I told my message. But when I mentioned the name of
the Count von Löen he stood aside in manifest disappointment."
"At all events, bring him instantly!" commanded the Princess.
The officer bowed low and retired.
The Princess Margaret smiled to herself.
"It is some more of their precious State secrets," she said. "Well--I
love secrets, and I can keep them too; but only my own, or those that
are told to me. And I will make my gentleman pay for playing off his
Counts von Löen on me!"
Presently she heard heavy footsteps approaching the door.
"Come in--come in straightway," she said in a loud, clear voice; "I have
a word to speak with you, Sir Count--who yet deny that you are a count.
And, prithee, to how many silly girls have you taught the foreign
fashions of linked arms, and all that most pleasant ceremony of
leave-taking in Kernsberg and Plassenburg?"
Then the Sparhawk had his long-desired view in full daylight of the
woman whose lips, touched once under cloud of night, had dominated his
fancy and enslaved his will during all the weary months of winter.
Also he had before him, though he knew it not, a somewhat difficult and
complicated explanation.
CHAPTER XIII
THE SPARHAWK IN THE TOILS
The Princess Margaret was standing by the window as the young man
entered. Her golden curls flashed in the late sunshine, which made a
kind of haze of light about her head as she turned the resentful
brilliance of her eyes upon Maurice von Lynar.
"Is it a safe thing, think you, Sir Count, to jest with a princess in
her own land and then come back to flout her for it?"
Maurice understood her to refer to the kiss given and returned in the
darkness of the night. He knew not of how many other indiscretions he
was now to bear the brunt, or he had turned on the spot and fled once
more across the river.
"My lady," he said, "if I offended you once, it was not done
intentionally, but by mistake."
"By mistake, sir! Have a care. I may have been indiscreet, but I am not
imbecile."
"The darkness of the night----" faltered von Lynar, "let that be my
excuse."
"Pshaw!" flashed the Princess, suddenly firing up; "do you not see, man,
that you cannot lie yourself out of this? And, indeed, what need? If _I_
were a secretary of embassy, and a princess distinguished me with her
slightest favour, methinks when next I came I would not meanly deny her
acquaintance!"
Von Lynar was distressed, and fortunately for himself his distress
showed in his face.
"Princess," he said, standing humbly before her, "I did wrong. But
consider the sudden temptation, the darkness of the night----"
"The darkness of the night," she said, stamping her foot, and in an
instinctively mocking tone; "you are indeed well inspired. You remind me
of what I ventured that you should be free. The darkness of the night,
indeed! I suppose that is all that sticks in your memory, because you
gained something tangible by it. You have forgotten the walk through the
corridors of the Palace, all you taught me in the rose garden,
and--and--how apt a pupil you said I was. Pray, good Master
Forgetfulness, who hath forgotten all these things, forgotten even his
own name, tell me what you did in Courtland eight months ago?"
"I came--I came," faltered the Sparhawk, fearful of yet further
committing himself, "I came to find and save my dear mistress."
"Your--dear--mistress?" The Princess spoke slowly, and the blue eyes
hardened till they overtopped and beat down the bold black ones of
Maurice von Lynar; "and you dare to tell me this--me, to whom you swore
that you had never loved woman in the world before, never spoken to them
word of wooing or compliment! Out of my sight, fellow! The Prince, my
brother, shall deal with you."
Then all suddenly her pride utterly gave way. The disappointment was too
keen. She sank down on a silk-covered ottoman by the window side,
sobbing.
"Oh, that I could kill you now, with my hands--so," she said in little
furious jerks, gripping at the pillow; "I hate you, thus to put a shame
upon me--me, Margaret of Courtland. Could it have been for such a thing
as you that I sent away the Prince of Muscovy--yes, and many
others--because I could not forget you? And after all----!"
Now Maurice von Lynar was not quick in discernment where woman was
concerned, but on this occasion he recognised that he was blindly
playing the hand of another--a hand, moreover, of which he could not
hope to see the cards. He did the only thing which could have saved him
with the Princess. He came near and sank on one knee before her.
"Madam," he said humbly and in a moving voice, "I beseech you not to be
angry--not to condemn me unheard. In the sense of being in love, I never
loved any but yourself. I would rather die than put the least slight
upon one so surpassingly fair, whose memory has never departed from me,
sleeping or waking, whose image, dimly seen, has never for a moment been
erased from my heart's tablets."
The Princess paused and lifted her eyes till they dwelt searchingly upon
him. His obvious sincerity touched her willing heart.
"But you said just now that you came to Courtland to see 'your dear
mistress?'"
The young man put his hand to his head.
"You must bear with me," he said, "if perchance for a little my words
are wild. I had, indeed, no right to speak of you as my dear mistress."
"Oh, it was of me that you spoke," said the Princess, smiling a little;
"I begin to understand."
"Of what other could I speak?" said the shameless Von Lynar, who now
began to feel his way a little clearer. "I have indeed been very ill,
and when I am in straits my head is still unsettled. Oftentimes I forget
my very name, so sharp a pang striking through my forehead that I dote
and stare and forget all else. It springs from a secret wound that at
the time I knew nothing of."
"Yes--yes, I remember. In the duel with the Wasp--in the yew-tree walk
it happened. Tell me, is it dangerous? Did it well-nigh cost you your
life?"
The youth modestly hung down his head.
This sudden spate of falsehood had come upon him, as it were, from the
outside.
"If the truth will not help me," he muttered, "why, I can lie with any
man. Else wherefore was I born a Dane? But, by my faith, my mistress
must have done some rare tall lying on her own account, and now I am
reaping that which she hath sown."
As he kneeled thus the Princess bent over him with a quizzical
expression on her face.
"You are sure that you speak the truth now? Your wound is not again
causing you to dote?"
"Nay," said the Sparhawk; "indeed, 'tis almost healed."
"Where was the wound?" queried the Princess anxiously.
"There were two," answered Von Lynar diplomatically; "one in my shoulder
at the base of my neck, and the other, more dangerous because internal,
on the head itself."
"Let me see."
She came and stood above him as he put his hand to the collar of his
doublet, and, unfastening a tie, he slipped it down a little and showed
her at the spring of his neck Werner von Orseln's thrust.
"And the other," she said, covering it up with a little shudder, "that
on the head, where is it?"
The youth blushed, but answered valiantly enough.
"It never was an open wound, and so is a little difficult to find. Here,
where my hand is, above my brow."
"Hold up your head," said the Princess. "On which side was it? On the
right? Strange, I cannot find it. You are too far beneath me. The light
falls not aright. Ah, that is better!"
She kneeled down in front of him and examined each side of his head with
interest, making as she did so, many little exclamations of pity and
remorse.
"I think it must be nearer the brow," she said at last; "hold up your
head--look at me."
Von Lynar looked at the Princess. Their position was one as charming as
it was dangerous. They were kneeling opposite to one another, their
faces, drawn together by the interest of the surgical examination, had
approached very close. The dark eyes looked squarely into the blue. With
stuff so inflammable, fire and tow in such immediate conjunction, who
knows what conflagration might have ensued had Von Lynar's eyes
continued thus to dwell on those of the Princess?
But the young man's gaze passed over her shoulder. Behind Margaret of
Courtland he saw a man standing at the door with his hand still on the
latch. A dark frown overspread his face. The Princess, instantly
conscious that the interest had gone out of the situation, followed the
direction of Von Lynar's eyes. She rose to her feet as the young Dane
also had done a moment before.
Maurice recognised the man who stood by the door as the same whom he had
seen on the ground in the yew-tree walk when he and Joan of the Sword
Hand had faced the howling mob of the city. For the second time Prince
Wasp had interfered with the amusements of the Princess Margaret.
That lady looked haughtily at the intruder.
"To what," she said, "am I so fortunate as to owe the unexpected honour
of this visit?"
"I came to pay my respects to your Highness," said Prince Wasp, bowing
low. "I did not know that the Princess was amusing herself. It is my
ill-fortune, not my fault, that I interrupted at a point so full of
interest."
It was the truth. The point was decidedly interesting, and therein lay
the sting of the situation, as probably the Wasp knew full well.
"You are at liberty to leave me now," said the Princess, falling back on
a certain haughty dignity which she kept in reserve behind her headlong
impulsiveness.
"I obey, madam," he replied; "but first I have a message from the Prince
your brother. He asks you to be good enough to accompany his bride to
the minster to-morrow. He has been ill all day with his old trouble, and
so cannot wait in person upon his betrothed. He must abide in solitude
for this day at least. Your Highness is apparently more fortunate!"
The purpose of the insult was plain; but the Princess Margaret
restrained herself, not, however, hating the insulter less.
[Illustration: "The lady looked haughtily at the intruder." [_Page 88_]]
"I pray you, Prince Ivan," she said, "return to my brother and tell him
that his commands are ever an honour, and shall be obeyed to the
letter."
She bowed in dignified dismissal. Prince Wasp swept his plumed hat along
the floor with the profundity of his retiring salutation, and in the
same moment he flashed out his sting.
"I leave your Highness with less regret because I perceive that solitude
has its compensations!" he said.
The pair were left alone, but all things seemed altered now. Margaret of
Courtland was silent and distrait. Von Lynar had a frown upon his brow,
and his eyes were very dark and angry.
"Next time I must kill the fellow!" he muttered. He took the hand of the
Princess and respectfully kissed it.
"I am your servant," he said; "I will do your bidding in all things, in
life or in death. If I have forgotten anything, in aught been remiss,
believe me that it was fate and not I. I will never presume, never count
on your friendship past your desire, never recall your ancient goodness.
I am but a poor soldier, yet at least I can faithfully keep my word."
The Princess withdrew her hand as if she had been somewhat fatigued.
"Do not be afraid," she said a little bitterly, "I shall not forget. _I_
have not been wounded in the head! _Only in the heart!_" she added, as
she turned away.
CHAPTER XIV
AT THE HIGH ALTAR
When Maurice von Lynar reached the open air he stood for full five
minutes, light-headed in the rush of the city traffic. The loud
iteration of rejoicing sounded heartless and even impertinent in his
ear. The world had changed for the young Dane since the Count von Löen
had been summoned by the Princess Margaret.
He cast his mind back over the interview, but failed to disentangle
anything definite. It was a maze of impressions out of which grew the
certainty that, safely to play his difficult part, he must obtain the
whole confidence of the Duchess Joan.
He looked about for the Prince of Muscovy, but failed to see him. Though
not anxious about the result, he was rather glad, for he did not want
another quarrel on his hands till after the wedding. He would see the
Princess Margaret there. If he played his cards well with the bride, he
might even be sent for to escort her.
So he made his way to the magnificent suite of apartments where the
Duchess was lodged. The Prince had ordered everything with great
consideration. Her own horsemen patrolled the front of the palace, and
the Courtland guards were for the time being wholly withdrawn.
[Illustration: "Joan of Hohenstein stood, looking out upon the river."
[_Page 91_]]
It seemed strange that Joan of the Sword Hand, who not so long ago had
led many a dashing foray and been the foremost in many a brisk
encounter, should be a bride! It could not be that once he had
imagined her the fairest woman under the sun, and himself, for her sake,
the most miserable of men. Thus do lovers deceive themselves when the
new has come to obliterate the old. Some can even persuade themselves
that the old never had any existence.
The young Dane found the Duchess walking up and down on the noble
promenade which faces the river to the west. For the water curved in a
spacious elbow about the city of Courtland, and the summer palace was
placed in the angle.
Maurice von Lynar stood awhile respectfully waiting for the Duchess to
recognise him. Werner, John of Thorn, or any of her Kernsberg captains
would have gone directly up to her. But this youth had been trained in
another school.
Joan of Hohenstein stood a while without moving, looking out upon the
river. She thought with a kind of troubled shyness of the morrow, oft
dreamed of, long expected. She saw the man whom she was not known ever
to have seen--the noble young man of the tournament, the gracious Prince
of the summer parlour, courteous and dignified alike to the poor
secretary of embassy and to his sister the Princess Margaret of
Courtland. Surely there never was any one like him--proudly thought this
girl, as she looked across the river at the rich plain studded with
far-smiling farms and fields just waking to life after their long winter
sleep.
"Ah, Von Lynar, my brave Dane, what good wind blows you here?" she
cried. "I declare I was longing for some one to talk to." A
consciousness of need which had only just come to her.
"I have seen the Princess Margaret," said the youth slowly, "and I think
that she must mistake me for some other person. She spoke things most
strange to me to hear. But fearing I might meddle with affairs wherewith
I had no concern, I forebore to correct her."
The eyes of the Duchess danced. A load seemed suddenly lifted off her
mind.
"Was she very angry?" she queried.
"Very!" returned Von Lynar, smiling in recognition of her smile.
"What said the Princess?"
"First she would have it that my name and style were those of the Count
Von Löen. Then she reproached me fiercely because I denied it. After
that she spoke of certain foreign customs she had been taught, recalled
walks through corridors and rose gardens with me, till my head swam and
I knew not what to answer."
Joan of the Sword Hand laughed a merry peal.
"The Count von Löen, did she say?" she meditated. "Well, so you are the
Count von Löen. I create you the Count von Löen now. I give you the
title. It is mine to give. By to-morrow I shall have done with all these
things. And since as the Count von Löen I drank the wine, it is fair
that you, who have to pay the reckoning, should be the Count von Löen
also."
"My family is noble, and I am the sole heir--that is, alive," said
Maurice, a little drily. To his mind the grandson of Count von Lynar, of
the order of the Dannebrog, had no need of any other distinction.
"But I give you also therewith the estates which pertain to the title.
They are situated on the borders of Reichenau. I am so happy to-night
that I would like to make all the world happy. I am sorry for all the
folk I have injured!"
"Love changes all things," said the Dane sententiously.
The Duchess looked at him quickly.
"You are in love--with the Princess Margaret?" she said.
The youth blushed a deep crimson, which flooded his neck and dyed his
dusky skin.
"Poor Maurice!" she said, touching his bowed head with her hand, "your
troubles will not be to seek."
"My lady," said the youth, "I fear not trouble. I have promised to serve
the Princess in all things. She has been very kind to me. She has
forgiven me all."
"So--you are anxious to change your allegiance," said
the Duchess. "It is as well that I have already made you Count von Löen,
and so in a manner bound you to me, or you would be going off into
another's service with all my secrets in your keeping. Not that it will
matter very much--after to-morrow!" she added, with a glance at the wing
of the palace which held the summer parlour. "But how did you manage to
appease her? That is no mean feat. She is an imperious lady and quick of
understanding."
Then Maurice von Lynar told his mistress of his most allowable
falsehoods, and begged her not to undeceive the Princess, for that he
would rather bear all that she might put upon him than that she should
know he had lied to her.
"Do not be afraid," said the Duchess, laughing, "it was I who tangled
the skein. So far you have unravelled it very well. The least I can do
is to leave you to unwind it to the end, my brave Count von Löen."
So they parted, the Duchess to her apartment, and the young man to pace
up and down the stone-flagged promenade all night, thinking of the
distracting whimsies of the Princess Margaret, of the hopelessness of
his love, and, most of all, of how daintily exquisite and altogether
desirable was her beauty of face, of figure, of temper, of everything!
For the Sparhawk was not a lover to make reservations.
* * * * *
The morning of the great day dawned cool and grey. A sunshade of misty
cloud overspread the city and tempered the heat. It had come up with the
morning wind from the Baltic, and by eight the ships at the quays, and
the tall beflagged festal masts in the streets through which the
procession was to pass, ran clear up into it and were lost, so that the
standards and pennons on their tops could not be seen any more than if
they had been amongst the stars.
The streets were completely lined with the folk of the city of
Courtland as the Princess Margaret, with the Sparhawk and his company of
lances clattering behind her, rode to the entrance of the palace where
abode the bride-elect.
"Who is that youth?" asked Margaret of Courtland of Joan, as they came
out together; she looked at the Dane--"he at the head of your first
troops? He looks like your brother."
"He has often been taken for such!" said the bride. "He is called the
Count von Löen!"
The Princess did not reply, and as the two fair women came out arm in
arm, a sudden glint of sunlight broke through the leaden clouds and fell
upon them, glorifying the white dress of the one, and the blue and gold
apparel of the other.
The bells of the minster clanged a changeful thunder of brazen acclaim
as the bride set out for the first time (so they told each other on the
streets) to see her promised husband.
"'Twas well we did not so manage our affairs, Hans," said a fishmonger's
wife, touching her husband's arm archly.
"Yea, wife," returned the seller of fish; "whatever thou beest, at least
I cannot deny that I took thee with my eyes open!"
They reached the Rathhaus, and the clamour grew louder than ever.
Presently they were at the cathedral and making them ready to dismount.
The bells in the towers above burst forth into yet more frantic
jubilation. The cannons roared from the ramparts.
The Princess Margaret had delayed a little, either taking longer to her
attiring, or, perhaps, gossiping with the bride. So that when the shouts
in the wide Minster Place announced their arrival, all was in readiness
within the crowded church, and the bridegroom had gone in well-nigh half
an hour before them. But that was in accord with the best traditions.
Very like a Princess and a great lady looked Joan of Hohenstein as she
went up the aisle, with Margaret of Courtland by her side. She kept her
eyes on the ground, for she meant to look at no one and behold nothing
till she should see--that which she longed to look upon.
Suddenly she was conscious that they had stopped in the middle of a vast
silence. The candles upon the great altar threw down a golden lustre.
Joan saw the irregular shining of them on her white bridal dress, and
wondered that it should be so bright.
There was a hush over all the assembly, the silence of a great multitude
all intent upon one thing.
"My brother, the Prince of Courtland!" said the voice of the Princess
Margaret.
Slowly Joan raised her eyes--pride and happiness at war with a kind of
glorious shame upon her face.
But that one look altered all things.
She stood fixed, aghast, turned to stone as she gazed. She could neither
speak nor think. That which she saw almost struck her dead with horror.
The man whom his sister introduced as the Prince of Courtland was not
the knight of the tournament. He was not the young prince of the summer
palace. He was a man much older, more meagre of body, grey-headed, with
an odd sidelong expression in his eyes. His shoulders were bent, and he
carried himself like a man prematurely old.
And there, behind the altar-railing, clad in the scarlet of a prince of
the Church, and wearing the mitre of a bishop, stood the husband of her
heart's deepest thoughts, the man who had never been out of her mind all
these weary months. He held a service book in his hand, and stood ready
to marry Joan of Hohenstein to another.
The man who was called Prince of Courtland came forward to take her
hand; but Joan stood with her arms firmly at her sides. The terrible
nature of her mistake flashed upon her and grew in horror with every
moment. Fate seemed to laugh suddenly and mockingly in her face. Destiny
shut her in.
"Are you the Prince of Courtland?" she asked; and at the sound of her
voice, unwontedly clear in the great church, even the organ appeared to
still itself. All listened intently, though only a few heard the
conversation.
"I have that honour," bowed the man with the bent shoulders.
"Then, as God lives, I will never marry you!" cried Joan, all her soul
in the disgust of her voice.
"Be not disdainful, my lady," said the bridegroom mildly; "I will be
your humble slave. You shall have a palace and an establishment of your
own, an it like you. The marriage was your father's desire, and hath the
sanction of the Emperor. It is as necessary for your State as for mine."
Then, while the people waited in a kind of palpitating uncertainty, the
Princess Margaret whispered to the bride, who stood with a face ashen
pale as her own white dress.
Sometimes she looked at the Prince of Courtland, and then immediately
averted her eyes. But never, after the first glance, did Joan permit
them to stray to the face of him who stood behind the altar railings
with his service book in his hand.
"Well," she said finally, "I _will_ marry this man, since it is my fate.
Let the ceremony proceed!"
"I thank you, gracious lady," said the Prince, taking her hand and
leading his bride to the altar. "You will never regret it."
"No, but you will!" muttered his groomsman, the Prince Ivan of Muscovy.
The full rich tones of the prince bishop rose and fell through the
crowded minster as Joan of Hohenstein was married to his elder brother,
and with the closing words of the episcopal benediction an awe fell upon
the multitude. They felt that they were in the presence of great unknown
forces, the action and interaction of which might lead no man knew
whither.
At the close of the service, Joan, now Princess of Courtland, leaned
over and whispered a word to her chosen captain, Maurice von Lynar, an
action noticed by few. The young man started and gazed into her face;
but, immediately commanding his emotion, he nodded and disappeared by a
side door.
The great organ swelled out. The marriage procession was re-formed. The
prince-bishop had retired to his sacristy to change his robes. The new
Princess of Courtland came down the aisle on the arm of her husband.
Then the bells almost turned over in their fury of jubilation, and every
cannon in the city bellowed out. The people shouted themselves hoarse,
and the line of Courtland troops who kept the people back had great
difficulty in restraining the enthusiasm which threatened to break all
bounds and involve the married pair in a whirling tumult of acclaim.
In the centre of the Minster Place the four hundred lances of the
Kernsberg escort had formed up, a serried mass of beautiful well-groomed
horses, stalwart men, and shining spears, from each of which the pennon
of their mistress fluttered in the light wind.
"Ha! there they come at last! See them on the steps!" The shouts rang
out, and the people flung their headgear wildly into the air. The line
of Courtland foot saluted, but no cheer came from the array of Kernsberg
lances.
"They are sorry to lose her--and small wonder. Well, she is ours now!"
the people cried, congratulating one another as they shook hands and the
wine gurgled out of the pigskins into innumerable thirsty mouths.
On the steps of the minster, after they had descended more than
half-way, the new Princess of Courtland turned upon her lord. Her hand
slipped from his arm, which hung a moment crooked and empty before it
dropped to his side. His mouth was a little open with surprise. Prince
Louis knew that he was wedding a wilful dame, but he had not been
prepared for this.
"Now, my lord," said the Princess Joan, loud and clear. "I have married
you. The bond of heritage-brotherhood is fulfilled. I have obeyed my
father to the letter. I have obeyed the Emperor. I have done all. Now be
it known to you and to all men that I will neither live with you nor yet
in your city. I am your wife in name. You shall never be my husband in
aught else. I bid you farewell, Prince of Courtland. Joan of Hohenstein
may marry where she is bidden, but she loves where she will."
The horse upon which she had come to the minster stood waiting. There
was the Sparhawk ready to help her into the saddle.
Ere one of the wedding guests could move to prevent her, before the
Prince of Courtland could cry an order or decide what to do, Joan of the
Sword Hand had placed herself at the head of her four hundred lances,
and was riding through the shouting streets towards the Plassenburg
gate.
The people cheered as she went by, clearing the way that she might not
be annoyed. They thought it part of the day's show, and voted the
Kernsbergers a gallant band, well set up and right bravely arrayed.
So they passed through the gate in safety. The noble portal was all
aflutter with colour, the arms of Hohenstein and Courtland being
quartered together on a great wooden plaque over the main entrance.
As soon as they were clear the Princess Joan turned in her saddle and
spake to the four hundred behind her.
"We ride back to Kernsberg," she cried. "Joan of the Sword Hand is wed,
but not yet won. If they would keep her they must first catch her. Are
you with me, lads of the hills?"
Then came back a unanimous shout of "Aye--to the death!" from four
hundred throats.
"Then give me a sword and put the horses to their speed. We ride for
home. Let them catch us who can!"
And this was the true fashion of the marrying of Joan of the Sword Hand,
Duchess of Hohenstein, to the Prince Louis of Courtland, by his brother
Conrad, Cardinal and Prince of Holy Church.
CHAPTER XV
WHAT JOAN LEFT BEHIND
After the departure of his bride, the Prince of Courtland stood on the
steps of the minster, dazed and foundered by the shame which had so
suddenly befallen him. Beneath him the people seethed tumultuously,
their holiday ribands and maypole dresses making as gay a swirl of
colour as when one looks at the sun through the facets of a cut Venetian
glass. Prince Louis's weak and fretful face worked with emotion. His
bird-like hands clawed uncertainly at his sword-hilt, wandering off over
the golden pouches that tasselled his baldric till they rested on the
sheath of the poignard he wore.
"Bid the gates be shut, Prince!" The whisper came over his shoulder from
a young man who had been standing all the time twisting his moustache.
"Bid your horsemen bit and bridle. The plain is fair before you. It is a
long way to Kernsberg. I have a hundred Muscovites at your service, all
well mounted--ten thousand behind them over the frontier if these are
not enough! Let no wench in the world put this shame upon a reigning
Prince of Courtland on his wedding-day!"
Thus Ivan of Muscovy, attired in silk, banded of black and gold,
counselled the disdained Prince Louis, who stood pushing upward with two
fingers the point of his thin greyish beard and gnawing the straggling
ends between his teeth.
"I say, 'To horse and ride, man!' Will you dare tell this folk of yours
that you are disdained, slighted at the very church door by your wedded
wife, cast off and trodden in the mire like a bursten glove? Can you
afford to proclaim yourself the scorn of Germany? How it will run, that
news! To Plassenburg first, where the Executioner's Son will smile
triumphantly to his witch woman, and straightway send off a messenger to
tickle the well-larded ribs of his friend the Margraf George with the
rare jest."
The Prince Louis appeared to be moved by the Wasp's words. He turned
about to the nearest knight-in-waiting.
"Let us to horse--every man of us!" he said. "Bid that the steeds be
brought instantly."
The banded Wasp had further counsels to give.
"Give out that you go to meet the Princess at a rendezvous. For a
pleasantry between yourselves, you have resolved to spend the honeymoon
at a distant hunting-lodge. Quick! Not half a dozen of all the company
caught the true import of her words. You will tame her yet. She will
founder her horses in a single day's ride, while you have relays along
the road at every castle, at every farm-house, and your borders are
fifty good miles away."
Beneath, in the square, the court jesters leaped and laughed, turning
somersaults and making a flying skirt, like that of a morrice dancer,
out of the long, flapping points of their parti-coloured blouses. The
streets in front of the cathedral were alive with musicians, mostly in
little bands of three, a harper with his harp of fourteen strings, his
companion playing industriously upon a Flute-English, and with these two
their 'prentice or servitor, who accompanied them with shrill iterance
of whistle, while both his hands busied themselves with the merry tuck
of tabour.
In this incessant merrymaking the people soon forgot their astonishment
at the sudden disappearance of the bride. There was, indeed, no
understanding these great folk. But it was a fine day for a feast--the
pretext a good one. And so the lasses and lads joked as they danced in
the lower vaults of the town house, from which the barrels had been
cleared for the occasion.
"If thou and I were thus wedded, Grete, would you ride one way and I the
other? Nay, God wot, lass! I am but a tanner's 'prentice, but I'd abide
beside thee, as close as bark by hide that lies three years in the same
tan-pit--aye, an' that I would, lass!"
Then Gretchen bridled. "I would not marry thee, nor yet lie near or far,
Hans; thou art but a boy, feckless and skill-less save to pole about thy
stinking skins--faugh!"
"Nay, try me, Grete! Is not this kiss as sweet as any civet-scented fop
could give?"
At the command of the Prince the trumpets rang out again the call of
"Boot-and-saddle!" from the steps of the cathedral. At the sound the
grooms, who were here and there in the press, hasted to find and
caparison the horses of their lords. Meanwhile, on the wide steps the
Prince Louis fretted, dinting his nails restlessly into his palms and
shaking with anger and disappointment till his deep sleeves vibrated
like scarlet flames in a veering wind.
Suddenly there passed a wave over the people who crowded the spacious
Dom Platz of Courtland. The turmoil stilled itself unconsciously. The
many-headed parti-coloured throng of women's tall coifs, gay fluttering
ribands, men's velvet caps, gallants' white feathers that shifted like
the permutations of a kaleidoscope, all at once fixed itself into a sea
of white faces, from which presently arose a forest of arms flourishing
kerchiefs and tossing caps. To this succeeded a deep mouth-roar of
burgherish welcome such as the reigning Prince had never heard raised in
his own honour.
"Conrad--Prince Conrad! God bless our Prince-Cardinal!"
The legitimate ruler of Courtland, standing where Joan had left him,
with his slim-waisted Muscovite mentor behind him, half-turned to look.
And there on the highest place stood his brother in the scarlet of his
new dignity as it had come from the Pope himself, his red biretta held
in his hand, and his fair and noble head erect as he looked over the
folk to where on the slope above the city gates he could still see the
sun glint and sparkle on the cuirasses and lanceheads of the four
hundred riders of Kernsberg.
But even as the Prince of Courtland looked back at his brother, the
whisper of the tempter smote his ear.
"Had Prince Conrad been in your place, and you behind the altar rails,
think you that the Duchess Joan would have fled so cavalierly?"
By this time the young Cardinal had descended till he stood on the other
side of the Prince from Ivan of Muscovy.
"You take horse to follow your bride?" he queried, smiling. "Is it a
fashion of Kernsberg brides thus to steal away?" For he could see the
grooms bringing horses into the square, and the guards beating the
people back with the butts of their spears to make room for the mounting
of the Prince's cavalcade.
"Hark--he flouts you!" came the whisper over the bridegroom's shoulder;
"I warrant he knew of this before."
"You have done your priest's work, brother," said Louis coldly, "e'en
permit me to go about that of a prince and a husband in my own way."
The Cardinal bowed low, but with great self-command held his peace,
whereat Louis of Courtland broke out in a sudden overboiling fury.
"This is your doing!" he cried; "I know it well. From her first coming
my bride had set herself to scorn me. My sister knew it. You knew it.
You smile as at a jest. The Pope's favour has turned your head. You
would have all--the love of my wife, the rule of my folk, as well as the
acclaim of these city swine. Listen--'The good Prince Conrad! God save
the noble Prince!' It is worth while living for favour such as this."
"Brother of mine," said the young man gently, "as you know well, I
never set eyes upon the noble Lady Joan before. Never spoke word to her,
held no communication by word or pen."
"Von Dessauer--his secretary!" whispered Ivan, dropping the suggestion
carefully over his shoulder like poison distilled into a cup.
"You were constantly with the old fox Dessauer, the envoy of
Plassenburg--who came from Kernsberg, bringing with him that slim
secretary. By my faith, now, when I think of it, Prince Ivan told me
last night he was as like this madcap girl as pea to pea--some fly-blown
base-born brother, doubtless!"
Conrad shook his head. His brother had doubtless gone momentarily
distract with his troubles.
"Nay, deny it not! And smile not either--lest I spoil the symmetry of
that face for your monkish mummery and processions. Aye, if I have to
lie under ten years' interdict for it from your friend the most Holy
Pope of Rome!"
"Do not forget there is another Church in my country, which will lay no
interdict upon you, Prince Louis," laughed Ivan of Muscovy. "But to
horse--to horse--we lose time!"
"Brother," said the Cardinal, laying his hand on Louis's arm, "on my
word as a knight--as a Prince of the Church--I knew nothing of the
matter. I cannot even guess what has led you thus to accuse me!"
The Princess Margaret came at that moment out of the cathedral and ran
impetuously to her favourite brother.
He put out his hand. She took it, and instead of kissing his bishop's
ring, as in strict etiquette she ought to have done, she cried out,
"Conrad, do you know what that glorious wench has done? Dared her
husband's authority at the church door, leaped into the saddle, whistled
up her men, cried to all these Courtland gallants, 'Catch me who can!'
And lo! at this moment she is riding straight for Kernsberg, and now our
Louis must catch her. A glorious wedding! I would I were by her side.
Brother Louis, you need not frown, I am nowise affrighted at your
glooms! This is a bride worth fighting for. No puling cloister-maid this
that dares not raise her eyes higher than her bridegroom's knee! Were I
a man, by my faith, I would never eat or drink, neither pray nor sain
me, till I had tamed the darling and brought her to my wrist like a
falcon to a lure!"
"So, then, madam, you knew of this?" said her elder brother, glowering
upon her from beneath his heavy brows.
"Nay!" trilled the gay Princess, "I only wish I had. Then I, too, would
have been riding with them--such a jest as never was, it would have
been. Goodbye, my poor forsaken brother! Joy be with you on this your
bridal journey. Take Prince Ivan with you, and Conrad and I will keep
the kingdom against your return, with your prize gentled on your wrist."
So smiling and kissing her hand the Princess Margaret waved her brother
and Prince Ivan off. The Prince of Courtland neither looked at her nor
answered. But the Muscovite turned often in his saddle as if to carry
with him the picture she made of saucy countenance and dainty figure as
she stood looking up into the face of the Cardinal Prince Conrad.
"What in Heaven's name is the meaning of all this--I do not understand
in the least?" he was saying.
"Haste you and unrobe, Brother Con," she said; "this grandeur of yours
daunts me. Then, in the summer parlour, I will tell you all!"
[Illustration: "They stood ... looking down at the rushing river."
[_Page 105_]]
CHAPTER XVI
PRINCE WASP'S COMPACT
"I cannot go back to Courtland dishonoured," said Prince Louis to Ivan
of Muscovy, as they stood on the green bank looking down on the rushing
river, broad and brown, which had so lately been the Fords of Alla. The
river had risen almost as it seemed upon the very heels of the four
hundred horsemen of Kernsberg, and the ironclad knights and men-at-arms
who followed the Prince of Courtland could not face the yeasty swirl of
the flood.
Prince Ivan, left to himself, would have dared it.
"What is a little brown water?" he cried. "Let the men leave their
armour on this side and swim their horses through. We do it fifty times
a month in Muscovy in the springtime. And what are your hill-fed brooks
to the full-bosomed rivers of the Great Plain?"
"It is just because they are hill-fed that we know them and will not
risk our lives. The Alla has come down out of the mountains of
Hohenstein. For four-and-twenty hours nothing without wing may pass and
repass. Yet an hour earlier and our Duchess had been trapped on the
hither side even as we. But now she will sit and laugh up there in
Kernsberg. And--I cannot go back to Courtland without a bride!"
Prince Ivan stood a moment silent. Then his eyes glanced over his
companion with a certain severe and amused curiosity. From foot to head
they scanned him, beginning at the shoes of red Cordovan leather,
following upwards to the great tassel he wore at his poignard; then came
the golden girdle about his waist, the flowered needlework at his wrists
and neck, and the scrutiny ended with the flat red cap on his head, from
which a white feather nodded over his left eye.
Then the gaze of Prince Ivan returned again slowly to the pointed red
shoes of Cordovan leather.
If there was anything so contemptuous as that eye-blink in the open
scorn of all the burghers of Courtland, Prince Louis was to be excused
for any hesitation he might show in facing his subjects.
The matter of Prince Wasp's meditation ran somewhat thuswise: "Thou man,
fashioned from a scullion's nail-paring, and cocked upon a horse, what
can I make of thee? Thou, to have a country, a crown, a wife! Gudgeon
eats stickleback, jack-pike eats gudgeon and grows fat, till at last the
sturgeon in his armour eats him. I will fatten this jack. I will feed
him like the gudgeons of Kernsberg and Hohenstein, then take him with a
dainty lure indeed, black-tipped, with sleeves gay as cranes' wings, and
answering to the name of 'my lady Joan.' But wait--I must be wary, and
have a care lest I shadow his water."
So saying within his heart, Prince Wasp became exceedingly thoughtful
and of a demure countenance.
"My lord," he said, "this day's work will not go well down in Courtland,
I fear me!"
Prince Louis moved uneasily, keeping his regard steadily upon the brown
turmoil of the Alla swirling beneath, whereas the eyes of Ivan were
never removed from his friend's meagre face.
"Your true Courtlander is more than half a Muscovite," mused Prince
Wasp, as if thinking aloud; "he wishes not to be argued with. He wants a
master, and he will not love one who permits himself to be choused of a
wife upon his wedding-day!"
Prince Louis started quickly as the Wasp's sting pricked him.
"And pray, Prince Ivan," he said, "what could I have done that I left
undone? Speak plainly, since you are so prodigal of smiles suppressed,
so witty with covert words and shoulder-tappings!"
"My Louis," said Prince Wasp, laying his hand upon the arm of his
companion with an affectation of tenderness. "I flout you not--I mock
you not. And if I speak harshly, it is only that I love not to see you
in your turn flouted, mocked, scorned, made light of before your own
people!"
"I believe it, Ivan; pardon the heat of my hasty temper!" said the
Prince of Courtland. The watchful Muscovite pursued his advantage,
narrowing his eyes that he might the better note every change on the
face of the man whom he held in his toils. He went on, with a certain
resigned sadness in his voice--
"Ever since I came first to Courtland with the not dishonourable hope of
carrying back to my father a princess of your house, none have been so
amiable together as you and I. We have been even as David and Jonathan."
The Prince Louis put out a hand, which apparently Ivan did not see, for
he continued without taking it.
"Yet what have I gained either of solid good or even of the lighter but
not less agreeable matter of my lady's favour? So far as your sister is
concerned, I have wasted my time. If I consider the union of our
peoples, already one in heart, your brother works against us both; the
Princess Margaret despises me, Prince Conrad thwarts us. He would bind
us in chains and carry us tinkling to the feet of his pagan master in
Rome!"
"I think not so," answered Prince Louis--"I cannot think so of my
brother, with all his faults. Conrad is a brave soldier, a good
knight--though, as is the custom of our house, it is his lot to be no
more than a prince-bishop!"
The Wasp laughed a little hard laugh, clear and inhuman as the snap and
rattle of Spanish castanets.
"Louis, my good friend, your simplicity, your lack of guile, do you
wrong most grievous! You judge others as you yourself are. Do you not
see that Conrad your brother must pay for his red hat? He must earn his
cardinalate. Papa Sixtus gives nothing for nothing. Courtland must pay
Peter's pence, must become monkish land. On every flake of stockfish,
every grain of sturgeon roe, every ounce of marled amber, your Holy
Father must levy his sacred dues. And the clear ambition of your brother
is to make you chief cat's-paw pontifical upon the Baltic shore.
Consider it, good Louis."
And the Prince of Muscovy twirled his moustache and smiled
condescendingly between his fingers. Then, as if he thought suddenly of
something else and made a new calculation, he laughed a laugh, quick and
short as the barking of a dog.
"Ha!" he cried, "truly we order things better in my country. I have
brothers, one, two, three. They are grand dukes, highnesses very serene.
One of them has this province, another this sinecure, yet another waits
on my father. My father dies--and I--well, I am in my father's place.
What will my brothers do with their serene highnesses then? They will
take each one the clearest road and the shortest for the frontier, or by
the Holy Icon of Moscow, there would very speedily be certain new
tablets in the funeral vault of my fathers."
The Prince of Courtland started.
"This thing I could never imagine of Conrad my brother. He loves me. At
heart he ever cared but for his books, and now that he is a priest he
hath forsworn knighthood, and tournaments, and wars."
"Poor Louis," said Ivan sadly, "not to see that once a soldier always a
soldier. But 'tis a good fault, this generous blindness of the eyes. He
hath already the love of your people. He has won already the voice that
speaks from every altar and presbytery. The power to loose and bind
men's consciences is in his hand. In a little, when he has bartered away
your power for his cardinal's hat, he may be made a greater than
yourself, an elector of the empire, the right-hand man of Papa Sixtus,
as his uncle Adrian was before him. Then indeed your Courtland will
underlie the tinkle of Peter's keys!"
"I am sure that Conrad would do nothing against his fatherland or to the
hurt of his prince and brother!" said Prince Louis, but he spoke in a
wavering voice, like one more than half convinced.
"Again," continued Ivan, without heeding him, "there is your wife. I am
sure that if he had been the prince and you the priest--well, she had
not slept this night in the Castle of Kernsberg!"
"Ivan, if you love me, be silent," cried the tortured Prince of
Courtland, setting his hand to his brow. "This is the mere idle dreaming
of a fool. How learned you these things? I mean how did the thoughts
enter into your mind?"
"I learned the matter from the Princess Margaret, who in the brief space
of a day became your wife's confidante!"
"Did Margaret tell it you?"
The Prince Ivan laughed a short, self-depreciatory laugh.
"Nay, truly," he said, smiling sadly, "you and I are in one despite,
Louis. Your wife scorns you--me, my sweetheart. Did Margaret tell me?
Nay, verily! Yet I learned it, nevertheless, even more certainly because
she denied it so vehemently. But, after all, I daresay all will end for
the best."
"How so?" demanded Prince Louis haughtily.
"Why, I have heard that your Papa at Rome will do aught for money.
Doubtless he will dissolve this marriage, which indeed is no more than
one in name. He has done more than that already for his own nephews. He
will absolve your brother from his vows. Then you can be the monk and he
the king. There will be a new marriage, at which doubtless you shall
hold the service book and he the lady's hand. Then we shall have no
ridings back to Kernsberg, with four hundred lances, at a word from a
girl's scornful mouth. And the Alla down there may rise or fall at its
pleasure, and neither hurt nor hinder any!"
The Prince of Courtland turned an angry countenance upon his friend, but
the keen-witted Muscovite looked so kindly and yet so sadly upon him
that after awhile the severity of his face relaxed as it had been
against his will, and with a quick gesture he added, "I believe you love
me, Ivan, though indeed your words are no better than red-hot pincers in
my heart."
"Love you, Louis?" cried Prince Ivan. "I love you better than any
brother I have, though they will never live to thwart me as yours
thwarts you--better even than my father, for you do not keep me out of
my inheritance!"
Then in a gayer tone he went on.
"I love you so much that I will pledge my father's whole army to help
you, first to win your wife, next to take Hohenstein, Kernsberg, and
Marienfeld. And after that, if you are still ambitious, why--to
Plassenburg and the Wolfmark, which now the Executioner's Son holds.
That would make a noble kingdom to offer a fair and wilful queen."
"And for this you ask?"
"Only your love, Louis--only your love! And, if it please you, the
alliance with that Princess of your honourable house, of whom we spoke
just now!"
"My sister Margaret, you mean? I will do what I can, Ivan, but she also
is wilful. You know she is wilful! I cannot compel her love!"
The Prince Ivan laughed.
"I am not so complaisant as you, Louis, nor yet so modest. Give me my
bride on the day Joan of the Sword Hand sleeps in the palace of
Courtland as its princess, and I will take my chance of winning our
Margaret's love!"
CHAPTER XVII
WOMAN'S WILFULNESS
Joan rode on, silent, a furlong before her men.
Behind her sulked Maurice von Lynar. Had any been there to note, their
faces were now strangely alike in feature, and yet more curiously unlike
in expression. Joan gazed forward into the distance like a soul dead and
about to be reborn, planning a new life. Maurice von Lynar looked more
like a naughty schoolboy whom some tyrant Fate, rod-wielding, has
compelled to obey against his will.
Yet, in spite of expression, it was Maurice von Lynar who was planning
the future. Joan's heart was yet too sore. Her tree of life had, as it
were, been cut off close to the ground. She could not go back to the old
so soon after her blissful year of dreams. There was to be no new life
for her. She could not take up the old. But Maurice--his thoughts were
all for the Princess Margaret, of the ripple of her golden hair, of her
pretty wilful words and ways, of that dimple on her chin, and, above
all, of her threat to seek him out if--but it was not possible that she
could mean that. And yet she looked as though she might make good her
words. Was it possible? He posed himself with this question, and for
half an hour rode on oblivious of all else.
"Eh?" he said at last, half conscious that some one had been speaking to
him from an infinite distance. "Eh? Did you speak, Captain von Orseln?"
Von Orseln grunted out a little laugh, almost silently, indeed, and
expressed more by a heave of his shoulders than by any alteration of his
features.
"Speak, indeed? As if I had not been speaking these five minutes. Well
nigh had I stuck my poignard in your ribs to teach you to mind your
superior officer. What think you of this business?"
"Think?" the Sparhawk's disappointment burst out. "Think? Why, 'tis past
all thinking. Courtland is shut to us for twenty years."
"Well," laughed Von Orseln, "who cares for that? Castle Kernsberg is
good enough for me, so we can hold it."
"Hold it?" cried Maurice, with a kind of joy in his face; "do you think
they will come after us?"
Von Orseln nodded approval of his spirit.
"Yes, little man, yes," he said; "if you have been fretting to come to
blows with the Courtlanders you are in good case to be satisfied. I
would we had only these lumpish Baltic jacks to fear."
Even as they talked Castle Kernsberg floated up like a cloud before them
above the blue and misty plain, long before they could distinguish the
walls and hundred gables of the town beneath.
But no word spoke Joan till that purple shadow had taken shape as
stately stone and lime, and she could discern her own red lion flying
abreast of the banner of Louis of Courtland upon the topmost pinnacle of
the round tower.
Then on a little mound without the town she halted and faced about. Von
Orseln halted the troop with a backward wave of the hand.
"Men of Hohenstein," said the Duchess, in a clear, far-reaching alto,
"you have followed me, asking no word of why or wherefore. I have told
you nothing, yet is an explanation due to you."
There came the sound as of a hoarse unanimous muttering among the
soldiers. Joan looked at Von Orseln as a sign for him to interpret it.
"They say that they are Joan of the Sword Hand's men, and that they will
disembowl any man who wants to know what it may please you to keep
secret."
"Aye, or question by so much as one lifted eyebrow aught that it may
please your Highness to do," added Captain Peter Balta, from the right
of the first troop.
"I said that our Duchess could never live in such a dog's hole as their
Courtland," quoth George the Hussite, who, before he took service with
Henry the Lion, had been a heretic preacher. "In Bohemia, now, where the
pines grow----"
"Hold your prate, all of you," growled Von Orseln, "or you will find
where hemp grows, and why! My lady," he added, altering his voice as he
turned to her, "be assured, no dog in Kernsberg will bark an
interrogative at you. Shall our young Duchess Joan be wived and bedded
like some little burgheress that sells laces and tape all day long on
the Axel-strasse? Shall the daughter of Henry the Lion be at the
commandment of any Bor-Russian boor, an it like her not? Shall she get a
burr in her throat with breathing the raw fogs of the Baltic? Not a
word, most gracious lady! Explain nothing. Extenuate nothing. It is the
will of Joan of the Sword Hand--that is enough; and, by the word of
Werner von Orseln, it shall be enough!"
"It is the will of Joan of the Sword Hand! It is enough!" repeated the
four hundred lances, like a class that learns a lesson by rote.
A lump rose in Joan's throat as she tried to shape into words the
thoughts that surged within. She felt strangely weak. Her pride was not
the same as of old, for the heart of a woman had grown up within her--a
heart of flesh. Surely that could not be a tear in her eye? No; the wind
blew shrewdly out of the west, to which they were riding. Von Orseln
noted the struggle and took up his parable once more.
"The pact is carried out. The lands united--the will of Henry the Lion
done! What more? Shall the free Princess be the huswife of a yellow
Baltic dwarf? When we go into the town and they ask us, we will say but
this, 'Our Lady misliked the fashion of his beard!' That will be reason
good and broad and deep, sufficient alike for grey-haired carl and
prattling bairn!"
"I thank you, noble gentlemen," said Joan. "Now, as you say, let us ride
into Kernsberg."
"And pull down that flag!" cried Maurice, pointing to the black
Courtland Eagle which flew so steadily beside the coronated lion of
Kernsberg and Hohenstein.
"And pray, sir, why?" quoth Joan of the Sword Hand. "Am I not also
Princess of Courtland?"
* * * * *
From woman's wilfulness all things somehow have their beginning. Yet of
herself she is content with few things (so that she have what she
wants), somewhat Spartan in fare if let alone, and no dinner-eating
animal. Wine, tobacco, caviare, Strasburg goose-liver--Epicurus's
choicest gifts to men of this world--are contemned by womankind. Left to
their own devices, they prefer a drench of sweet mead or hydromel laced
with water, or even of late the China brew that filters in black bricks
through the country of the Muscovite. Nevertheless, to woman's wantings
may be traced all restraints and judgments, from the sword flaming every
way about Eden-gate to the last merchant declared bankrupt and "dyvour"
upon the exchange flags of Hamburg town. Eve did not eat the apple when
she got it. She hasted to give it away. She only wanted it because it
had been forbidden.
So also Joan of Hohenstein desired to go down with Dessauer that she
might look upon the man betrothed to her from birth. She went. She
looked, and, as the tale tells, within her there grew a heart of flesh.
Then, when the stroke fell, that heart uprose in quick, intemperate
revolt. And what might have issued in the dull compliance of a princess
whose life was settled for her, became the imperious revolt of a woman
against an intolerable and loathsome impossibility.
So in her castle of Kernsberg Joan waited. But not idly. All day long
and every day Maurice von Lynar rode on her service. The hillmen
gathered to his word, and in the courtyard the stormy voices of George
the Hussite and Peter Balta were never hushed. The shepherds from the
hills went to and fro, marching and countermarching, wheeling and
charging, porting musket and thrusting pike, till all Kernsberg was
little better than a barracks, and the maidens sat wet-eyed at their
knitting by the fire and thought, "Well for Her to please herself whom
she shall marry--but how about us, with never a lad in the town to
whistle us out in the gloaming, or to thumb a pebble against the
window-lattice from the deep edges of the ripening corn?"
But there were two, at least, within the realm of the Duchess Joan who
knew no drawbacks to their joy, who rubbed palm on palm and nudged each
other for pure gladness. These (it is sad to say) were the military
_attachés_ of the neighbouring peaceful State of Plassenburg. Yet they
had been specially cautioned by their Prince Hugo, in the presence of
his wife Helene, the hereditary Princess, that they were most carefully
to avoid all international complications. They were on no account to
take sides in any quarrel. Above all they must do nothing prejudicial to
the peace, neutrality, and universal amity of the State and Princedom of
Plassenburg. Such were these instructions.
They promised faithfully.
But, their names being Captains Boris and Jorian, they now rubbed their
hands and nudged each other. They ought to have been in their chamber in
the Castle of Kernsberg, busily concocting despatches to their master
and mistress, giving an account of these momentous events.
Instead, how is it that we find them lying on that spur of the
Jägernbergen which overlooks the passes of Alla, watching the gathering
of the great storm which in the course of days must break over the
domains of the Duchess Joan--who had refused and slighted her wedded
husband, Louis, Prince of Courtland?
Being both powerfully resourceful men, long lean Boris and rotund Jorian
had found a way out of the apparent difficulty. There had come with
them from Plassenburg a commission written upon an entire square of
sheepskin by a secretary and sealed with the seal of Leopold von
Dessauer, High Councillor of the United Princedom and Duchy, bearing
that "In the name of Hugo and Helene our well-loved lieges Captains
Boris and Jorian are empowered to act and treat," and so forth. This
momentous deed was tied about the middle with a red string, and
presented withal so courtly and respectable an appearance to the
uncritical eyes of the ex-men-at-arms themselves, that they felt almost
anything excusable which they might do in its name.
Before leaving Kernsberg, therefore, Boris placed this great red-waisted
parchment roll in his bed, leaning it angle-wise against his pillow.
Jorian tossed a spare dagger with the arms of Plassenburg beside it.
"There--let the civil power and the military for once lie down
together!" he said. "We delegate our authority to these two during our
absence!"
To the silent Plassenburgers who had accompanied them, and who now kept
their door with unswerving attention, Boris explained himself briefly.
"Remember," he said, "when you are asked, that the envoys of Plassenburg
are ill--ill of a dangerous and most contagious disease. Also, they are
asleep. They must on no account be waked. The windows must be kept
darkened. It is a great pity. You are desolated. You understand. The
first time I have more money than I can spend you shall have ten marks!"
The men-at-arms understood, which was no wonder, for Boris generally
contrived to make himself very clear. But they thought within them that
their chances of financial benefit from their captain's conditional
generosity were worth about one sole stiver.
So these two, being now free fighting-men, as it were, soldiers of
fortune, lay waiting on the slopes of the Jägernbergen, talking over the
situation.
"A man surely has a right to his own wife!" said Jorian, taking for the
sake of argument the conventional side.
"_Narren-possen_, Jorian!" cried Boris, raising his voice to the
indignation point. "Clotted nonsense! Who is going to keep a man's wife
for him if he cannot do it himself? And he a prince, and within his own
city and fortress, too. She boxed his ears, they say, and rode away,
telling him that if he wanted her he might come and take her! A pretty
spirit, i' faith! Too good for such a dried stockfish of the Baltic,
with not so much soul as a speckled flounder on his own mud-flats!
Faith! if I were a marrying man, I would run off with the lass myself.
She ought at least to be a soldier's wife."
"The trouble is that so far she feels no necessity to be any one's
wife," said Jorian, shifting his ground.
"That also is nonsense," said Boris, who, spite his defence of Joan,
held the usual masculine views. "Every woman wishes to marry, if she can
only have first choice."
"There they come!" whispered Jorian, whose eyes had never wandered from
the long wavering lines of willow and alder which marked the courses of
the sluggish streams flowing east toward the Alla.
Boris rose to his feet and looked long beneath his hand. Very far away
there was a sort of white tremulousness in the atmosphere which after a
while began to give off little luminous glints and sparkles, as the sea
does when a shaft of moonlight touches it through a dark canopy of
cloud.
Then there arose from the level green plain first one tall column of
dense black smoke and then another, till as far as they could see to the
left the plain was full of them.
"God's truth!" cried Jorian, "they are burning the farms and herds'
houses. I thought they had been Christians in Courtland. But these are
more like Duke Casimir's devil's tricks."
Boris did not immediately answer. His eyes were busy seeing, his brain
setting in order.
"I tell you what," he said at last, in a tone of intense interest,
"these are no fires lighted by Courtlanders. The heavy Baltic knights
could never ride so fast nor spread so wide. The Muscovite is out! These
are Cossack fires. Bravo, Jorian! we shall yet have our Hugo here with
his axe! He will never suffer the Bear so near his borders."
"Let us go down," said Jorian, "or we shall miss some of the fun. In two
good hours they will be at the fords of the Alla!"
So they looked to their arms and went down.
"What do you here? Go back!" shouted Werner von Orseln, who with his men
lay waiting behind the floodbanks of the Alla. "This is not your
quarrel! Go back, Plassenburgers!"
"We have for the time being demitted our office," Boris exclaimed. "The
envoys of Plassenburg are at home in bed, sick of a most sanguinary
fever. We offer you our swords as free fighting-men and good Teuts. The
Muscovites are over yonder. Lord, to think that I have lived to
forty-eight and never yet killed even one bearded Russ!"
"You may mend that record shortly, to all appearance, if you have luck!"
said Von Orseln grimly. "And this gentleman here," he added, looking at
Jorian, "is he also in bed, sick?"
"My sword is at your service," said the round one, "though I should
prefer a musketoon, if it is all the same to you. It will be something
to do till these firebrands come within arm's length of us."
"I have here two which are very much at your service, if you know how to
use them!" said Werner.
The men-at-arms laughed.
"We know their tricks better than those of our sweethearts!" they said,
"and those we know well!"
"Here they be, then," said Von Orseln. "I sent a couple of men spurring
to warn my Lady Joan, and I bade them leave their muskets and bandoliers
till they came back, that they might ride the lighter to and from
Kernsberg."
Boris and Jorian took the spare pieces with a glow of gratitude, which
was, however, very considerably modified when they discovered the state
in which their former owners had kept them.
"Dirty Wendish pigs," they said (which was their favourite malediction,
though they themselves were Wend of the Wends). "Were they but an hour
in our camp they should ride the wooden horse with these very muskets
tied to their soles to keep them firmly down. Faugh!"
And Jorian withdrew his finger from the muzzle, black as soot with the
grease of uncleansed powder.
Looking up, they saw that the priest with the little army of Kernsberg
was praying fervently (after the Hussite manner, without book) for the
safety of the State and person of their lady Duchess, and that the men
were listening bareheaded beneath the green slope of the water-dyke.
"Go on cleaning," said Boris; "this is some heretic function, and might
sap our morality. We are volunteers, at any rate, as well as the best of
good Catholics. We do not need unlicensed prayers. If you have quite
done with that rag stick, lend it to me, Jorian!"
CHAPTER XVIII
CAPTAINS BORIS AND JORIAN PROMOTE PEACE
Now this is the report which Captains Boris and Jorian, envoys (very)
extraordinary from the Prince and Princess of Plassenburg to the
reigning Duchess of Hohenstein, made to their home government upon their
return from the fords of the Alla.
They wrote it in collaboration, on the usual plan of one working and the
other assisting him with advice.
Jorian, being of the rotund and complaisant faction, acquiesced in the
proposal that he should do the writing. But as he never got beyond "To
our honoured Lord and Lady, Hugo and Helene, these----" there needs not
to be any particularity as to his manner of acting the scribe. He mended
at a pen till it looked like a brush worn to the straggling point. He
squared his elbows suddenly and overset the inkhorn. He daubed an entire
folio of paper with a completeness which left nothing to the
imagination.
Then he remembered that he knew where a secretary was in waiting. He
would go and borrow him. Jorian re-entered their bedroom with a beaming
smile, and the secretary held by the sleeve to prevent his escape. Both
felt that already the report was as good as written. It began thus:--
"With great assiduity (a word suggested by the secretary) your envoys
remembered your Highnesses' princely advice and command that we should
involve ourselves in no warfare or other local disagreement. So when we
heard that Hohenstein was to be invaded by the troops of the Prince of
Courtland we were deeply grieved.
"Nevertheless, judging it to be for the good of our country that we
should have a near view of the fighting, we left worthy and assured
substitutes in our place and room
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