"Maximilian was one amongst many! I judged the advice sound. I dismissed Wallenstein. My foes were beaten down. There was no need to maintain an armyof seventy thousand men in the field to nourish the ambition of a general. It is enough, Stephanie. No good can come of princesses meddling in politics. Look to it that you entreat not our cousin Maximilian slightingly, or even with less than the graciousness that becomes a princess. I am too indulgent. The affair can wait till it be considered further. You would not be the first princess of the house of Habsburg to wed without love. Therefore make no grievance of it!"
He held out his hand, which the Archduchess bent over and kissed, and she left the Emperor once more alone.
Thatevening Nigel was not left to eat his meal in the littlesalle à mangeradjoining his bedchamber, but was invited by the officers of the guard to join them, a compliment that was worth the paying, seeing that the officers of the guard were drawn from the oldest families in Austria and Hungary, and that a mere sub-lieutenant in the guard ranked as a regimental captain in the army, and a captain was equal to a colonel, if not higher, in the point of distinction.
Notwithstanding that he was a regimental officer bearing the rank of captain, and an outlander, a fact which emphasised another fact, that he was a soldier of fortune, or, if we prefer it, a soldier without a fortune, whereas his hosts were men of high family and fortunes who happened to be soldiers, they received him with that perfection of politeness which already characterised the Austrian nobility in so far as it came into daily contact with the court. Something there was of the ceremony and grandiosity of Spain, which the intermarriages of princes and princesses had brought about, mingled with the brightness and gaiety that sprung of a northern race and northern air, and of a greater activity of body and alertness of mind.
They regarded the sack of Magdeburg as a mere incident, but sufficiently interesting to men who professed the art of war to make them put to their guest a perfect array of questions as to the tactics employed, the relative value of the weapons, and Tilly's projected movements. He had to tell at full length his adventure at Plauen, and they contrived to let him know that he was more fortunate than they in having enjoyed such experiences.
When the supper had proceeded to a pleasant length, if it were not quite so prolonged as that famous meal which Mr Howell, who was secretary to an embassy to Denmark, has related in his letters, consisting as it did of forty courses and thirty-five toasts, the Captain-General of the guard, a venerable officer, who wore the orders of half the kingdoms of Europe, suspended by gold chains and gold brooches, giving almost the similitude of a cuirass, rose, and in the name of the Emperor complimented their guest on the services he had rendered and the signal bravery he had shown at the siege and the storm of Magdeburg. He ended by presenting him with a Colonel's commission under the Emperor's own hand and seal, and drank his health in the most handsome fashion—an example which the whole corps of officers followed with much zest and the draining of many flagons of Tokay.
Nigel was taken indeed by surprise. His blushes testified at once to his habitual modesty, and to his youth. But for the honour of his race and country he regained his self-command in a short space, and made a speech of thanks which, for fluency in the German tongue and the spirit of loyalty to his chosen standard which infused it, gained him an even greater credit in the minds of his hearers. Scotland was to most of them a far-off country, and being far was esteemed uncivilised, and theymarvelled that a Scottish gentleman could without effort assume the ease of manner and the air of compliment in the banqueting-hall of Vienna as well as lead an attacking party, which any officer of proper valour and skill should be able to do.
Just as the supper had concluded and the tables had been cleared for wine and the dice-box, or whatever other pastime was forward, a page arrived to tell him that the Emperor commanded his attendance at his card-party in half an hour. Nigel would perhaps have more willingly sat over his wine with these jovial gallants of the guard. But there was no choice. So that he took leave of the Captain-General and of his other hosts, some of whom had their military rounds to make, and hastened to refresh himself, and make what change in his dress he could for the ordeal of the court reception.
On reaching his bedchamber he was amazed to find it lit up with many candles, and a court suit lying upon his bed, new and of rich stuffs. Everything he needed was there, and a barber was in attendance together with a valet to assist him to make his outward appearance worthy of the occasion.
Nigel had heard of the lavish generosity of Italian princes towards their friends. He knew of favourites both in Spain and in Britain who had been plentifully rewarded by the bestowal of public office or of pension. In France the King's cash-box, which was also the State's, was frequently opened to reward the deserving and undeserving. But it had never before happened to him that he was invited to be of the company of a prince and provided with a new court suit in the bargain. Monarchs were often unmindful of these petty but costly trivialities. But since in his own case the Emperor Ferdinand had expended so much thoughtfulness and a goodly purse of crowns on his wedding garment, Nigel was not disposedto blame him for departing from the usual rule. It was difficult besides not to feel uncommonly elated when Fortune persisted in making him so avowedly her favourite. And if, while he was being dealt with by the barber, he did wonder how that slightly dry, tired-eyed Emperor had contrived to think two consecutive thoughts about his, Nigel's, wearing apparel, and fell back upon the Archduchess Stephanie as the possible donor, he dismissed the latter suggestion because he was not sufficiently full of conceit to credit it, and accepted the first as a very natural explanation, because his opinion of his own services unconsciously coincided with the sense of them he imputed to the Emperor. It must not be forgotten that Tokay in unstinted measure has a tendency to make a man reflect in the first instance what a really fine fellow he is. It is doubtless one of the first qualities of good wine to enhance in the man who drinks it the estimation of his own vintage. Had the page, who as a fact knew nothing, or the barber, or the valet, breathed the name of Father Lamormain, of a surety Nigel would have regarded the idea as humorous, and even at that rather wanting in point. If he had been solemnly assured that Father Lamormain, that very benign Jesuit he had met for the first and only time in his life in the palace garden, was the donor of the suit, he would probably have worn it, but, as the gentleman in one of Shakespeare's plays wore his rue, with a difference.
Not that Nigel Charteris in his braveries was one whit more a braggart or a fop or one iota less a Scottish gentleman than when, stained with blood and smoke, begrimed and weary, he had taken shelter at the hands of Elspeth Reinheit in the old house at Magdeburg. But that evening he did feel that the world was at his feet, and he did make a gallant figure as the doors flew open and the pages, announcing the "high-born and noble Colonel Nigelvon Charteris," admitted him to the presence of his Emperor and the brilliant circle of the court.
The Emperor and his consort alone were seated. The guests were not yet all assembled, and stood about in groups within reach of the royal voices. There were perhaps eight or ten ladies, amongst whom, when his eyes had grown used to the numerous candles and the glitter of jewels, reflected and multiplied by the mirrors of Venetian glass that hung upon the walls, Nigel recognised the Archduchess Stephanie and a younger sister who more resembled the Emperor.
The Archduchess shot him a swift glance of recognition, and the smile, which rather accompanied than followed it, bestowed not upon him but upon some chance-favoured auditor with whom she talked, seemed to imply approval of his choice of a court dress. That swift glance of hers was enough to tell him that their rencontre of the morning was, if it could not be swept from remembrance, at least to be treated as if it had not been.
It was Father Lamormain who, gliding to his side, assumed the gracious part of cicerone.
"And are you still pleased with your good news, colonel?" he asked with his benevolent smile of universal fatherhood.
"More and more, Father! This morning there was the promise. This evening it is in flower!"
"The blossom," said the priest, looking at the court suit, "becomes the tree if the tree yield good fruit." A saying which left Nigel puzzled, intimating as it did that his reward was not so much for service done as for services to do. He had no time to ponder it, for Father Lamormain had led him to the Archduchess Stephanie and was presenting him.
"Your Highness! may I present to you the youngest Colonel of Musketeers in the Imperial armies, Mr NigelCharteris, who has had the honour and the peril of bearing Count Tilly's despatches from Magdeburg!"
"I am pleased to greet you!" said the Archduchess, giving him her hand to kiss. "I trust your journey was as pleasant as the issue was successful."
As Nigel had bent to kiss the long slender fingers that were so like the Emperor's, he seemed to see again those of Ottilie von Thüringen binding up the wound of Elspeth Reinheit. He answered her—
"The journey was not so perilous, your Highness, as the reward is great in your Highness's gracious welcome!" And greatly daring he gazed for a moment with unfeigned admiration at the eyes of the Archduchess.
"Count Tilly's captains are swift to learn, Father?" she said, smiling.
"They are more teachable than princesses!" said Father Lamormain, with such banter in his tone as the privileged spiritual director of the family might employ. "And princesses," he added, "are swift to teach."
A saying which the Archduchess and Nigel alike felt might be innocent or barbed with irony.
Father Lamormain did not leave him till he had made the round of the guests. Nigel's brain was becoming clearer as he became used to the scene, and the effects of the excellent Tokay were wellnigh spent. He learned by observation in what very real respect the whole court held the Jesuit father. This polished and witty priest had something in the way of compliment for all the ladies, something flattering for the great lords and lordlings. But for the Father there was no covert sneer, or half attention, or sign of fear. There was real respect, and something that resembled the perfect confidence of friendship.
Last of all, the Elector Maximilian, with his eternalhalf-smile, left the Emperor's immediate group and accosted Nigel.
"So Father Lamormain has taken you in hand, Colonel! They say that this is a greater mark of honour than even the Emperor can bestow. Beware, however, of any love secrets. He will worm them out of you!"
"He does not wear them upon his sleeve, your Highness!" said the priest, with a glance over in the direction of the Archduchess Stephanie, which was not understood by Nigel.
"And in what plight are my Bavarians?" the Elector went on.
Father Lamormain beat a retreat. They would find much to talk about, and if the fathoming of Nigel's leanings were necessary Maximilian was as astute as himself. Luckily Nigel held a high opinion of Pappenheim, whom many regarded as the foremost general in Germany, even before Wallenstein, but who was a soldier and nothing more, no politician or ambitious seeker after power.
"You were with Tilly before?"
"No, sire! With Wallenstein from the campaign against Mansfeld to the end of his command!"
To the "Ah" with which this was received Nigel attached the significance it bore.
"Have you seen him since his ... resignation?"
"Yes, sire; at Eger on my journey here."
"And how does he bear his retirement?"
"In truth I know almost nothing, sire. When I was under him I rarely saw him, and was not of his familiar circle, if indeed he had such. I do not know. He asked for my company at Eger to divide a bottle of wine with him. He seems to occupy himself with astronomy and the mathematics."
"I have heard," rejoined Maximilian, "that he hadgreat acquaintance and much controversy with a learned doctor, one Paracelsus, but these matters are beyond my ken. Men and women are more to me than the stars."
Several gentlemen of the court had gathered round the Elector, and it was the hearing of the name of Wallenstein that drew them, for it was well known that the Elector and he were on terms of discord. In the days of the Winter King it had been Maximilian and his armies who had been in fact the Emperor's legions, then as a counterpoise the Emperor had raised up Wallenstein. When Wallenstein had made Maximilian the pale shadow of an armed power, Maximilian had plotted till Wallenstein was deposed and his army scattered to the ten thousand hamlets of Germany.
"A veritable Cincinnatus!" said an elderly gentleman.
"He raised cabbages for sauerkraut, did he not?" a younger man asked.
"Your Cincinnatus," said the Elector, "raiseth weeds of a poisonous and rebellious nature."
"Such as, sire?" a staid and solemn-faced minister of state inquired.
"Ambition, my Lord! It brought Cæsar to the ground, and Cæsar was a greater man. When Wallenstein, then a rich Bohemian landlord, discovered that he had the genius of organising an army, he began to think he had discovered in himself another Cæsar. He thought that to command a great army, to find its food and pay, was absolute power. He forgot that that consent of the Emperor, which alone had made it possible, was the real source of power, and that the consent might be withdrawn. You all know what happened in fact. He has no patriotism. His country, his Emperor, his creed, is Wallenstein; and he would as soon serve Gustavus, if Gustavus would promise him a kingdom, as serve the Emperor."
The Elector Maximilian had raised his voice a little as he spoke his last sentences. The Emperor, turning in his chair from his cards not far away, said—
"Your favourite topic, cousin! He did us good service in our need."
"In truth, sire!" said the Archduchess Stephanie, also addressing Maximilian. "Age should be more lenient to age and honourable service."
Nigel wondered why the Elector showed so much the symptoms of a frown when his mouth, so much of it as was visible, essayed a smile as he turned towards the Archduchess.
The Emperor and Father Lamormain, who was of his party at cards, exchanged a guarded glance.
"You remind me of that, Stephanie, which in your presence I had forgotten."
With which saying he strode to her side with an air of gallantry, which had sat well upon a younger man, and engaged her in a conversation out of earshot, as he meant, of the rest of the company.
At this point a page came to the Emperor and gave him a message in a low tone. The page went out, and in a moment the doors opened.
"His Grace the Duke of Friedland" was announced; and instantly the company sat or stood as if petrified.
Albrecht von Walstein entered, attired not plainly, but as became a magnifico of the Empire. There was violet velvet slashed with green silk and sewn with pearls, and all point devise. He made three obeisances as he approached the Emperor, and kissed his hand, then that of his consort. The Emperor bade him be seated.
"You have been long coming to Vienna, Duke, but seeing that you are here you are well-come. You have news?"
"Sire! I was but a few days since at Eger, where Ihave a poor dwelling-place, when I heard that the King of Sweden has left Frankfort, has marched to Werben, where the river Havel pours into the Elbe, and has there entrenched his army in a fortified camp. Brandenburg has given up Spandau and Custrin. We are shut off from the North."
The Emperor's face became a thought graver than usual. So did those of Father Lamormain and of Maximilian, who, leaving the Archduchess, drew near at a sign from the Emperor.
"How many men hath he?"
"My report says forty thousand, all veteran troops. Saxony and Brandenburg can raise another forty thousand between them."
"With a few reinforcements, Tilly and Pappenheim should be able to stay his march," said Maximilian.
To which Wallenstein said nothing. Hisrôlewas the disinterested friend, the wealthy noble to whom war was of no moment.
For a moment there was a curious silence.
Wallenstein would not ask for a command. To offer him a subordinate one was to invite a cold refusal. Father Lamormain and Maximilian were resolutely opposed to any offer being made, and the Emperor knew it. Yet he felt by no means sure that Tilly and Pappenheim could stem the Swedish tide, and he was the head and front and citadel of the Empire, fully aware of his responsibilities towards the state and towards the church, especially the latter.
At Maximilian's words the Archduchess Stephanie made an involuntary movement forward, but checked herself and stood where she was. Nigel, from the place where he stood amid a knot of courtiers, could see her face.
It bore that strange rapt expression of the eyes that he had seen in the vision of Bramante's conjuring, and theeyes were fixed on Wallenstein. Indeed, Wallenstein looked up for an instant and saw them. Nigel could have sworn that a flush swept below the swarthy and much-lined skin of the great commander; but the face with its high cheek-bones and small bright eyes had recovered its bronze composure in the instant.
Thepersons who witnessed the unexpected arrival of Wallenstein asked themselves why he had come; Nigel because to his reflective mind the ostensible reason, anxiety to impart the news of Gustavus to the Emperor, was insufficient; the Archduchess Stephanie because she desired with all the intensity of woman that another cause might be at work.
Nigel in the camp with Tilly had heard accounts, more or less garbled, of the famous meeting of the Electors with the Emperor at Ratisbon a year before. Reichstag, the Diet, or Day of the State, was the name of such meetings, and that had been a momentous one for Wallenstein, for the world. All the Electors were there save only the Elector Palatine, the Winter-King, who was a wanderer over the face of Europe. And without the conclave were Friar Joseph, "His grey Eminence," the familiar of Cardinal Richelieu, and Cardinal Caraffa, the Pope's nuncio. France and Italy alike on this occasion were pulling at the Electoral puppet-strings, and making them hold up hands for the dismissal of Wallenstein, the "insolent Wallenstein." And when a captain-general, for four years in the field, has set all the Electors of Germany, Catholic and Protestant, against him, it may bededuced that he has shown himself careless of giving offence, and has forgotten the respect due to princes. The Emperor had wished to retain him. He knew that he had been well served, and in so far as his extreme religious views would allow him, he was a just and certainly courageous prince. But he had been forced to defer to the Electors who had chosen him to be Emperor.
Nigel agreed that a man as great as Wallenstein would never have ridden from Eger to Vienna to bring this news to the Emperor, notwithstanding that, if Wallenstein had ever shown anything approaching to personal affection and deference to man, it had been to the Emperor. He would have sent a swift messenger, or allowed the Emperor to learn the news in his own way, as he would have learned it in a day or two at the most. And Nigel was right in his conjecture.
The following afternoon the Archduchess Stephanie, with two ladies in demure attendance, took the air in a light carriage, which, for its elegance, was still an object of admiration in the streets of Vienna. It was said to have been a present to the Emperor from his brother monarch, Louis Treize. And was not the Queen of Louis Treize Anne of Austria?
The carriage stopped at Otto Fugger's in the Rudolf Strasse. Otto Fugger was the richest banker in Vienna, and was the brother of Jacob Fugger of Antwerp, and cousin of Wilhelm Fugger of Amsterdam, and of Antonio Fugger in Venice. The Archduchess descended and entered. All the aristocracy of Europe dealt with the Fuggers.
And when the Archduchess was ushered with great politeness by Otto Fugger himself into one of his several libraries on an upper floor, and the banker had bowed low and left her, she found one she expected standing by a casement which looked out into a beautiful garden.
In the habit which he wore, of sombre hue and formal cut, rich withal but not conspicuous, he might have passed for one of those very prosperous merchants that were making their presence felt in the large cities, if the alert bearing of the man, and the air of domination, had not proclaimed one of a superior rank and a military caste.
The man and the woman looked at one another. In the man's look was questioning. It asked, "How can this woman serve my purpose? What makes her wish to serve it?"
In the woman's was rejoicing at some purpose partly achieved, and something of timidity.
The looks were instantaneous; the pause before the speech but momentary.
"At last, Albrecht von Waldstein!" She spoke in low soft tones, and held out both hands, as if he should take them both into captivity.
"I am here because you have willed it, Stephanie!"
It was a personal touch, not an outcome of his immense pride. Here they met on another plane than that of the life of courts. And Stephanie was so young. He took her long slender fingers in his large masterful brown hands and kissed them both, in his heart rather amused.
Let us not be mistaken. Wallenstein was not led to Vienna by the God of Love. Nor did he imagine that he was. He came, and knew that he had come, because of the perfect circle of Pietro Bramante, who was rather the priest of Apollo, because of the secant ellipse, whose right focus was the centre of his circle.
He came because of the image of Stephanie, which he had seen, or thought he had seen, at Eger, even as Saul saw the wraith of Samuel, or thought he saw it, in the caves at Endor.
But Pietro Bramante had prophesied, or so Wallenstein had read the prophecy, that his way to the complete circlewas by making the heart of woman the pivot and centre of his intelligence. It was not easy for Wallenstein to formulate the idea in words; but if there were a meaning in the mystery it must be that through the love of Stephanie he would arrive at the culminating point of success; and Stephanie was the daughter of the Emperor.
Therefore he looked curiously at her, wondering at the miracle, as any man who experiences it must wonder at the miracle of the love of woman.
Wallenstein had never been a habitant of the palaces of kings. As little as need was had he come to Vienna on sparse visits to the Emperor. He had seen and spoken to the Archduchess Stephanie, when, six years before, he had laid his offer before the Emperor. He remembered her as a tall, slim maiden with large, dark, wistful, following eyes, a child of moods. He remembered her when two years more had passed, what a glorious triumphant pair of years, in which he had gathered his army, marched against Mansfeld, overcome him at Dessau on the Elbe, then harried him through Silesia into Hungary, forced his ally, Bethlen Gabor, to throw down his arms, and driven Mansfeld over the border into Bosnia to die of a broken fame. Before going into winter quarters he had paid a fleeting visit to Vienna to receive his first meed of commendation from the Emperor. The Archduchess Stephanie had ripened to the first promise of a completer womanhood, gained in erectness, in rounder curves, and over her face and bearing had stolen virginal radiance and conscious modesty, not unmingled with the Habsburg pride of race. Wallenstein remembered how she too had greeted him in her own way with two sprigs of laurel and a little speech which died on her lips.
And now she had reached the perfect May of womanhood. "What then? At last, Albrecht von Waldstein!"
"I am here because you have willed it, Stephanie!"
"Say rather because the fates have willed it!" she said in a tone in which awe and triumph were mingled, and her eyes looked out as through a mist. Wallenstein felt a thrill go through him, something unknown to his cold intelligence, something which roused latent fire in him, and infused into him a spirit more akin in rarity to hers.
He still held her slender fingers in his brown sinewy hands as if he would suck in more of that ethereal fluid fire.
"You would have come of your own accord because of your interest in Albrecht von Waldstein?" There was approval, condescension, petition for her assent in his tones.
"Something of you grew into my girlhood, Albrecht! I cannot tell how. When you, a simple gentleman of Bohemia, came to my father and in his troubled hour offered to raise up an army to defend him against his enemies, I had a feeling of exultation. Something told me that here was greatness, a new Hercules come to earth."
Wallenstein's eyes, those cold eyes of his, glowed at her saying. Prodigious egotist that he was! He accepted her words as those of an oracle. He drank in the significance of her words, but of their relation to the feelings of the priestess that uttered them he divined less even than he valued them. To him her words confirmed him in his own estimate of himself. But he was too little a connoisseur of precious nonsubstantial things to show surprise or wonder at the priceless worth of that young princess's worship.
"Six years ago," he said, "you acclaimed my star on the horizon of your heart."
"Yes, Albrecht! And then when you came again, doyou remember my poor sprigs of laurel which I was almost too shy to give you?"
"I have them yet, Stephanie!" It was true. He had them. They were an emblem of his advancing fortunes bestowed by the daughter of the Emperor. Of the heart that had prompted the gift, the shy, proud, full, maidenly heart, he had known nothing.
"And as your star waxed, so I rejoiced and said, 'Albrecht von Waldstein is become equal to the greatest princes of the earth.' You and your armies filled all my mind. My pride in you became a great part of me."
Her eyes were cast down so that he saw little but the soft black fringes of the lids; her rich voice was modulated to all but a whisper. And as the man gazed at her, drinking in her words and watching the heave and fall of her bosom, an unusual gentleness crept over him and he began to see the wonder of her.
"Gracious and beautiful princess!" he said. "To think that as I climbed I knew nothing of the spirit that spoke secretly to mine and urged me forward and upward." There was something of self-reproach in his tone as for something beautiful in a glimpse of the valley that a climber misses and learns of in after days.
She went on with her confession—
"I prayed for your success. I do not know what I would have had you do, until the day of Ratisbon, when all the dogs in Germany bayed at you and the Emperor sent an embassy—it was that in fact—to beg you to lay down the power, the stupendous power, you wielded. Then, oh the direful days they were! I hoped, I feared. I dreaded and longed to hear that, like Cæsar of old, you were crossing the Rubicon and were marching on the capital."
Wallenstein heaved a mighty sigh.
"You felt, Stephanie, what it cost me!"
The Archduchess looked up into his eyes.
"It is true. My heart had awakened. The woman mourned and would not be comforted. She would have had you king! King, Albrecht! And you put everything aside to resume a private station. And some said that therein you did the greatest act of your life to make the way easy for the Emperor and bring peace into the land."
"And you, Stephanie?"
"Not I!" She raised her head proudly to its full eminence, that queenly brow with its twin lakes of unfathomable light. "Not I! What to me was the peace of Germany, or of the Emperor? I would have had you march on to victory or death. Fortune must be taken at the flood. She seldom comes twice for the same barque."
"You have the spirit of your eagles, Stephanie! Trust me! I weighed the chances and put off the hour because the hour was destined to return again. It was tempting fortune; but it was better to resign my baton gracefully at the Emperor's command than to lose all in one desperate, unconsidered rebellion."
"Rebellion is for subjects! But remember, Albrecht von Waldstein, that if you would mate with eagles you must prove yourself their peer. Fly high and boldly!"
Wallenstein experienced another thrill. This time a fresh thought leapt into being. "Mate with eagles? What could she mean?" An unwonted light broke over the cold, lined face.
"You cannot mean that in the hour of victory you will be my hostage against the Emperor, Stephanie?"
"The day you win Bohemia for your crown I share it with you!"
"Bohemia! And you, Stephanie?" Even now he could scarcely believe his ears. He saw quite clearly the immense advantage it would be to him to wed Stephanie:how it would tie the hands of the Emperor and prevent the otherwise inevitable reprisals.
"And Holy Church? I am wedded man!"
"The Church can give dispensations where she wishes. She shall wish, even if you have to march on Rome!"
"And you pledge yourself to help me counter their Jesuit plans?"
"I do, Albrecht. See, I kiss the cross! I vow it solemnly! And as earnest, let me tell you they would have me marry Maximilian!"
"God in heaven!" exclaimed Wallenstein. "That shall not be, if there be a nunnery to keep you safe on this side of the Alps."
Wallenstein made no movement of passion. He looked at her and saw that she was desirable and lovely beyond the common allurement of women, beyond the beauty of all princesses he had seen. But he saw, too, that there was something lofty in her soul, a virgin chastity, that forbade all trivial thought of dalliance. It was a solemn compact.
He knelt at her feet. She laid one soft hand upon his head and said—
"Be my knight, Albrecht, without fear. And when all the fields are won, I await you."
He took her other hand and kissed it. The vibration of a strong emotion passed through him. He was left alone.
Onthe next day Wallenstein departed as secretly as he had come. Father Lamormain ascertained that he did not return to Eger. One rumour had it that he had gone to his estate in Friedland, which is in the north-eastern part of Bohemia, bordered by Silesia on one side and the kingdom of Saxony on the other, a remote mountainous region, sparsely inhabited. The rumour may well have been true, for that was where the Duchess of Friedland lay at that time, and it had never been said that her lord neglected her for any other dame, unless it were Dame Bellona, who, ugly as she is, has in her time made many good wives jealous, and proved fatal to untold thousands of her wooers.
Three of these wooers, no longer perhaps so ardent or so able as of old, advised the Emperor in warlike matters. Colonel von Falck had taken part in the wars against the Turks in the days of the late Emperor Rudolf, and had lost an eye. He was almost patriarchal, but men said of him that he was a tremendous judge of Tokay, and unerring in his selection of officers. Of the former branch of military knowledge he gave almost daily proof, and his reputation in the latter, like many official reputations, rested on evidence which was quite irrefragable, since noone knew what it was. The second was a retired Master of Camp, a man just past middle age, who had had the misfortune to lose an arm, his left, fortunately, at the Weisser Berge. He was an acknowledged authority on waggons, horses, stores, cannon, and equipment generally. And an officer who has lost an arm by a cannon-ball must be admitted to have some practical knowledge of artillery. The third officer was the Grand Duke Lothar, a blood relation of the Emperor, who, owing to a very real lameness, acquired in his subaltern days, had been obliged to confine his military excursions within the narrow limits of Vienna or Ratisbon. But he had stored up a profound knowledge of Cæsar's 'Commentaries,' and was very well acquainted with the theory of war as it was then understood.
It was the Emperor, usually in consort with the experienced Maximilian, who formed the general plan of campaign. If the Council's opinion coincided with the Emperor's, as it usually did, on a review of the plan, its execution was left in the hands of the general in command of the army, and the function of the council was then to take all possible steps to provide reinforcements, arms, and officers.
Before this sage professional committee Nigel was summoned.
"You have learned the manège, colonel?" was the abrupt inquiry of the oldest officer.
"What is the complete equipment of a trooper?" was that of the camp-master.
"How many troopers do you require in a regiment of dragoons, and what officers? How many squadrons could you make of it? How many troops go to a squadron?" These were Lothar's.
Nigel, greatly wondering, answered all these readily and satisfactorily.
Then followed a catechism of the tactics of cavalry bythe Grand Duke Lothar, who drew lines on a sheet of paper to illustrate his meaning. These also Nigel answered, for in a prolonged period of active service little had escaped his eye or his ear of what happened in any department of arms.
The three military councillors exchanged nods and whispers of approval.
"We are going to recommend his Imperial Majesty to cancel your commission in his musketeers and appoint you to the command of a new regiment of light horse!" said von Falck.
"I am forming the regiment," said the camp-master. "Bohemians, Austrians—all riders from their youth—with a sprinkling of old cavalrymen. They will need some shaping!"
"The other officers are being selected," said the Grand Duke. "You will spend the next week or two getting them equipped, and horsed, and drilled. Then your orders will be given you."
"I am at your Excellencies' service!" said Nigel.
Three days afterwards, spent in wearisome discussions, conducted on the one side in half the patois of Europe, and on the other in tolerably good German and an admixture of plain Scots, the subject being horses, Nigel was wishing devoutly that he had never seen Vienna, never become the favoured child of fortune, never——
"Well, Blick, what is itnow?"
"Magdeburg's wellnigh spent, colonel!"
"Is that so?" was Nigel's rejoinder.
"Never saw such a place as Vienna," said Blick. "The beer is too light!"
"Well!" said Nigel, "you must drink more of it, or less of it."
"Yes, colonel! And the stagshorn dice are too light above and too heavy below!"
"Worse and worse! You'll have to give up play!"
"It'll give me up," said Blick. "And the wenches, colonel!"
"Well? Are they too light also?"
"I am not a bad-looking fellow, colonel! But if I stay here ... they're the very devil ..." groaned Sergeant Blick.
"You want to get back to Count Tilly? Is that it?"
"Not for twenty rix-dollars!"
"Well! Tell me! What is it you want?"
"I want to be sergeant in your new regiment!"
"What do you know of cavalry?" asked Nigel.
"I know men," said Blick stubbornly. "I can drill them. I know horses. I can break them in. My father was a smith, and my uncle a horse-dealer. My grandfather was hung for stealing horses. It's in the blood. In three days I will have that mob of rascals at my heel. I am Sergeant Blick! I say it!"
Nigel looked at Sergeant Blick with a good deal of interest. He had looked at him before, as he had looked at interminable ranks of soldiers, and had never observed that in Blick, as in himself, although Blick knew no reading or writing, grew the stubborn thistle of ambition. He also remembered a dozen instances of good sergeantry which Blick had displayed. It dawned upon his mind that, as it takes years to make a good ploughman, so it takes years to produce the good sergeant; and that without good sergeants it is impossible to make good regiments.
Sergeant Blick, despite his words, stood stiffly at attention, awaiting the settlement of his destiny. There were at least two scars on his face, which were an abiding proof that he had faced both pike and sword, and his complexion, originally fair (he was a North German from Münster), had been tanned and weather-beaten. Thelight-blue eyes, somewhat hard in the glint, were full of resolution and vigour, if the cheeks and the mouth did smack somewhat of the beer-can, as did the great girth of his waist, hardly counterbalanced by the greater girth of his shoulders.
"Sergeant is it? You can have it! You begin to-morrow; and keep all the corporals sober till we are ready to start, four days from now."
"Four days! The devil himself couldn't bring that mob of wild Zigeuners and half-cooked hinds into the likeness of a regiment in four days."
"Nevertheless it must be done!" said Nigel.
The new sergeant grunted some guttural remarks, which Nigel took in good part, as they were hurled less at himself than at things in general, which, as every one knows, are always deserving of the extreme of objurgation. Then the sergeant paused.
"Well? You want something else?"
"Yes, colonel! This little bodkin that the lady at Magdeburg tried to push through your steel cap! I tried to bargain with a dirty Jew for a crown or so. He said it was good silver, but he asked how I came by it. I hit him a buffet, but he only snarled that neither he nor any other dealer in Vienna would buy it because of something or other, arms or what not, on the hilt."
"Oh! Let me look at it! So! It is a curious device. Well, I'll give you a crown for it. At all events I have a good right to it if any one has. The point was meant for my head."
Sergeant Blick took his crown with thanks, saluted, and went out. To realise one's ambition and a crown, albeit a silver one, in the same half-hour, is always worth while.
It was true that to Nigel the weapon, which, had it been used otherwise, might have slain him, was a possession of interest. But a further look at it, or rather at the ornamentation of the haft, which was good silversmith's work, revealed to him what it had revealed to the Jew, who was too careful to buy that which might put a rope round his neck, something, in his opinion, stolen from some dangerously high place.
Again he asked himself, "Who is Ottilie von Thüringen?"
"By Saint Andrew!" he exclaimed as some one entered.
"Heilige Frau!" the other cried in equal astonishment. "So you are my new colonel, Charteris?"
"And you, Hildebrand?"
"I am to be your major, it seems, by the grace of General von Falck with one eye, Camp-Master von Pratz with one arm, and his Highness the Grand Duke Lothar, to whom regiments are sheets of paper and the officers numbers."
Major Hildebrand von Hohendorf did not seem altogether gratified.
"Dear old comrade!" said Nigel warmly, shaking him by the hand, "it would have given me greater pleasure to have been your major than it does to be your colonel. You were buried in Hradschin. Now you may conclude by becoming Field-Marshal."
Nigel knew that Hildebrand was not one to nurse small jealousy, and was amenable to the gentle influence of a bottle and an honest friend taken together. The bottle was soon forthcoming, and so was Hildebrand's pipe.
"Comes of helping to sack Magdeburg and carrying despatches, I suppose," said Hildebrand, a twinkle becoming apparent in his eyes. "Or have you been making love to Lothar's wife. They say she names most of the colonels! Ha! What's this pretty thing?"
He picked up the tiny dagger, which for the moment Nigel had forgotten.
"That's a little trifle a noble lady in Magdeburg tried to stick into my neck!" said Nigel. "My sergeant picked it up."
"Pretty thing!" said Hildebrand, examining it. "Bears the arms of the Habsburgs, too!" The peculiarity did not seem to strike very deep, for he went off to another topic—
"Now, what have we got to do? It seems to me we've got to make a regiment and then constitute ourselves free companions for a few weeks, maybe months, and then join Tilly!"
"Listen!" said Nigel. "We have to cross Southern Bohemia, the Upper Palatinate, enter Würzburg, then Hesse Cassel, to frighten the Landgrave, ride eastward to the Elbe, and find Gustavus. Having satisfied ourselves of the direction of his march, we are to hang on to the advance-guard, and give early and constant information to Count Tilly and Pappenheim. When the two armies come into touch we are to place our regiment under Tilly's orders."
"Lord, what a riding and camping and sleeping under the trees," said Hildebrand.
"Make us the most serviceable regiment of cavalry in the whole army," Nigel consoled. "You'll be as thin as a pikestaff and as hard! No Tokay in the Thüringerwald!"
"The beer might be worse!" rejoined Hildebrand. "I've tasted it."
AsNigel thought he owed that great windfall of fortune, the restoration of his cherished wallet of despatches, to the Archduchess Stephanie, insomuch as it was a direct outcome of her mysterious association with Wallenstein, so he was inclined, without evidence, to attribute to her this second shaking of the tree, which had brought to his feet the still riper fruit of the command of the regiment of horse. Perhaps the joking of Hildebrand had left behind in his mind some traces of its passing. It certainly was not due to any conceit that he had made any impression on the heart of the Archduchess. But it was just possible that her sympathy with the mind and destiny of Wallenstein might have displayed itself in an endeavour to promote the fortunes of one who had been, and might some day be again, with Wallenstein.
An unquenchable desire pursued him. It had no effect upon his military duties, for at those he worked as one possessed. The horses, a motley but on the whole a useful collection, were allotted to their riders, the riders distributed into troops and half troops, the old soldiers converted into troop sergeants and corporals, and all kept busy at their exercising. Hildebrand and all the other officers grumbled at this intolerable, but undoubtedlyaffable, Scot, who let no man rest nor rested himself. But as daylight fell, and with it the last bulwarks of human patience, and the quarters and the taverns once more welcomed the "Rough Riders," as some wit of the canteens christened them, Nigel was fain to seek rest and refresh himself. It was then, in the moments of relaxation, that the desire came upon him to seek out the Archduchess.
The strange likeness that she bore to the fugitive Ottilie intrigued him. Ottilie in the cathedral of Erfurt had seemed, if his ears had not belied him, to pray for Wallenstein. Half an hour afterwards she had breathed scorn of Wallenstein. The Archduchess had named him in a way that gave a hint of an amiable alliance between them. Had she any influence with Lothar, or General von Falck, or the redoubtable Camp-Master, and exercised it to gain him this commission? If not, to what circumstances did he owe it? Could the Emperor be so lacking in tried cavalry officers that he, who was not a cavalryman, should be selected? Self-pride urged that his experience in the wars was his real recommendation for what must prove a perilous and delicate work. The Scots have always been said to have a "gude conceit" of themselves; and Nigel was not without it. But his Scots caution tempered it. He gave self-pride its due weight and no more, and looked outside for the real reasons.
But to approach the Archduchess was not easy. He had been allotted other quarters in the part of the palace devoted to the officers of the guard. He could not without remark place himself in her way in the gallery of portraits. Nor could he make an assignation to meet her, as the officers of the guard did, with the ladies-in-waiting, whom among themselves they called in their familiar German fashion Gretchen, Bette, or Lotta. They might boast contemptuously of favours behind their charmers'backs, while professing a most poetical admiration to their faces. He could do neither. There was a gulf not easy to bridge between a lady-in-waiting and an Archduchess.
Nigel had acquired a certain distrust of messages verbal or written, for his short intercourse with courtiers had engendered the belief that one half of the denizens of the palace, high and low, were spies upon the other half, and that Father Lamormain heard everything. But as write he must, he bethought him of certain poetical exercises of his which he had practised lamely enough while at the University of St Andrews, in fond imitation of the poets of the court of Queen Elizabeth, where every one rhymed that could hold a quill. He drew with great pains the circle, the oval, and the curve of Pietro Bramante at the head, and, after many attempts in the long unaccustomed art, involving one hundred and four elisions and at least four separate drafts, he wrote beneath the figure the following lines, hoping that the whole might excite her curiosity if not her admiration, and lead to the audience so much desired:—