Strassfurtgave the travellers too poor an entertainment to make them tarry by it. They got a change of horses and pushed on another ten miles, the ground rising steadily as they began to leave the plains and cross the eastern spurs of the Harz mountains. At Aschersleben the air was noticeably purer and laden with the resinous smell of the pines. They made a long rest here for the evening meal and then rode slowly, for the troopers' horses were tired and sore with the weight of men and mail. The lieutenant made his men walk up the steep hills, but it was late when they clattered and rumbled into little Sangershausen and came to a good inn in the shadow of St Ulrich.
The inn was not large but the stables were spacious enough to take in all the troopers as well as their horses: a fortunate thing, since, at the late hour it was, to have made any endeavour to quarter them on the inhabitants would have been a possible cause of tumult. They were already sufficiently near to Thüringen, a Protestant state in the main, for Protestant feeling to be uppermost. Some news of the vengeance executed on Protestant Magdeburg would have preceded the travellers even at this remote town on the borders of the Harz, and Nigel and thelieutenant were both aware of the danger they ran, peaceful as their errand was.
Despite their fatigue they set off again early, covering the ten miles to Frankenhausen with ease. Then the road began to wind in and out among the hills, which lay across their path to Erfurt. The lower slopes of the hills already showed corn ripening; the grass stood knee-deep in the valleys, but above the cornlands on every hillside rose the forest. There were a few woodcutters in the forest, a labourer or two here and there in the fields, and at long intervals tiny hamlets, with perhaps a mill or an indifferent inn. To the travellers one and all, the continuous ascents to high ground, the long forest roads, the descents into new valleys, became monotonous and seemingly interminable. They made no haste. It was no countryside for haste. At the best Nigel expected to reach Erfurt at sundown: for the horses had not thrown off the weariness of yesterday, and they could not expect to get a relay for the coach. At the inn where they made what midday meal the place was capable of they could get nothing but smoked ham, little tough cheeses, rye-bread and beer. Fortunately there was plenty of the latter, and the troopers made no grumbling at its quality. Elspeth Reinheit appeared to be blessed with a good appetite, and found ham and rye-bread and cheese to her liking, for she did well by them. The other and more highly-born girl ate little and drank goat's milk, which has a sustaining quality for those who can put up with its richness. Pastor Rad was no more talkative than he had been the day before, and brooded alike in valley and on hill-top with a morose perseverance that foreboded a wealth of prophetic outburst, whenever he should come to his opportunity and to his flock. He watched Nigel in all his approaches and conversation with Elspeth, which the chance or the tedium of the journey brought about.Nigel was on his side quite natural and unconstrained in his behaviour to the girl, who had done him a vital service which he had in his turn requited. There was no feeling except that of human kindness, which perhaps runs a little thicker as between man and woman, more so still if the man be comely and the woman not less well-seeming than a woman should be.
The longest day of travel comes to an end: and at last they spied the cathedral and the sister church of Saint Severus perched on its eminence. Then the spires of St Martin, St Michael, St Laurence, and later on the walls of Erfurt, rose to view. There were gates to pass, two waterways to cross by little bridges, which let one see a wilderness of little streets, and then they drew rein at a demure hostelry in the Prediger Strasse, well thought of by the Protestant community of Erfurt.
Nigel and the lieutenant having seen their charges safely housed, rode on with their escort, and readily found quarters for them with the soldiers of the garrison; for Erfurt, if it showed no active partisanship at this time, was passively more for the Emperor than for the cause of Gustavus. Originally one of the free cities of the Hanseatic League, it had become annexed by some threads of service to the Electorate of Mainz, the Elector being the Archbishop, and so able to exercise influence, if not precisely dominion, by the spiritual arm as well as by his considerable secular forces. Despite Luther, Erfurt was still to be reckoned as a Catholic city, and not many months after this very day Gustavus treated it accordingly in the swift foray that followed his victory of Breitenfeld.
The lieutenant being by habit a good companion and a great man at a bottle, where he could find both company and bottle, having once sat down with the officers of the garrison, was in no mood to leave them. Nigel Charteris, on the other hand, like many of his fellow-countrymen,was prone to content himself with his own company rather than make himself profoundly uncomfortable for the sake of being sociable. Wine, Woman, and Song, as the triune object of German idolatry, especially in garrisons, camps, and universities, did not evoke any enthusiasm in him.
He drank wine for good cheer. Song he could bear rather than love, so it had a lilt in it. As for woman, as she followed the camp, or in the character of the helpless quarry of the licentious chase of officers and soldiers alike, or again as the fat helpmeet of the German burgher, redundant with all the virtues but lacking equally all the graces, Nigel Charteris paid her no heed. His gorge rose from one cause or another at all three. Through all the coarse scenes of camp life, the brutalities of the sack of cities, he had preserved with religious fervour the memory of his mother, and of the maidens of gentle quality whom he had known in his own land, tall, straight-limbed women with broad foreheads and blue-grey or dark-brown eyes, looking boldly out upon a world that dared not asperse them.
In Ottilie von Thüringen he had recognised at a glance one of their peers, with less of their frankness, with more of their pride of race, a woman of rare beauty, mysterious, tangible yet intangible. For the first time in his prime of manhood did he feel troubled in spirit by the consciousness that something in him strove towards the infinite that is the spirit of woman.
But whether it was this, or the consciousness that of late he had been remiss in his devotions, he stole out beneath the intense blue of a starlit sky towards the cathedral, in the precincts of which he trusted to find a priest to hear his confession.
The builders in their desire to set their holy city on a little hill, and the only hill having a steep declivity tomore mundane levels, had constructed a series of under-buildings, calledcavaten, till they got a continuous level on which to build the cathedral. And a penitent who has to mount a matter of fifty steps, and does so, certainly deserves well of Mother Church. So at least thought Nigel Charteris, as, somewhat breathless, he peered in and found it almost dark. A lantern standing on the floor in a corner announced the presence of some one, who proved to be the sacristan coming out of the sacristy.
By the aid of a few small coins the sacristan remembered that Father Felix lodged at the priest's house close by, and offered to fetch him. While he was gone Nigel made the round of the nave, the side-aisles, and the chancel. So lofty was the roof his eye could not pierce the gloom, but the cathedral was of no great extent, the chancel being in fact very nearly as large as the nave. The faint rays of the lantern lit up the carved and polished ages-old woodwork of the choir seats. Beyond was a shadowy land round which he walked in the space of a few minutes.
From the still deeper shadow of a group of pillars Nigel was startled by a woman's sobbing. Out of the great silence of the place it was audible, when his own footfall ceased for an instant, and then it ceased suddenly, as if the woman, learning that she was not alone, had regained command of herself. There ensued a soft murmur as of a recited prayer, one long familiar to her who prayed, and then as of some concluding personal petition, in which Nigel was almost certain that he heard the name of Albrecht von Waldstein. His mind being intent upon this name, that he should think to hear it even in this solemn environment was not in itself strange, but Nigel was inclined to regard the fancied recognition as having something of a supernatural significance.
At this moment the priest and the sacristan entered,and the holy father and his soldier penitent entered the confessional.
When Nigel came out he walked slowly to the door, where he was joined by the priest, who, his office performed, was cheerfully curious as any layman to hear the latest details from Magdeburg. News of the victory of the Church, as every Catholic was bound to esteem it, had reached him. He was willing to hear more, but made no comment. His sympathies, it appeared, were mainly confined to his own surroundings, his personal charge in Erfurt, and did not travel outward to the greater world. He was curious to hear whether the Jesuits were jubilant over the new phase in politics. It was clear that he at least was no Jesuit. The priestsecularhas always had a certain jealousy of the priestregular.
Nigel received his "Pax vobiscum," and turned away to make for his quarters. A few, and those feeble, lights burned at a distance from the cathedral. There was the blue sky, starlit as when he had entered. Standing still a moment or two to make sure of his direction in this solitary part of the city, he heard a light step beside him, and a tall closely-veiled lady asked him to set her on her way to the Prediger Strasse.
Muffled as the tones were, Nigel recognised them.
"Then it was your ladyship in the cathedral a while ago?"
"Sir! I do not know of what you speak! Can you not point me to the Prediger Strasse?"
"It is useless to pretend! You are she who calls herself Ottilie of Thüringen! And you are of the Holy Catholic faith! I am Nigel Charteris!"
"Had the night been lighter," she said in a tone of vexation, "I should have asked no man! Now I am forced to confide what I wished not to tell; Iamof your faith."
"You may trust me!" said Nigel, taking her by the arm and making across the Mainzerhof bridge over the Bergstrom, a branch of the main waterway that threads the town as a string does a row of paunchy beads from Leipzig Fair.
"'Tis not the shortest way, but it is the least lonely. Tell me why you consorted with Protestants even to the risk of death or worse in Magdeburg?"
"Captain Charteris!" She spoke in low clear tones which could reach his ear alone. "It is no article of our compact to tell you these things. It is just as well for you to know nothing. It is a great protection sometimes not to know anything."
"Count Tilly said that same thing!" said Nigel. "Is it a password of the Rosicrucians?"
"Then he warned you against me!" she said in a tone of triumph.
Nigel bit his lip for its indiscretion.
"He gave it as a piece of general advice," he said. "But what is in our compact?"
"Merely this!" she replied. "You were to conduct us to Erfurt. You were to put us into the company of trustworthy people so that we might pursue our way to Eisenach."
"That is true!" said Nigel. "Yet it is not to be wondered at if I cast about to know more of a noble lady who first tries to stab me with a dagger, then takes a passing interest in my parentage, whom next I find by an extraordinary chance sobbing in a dark corner of a cathedral, whom, finally, I have the honour of conducting to her lodging at an hour when most noble ladies are glad to be within doors." There was a vein of humour in his tone rather than in what he said.
"You think I owe it to you, sir?"
"Does woman ever owe anything to man that she doesnot pay a thousand-fold? I count no woman my debtor!" He said it in a tone of tenderness she had not heard before from this soldier of fortune.
"Trust me then in turn! I tell you nothing! Believe me, there are things I dare not tell my confessor that Icouldtell you; only it is better not."
"Let it be so, madame! 'Trust me all in all or not at all' is a proverb of my country."
They had reached the further end of the street called Fischersand and turned on to the Long Bridge, from which it was but the length of a small side street to the Prediger Strasse.
They halted on the bridge and looked over the balustrade, up the waterway. There was candlelight here and there in the back windows of the houses that abutted on the water. Their gaze could only penetrate a little way along the dark space between the houses. A few stars reflected themselves in the water at their feet. The Lady Ottilie of Thüringen was in a restless mood, in that mood when a woman wants everything and nothing, when she is eager to reveal and careful to hide everything but her eagerness. To an older man perhaps there would have been no puzzle, but to Nigel Charteris, who had never known the spell of woman, she was a mysterious child following her own phantasies.
She gazed into the dark vista for a full minute or so of silence—a silence only broken by the tramp of the guard going its rounds. Then she said—
"Have you ever known what love is?"
Nigel started at the question, for he was conscious of the exaltation of spirit that he felt at being alone with this mysterious child, who was a woman who had proud eyes, that he felt at being her protector in this old garrisoned city that was strange to both of them.
"No, lady!" He spoke truth, and she knew it.
"It is like this!" she said, and pointed downwards. "It is dark and in movement, and you see stars in it glittering,—wavy stars that you know are not real, though they look so near. You know that it would be cold to plunge in, and that you would not get your stars. There are the stars above in the blue at an immense distance.... It's like that too!" She pointed up the waterway into the darkness. "You can see a little of the way, and then it is all dark, all a mystery, and yet you know that you are eager to go, and that if you go far enough you will expect to reach the stars."
Nigel listened and was troubled—troubled because he was not by nature a poet, and could not well follow her thought, and troubled because he felt that her note was impersonal as relating to himself. If she was referring to a particular man it was not himself.
"To think," she went on, "that a woman could be so stirred, so set above herself by any man that she would become even as his slave in return for nothing but his barest thanks, that her mind could be full of him day and night, that all he might do or say, were it to her own injury, would be right in her eyes!"
"And yours—your mind is full of Albrecht von Waldstein, if I guess rightly?" Nigel asked.
"Sir!" She flashed upon him, turning towards the pathway. "Go you and seek your Wallenstein! What think you that Ottilie von Thüringen can have in common with that cold seeker after power, with him who would use the Habsburgs for a stepping-stone, and play the Cæsar?"
Nigel was silent. He was confident that he had struck the keynote of her meditation, but refrained from placing his finger upon it with insistence, as he might have done, from fear that he should find that she resounded to none other. For he began willy-nilly to desire that thisharpsichord of hers should give forth melody beneath his own fingers. But after a moment or two, with the directness of the Scot, without irony, stating a fact, he said—
"Lady, I would gladly be the man you spoke of!"
She turned towards him, hurling him a look through her veil.
"My tall captain! You would be a fool even to dream of it!"
"So be it!" he said in his plain way. "Here is your inn. To-morrow your escort will be here. At what hour?"
"At eight, sir, if you can so contrive."
Itwas not difficult to find at the sign of the Lily a couple of worthy merchants who were returning on the morrow to Gotha, and they readily promised Nigel to act as escort so far. From Gotha it would go hard if the girls did not get a safe journey to Eisenach.
The parting was brief. Some tears sprang to the ready eyes of Elspeth. Ottilie's eyes showed nothing. Her lips repeated, "Till we meet again, captain!" The pastor nodded sulkily. No sooner had the coach rumbled off than Nigel sprang to his saddle, and together with his comrade, the lieutenant, and the escort, trotted to the merry jingle of the accoutrements and the clash of hoofs out of Erfurt over Steiger Hill on the road for Rudolfstadt. In consultation with some of the garrison he had planned to ride through the forest to Rudolfstadt, thence to Plauen, pass the night there, cross the Erzgebirge on the next day, and push into Bohemia as far as Pilsen; by good fortune they might be at Budweis on the evening of the third day and in Vienna by the afternoon of the fourth.
After surmounting Steiger the road lay straight enough across a broad valley through a round dozen of hamlets, and at the tenth mile they crossed the Ilm and beganto ascend a more winding road, which, six miles farther, brought them to Rudolfstadt. Here they made their midday meal, and without delaying over the wine-pot, made good speed into the hills that lay between them and Plauen, the chief city of the Vogtland. The Vogt had been careful to choose a high country for his dwelling, and so the horses found it no easy finish to their day's work to climb as they had to do to bed and fodder.
So far Nigel had paid little heed to any demonstrations of Lutheran spirit. Erfurt, for all it had nursed Luther out of monkhood into flat heresy, was still Catholic. Rudolfstadt was towards the outskirts of the Thüringer Wald and a mere hamlet, though it bore a kingly name. The other villages that lay between it and Plauen were inconsiderable, and Nigel did not let his men linger when traversing them. It was quite possible that the news of the sack of Magdeburg had preceded him, but it was unlikely that any force of the soldiers of Gustavus or of his allies were in the neighbourhood, and against any undisciplined throng of turbulent Protestants Nigel felt secure, if he were not greatly outnumbered.
But as soon as the gates closed behind him and his men, he became aware from the looks of the people and their answers to his questions that he had come into a very hornet's nest. Arms seemed to be the customary wear, and in at least two of the squares he noticed stout burghers and apprentices practising drill under the guidance of men of martial bearing.
Instead of making, as he would have done, for an inn, he rode right through the town to the castle of Hradschin, which was the one place inside the town that promised security, if not good cheer, and was held on behalf of the Emperor by an officer who represented in a shadowyway the ancient dignity and function of the Vogt of long ago.
There he found the drawbridge up and the sentinels on guard, but he was admitted without much parley to find that the officer in question was an old comrade of his Wallenstein days, one Hildebrand von Hohendorf, who received him with open arms and a full flagon, and whose eyes roamed over the twenty well-appointed troopers with much satisfaction.
The burly Commandant's eye, as he sat back in his great chair after the first part of the supper was despatched, lit upon Nigel with great good-humour.
"So you are a captain of Tilly's, my boy! And I warrant you get another step if you carry despatches safely to Vienna! Some people have all the luck. And I wager you've a good round bag of golden crowns in your wallet as it is."
"As to that," said Nigel, "I left a few odd thalers with an honest banker at Erfurt. I know better than to carry much gold about me."
"Sly fellows, you Scots! Ha! ha! ha! A few odd thalers! Why, the sack of miserly Madgeburg must have been like drawing water in a bucket from a brimming well! And here I sit cooped up in Hradschin, and draw a few groschen a day for running the risk of a Lutheran bullet, or a crack from a sledge-hammer every time I go into the town, and the saints above know when I shall be able to get back to the wars."
"Why didn't you do the same as the others, and join Tilly?"
"In the first place, I got the offer of Hradschin, and in the second place, my own little estate of Hohendorf is but a few miles to the north, over by Elsterberg, and I can keep a better eye upon it than if I were wandering about with Tilly. And in the third place, when one has servedwith Wallenstein, it isn't the same thing to serve with Tilly."
"And in the fourth place, Hildebrand, you seem to have a good larder and a good cellar!"
Hildebrand laughed a hearty contented laugh.
"I like them better than your Restitution Edict! Well, Hendrick?"
A soldier had come in and stood at attention.
"There is a tumult in the town, Commandant. They have assembled on the other side of the moat with torches and weapons."
"Bid them all go to the devil and come back to-morrow morning!"
"Yes, Commandant!"
The soldier returned in a few minutes.
"They will have speech with you, Commandant!"
"Confound them all for disturbers of the peace! I am coming. This is a new caper!"
The Commandant donned his corselet and headpiece, and accompanied by Nigel came out on the roof of a small tower that overlooked the drawbridge.
There was the moat below and a narrow one at that. But it was a sufficient barrier.
"Silence for the Commandant!" shouted the sergeant of the guard. There was silence in the grim-looking crowd that stood many deep on the other side, torches and lanterns lighting up the faces of some and leaving others mere shadowy patches, lighting up, too, the faces of many steel weapons and the barrels of many firelocks.
"Now Johann Pfarrer! In God's name tell us what this is all about, and let a man get back to his supper!"
"Magdeburg!" shouted Johann Pfarrer with a voice like a deep-toned trumpet.
"Aye! Magdeburg!" The crowed echoed and roared it lustily with a curious note of wild anger in the throat.
"Well, friends? What have I to do with Magdeburg?"
"Just this!" said Johann Pfarrer. "To-night we have heard an exact relation of the sack of Magdeburg. You have with you one of Tilly's captains and twenty of his hell-born riders."
"Faith, Johann! you may be right! I don't know where they were born. They are all good Germans!"
"The more shame!" growled Johann. "Now, Commandant, we are not joking. Deliver them all up to us, officers and men!"
"For what? Who ever heard of a German delivering up his guests? Tut! tut! man!"
"There is no 'Tut! tut!' about it," retorted Johann. "We are going to hang them. Blood for blood! Vengeance for Magdeburg!"
"What nonsense you talk," said Hildebrand in his jolly cajoling fashion. "Why should you or I trouble about Magdeburg? Let the Brandenburgers look after themselves. You don't owe them anything!"
"They are our brothers in the faith," said another voice, and a Lutheran pastor stood out from the throng.
"Yes! Yes! Our brothers in the faith." The bystanders took up the cry till it reached the outskirts of the throng, seemingly a long way back.
"Well! I take my orders from the Emperor!" said Hildebrand. "You had better go and ask him! I give up my guests for no one. Now go away home to your suppers and your wives and don't trouble your heads with politics!"
"You hear, friends?" shouted Johann, turning to his comrades. "You hear what Commandant von Hohendorf tells us. Shall we?"
"No! A thousand noes!" was the reply from hundreds of throats, and the ominous rattle of weapons gave itemphasis. "Storm the castle! Burn down old Hradschin! Death to the hell-riders," came from all sides.
Nigel, standing on the battlements in the rear of the Commandant, was not recognisable from below, but could very well distinguish the faces of most of those who stood in the front of the throng. They were drawn from all classes in the town, which, it was clear, was stirred to its depths. There were few women, and only two of these had ventured near to the leaders. Nigel surveyed the assembly with the indifference of the soldier to the execrations of a crowd of citizens, and the added feeling of detachment from the exasperation which they felt at the slaughter of some of their own countrymen by others of their own countrymen in the pay of the Emperor, who was far on the other side of the mountains. His curiosity was alert, however, and when his eyes rested on the two women, whose heads were enveloped in hoods that left most of the face in impenetrable shadow, he strove to estimate their condition, whether gentle or simple. In bearing they both seemed apart from the burghers with whom they mingled. One of them was tall for a woman, and, when she moved, did so with a gesture that marked her at least as no housewife. The other's movements were quick, and reminded Nigel of a hen moving and pecking with sudden jerks of fussiness. Then for a moment, as the Commandant was speaking, the tall woman looked upward and the ruddy light from a neighbouring torch fell upon her face for a mere instant, but it was long enough. Nigel drew his cloak about him with a shiver. The woman appeared to have the eyes and mouth of Ottilie von Thüringen.
He was sure it was not she. She had started for Gotha. He had seen her in the coach, and at the head of his men had ridden, not, it was true, at breakneck speed, but at a good pace, wasting no time.
Some one, it was clear, had arrived in the town who had witnessed the sack of Magdeburg, and striven to and contrived to inflame the townspeople to a fever point. But even supposing, what was impossible, that the mysterious Ottilie had ridden by other roads and reached Plauen at his heels, what could her errand be? She was a Catholic. It was unthinkable to believe that she could be seeking to inflame the minds of Protestants to the butchery of a score of troopers in the service of the Emperor out upon a peaceful task of escort duty.
It passed through his mind and was dismissed. Hildebrand turned to him.
"The pigs! They will be less noisy in the morning. Let us go in and finish our wine. Hradschin can stand a few hard words and even a few knocks such as they can give, unless Gustavus sends them a few cannon."
As they went in the tumult grew in volume, but it was soon lost to their ears as they once more resumed their wine within the thick walls.
"The devil of it is," said the Commandant, "that there will be no getting out of the place while they are in this mind. They will guard all the roads. And your men are all needed here if they make an attack in force to-morrow."
"The despatches do not admit of delay," said Nigel, who had no mind to be cooped up in Hradschin for a week. "If I cannot leave with the men, I must leave without them."
"But how are you going to get out of the town? You must cross the river, and the bridge will be guarded. There's your horse, too. Still, as you say, there are the despatches."
"Surely, if I start two hours before dawn, I can get the gates open after overpowering the guard. My twentytroopers ought to manage that. How far is it from here to the bridge?"
"Four hundred yards! But four hundred yards, of which at least a hundred are down a narrow street to the bridge-head, supposing the pigs are on the watch, are as bad as four miles. You know what it is to ride through a press of people. You and your troopers would be pulled from your horses in no time. We must think! Pass the flagon, comrade!"
"Lieutenant! Make the round of the ramparts with one of the Commandant's soldiers and see what the dispositions are, whether one can leave the castle and how. One cannot make one's plans for leaving the town if one cannot first leave the castle."
"True!" said Hildebrand, who was secretly desirous of retaining the twenty troopers to defend Hradschin. "And sound your men as to whether they will risk a rope with Captain Charteris or remain here with me."
Nigel would have been inclined to resent this, but as Hildebrand was his host he said nothing, only being quite resolved that in the end his men should obey orders, hanging or no hanging.
Then they fell to discuss the road Nigel should take.
"Pilsen is a long journey through the hills!" said the Commandant. "Why not make for Eger? There is a strong garrison at Eger. If you reach there in safety you can get another escort to Vienna, and when things are quiet your men can slip out and go there to await your return." In this way the Commandant made it a more familiar idea to Nigel's mind that he should go alone. And Nigel, on his part, resolved that alone, or accompanied, it would be easier to escape that night, when the citizens would be drowsy with their unwonted watching, say two hours before dawn, than on the morrow when the threatened attack began. The heart of the difficulty tohis mind would be the gate at the bridge-head. Even if the guard were overcome there would still be delay, and delay would be fatal.
The lieutenant returned and reported that watch-fires were lit and burning at all the four avenues which gave egress from the neighbourhood of the castle, and at each was a strong guard, all armed with muskets. Any one coming from the castle could be seen. The crowd had dispersed.
The three soldiers put their heads together over a plan of the town, and Nigel asked question after question till he had extracted all the facts he could from the Commandant. Then he asked the Commandant for the quickest-witted of his men, and sent for Sergeant Blick, one of the escort, by special request of Nigel, who had great confidence in his fidelity.
In a quarter of an hour the two men dropped into a flat-bottomed boat kept at a small back gate of the castle for the convenience of the kitchens. And mooring it carefully on the other side, they stood half-way between the fires and the guards to the north and those to the south. The soldier belonging to the castle tapped at a window in the street which faced the castle again and again. Presently the knock was answered. The casement opened. The soldier got through, and burly Sergeant Blick waited for the door to open. Then he entered too. A few words with the goodwife, who supplied the soldiers of the garrison with spiced sausages, and they departed through a door at the back of the house into a darkness that could scarcely have been bettered.
As the clock of the Rathhaus struck one past midnight there gathered in its shadows a knot of men. By a quarter past there were twenty, and at half-past there were forty. Every man came by himself and stealthily, and every man came armed, and was surprised to find so manyothers there before him, except only the first three, and they were very old in comradeship. As each man came up he murmured "Waldstein," and waited in the gloom in silence.
As the clock of the Rathhaus struck one past midnight Sergeant Blick and two or three men who, like him, knew something about horses, were as silently as possible yoking horses, and in some cases oxen, which had complacently folded their legs and gone to sleep chewing the cud as industriously as usual, to the waggons that stood in the market street and market-place. The noise of horses and waggons clattering or creaking was nothing to the dwellers in that part of the town.
One of the ostlers led away a waggon creaking and rumbling. The ostler was a good Catholic, and had a solid crown piece in his breeches. Then the other led away a waggon. Then when the first ostler had returned, Sergeant Blick started, and by half-past one eight waggons were disposed across the streets that led to the castle and not far from the men round the watch-fires. The horses were brought back again.
At half-past one the men in the shadows of the Rathhaus saw one who walked like a soldier come towards them, and as he halted just outside the shadows they could see the glint of his casque and heard him call them sharply to attention. In a trice they had arranged themselves in two lines as they had been used to do in Wallenstein's army. They had no doubt it was one of Wallenstein's officers, and one or two thought they remembered the voice.
They marched without hesitation towards the castle, and creeping past the waggons ranged up again in order. One or two of the guard not so overcome with sleep as the others—for your watch-fire, especially if it be smoky, as it can easily be, is a monstrous soporific—glanced rounduneasily at the clink of arms and peered into the shadows and saw nothing. Then came a word of command, and, before they could all spring to their weapons, Nigel and his levy were upon them, had beaten every man to the earth, scattered the watch-fire where it would, and then, re-forming, passed on. They halted in front of the drawbridge of the castle. It was let down, and nineteen troopers and the lieutenant came over the moat and formed up. Nigel said a word to the lieutenant and passed on with his footmen till he sighted the second watch-fire. Once again his besom of men swept the watchers, and this time they were caught by the barricade of waggons, and every man, who was not laid flat and helpless by sword or pike or stave, was trussed up till further need. The waggons were dragged aside, and the horsemen trotted towards the narrow street that led to the bridge-head and the old soldiers marched behind as a rearguard, still led by Nigel. When they got within bowshot of the gate the horsemen rode down upon the guard and made them deliver up the keys.
The gates were opened. Nigel sprang to the spare horse, and said a thankful farewell to the old soldiers and to Plauen.
His last words to the old soldiers had been—
"If Wallenstein wants you again, will you come?"
And every man had growled out, "Aye, with a will!"
Onceclear of the town and on the open road to Olsnitz Nigel's immediate anxiety was ended. He did not fear the pursuit of the townspeople. Not despicable in quality is the valour which rouses and fills a man, and a man's fellows, in sight of their common hearthstone at the Rathhaus, or of that, possibly dearer, rallying-place the Rathskeller, where the favoured vintages of the burghers lie snug in cobwebs, only to be brought forth from the complete darkness of their resting-places to the still dim and broken daylight of the afternoon, or to the lantern-light cloven by the massive pillars of the low arches into patches of ruddy glow and pools of shadow. Not despicable in quality is it, but it carries a mighty stroke only within the town's walls. To pursue with success a troop, however small, of trained mounted men, one must have the like. Nigel and his men rode on into the darkness, which was just sufficiently permeated by the faint light of stars to let them see the road at their horses' feet and a few yards ahead; they rode sleepily, but feeling secure. The road they followed was the road to Hof, which a few miles out throws out a branch to Olsnitz, and this again at Olsnitz fathers two younglings, the road to Graslitz and Pilsen, and the road to Eger.
Nigel meant to bivouac by the roadside, beneath the pine-trees, where the bed was soft with the pine-needles and dry, and horses and men alike could sleep till an hour after dawn. He was not in the mind to lock himself in any more walled cities till he was in safer country. He had also resolved to make for Eger rather than Pilsen, because, from Eger, which was a frontier post of some quality, he could perhaps send Hildebrand von Hohendorf some assistance.
So having put an hour's riding between his troops and Plauen he called a halt, and the men led their horses up the sloping banks into the forest, where they unsaddled, tethered their horses, and lay down quite contentedly. Nigel, with his head on his saddle-bags and two sentries within hail, was asleep in a few seconds. A few seconds of sleep, so it seemed to the sleep-hungered soldier, and the persistent twittering of the birds, that outburst that hails the almost imperceptible rolling up of the night clouds, awoke him. The birds could see up there in the branches. Where he lay it was dark enough to swear it was still night. Out of the darkness he heard the voice of Sergeant Blick drowsily calling the birds "fools and heretics" for waking him, and he fell asleep again. Another two or three seconds, which were an hour by the clock at Olsnitz, and the birds, after their last nap, were again calling one another to the duty of seeing after breakfast. Nigel rose and stamped his feet and shook himself, listened for the trickle of a spring, and went off to salute it. Then he returned to his saddle and called for his horse. While this was being brought he put his hand into his saddle-bags where he carried the bulky despatches of Count Tilly: first the left, and then the right, then he searched his doublet, his holsters. There were no despatches. Sleep had played him traitor, delivered him bound into the enemy's hand. Into whose?
Nigel was possessed of common-sense, but when common-sense could give but a flimsy explanation, he was not disinclined to allow that the powers of darkness and witchcraft might, notwithstanding King Jamie and his pronouncements, be of some potency. He was cautious too. While not suspecting any of his men, he thought that to keep the loss to himself was the surest way to discover the culprit, if he was among them. So he made no inquiry of the sentries. He had a sure memory, so clear and flawless, that he could repicture himself as in a mirror placing the papers in his saddle-bag. They were there when he placed his head upon the saddle. They were not there now. He searched his lair for any sign that it might give. There was still the impress where he had lain upon the pine-needles but nothing else. The loss was inexplicable as it was irreparable. His professional honour was in jeopardy. His reputation as an officer of approved sagacity was gone. He must go on. There was no help. He must go on and carry to the Emperor the tale of his misfortune, which would sound but a sorry one in the light of Vienna, and, instead of the despatches, such details as he could remember; wherein his excellent memory would doubtless replace all that Count Tilly could have set down. But Tilly's foreshadowed plans? Tilly's recommendation of himself? Into whose hands had they fallen?
If witches had stolen the despatches, were they Protestant witches? No Catholic could be a witch. That was an incompatibility.
The men paraded in the road, and he and the lieutenant looked them over to see that every man was there and in marching order. And Nigel scanned every face and pair of hands.
No! They were as respectable a lot of ruffians inleather and headpiece as one could pick. The order was given to ride, and they rode clanking into Olsnitz, where at the first inn they demanded beer and sausages and bread with the clamour born of a fast of eight hours and a night in the forest.
Nigel and his comrade were hungry too, and having satisfied the hunger for food, he summoned the ostler, taking him inside and questioning him if travellers had passed that way earlier in the morning.
"Three! Two stayed on the road. The third came for a small truss of hay and paid for it and went away again. He was not of these parts."
"Which road did he take?"
"The road to Eger."
Nigel asked other questions, but the answer told him nothing except that he got a minute description of the man and of the horse, the latter more particularly being the ostler's business. It was a sorrel with one black hoof and three white. There were other marks, but that was enough.
Evidently the travellers were going far, and wished to go fast, and not to call at any inn for the space of a horse's feed and watering.
Nigel wasted no time getting to horse again. One of those three had the despatches. He must overtake them. So he rode on briskly, wondering who would steal them and why. To the first question he answered: "The Protestants! For they would be in communication with Gustavus, and would wish to be beforehand in the matter of Tilly's plans."
But why should they take the road to Eger when Gustavus was far to the north? Rather should they ride north to Saxony. The road, however, was plain enough along the valley of the Elster, always rising a little, and steep hillsides on either bank. Of bridle-tracks there were many without doubt, for those who knew the intricacies of the pine-covered hills. But it was not likely the three unknown would take to them.
At Adorf, Nigel learned that three horsemen had passed an hour before. He was gaining upon them then. His men were somewhat surprised that the march was being forced, but they scented rest and a German trooper's welcome at Eger. Ten miles farther they had gained another half-hour. Either the three had become careless, or their horses were tired, or they were poor horsemen. Nigel would have them in the net at Eger, and rode at a great pace. At one point, where the road took a wide bend, he even caught sight of three horses, mere little black spots on the white line of the road, and then he lost them. Trees intervened. At the long last he saw them clearly enough pass through the gate of Eger, and in a few minutes he and his troop clattered through the archway, and saw only that the town had swallowed them up. There was still a sorrel horse with one black hoof and three white ones for a clue.
Nigel bade the lieutenant find quarters for the night, and let the men eat and enjoy themselves. He also privately instructed Sergeant Blick to find the sorrel horse and not miss getting into converse with its rider, nor let him go before he could see him. Then he rode up to the castle, the citadel of the town. He sought the commandant, and was surprised to find in him a fellow-countryman, one David Gordon, a lean, lantern-jawed fellow, whose uniform bespoke the professional soldier, but whose talk reminded Nigel of the ultra-sanctimonious burghers of Edinburgh, on whom the spirit of Knox in its narrowness had descended, but not the fire of his conviction, while gaining a smoky stubbornness and sourness of which Knox would have been little proud.
"Sae yer Coont Tilly has warstled through into Magdeburg, Meester Charteris?"
"Aye, has he!" said Nigel, watching the cold glint of the little eyes beneath the heavy brows.
"And ye'll be carrying the despatches to the Emperor!"
"Yes!"
"Hooch aye!" The commandant rubbed a bristly chin, and watched Nigel's face. "Did ye have a peaceful journey?"
"Not exactly! I had trouble to get out of Plauen, and I think you should send Commandant von Hohendorf a couple of companies. The townsfolk are out of hand."
"Ah! ha!" said the other. "Tis the working of God's wrath at the sinful deeds at Magdeburg!"
If David Gordon had been weighing out spices in a little shop in the Canongate, the speech would have had its right surroundings. As it was, issuing from the mouth of one of the Emperor's officers, it sounded out of place.
"Master Gordon! That's a queer speech!" said Nigel. "Count Tilly's been carrying out the Edict."
"Aye! That's just it, the most abominable Edict. Save us, mebbe ye're a Papist yersel'!"
"Yes! Or I should not be doing the Emperor's service!" Nigel retorted with some heat.
"Whisht! Whisht! man! A man must look to the bawbees, ye ken; but he should aye hould fast to his opeenions!"
"'Tis not for me to say what Mr Gordon should do, or not do," said Nigel dryly. "My creed is where I take my pay, there I fight, and as for the cause I say nothing."
"Aye!" said Commandant Gordon with something like a sigh. "And what brought ye to Eger, when it was a wheen shorter by Pilsen?"
He scrutinised Nigel with a long careful scrutiny.
"That I might tell you how matters stood with Hohendorf. Yours is the nearest garrison."
"Hooch aye!" The commandant appeared to be relieved of some anticipated trouble. "I dinna think I can spare ony, but ye've done your duty in reporting it. I thocht ye were maybe paying a veesit to yon warlock the new Duke keeps at his hoose!"
"What new Duke?"
"Waldstein! Man! Waldstein! Duke of Friedland and the haill rickmatick!"
"Waldstein!" said Nigel. "Here? Waldstein?"
"Aye! He's studying the stars, he and his warlock. He's naething else to do. He's just a spent cannon-ball: good iron but useless. Speiring at the stars will he come back again or no, and speiring at Gustavus of Sweden whether he'll give him all the kingdoms of the earth and the glory of them, if he falls doon and worships him."
"How do you know that he sends letters to Gustavus? Or what is in them?"
"Is it sae unlikely?" the other questioned cunningly. "I could believe onything of a Popish recusant! Waldstein was born a Protestant of good Lutheran parents, and ganged to a Protestant University—Altdorf—and then he wins clean over to the Papists. Noo I'm not saying onything against Papistry, though I dinna believe in it mysel', butyecome of a Catholic family and have never known the truth. I peety but I dinna blame!"
"I am your very humble servant, Mr Gordon," said Nigel, bowing. "I am in need of food and lodgment. Good-bye!"
Nigel took horse again and rode down into the town, pondering many things.
At the foot of the hill he met Sergeant Blick.
"The sorrel horse, captain, is in a stable at the White Lamb."
"Good. We start to-morrow morning at dawn. Therefore have every man ready!"
"Yes, captain!"
"The man who rides the sorrel horse will ride northward before dawn. By whichever gate he passes, he must be caught and made to ride with us, whether he likes it or not, without noise or fuss."
"Yes, captain!"
"Where is the lieutenant?"
"He is at the Blue Angel, captain!"
"Good! To-morrow at dawn!"
Nigel found the lieutenant sitting down to a dish of scrambled eggs with a plentiful dressing of chopped ham.
"There is veal to follow, and then a couple of ducks!" said the lieutenant, concluding the remark with a great gurgle of beer in the recesses of a huge tankard.
Nigel made haste to catch up with the lieutenant.
He had travelled with his comrade through the egg country, the calf country, and had reached duckland. Two legs, a slice of the broad brown back, and some delicate spinach loaded up his plate, when the door opened and a man-servant with the bearing of a soldier entered.
"Captain Charteris!"
"That is I!" said Nigel.
"The Count Albrecht von Waldstein desires the favour of your company for an hour."
Nigellooked ruefully at the duck.
"Stay and eat it, comrade!" said the lieutenant.
"I must leave it! One does not keep Waldstein waiting! I bequeath it to you. See that you give a good account of it."
"That I can promise you!" said the still hungry lieutenant. "At dawn, you said?"
"At dawn! And give a good look at the horses before you turn in!"
Then casting his cloak about him Nigel went out into the deepening twilight.
Nigel Charteris had once, and only once, spoken to Wallenstein face to face. For although Nigel served as a subaltern all through the great campaign, the large armies commanded by the great general operated over tracts of country often miles apart, and months elapsed between one glimpse of him and the next. Little by little, as the great game of war had come to mean something to Nigel's mind, for at the first it had seemed but a sadly confused business, it came to him that Albrecht von Waldstein was a great player. Since his experience with Count Tilly, Nigel had been able to agree that he also was no meanantagonist, but not the equal of Wallenstein. In that curious welter of the Thirty Years' War it wanted but little shaking of the dice-box for Tilly and Wallenstein to have been pitted against one another. As the dice fell, they never were so pitted, and by consequence what then might have happened is left to those skilful in conjecture, and not for us the chroniclers of what did happen.
Nigel, ushered by one servant to another, and finally by some great one to the presence of the great man, felt the awe that one does in meeting the supremely great in one's own profession; but as to his being a Count of the Holy Roman Empire, which the Emperor had made him, a Duke of Friedland, which by comparison was a mere proclamation of landed nobility, Nigel Charteris of Pencaitland in the Lothians cared little. The man was gentle by birth as he himself was. Whether he was a degree higher or lower was naught to a gentle Scot, for the Scot yields to no man in the pride of race.
The house was a great house, rather deep than wide, with gardens full of trees behind. At some time it had belonged to the King of Bohemia, but had been bestowed on one of the great nobles, and in the general disturbance of things ensuing upon the Winter King's invasion of Bohemia, Albrecht von Waldstein had bought it for a small part of its value. It was not the only instance of that faculty the exercise of which by the Jews has gained them the contemptuous names of brokers and Lombarders. In other words, Wallenstein became rich, had become rich, not because he was a great and successful general, but because the same talents which enabled him to plan and organise his armies, enabled him also to plan his own fortunes in matters of estate.
Wallenstein received Nigel in a spacious chamber, which had been an audience-chamber in older days. It was panelled with wood all round the walls, and theflat ceiling was also of wood, but painted with the royal arms of Bohemia and those of the chief vassals, much of them faded and blackened. There was a great open fireplace with a goodly fire of logs blazing in it, and at a convenient distance from it was a small table, curiously carved as to the legs, a couple of flagons of wine, and two tall goblets of fine glass curiously wrought.
In a great chair sat Wallenstein, and at the door by which Nigel entered stood two serving-men.
Nigel saluted his old commander-in-chief. Wallenstein nodded, and bade a servant bring a chair.
"You were with me in the late wars?" was his question, not in the abrupt military fashion, though there were no more words, but in a tone which bespoke a certain graciousness and a certain distance.
"I was, your Grace—lieutenant, then captain of musketeers!"
"And are now with Count Tilly? You were at Magdeburg?"
"Yes! I am now riding with despatches to the Emperor!"
This was the second time he had implied that he had the despatches to deliver, knowing in fact that he had none. He had lied boldly to Gordon, the commandant who should have been a shopkeeper, and thought nothing of it. Besides, Gordon was a Protestant. He did not like lying even by implication to Wallenstein, but he had the wish not to give the great commander an ill opinion of his capacity.
"It is well!" said Wallenstein. "I do not ask you to show them to me. But I should like to know something of Count Tilly's dispositions. I am out of harness. I am enriched and decorated with titles, and put aside. The Jesuits would like to use me as a flail to beat the Protestants, but they do not want the flail for itself, orto beat them. The flail is a passably good flail, and will not wear out yet. How many men has Count Tilly?"
"Twenty thousand foot; two thousand horse!" said Nigel promptly.
"And artillery?"
"Fifty pieces of all kinds!"
"And powder and ball and matches?"
"Sufficient store!"
"Ah!" said Wallenstein. "If Saxony and Brandenburg together make up their minds they can find work for Count Tilly. And then there is Gustavus! Who is to oppose him, and with what? Where do they say Gustavus is?"
"In Pomerania, your Grace!"
"So I have heard, and is negotiating a treaty with France! If the Protestants but knew it, they could beset Tilly and ruin the Emperor."
"But you forget the Elector Maximilian?"
"He is forgettable! He is a Jesuit, who should have been a priest, but was unhappily born a prince. He has an arm, and that arm is Pappenheim. With men enough Pappenheim could face Gustavus. But Pappenheim is with Tilly. An army can have but one head."
"When the Emperor's advisers grow frightened they will send again for your Grace!" said Nigel.
"They must pay dearly!" was Wallenstein's grim remark, with a curl of his thick lower lip. Then he asked abruptly, in a tone which suggested an amused contempt for such toys, "Do you believe in the stars?"
Had Nigel been sitting over a flagon with Hildebrand von Hohendorf instead of with Albrecht von Waldstein he would have laughed out a "No." But two experiences, the sudden apparition of Ottilie outside Hradschin, a possible delusion of the sense of sight, and the disappearance of his despatches from beneath his head indefiance of sentries and all his senses, which was no delusion, had shaken his hitherto light esteem for witchcraft, star-gazing, horoscopes, alchemy, and all the other ingenious paltering with past and future. It had been whispered too among the armies that Wallenstein had commanded that he, like many other great ones of the time, devout Catholics all, consulted necromancers, and this came to Nigel's mind. He made a cautious reply.
"I have never had my horoscope cast. Nor do I know anything of the science of the stars. It is an old belief that the stars affect the destinies of the great ones of the earth, and it would be a presumption in me, who am nobody but a poor Scots gentleman, to treat it lightly."
"Destiny? What is it?" Wallenstein asked. "Man makes his own path out of the best materials to his hand or lets others buffet him into nothingness. There is no third way. But every man who carves his own pathway would fain learn by what implements he can arrive at the summit, so that he may use them at the earliest."
"And suppose," said the other, "the end be a cannon-ball that cuts one in two, what better is a man for knowing it two years before?"
"In truth," and into the eyes of Wallenstein came a strange look, "I know not, but there is always the grim feeling that one may stumble upon a most exact presage of fatality. It draws one on."
"Then you have made some experiments, your Grace?"
"One must do something when one has too much leisure. There is a learned master, a Jew, I think, but he tells little of his origin, who is to be found sometimes at Vienna, sometimes elsewhere, who calls himself Pietro Bramante. He commended himself to me because he hates the Jesuits. He showed skill in casting my horoscope, and has on several occasions given me good intelligence. He is here now."
Nigel involuntarily made the sign of the Cross.
Wallenstein noticed it.
"He does not traffic in devils, nor meddle with holy things. But he professes great skill in the mathematics, which he says are the root of all divination. He is learned in the Cabal, the unwritten tradition of the Jews, whereby Solomon came to know the beginning, mediety, and consummation of times."
The chamberlain of the household now came in, and bowing low said, "The learned Pietro Bramante bids me to acquaint you, my lord, that the constellations are in a favourable aspect for you to enter the House of Knowledge, but that the stranger must enter also, for the orbit of his star conjoins with your lordship's."
"Come!" said Wallenstein, his eyes lighting up into a curious eagerness, curious that is, in a man of his years, and more so to a Scot such as Nigel Charteris was, for the Scots are not given to appearing eager,—even of good fortune. And if the Scot were forty-eight, which was the tale of Wallenstein's years, and he were told that some one was ready to give him good news or bad, he would say, "Weel! weel! it'll no lose in the tellin'," and never move his legs an inch faster.
"Come! Let us see what this diviner has to say!"
Nigel was in truth by no means pleased. For he was a devout Catholic, and hated alike Jews and witchcraft, and thought little of horoscopes. The stars were a good guide on a clear night crossing a moor or in a strange country. That was all. But Wallenstein had once held all the German lands in his hands, and might again. It was a waste of opportunity not to second his whimsies: and if there was nothing in divination but hocus-pocus, why, there was no harm could come of it.
So he rose to his feet and followed: and Wallenstein led him upstairs to a long gallery, and at the farther endwas a curtain drawn across. Portraits of many kings and princesses were ranged along the one wall, and upon the other where the windows were not. The windows looked out upon a balcony and the balcony upon a pleasaunce, but of this, it being now night, Nigel could see little. At long intervals were lighted candles, and many unlit between. And their footfalls, soldier-like and decided, echoed by walls and ceiling, made a great noise in Nigel's ear.
So they came to the curtain and a voice bade draw, and Pietro Bramante stood there and moved not a whit. There were no candles alight near him, and all the light that was came from a copper bowl in which he burned some tow with a blue and now a green flame.
The sage began a recitation in which he made much mention of the seventh house and divers stars and constellations being in opposition or in conjunction, and of this Abracadabra Nigel made nothing. The blue and green flame played upon his naturally brownish face and it was grey, and from Wallenstein's all colour seemed to be gone; instead was his face like a parchment full of lines, all but the eyes, which glittered blackly, never losing gaze upon the sage's face. Except for the latter's utterances there was deep silence, and the three seemed to be alone, for the chamberlain had retired, having ushered them into the gallery.
Then the sage blew out the flame, and his finger faintly glowing began to be visible writing on a wall, or some flat upright surface, and the figure he made was a circle, as truly drawn an O as Messire Michelangelo Buonarrotti might have made. And the circle was of light and glowed through more strongly in one part than another.
"Behold the orbit of the life of Albrecht von Waldstein, a perfect circle. Those lines are perfect circles that make a multiple of ten. It is in every tenth year that greatcauses may affect them—great upliftings of Fortune, or great fatalities.
"Now regard truly this orbit of another life, which passeth through the centre of the first," and again with unerring finger he drew another curve, which may have been a section of a greater circle, or of an elliptical figure, or of a parabola, but it was a true curve, and cut the circle at its centre. "This orbit passeth through the field of Mars and ariseth beyond the plane of the first orbit, and this signifieth that it is the life of a stranger by blood and nation."
So the original glowed upon the void darkness, and the new line that came from afar and passed through the centre of the circle glowed; and yet another line Pietro Bramante drew, and this time it was an oval.
"Behold now the orbit of yet another life. It is an oval and signifieth the life of a woman. An oval hath two foci, and the one is the centre of the orbit of Albrecht von Wallenstein and the other is upon the circumference of the same circle. Now the actions of woman proceed from two foci, the heart and the intelligence, and the heart focus is upon the centre of the circle and the other focus of the mind is upon the circumference or pathway of the same circle. Wherefore I deduce that this woman, whoever she be, hath her affections firmly set upon the very essence which is the spirit of Albrecht von Wallenstein, and her intelligence is set steadfastly on the orbit of his destiny so that it may go fast or slow as she willeth.
"Now, sir!" he addressed Nigel, "what was the day and hour of your birth?"
"The year 1603. The month July. The day the 7th, and the hour 7!"
"Behold figures full of portent," said Pietro. "The year's numerals added together give ten, which is a completenumber. Sixteen hundred and three is a multiple of seven. The month is the seventh month. The day is the seventh. The hour is the seventh. They are propitious times and should give a favourable horoscope. Now I will cast it, and calculate the orbit."
Pietro turned to his copper vessel, and by means which neither of his onlookers could guess the flame sprang up again, and taking a sheet of parchment he made calculations, and set down the fixed points his calculations showed. As the light burned, so the geometrical figures he had drawn before faded from sight.
The two sat silently. Nigel thus far was impressed against his will by the mathematical methods of the learned doctor. He stole a swift glance now and again at Wallenstein, who sat stiffly, absorbed in the doings. Nigel was more interested in the figures of the circle and of the ellipse as they applied to Wallenstein, for Wallenstein of all men was as little to be swayed by any feminine influence as any man. He had married twice. In both cases he had married a woman of noble birth, and of moderate, almost of great, fortune. But no one called Wallenstein uxorious or accused him of careless living in the article of women. No one had imputed to him that he had mistresses, or that either of his wives had ruled him. His face betrayed no tendency to passion. The eyes had no amorousness. As to the lips, if the lower lip spoke of the senses, it was rather of good living. The many lines upon his brow spoke of thought and ambition.
A smile or the semblance of a smile, and that sardonical, had passed across his face when the doctor had spoken of the mysterious woman who was to influence his life.
At last Pietro looked up from his calculations. There was a slight gleam in his worn eyes as of satisfaction, and he brought them his parchment.
"The line of this life, sirs, from the figures of the birth, when affected by the influences which the constellations exercise, must pass through these points," and he showed points upon the parchment marked with Greek letters. "Now if I join these points," and he did so with the point of his pen, "a curve is produced." Again he extinguished the flame of his lamp.
"Now, compare it with the curve I have just shown to you," and it was visible on the extinction of the other flame. "It is the same curve without doubt!"
Nigel was aware of some extraordinary exaltation of mind he could in no wise account for. With his colder intelligence he yet seemed incapable of resisting the belief that the conclusions of the reader of horoscopes were true, that his own path of life was in some momentous way linked up with that of Wallenstein, the idol of his professional admiration, and that now and here that part of his earthly path had begun.
"It seems," said Wallenstein, turning to Nigel, "that by all the rules of divination as practised by the learned doctors of these times, and in particular by Pietro Bramante, who has at divers times made notable experiments at the court of Vienna and elsewhere, you are one of those whose birth is fortunate, and that you are destined to cross my orbit at its zenith and its nadir, and to pass through the very centre of my intelligence for good or ill."
"You read aright, sir!" said Pietro. "It is beyond my power to say if for good or for ill."
"I would fain know," said Wallenstein, "if you are a good Catholic."
"I am!" said Nigel.
"And have no dealings with the Jesuits?"
"No! I have had no commerce with them at any time!"
"It is well!" said Wallenstein. "For the rest you are a soldier of fortune, and your greatest desire——"
"Is to become a trusted officer in your Grace's service, whenever it shall please the Emperor to recall you!" said Nigel heartily.
"Then let us read the presage as a fortunate one!" said Wallenstein, "and God speed the fulfilment of your desires! And now, most learned doctor, surely your powers of divination do not end here. You have spoken of some unknown lady or perchance some uncouth beldame, whom the stars have chosen to become a benign power in my life. Does not your art enable you to disclose at least her name? Tell me at least whether she is of a dark and melancholic disposition, or of a sanguine inclination."
Nigel could not tell from the dry passionless utterance of the speaker whether irony lay at the root of his tongue: but he was at least as eager as Wallenstein appeared to be indifferent as to the outcome. It was the difference between youth and maturity. If it had been permitted to look into the mind of that inscrutable man, one might have expected to find that on a stage where strode so many principal and, in their several parts, renowned actors, where war and high policy and ambition were the themes, Wallenstein should count as nothing the staying or speeding of his actions by any woman.
Pietro Bramante turned again to his lamp, which he relighted, and, drawing a curtain aside, the light fell upon a tall mirror of the height of a man set at such an angle that at the present it reflected nothing. At two paces from it he set a chafing-dish wherein burned glowing charcoal, and upon it sprinkled some powder from a little box of ebony; and from the dish rose up a white smoke of a sweet savour. And then Pietro recited some Latin verses, which to Nigel, unversed in such incantations, bore no meaning.