Afterthe victory of the Lutheran faith at Breitenfeld, Pastor Rad had found himself without a definite mission. In his enthusiasm he had made his way to the camp of Gustavus at Werben and marched with the Swedes to that field of triumph, using such opportunities as occurred to labour by way of exhortation and of prayer. So that his sonorous voice was lifted up, it mattered little who listened or regarded. At first the Swedes, drafted into whose ranks were many Brandenburgers, Pomeranians, and Saxons, listened to, if they only imperfectly understood, his vociferous ministrations. But after Breitenfeld the jealousy of the Swedish native ministers, who had at the beginning, while the issue was uncertain, held out the right hand of fellowship, manifested itself, and he was made to understand that his presence with the Swedish portion of Gustavus' army was superfluous. That army speedily moved onwards towards the west, and Pastor Rad, having reached Erfurt along with it, considered it a suitable opportunity for making his way back to Eisenach, where his flock, and his livelihood, lay peacefully enfolded in the forest.
His reception did not savour of fervency. The interest of utterly rural communities in external events happeninga hundred miles away is hard to kindle, and, when kindled, needs much application of the bellows to keep it at a red heat. Magdeburg had fired them. His own narratives and sermons had blown up their sparks to a blaze, but, with the marching of a small body of their young men to join Gustavus, the countryside had returned to its arduous agricultural pursuits, to its wood chopping and charcoal burning, to its smithies and its inns.
"Here comes Pastor Rad!" said Jacob Putkammer, the tailor. "Now we shall hear!"
"About Breitenfeld?" was the pastor's eager question. "It was glorious."
"Yes! Yes! The Swede beat Tilly till there was not a whole suit of clothes in his army! We know all that."
"What we want to know," said Marx Englehart, the smith, "is what has become of Elspeth Reinheit?"
"Elspeth Reinheit?" queried the pastor in astonishment.
"You remember, pastor, how you set about driving the devil out of her! Over yonder at Ruhla!"
The pastor flushed at the remembrance.
"Yes! Didn't some soldier come interfering and carry her off?" said the smith. "I wasn't there. I had too much to do at the time to make a holiday."
"Holiday! Marx!" said the pastor sternly. "It was a solemn duty we had to perform, and we were shamefully interrupted."
The tailor's eyes glinted as he said—
"I can picture him now dusting your gown for you!"
The pastor looked, as he felt, very angry.
"I don't know what became of her."
"Well!" said the smith, "I shouldn't advise you to go too near old Reinheit, her father. He's in an awful fume against you, pastor. Of course at the time he thought itwas all for her good, but he did not expect you would go to the length of whipping the poor girl."
"How else should one persuade the devil out of a woman?" asked Pastor Rad.
"Ah!" said the tailor. "We are not learned in these matters. Now if you had been married to her, no one would have complained. There is no better way."
"There was a good deal of talk before that that you were cocking your cap at her!" said the smith slowly.
"And might have done worse! Old Reinheit's got a fine stocking of gold somewhere, and look at his farm," said the tailor.
"Lay not up for yourselves——" began the pastor.
"That's all very well!" said the tailor. "But a good-looking wench, even if she has got a devil, is none the worse for having a rich father.Shedidn't lay up the treasure. Besides, I wouldn't give half a batz for a woman who hadn't got a bit of the devil in her."
"Come! come! Jacob!" said the pastor. "Your tongue speaketh of vanity as your trade does. As for Nicholas Reinheit, I shall even go up to his house and comfort him."
"Well!" said the smith. "It is only just and manly so to do, but look after your skin, for he is a man who can still use his hands if he is a bit over sixty."
A good many people met Pastor Rad as he went through the town to Nicholas Reinheit's farm, and every one of them asked him—
"Where is Elspeth Reinheit?"
And some careless people even put it in this way—
"What have you done with Elspeth Reinheit?"
It was bad enough to be asked where she was. It was iniquitous that he should be taxed with having put her away.
It was not very strange that Pastor Rad should not have known what had become of Elspeth. He had seen Nigel carry her off. That was all of a piece with his own unworthy suspicions of Elspeth's character. As to her after-fate Pastor Rad had very little doubt of that. She would have been abandoned in some city to her own wretchedness and shame, not daring to return home. All armies left a track of human litter that had once been spotless maidens and chaste wives. He felt himself aggrieved at his own personal loss. He had fully intended to wed Elspeth in due time and inherit as much as he could of Nicholas Reinheit's wealth. Nicholas the farmer had not been overmuch in favour of the idea, but old Pastor Reinheit, the girl's uncle, who had died at Magdeburg, was desirous that the wedding should come about. Altogether Pastor Rad was not very eager to meet the girl's father, but the tailor and the smith, who represented public opinion in Eisenach, had led him in his haste to declare that he would face Nicholas, and he would. Pastor Rad's consciousness of his own honesty of purpose upheld him.
Nicholas gave him a grudging "good-day!" He was a stoutly built, rather fat man, but anxiety had perceptibly thinned him, and his cheeks hung loose and baggy.
"The Lord comfort you in your affliction!" said Pastor Rad.
The old man turned on him with a snarl—
"It is easy to say. You took away my daughter. You set some silly tale going about her being possessed till the countryside demanded that she should suffer discipline. Fool! It was you that was possessed. And you set about giving her a public whipping, my daughter Elspeth, as good and true a maid as ever walked, and all those mawkish fools of elders and hugger-muggers sitting in a ring all about you mum and not lifting a finger."
"The discipline has been found efficacious in cases of possession!" said Pastor Rad.
"Very likely," retorted Nicholas, "where some servant girl has gone distraught and howled like a wolf up and down the village, or an old witch has given a man's horse the murrain. Whip 'em! Burn 'em! Drown 'em. But my daughter Elspeth! And then forsooth one of the Emperor's captains takes her out of your hands and rides away with her, and you with your three or four hundred men with muskets and pikes never move a finger. Where is she now? Tell me that! Is she alive or dead? You professed to have a liking for her at one time. Why, man, if you had had a spark of love in you, you would have followed that captain's troops till you dropped! Pastor! Pastor means shepherd, doesn't it? What manner of shepherd are you that lets the wolf snatch his lamb out of his very fingers?"
Nicholas spat solemnly on the hearth.
"You forget," expostulated Pastor Rad, "that there were above three hundred troopers, well armed and well horsed. We should have been cut in pieces."
"And would they have gone scathless? Has the forest lost all its manhood?"
"What was done or left undone cannot be remedied!" said the pastor.
"Did you know the man?" the farmer asked after a pause.
"Yes, it is the same fellow, a Scot, so they told me, who broke into the house at Magdeburg!"
"And saved all your lives, so Elspeth told me! 'Tis a pity he saved yours!"
"Friend Nicholas! You are too much beside yourself with grief. I was but an instrument of God."
"He rode with you to Erfurt, as I mind," the farmer went on. "Did he treat Elspeth as a light o' love?"
As a matter of fact, the pastor had been too much engaged in the contemplation of his coming sermons to remember, so he answered truthfully enough—
"I noticed nothing unseemly in his behaviour either to Elspeth or to Ottilie von Thüringen!"
"It may be that the captain but took her to a place of safety, thinking her in danger!" said the farmer, growing more placid as the thought sprang up that there was ground for hope. "I remember a regiment staying near here the night after your hocus-pocus at Ruhla. They came at nightfall, and with the dawn, or soon after, an officer came riding helter-skelter down the hill from the Wartburg with a single soldier after him, and in half an hour they mounted and rode away. Maybe he was the very man."
"But if he brought Elspeth thither why did he not send her to you?" propounded Pastor Rad.
"Because the girl would have had more sense than to get in your path again!"
"As if I had no work of the Lord's to do, where the hosts of the Lord were drawn out unto battle?"
"Depend upon it," said the farmer, "Elspeth's in the Wartburg hiding!"
The pastor shook his head. He would have liked to know that she was. After all, there was an air of solid comfort about old Reinheit's abode, sadly marred by the lack of Elspeth's trim figure in coif and apron trotting to and fro. The more he thought of it the more he wanted to see her. At last he said—
"It may be that the Lord will vouchsafe light I will go even unto the Wartburg and question the Landgravine, if peradventure she knows where the maiden is."
"You need not darken my door again if you find her not," said Nicholas Reinheit. "She can milk against any maid, make butter against any maid or wife in the forest,bake against any, brew against any. God in heaven! she must come back. And I shan't go to the church till she does."
Pastor Rad was too much surprised to say anything. For Nicholas had been a very steadfast pillar of the Church, and it boded ill for Pastor Rad if he did not succeed in restoring the lost lamb to the fold.
So he picked up his staff and trudged thoughtfully away up the steep path to the Wartburg.
But the quest did not end there. For the Landgravine told him that the Lady Ottilie von Thüringen had taken Elspeth away with her when she set out for Halberstadt, which was the next day, or the next day but one, after the Emperor's colonel had brought her.
This news acted like a spur upon Pastor Rad. He stayed long enough to send word by one of Reinheit's cowherds that he had learned something about Elspeth and had gone to find her. If he heard nothing of Elspeth, at least he was sure of getting trace of the Lady Ottilie, who had many threads of connection with the Protestant leaders in various places. And he did not have to go farther than Erfurt before he received some information which caused him to return southward and set his face towards Bohemia.
TheArchduchess Stephanie had rightly counted on a safe journey from Halberstadt to Bohemia, however small an escort she might be accorded. For, as the Countess Ottilie von Thüringen she claimed safe conduct whenever there was any risk of getting embroiled with small bodies of Protestant levies, and her escort was far too mindful of its own safety to risk giving any other account of her than she chose to give.
As it was a matter of knowledge to the chief conspirators in each place that she was a medium of communication between Wallenstein and the Protestant leaders, her name was sufficient to guarantee her safety through country patrolled by their troops.
So it was the track of the Countess Ottilie von Thüringen that Pastor Rad picked up at Erfurt. He learned that she had an escort of twenty Imperial troopers: that she had in her train several women servants or companions, the information not being very exact or well-defined: that she was making her way to Prague.
To Prague, then, the pastor made his way easily enough. The man that had come through the fires at Magdeburg and run innumerable risks at Breitenfeld,although not himself using the arms of the soldiery but only spiritual weapons, was in a measure a kind of prodigious heroic creature, and fared well accordingly. Much talking and preaching made him exceedingly hungry, and the farmers and burghers, who one after the other housed and fed him, were as much amazed at, and respected him as a trencherman, a thing they were well able to judge of, as they were at his exploits, of which they were, in truth, obliged to take the greater part at his own telling.
Prague was in a great turmoil. For bruit of the advance of the Saxon troops was in every mouth, though no one knew anything for certain. Indeed Pastor Rad knew as well as any one, though he kept his own counsel. The way of things was indeed greatly to his liking. The Lutherans were getting the upper hand, just as but a short year before the Catholics had done. It was in this wise. The Catholics had learned that no sufficient aid could reach them from Vienna. They had looked for Wallenstein to organise their defence, and had he chosen to raise his own banner, it is possible that a sufficient force of Catholic gentry and their retainers could have been mustered that, together with the Imperial garrisons, might have given the Saxons a very long pause.
But to the amazement of all, Wallenstein dismantled his house, collected his furniture in waggons and his household in coaches, and set out without haste towards Vienna. In fact, he rested at Znaim. This had given the signal for something like panic, and although it was the dead of winter, Catholic family after Catholic family followed in his wake, each departure making it still more difficult for the next, and creating confusion through the desperate efforts of each not to be the hindermost.
From the innkeepers Pastor Rad learned that the Countess Ottilie had rested but a night and gone on toZnaim, which being learned, the pastor could not resist the temptation of spending a day or two in the congenial company of the Lutherans of Prague, proving how well he could bray out prophetic denunciations against the fleeing Catholics. As he took his daily stand near the south gate of the city, his exuberant yellow locks floating in the wind, he was able to assail with his scriptural invective all the fugitives, with the certainty that some of his words at least would be, if not exactly treasured, at all events remembered by dint of his unwearied reiteration.
It was only when the burghers of Prague, tenacious of their privileges and of the well-ordering of their city, even with the dismal prospect before them of an occupation by their friends the Saxons, awakened to a sense of the unseemliness of his clamour, that Pastor Rad remembered the Lady Ottilie and Elspeth Reinheit, whose father was so well-to-do.
Once again he took staff in hand and trudged on to Znaim. At Znaim the host could only say that the Lady Ottilie had set out a full month before for Vienna.
He looked blank at the prospect. But he was by nature persistent, and unwilling to give up his search, which was now somewhat uninviting. Vienna meant Popery rampant, Jesuits in scores, rough soldiery, not rougher than usual, but with the licence of authority to subject a mere Lutheran pastor to all kinds of insults. There would be Lutherans even in Vienna, but those few and needy, and for companions on the road he would overtake the very Catholics he had so denounced.
Of money he had no great store, but he had contrived some replenishing of his purse at Prague, and husbanded his money as much as possible, taking advantage of every opportunity that offered of a free meal. In this way he accomplished the journey without much interruption, afew hard blows from the servants of those who remembered his oratory at Prague, excepted.
Vienna with its populace, as it seemed to him, speaking all the tongues except German and curiously garbed, thronging with priests and nuns and soldiers, stared at him, professed not to understand his speech. He slunk into the first inn that offered a semblance of refuge and frugal fare at a modest price. Having slept as well as he was able, he set out the next morning to find the Lady Ottilie von Thüringen.
Having first approached some of his own belief and discovered that they knew nothing of her, not even her name, he accosted some of the better class of burgesses, who showed him greater courtesy than he expected, but could give him no information. Failing with the citizens, he addressed himself with more politeness than he was in the habit of using (he had no very abundant stock in his wallet) to some of the gentlemen who aired themselves and their newest raiment in the principal streets. One or two of them manifested sufficient interest to take note of the name on their tablets and asked him to describe the lady, which he did with much particularity. These having heard, dismissed him with a vague negative, but left a disturbing impression on his mind that they knew more than they pretended.
Two days went by in this manner and in losing his way and finding it in the tortuous streets of the city. On the third day, however, he saw, as he stood gazing at the palace of the Emperor, an officer of high rank, as it seemed, come out and mount his horse which had been held by a soldier at the entrance.
The pastor's eyes roved wearily over this new subject, noting with contemptuous attention the plumed hat, the gold lace galloons and other striking embellishments, when something familiar in the officer's features orattitude came home to his consciousness. Then he recognised Nigel as the miscreant of Magdeburg, who had given him that never-to-be-forgotten chastisement.
Pulling his hat over his brows the pastor followed Nigel to his lodgings, and from midday till dusk he watched, following when Nigel set out, waiting when he returned. In what way he was to come at his desired end he did not know; but his old suspicion that between Nigel and Elspeth was some dark secret understanding had leapt to his mind with renewed vigour. It was a great joy to him when at dusk Nigel once more emerged, wrapped in a military cloak, bent upon some, so the pastor judged, furtive errand.
The dusk that favoured Nigel favoured him also. He followed with all the sleuth-hound in his composition, alert and noiseless. He wanted no second rencontre with that energetic Scot, but he did want to know very much whither he was bound.
He had much ado to keep pace, for Nigel walked quickly, but the pastor was a sturdy man and young. He kept well up and always in the shadow. The road lay away from the main streets into meaner ones, then left the houses altogether. On the left lay the city walls, furnished now and again with guard-houses, and defensive angles, and projections. On the right was a high bank, surmounted by a wall, of what height or thickness he could not gauge.
At a certain point Nigel stopped, looked round a moment, and then began to climb the bank. The pastor stood in the nearest shadow at the foot and watched till Nigel was at the top. Then the darkness was too much for him. Very stealthily the pastor climbed too. He was not a forest man for nothing. At the top it was clear that Nigel had disappeared. He must therefore have climbed the wall.
The wall was high, about twice the height of a man, with a coping-stone at the top, pent-house-wise, and grown thickly with moss and lichen and wild flowers. The wall was also rough, and the little clumps of moss showing in the interstices marked uneven places of which a climber might take advantage if he had long fingers and stout toes. But how to get off the ground was a problem. For a few moments he groped, half inclined to impute to "the Popish captain," as he called him, the sin of witchcraft, in addition to those of greed, unchastity, impiety, and a string of others of which the pastor was satisfied already. Then something that flicked him in the face, to wit, the leafless bough of a tree, brought him the solution. To spring for one a little above his head, and use it for a hand-grip while he stepped from toe-place to toe-place, and finally could dig his fingers securely into a great clump of moss at the coping with his right hand and haul himself up, took but a short interval of time. The getting down was not difficult.
The darkness had swallowed up Nigel. The grass made his footfall noiseless. The pastor's eyes, accustomed to the half darkness of the forest, were well fitted to the task at present. They enabled him merely to avoid or to thread the tangle of the bushes and get more and more into the open where the sky, now starlit, now cloudy by turns, allowed him a longer vision. At last he saw that the belt of grassland dotted by bushes was succeeded by formal walks and beds for flowers. A mile or so ahead he caught fitful glimpses of lights in some tall pile of buildings, which he conjectured to be the palace. These must be the demesnes of the Emperor's dwelling-place. His Popish captain was bent upon a rendezvous, doubtless with Elspeth. But where? Cautiously he stalked along making a straight line for the palace, keeping to turf or soft flower-beds by preference, and every now and thenstanding in the shadow of a sapling to seek for the amorous pair, to listen for the whispers that might betoken their presence. And so going farther and farther he came to a hedge, behind which was another wall, this time of no great height, but still sufficient. Along this he crept seeking for a gate. Here was a garden close for growing fruit, he argued, and the lovers might well have left a door unfastened in their eagerness. But having made the circuit and discovered three doors all secure, he found he must prove again his skill in climbing. The wind blowing just sufficiently to make the twigs and boughs keep up a low whistling, made it impossible to judge where he should make his attempt. So he selected the corner with an eye to an easy ascent. Once upon the wall he paused, lying flat and clasping its top with both hands.
There he lay listening with both ears, trying to get used to the whispering of the branches till he could distinguish the tones of human murmuring. Then he dragged himself along a few more yards.
Pastor Rad felt that Providence was with him. His motive was excellent in his own eyes. He was engaged in the pursuit of the evil-doer. What he should do when he had found him was not at present clear. Providence would point out by process of revelation what the next step should be.
For the time being he crawled to the detriment of his clothing along the wall. His patience and his stealth, the latter not usually mentioned in connection with Providence, were rewarded. He heard voices, a man's and a woman's.
The one was that of the ruthless Catholic Scotsman, the betrayer of Elspeth Reinheit. Had he not cause to remember its deep tones? The other was not Elspeth's. For a few instants he was at a loss. They were also deepand rich and aristocratic; the words they uttered were choice rather than homely. Then something in them recalled the very woman he was seeking, Ottilie von Thüringen.
At this moment when he waited for the inspiration he expected, an untoward interruption befell. He dislodged a large stone, which fell with a very noticeable thud on the inner side of the wall, and he was at the same time clutched by the leg, and very unceremoniously pulled to the ground on the outside of the wall by a pair of ruffians, who, with a choice garnishment of oaths growled under their breaths, proceeded first to rifle his pockets quite thoroughly, and then to bind his arms behind his back, his legs together, and to lay him, so trussed, on his back. Then they began to clamber up the wall, only to find that the love-birds they had come to seek had flown.
Pastor Rad wriggled in vain while his captors explored the orchard close, and at the end of their fruitless search they returned, untied his legs and marched him firmly and rudely towards the palace, where they placed him in a guard-room, satisfied that if they had missed a salmon they had at least caught a dog-fish.
Theofficer of the guard at the palace was not clear as to what he was to do with his unintended catch. The fact that he was, or styled himself, a Lutheran pastor, was, in Vienna, in the eyes of such an officer, a criminal offence in itself. In addition, he had been caught upon the wall of the orchard close in the gardens of the palace.
Upon examination he proved to be reticent even to moroseness. His only explanation was that he had come to Vienna in search of a high-born lady, the Countess Ottilie von Thüringen. The officer of the guard had never heard of her, and till the morning had no one to consult. So Pastor Rad spent an uncomfortable night. His supper was meagre. The stone floor of the guard-room was hard, and the wind swept in under the massive door and up the capacious chimney, incidentally swirling round the Pastor's head and shoulders on its way. Half a dozen soldiers, who smelt very vilely, sat round the fire and played cards with great zest, and with oaths the most blood-curdling that Pastor Rad, who had heard many things spoken in his lifetime, had ever heard. He slept badly.
The next day Father Lamormain, who heard of everything, heard of this incident and sent for Pastor Rad.
It was the mark of Father Lamormain that he was uniformly courteous. He kept all his hatred under lock and key. And his hatred of Lutheranism was perhaps the profoundest passion of his life, next to the love he bore to his own order of the regular priests. If Father Lamormain could have gathered all the Lutheran ministry together, and compounded them into one man, and severed that man's head from his body, he would have acquiesced in that monstrous execution, without personal gratification, but with a sense that the most desirable of events had come to pass. But to address an individual Lutheran (minister and layman were alike to him) with a frown, with harsh speech, or even with mild contempt, was impossible to him.
Pastor Rad, unkempt as to his abundant yellow hair, muddy as to his raiment, presented an object for easy ridicule. Father Lamormain's secretary led him in with an air of apology. The Emperor's confessor requested him to be seated, and asked him if he had broken his fast. Pastor Rad, much taken aback by his reception at the hands of this renowned enemy of his faith, said No! Father Lamormain bade his secretary give him what he needed, and bring him back in an hour.
The secretary, understanding all his instructions implied, brought him back washed, combed, brushed, and recognisable as a Lutheran pastor as far as externals went.
Pastor Rad was greatly mollified by these attentions, and found grace enough to return thanks.
"And now," said Father Lamormain, "you will pardon me, Pastor Rad, if I ask you a few questions. You came to Vienna from Prague?"
"Yes!" said the pastor.
"At Prague, I understand, you found it necessary to speed some of the Catholic fugitives with exhortations?"
Pastor Rad admitted it. On reflection this seemed to be a gentle description of his sonorous revilings; but he wondered how much Father Lamormain knew and how he knew it. He also considered that it behoved him to be careful.
"May I ask you what brought you to Prague?"
"In search of one, a maiden, named Elspeth Reinheit, a member of my flock from Eisenach."
"How did she come thither?"
"I had learned that she set out for Prague in company of a certain Countess Ottilie von Thüringen."
"Yes?"
"I learned that the Countess had set out for Vienna, and followed."
"Truly a good shepherd!" said Father Lamormain pleasantly. "You left the ninety-and-nine at Eisenach to discover your one lost lamb in Vienna!"
"And this Countess?"
"No one knows her in Vienna!"
"So you went to look for her in the orchard close in the palace gardens?"
Pastor Rad hesitated. Then he said—
"I did not seek her there. But she was there!"
"Yes!" said Father Lamormain. "You saw her!"
"No, I heard her voice!"
"So you knew her voice?"
"Yes, I had met her in Magdeburg during the siege!"
"She is a Lutheran also?"
"She consorted with the Lutherans! I know nothing of her except that she has been at the Wartburg staying with the Landgrave's family."
Pastor Rad suddenly began to suspect that he was too confidential.
"She is evidently a lady of rank!" said the Jesuit. "She was alone in the orchard?"
"No! She was with a cavalier."
"Ah! You knew him also?"
"Yes! I do not know his name! I saw him first at Magdeburg. He was a fierce fighter. He is a foreigner. I saw him yesterday as he rode away from the palace, and he lodges in the Fremdengasse. He is an officer."
"You seemed to have followed him! Did you suspect him of stealing your lamb?"
"Yes!" said Pastor Rad with an indignation which was not fictitious.
"And instead you found him with this strange Countess! Can you describe her to me?"
"She is very tall. She has dark hair, dark eyes, red lips, a pale complexion, and bears herself proudly!"
"Ah! Such a one can hardly escape notice in Vienna!" said the Jesuit. "And what is your purpose with this maiden—this Elspeth Reinheit?"
"To take her back to her father, and if she be indeed yet a true maid, to marry her!"
"She would scarcely have suffered loss in company of a great lady?"
"I do not know anything of great ladies! But I have many reasons to think this foreign officer may have wronged her—even in Magdeburg."
"'Judge not, that ye be not judged,' Pastor Rad. I promise that, if she be in Vienna, she shall be handed over to you. See to it that you deal tenderly with your lamb in return for our gentle dealing with you."
"I was robbed of my money!" Pastor Rad complained.
"It shall be repaid to you twice over," said the Jesuit. "How much was it?"
The pastor told him, and the Jesuit noted it on his tablets.
"Now get to your lodgings and wait there a day. A servant shall go with you."
On the same day Nigel Charteris was summoned by the Emperor's Military Council, and bidden make his way through Bavaria to join his old commander Count Tilly. There and not in Austria or Bohemia it was thought that a period might be put to the King of Sweden's progress. Tilly had men enough in conjunction with the Elector Maximilian's, but lacked officers. The Council feared the Saxons less, who were at Prague, and so in a manner at their doors, than the foreigner Gustavus, who had so signally shown his mastery alike upon the Elbe and upon the Rhine.
Asking what forces he was to conduct, he was told that a mere escort would be sufficient. The road was open, and speed alone was necessary. Nigel was more flattered than if three regiments had been confided to him, for the Council made it appear that it was he, Nigel, and not regiments, that was wanted. He knew that at the moment there was no superfluity of troops in and around Vienna to defend it should the Saxons decide to move southward, but his experience of the behaviour of the Saxon troops at Breitenfeld had left him with a poor opinion of their courage, their initiative, and their leadership.
Father Lamormain saw him after he had received his orders. He made no reference to Pastor Rad, of whose nearness Nigel was unaware, nor to the orchard close, nor to Stephanie. That some prowler or other had been about the trysting-place Nigel was aware, and, on account of the Archduchess, he had refrained from encountering him. Having seen nothing himself, he imagined that his own and his mistress's persons had enjoyed a like invisibility. Unaccustomed to fear himself, he had not understood why Stephanie in her concluding embrace had trembled and clung to him with the mingled weakness, tenderness, and passionate strength of which womanis capable at supreme moments of danger. It had touched his heart. It had left him determined that nothing at the last should separate them but the hand of death itself. So he looked upon this expected summons to resume duty at the front with the confidence of youth, that nothing but a few short weeks lay between him and her he loved,—weeks perhaps in which he might compass more of that military glory he coveted, and so lessen the distance that yawned between them. What if he should find the opportunity to wrest from the pretendedly reluctant and chaffering Wallenstein the laurels of the Empire to lay at her feet?
So Nigel met Father Lamormain with no suspicion at the back of his mind, but rather with brave hopes and the supreme joy that a man feels who knows that he is beloved by her whom he conceives to be the star of womanhood.
Father Lamormain bade him exert himself to the utmost. He told him that the armies of Tilly and Maximilian constituted the final barrier that prevented the Swedish hosts, reinforced by Germans from every Protestant state, from rolling through Bavaria, resistless as the Danube in flood, and finally reaching Vienna. He made him feel, as the clumsy brief remarks and explanations of the Army Council had not, though they had borne some suggestion, that on his own personal devotion and intelligence depended the whole fortune of the Empire. The appeal was the more sure that it was in the first place an appeal to his simple loyalty as a mercenary soldier, and not to his nationality. In the second place, Father Lamormain appealed to his faith. He spoke in no uncertain way of the fate of those heretics who should fall, striving against the Emperor and Holy Church. He touched slightly on the indifference of the Holy Father, Urban the Eighth, to the calls of the Emperor for succour, and the apparent hostility of the fervently Catholic King of France and his Cardinal Minister. He deplored them, but did not gloss them over. He was evidently, so Nigel thought, working towards producing in Nigel a proper state of mind from which might spring the spiritual flower of a heroic death. It was the rule of the order. For the individual, sacrifice; for the cause of the order, everything that might enhance its progress.
It was as if the Jesuit strove to wean him from earthly aims, to instil into him something of the essence of his own self-lessness: and, for the brief while that the audience lasted, Nigel's soul and mind took some impress in its wax of youth of the deep and hard graven die that was the Jesuit's.
More than before Nigel felt that an active benevolence in regard to him ran like a golden thread through the tissue of Father Lamormain's talk, that, while urging self-immolation on the altar of the Empire, he urged it only as a means of spiritual safety from pitfalls that otherwise yawned for him in this world and the next.
To the hidden meaning Nigel possessed no clue. The one all-obliterating fact of his love for the Archduchess and her love for him prevented the die of the Jesuit making more than a faint permanent impression upon his mind, sufficient only to be memorable.
Father Lamormain seemed to be aware of this faintness of impression, for he sighed deeply as Nigel, having received his last benediction, took his final leave.
Nigel rode forth towards Bavaria fully determined to fight the Swede, but whether the eyes of Stephanie, or the heavenly crown pictured for him by Father Lamormain, glittered the more brightly to his thoughts, is a question each one must settle for himself.
One thing Father Lamormain had kept back, and that was the progress of the negotiations between the Emperor and Wallenstein, which were still at a delicate stage, and were yet shaping towards success.
Twomonths slipped past for Gustavus Adolphus, two months of strenuous nights and days, two months of petty hostilities and multifarious negotiations. Richelieu was attempting to isolate Austria, bargaining with the Princes of the League that they should stand aside as neutrals, bargaining with Gustavus that, if they did, he should respect their neutrality. Then there could be nothing to prevent Gustavus from crushing Austria, and Richelieu's cup of joy would be full. Maximilian had indeed made a secret treaty with France, hoping to save his dominions from the Swede. But Richelieu's plan for isolation fell through, for Gustavus found reason to suspect the intentions of Maximilian, and marched into Franconia, whence Count Tilly had driven out Gustavus's General, Horn. When Gustavus marched, he had with him Horn, and Banner, and Duke William of Weimar, and forty thousand men.
Count Tilly was forced to retreat to the very confines of Bavaria, while Gustavus made a triumphant entry into Nuremberg, which received him with immense ovations.
Two months had also slipped past for Ferdinand and much had happened in Austria. It was summed up in this that Wallenstein had been gathering an army. Hehad refused to consider the question of its command in the field. He had undertaken its muster, contented to show the Emperor once again how potent was the name of Wallenstein wherewith to conjure men from all the quarters of Germany and beyond.
But Ferdinand the Emperor and his Father Confessor, encouraged yet to hope, resting on the fact that an army was being mustered between Vienna and Prague, at Znaim, to which haven Wallenstein had returned, making it his headquarters, were nevertheless perturbed about the attitude of the Elector Maximilian. Father Lamormain knew that the French Cardinal was endeavouring to detach him from the Emperor, knew also that Maximilian had much to gain from neutrality, immunity for his country, which had hitherto been spared the devastations of the war, and eventual aggrandisement for himself if the sun of Austria sank to its setting. On the other hand, both the Jesuit and the Emperor remembered oft-repeated proofs of Maximilian's fidelity to the Catholic faith and to the Emperor.
"Your Majesty must send an ambassador!" said Father Lamormain. "Such an ambassador as by his own nobility and charm of person and of eloquence shall sway the mind of the Elector, nay, his very heart, so that it shall tend towards your Majesty and thereby abide. And that quickly!"
Ferdinand smiled that pallid half-sardonic smile of his which seemed to sum up the weariness of generations of Habsburgs, and to be in itself a satiric comment upon the futility of human endeavours to stem the progress of events. He put a question—
"Whom?"
"The Archduchess Stephanie!"
The Emperor frowned the merest suspicion of a frown. Father Lamormain watched him peacefully, as if it hadbeen an affair of shuttlecocks and not a deep political design.
"Alone? Since when has Austria depended upon its women?"
"To the first question your Majesty, No! To the second, Always!"
"Ah!" said the Emperor. "My son Ferdinand."
"The Archduke Ferdinand! And with him the Archduchess Stephanie."
"Is she likely to add such cogency to our arguments that Bavaria will steady itself to be our last buttress?"
"The Elector Maximilian has sought her in marriage. The project has been deferred by the war, but the living princess, with pleading in her tones and promises in her eyes, should outweigh all the bribes of Richelieu."
"If Stephanie chose, she could bewitch him that he could not but choose to adhere to our side. But it has seemed to me that she was indifferent to his suit."
"Princesses can have no choice of their spouses!" said Father Lamormain. "Your Majesty must be round with her, leave her no room for wavering, bid her to her duty."
"You have as much influence with her as I, Father. If I do my part, so must you."
"Your Majesty may count on my endeavour! It is a happy moment when the need of Austria must outbalance all personal whims."
"The roads are open? You can arrange for a sufficient and well-equipped retinue, for a small company of our goodliest dames and demoiselles?"
"We are still Austria, your Majesty!"
"The project is good, Father! Put it in hand at once. The more haste the better."
Ferdinand's face cleared perceptibly.
On further reflection Father Lamormain judged it the wiser plan to prepare the mind of the Archduchess forthe order of the Emperor. He knew perhaps better than any one, except Stephanie, how rebellious a Habsburger there was in her. It is even possible that the Archduchess considered her own doings as fulfilling all thereasonabledemand of the parental laws. She would, however, have placed her own interpretation on the meaning of "reasonable."
He lost no time in seeking her out in her own apartments, and entreating a few moments' conversation.
He began by asking her whether by any chance a young woman, Elspeth Reinheit by name, had travelled with her from Prague, on her way home from Halberstadt.
The Archduchess, evidently astonished at the question, said—
"No! What makes you ask?"
"There is a certain Lutheran pastor, your Highness, who has journeyed to Vienna, one Melchior Rad, who seeks this Elspeth Reinheit."
"Yes! But what has that to do with me?"
"He is convinced that this girl was brought by a certain mysterious Countess Ottilie von Thüringen,of whom I have more than once heard, to Prague, that she set out for Znaim, and from Znaim for Vienna."
"Indeed! I know of no Countess of the name!"
"Nor do I," said the Jesuit. "Though I have searched the records of heraldry," he added quietly.
The Archduchess felt that the Jesuit was playing the cat to her mouse.
He proceeded: "But the singular thing is that when asked to describe the Countess Ottilie he described your Highness passably well."
"Whom he may have seen at Halberstadt!" said the Archduchess, determined that the cat should not gobble her.
"Only he has not been there!" said Father Lamormain.
"A prodigy!" said the Archduchess.
"More prodigious still, he recognised your voice, though he did not see your Highness by reason of the darkness!"
"Recognised my voice!" said the Archduchess, now roused to a fine appearance of indignation. "Where was this prowling Lutheran that he could hear my voice and neither see me nor be seen?"
"Upon the wall of the orchard close in the gardens of the palace of Vienna!"
But the Archduchess was quick of wit. "Dear Father Lamormain," she said without a blush, and with an amused irony in her tones, "since when is it reported that I have taken to assignations in the dark in orchard closes?"
"Nay!" said Father Lamormain. "Perchance I used not the right words. It was clumsy of me! The honest Pastor Rad but recognised the voice of his Countess talking to her lover in the orchard close!"
"And the lover?" the Archduchess asked with an accent of merriment. "Did his Lutheran sapience recognise him also?"
"He had followed him thither!" said the Jesuit. "It was no other than our faithful Scot, who has to-day departed for Tilly's army!"
"I believe none of your pastor's tales! There is no Elspeth Reinheit about the palace, even in the kitchens, no Ottilie von Thüringen that I have ever heard of in Vienna. As for me I have a suitor, or had one, of whom you have spoken aforetime, the Elector Maximilian. One suitor at a time is trouble enough."
The Jesuit knew too many particulars of the doings of Ottilie von Thüringen to be in any doubt as to her identity, but his suspicions of Nigel were too slight to credit the whole story of the pastor, so he said—
"It would be a great ease to the mind of the Emperorcould you but take the Elector's suit in grave earnest," and he sighed heavily. "For the Empire is in great jeopardy. The Swede advances towards us. We have nothing as yet to oppose him but Tilly's army, gathered from a hundred garrisons. The Holy Father refuses his aid. France, ever jealous of us, seeks to bribe Maximilian into neutrality. With Maximilian and the other princes of the League neutral, what chance does Austria stand?"
There was no mistaking the priest's seriousness. It impressed the Archduchess more than if he had preached a sermon on the end of all things. She had an uneasy conscience, for had she not helped to pull down the Empire?
"But what can I do?" she asked.
"You can give yourself for the Empire! In a time of peace you would have been wedded before this to whomsoever the Emperor judged it fit. In this time of war you can gain eternal salvation by offering yourself to our old ally."
"But how?"
"An embassy goes out to Bavaria to meet Maximilian to beg him to delay his scheme of neutrality, to oppose a strong front, to let his cities be besieged but not surrendered, to fight inch by inch of his soil, until we can bring a fresh army to his aid and drive back the Swede."
"And the embassy consists of?"
"The Archduke Ferdinand! Your Highness might well go with him, and some of our ladies. When Maximilian hears you plead for the Empire, hears you offer to stay with him and share his toils and his glory, there will be dealt the death-blow to the plots of France, and for Sweden it will be the beginning of the end."
"And what if the Elector flout me? It is ill offering the goods in the market that have once been denied to the buyer."
The Father Confessor smiled.
"We have never denied Maximilian. And the good wine has become the mellower in our Austrian cellars!"
The Archduchess drew up her head and pouted her red lips.
"We will consider this matter. The Empire shall not perish for need of us. Though, in faith, wanting Maximilian, the Empire still has Wallenstein!" She looked covertly at the priest as she mentioned the name.
"Your Highness has at times much prized our Wallenstein!"
"Yes, and with cause! By Wallenstein and not by Maximilian shall we be delivered. By all means let us use Maximilian as our buttress, but our sword and buckler in the open field will be Wallenstein. I would it were he and not Maximilian that I had to seek out!"
Father Lamormain marked the maidenly flush that accompanied the outspokenness, and adding them to what he had already known of her doings, he began to regard the tale of Pastor Rad as arising from some strange ferment in his brain. In any case his main point was gained. The Archduchess would go. How deep were her feelings towards the Elector, or towards Wallenstein, he could not gauge. But he knew the depth of the Habsburg pride, that, rebellious or not, must in the long-run fan the altar flame in the shrine of the Imperial house.
But Father Lamormain, reader of hearts and minds, of eyes and mouths and tones, was not omniscient, and he did not read the Archduchess Stephanie; for how should he know that in one short hour she had thrown down the image of Wallenstein and set up that of the Scottish soldier of fortune. Had he reflected that the western road might lead to the Scot as easily as to the Elector? The cat was allowing the mouse too much law.
Gustavus, in view of the proposals for the neutrality of the Elector, had granted a fortnight's cessation from hostilities. The Elector made use of it to strengthen his positions, and an intercepted letter showed Gustavus that, whatever Richelieu might think, the Elector had no intention of being neutral. Gustavus, once undeceived, marched with all the army he could muster against Tilly, and drove him out of Franconia. Tilly, advised by Maximilian, came to a stand on the banks of the Lech, which forms one of the frontiers of Bavaria. The firm intention of Tilly was to hold back Gustavus from the virgin territories of Maximilian.
The army of Count Tilly was drawn up in a position chosen by himself, astride the main road from Donauwerth to Neuburg, Ingolstadt, and Ratisbon, a position naturally defended on three sides by water, strongly fortified and armed. No bridges lent the Swedish army access. They had been destroyed. Along Tilly's front in an almost straight line was the river Lech in a state of turbulence and flood.
Gustavus stigmatised it as a brook, but even brooks have played a great part in the history of battles; and, sanguine leader that he was, it is doubtful if he expected to cross it by a wild rush through its treacherous waters.
Disposed in earthworks at suitable intervals behind the river were numerous pieces of ordnance ready to dispute the passage of the Swedes. And into the rear of the defences Maximilian himself had led up those regiments that constituted the household troops of his command, as opposed to those that formed part of the Imperial army under Count Tilly.
The conjoined host was a formidable one, well armed, provisioned, rested, numbering not much less than the forty thousand of the Swede.
A week before Nigel had ridden into Tilly's camp, much to the old general's surprise.
"I had thought Wallenstein would have clapped hands upon you to command a brigade!"
"I am not rich enough!" said Nigel. "Besides, who knows whether he will be needed."
"H'm!" was the old general's comment. "If old Tilly gets knocked on the head he will be needed, and soon. But what am I to do with you? Had you brought me three or four regiments now! Said there was a lack of officers, did they? Fools! Of captains and lieutenants? Yes! They have a habit of getting killed! Of colonels even I lack one or two, but of generals! I warrant Gustavus has not half as many. 'Tis the way of Imperial armies!"
"'Tis no matter what I am called!" said Nigel. "Give me a regiment. I am content to be called 'Colonel.' Give me a chance of having at them, sword, musket, gun, anyhow."
"You shall stand just as good a chance of getting killed as I do," grunted the Count.
Nigel was satisfied. The old general's thirst for danger was well known, and he had not forgotten Breitenfeld.Presently Count Tilly assigned him his command. It was a small brigade, comprising three regiments of musketeers and two batteries of ten pieces each. One of the regiments had just lost its colonel, the colonels of the other two were but young in experience, and had but recently been promoted.
The artillery was commanded by a major, who, Tilly said, might be relied upon to handle his pieces and his men in a soldier-like fashion, but had no head for tactics. This Nigel was to supply. Nigel's lines were well up the Lech towards the little town of Rain, and the northern angle of the triangle that formed the whole position of the camp.
For some days at least Nigel did nothing but drill and exercise his little force, make himself acquainted with his officers, and make reconnaissances along the road by which Gustavus must come.
The next best thing to a solitary hill-top for descrying an advancing host is a church spire, and one such, in a village some ten Scots miles from Rain, and a mile or two off the road to Donauwerth, Nigel had marked for a look-out tower.
Before the late sunrise of a wintry morning, wrapped in his ample horseman's cloak, he had crossed the Lech by the only and that a pontoon bridge and galloped for the village.
There was but a faint glimmer of dawn visible over the flat country as he approached the place, and little more as he slid from his horse, tethered it in a farmer's half-filled barn, and strode forward to the village church.
Cautiously he stole in at the door and up the winding stone stair to the belfry tower, and then up a rickety ladder into the spire itself as far as he could get. There was an open trap-door at the top, and inside was darkness.
He pulled himself up, and, feeling with his hands that a gangway of planks was laid against the outer framework of the spire, he crawled along it, hoping to find a convenient chink, or a small window hatch, to serve his purpose. The cold damp wind of the morning rather than the light apprised him that such a peep-hole was near him, and he felt about and about for the fastenings.
It was just when his hands had in fact touched the rusty hasp that the feeling came over him that he was not alone. The place was dark but not noiseless, for the wind whistled eerily and partially lifted loose laths of wood by one end, only to let them fall again as if in mockery of the work of men's hands. But over and above these noises was something more. It was as if other hands at some other point of the circumference were seeking slowly and noiselessly to undo a stubborn latch or rusty bolt. This muffled noise had made itself heard once or twice, and Nigel crouched warily on guard. Then, framed in a pause, came a clink of metal, of a sword against a spur, then silence.
Through a hundred little chinks the dawn began to steal and make of the darkness merely a misty gloom. Nigel had risen to his feet, and there across the unfloored space loomed the figure of another man, in cloak and headpiece like himself, standing stark against the roof.
With a grim quick motion Nigel ripped open his hatch, and with an answering jerk the stranger opened his. The wind rushed across with a roar and a whistle, and the dawn poured in till it made a twilight.
"Eh! sir! It's braw and snell the morn!" said the stranger, making a polite salute with his sword.
"Aye is it!" said Nigel, surprised beyond measure by the sound of the Scots tongue, but returning the compliment in kind.
"Mebbe ye wouldna refuse a wee tassie o' usquebaugh!" the stranger went on affably.
"When I know, sir, whether you come here as friend or enemy," said Nigel, looking across at the weather-tanned but open face something suspiciously.
"Man! ye should never refuse a cup offered in kindness, be it by friend or enemy. But to lat ye ken, I'm just ane o' yon Gustavus' officers, and I came here to spy out Count Tilly's dispositions. Give me twa glimpses and a keek oot o' this spy-hole and I'm your very humble servant." And without more ado he bowed, turned round, and scanned the camp at Rain, which he could see quite well through a glass.
And under his breath he counted and added—
"Thirty thousand, or mebbe thirty-twa! And a wheen o' cannon! And a river in front and the highroad behind. It's ower safe! I wouldna give a fig to be in yon." There was a note of good-natured contempt in his voice. "Eh! sir!"
"And why, sir?" asked Nigel, amused by the coolness of this gentleman, for gentleman he seemed for all his plainness of speech, which, it struck Nigel, might have been assumed.
"I have no liking to fight through the bars of a hencoop with the back out. Give me a gentle hillside and a wide plain, where there's no rinnin' awa' till all's daen, where there's room to get each at other. I dinna favour your fortified camps!"
"As for me," said Nigel, "I have had experience of both kinds of fighting, but on this occasion it is for me to await you on the other side of the river. I am with Count Tilly!"
"I gave you credit, sir, for more sense, seeing you'd a Scots tongue in your heid!" was the commentary.
"But it's richt ye should tak' your fill o' what ye can see! I'm for doon the stair," he added.
Nigel made a movement to intercept him. He waved his glove in friendly deprecation.
"Hoots aye! I'll wait for you at the foot! Ye'll be perverse enough to be wishing to carry me back to breakfast in Tilly's camp. And I've made up my mind to tak' ye back with me to sup our brose! I'll wait! Never fear!"
With which he went quietly and unhurried down the stair—and Nigel took a long look from his hatch. Very dimly he descried something in movement along the road from Donauwerth, and on the wings of the morning air came the sound of a solitary trumpet. Gustavus was advancing, and it behoved Nigel to get back to the camp. He descended the stair, and found the enemy standing, stamping his feet in the roadway.
"Now, sir! where's your horse? Mine's here. I've no wish to carry you, or you me, and there's no need to hack the puir beasties, so if it's all the same to you we'll fight on foot!"
"It's all the same to me," said Nigel, throwing off his cloak. "My horse is in the barn yonder."
"Good!" said the other. "Swords is it? And the first man to be disabled is the other's prisoner! Are these the conditions of the combat?"
Nigel saluted. "My name and condition is,—Nigel Charteris of Pencaitland—Major-General—commanding a brigade under Count Tilly."
"And mine is Sir John Hepburn, Captain-General of the Scots Brigade, serving with Gustavus Adolphus. It is a rare pity we should meet so. I kent your father lang syne. Even now I am willing to go my ways and allow you to do the same."
A swirl of remembrance gushed into Nigel's brain at the words, "Sir John Hepburn!"
"It is just that you are Sir John Hepburn that I dare not!" said Nigel. "Were you a lesser man!"
Sir John Hepburn stood on guard, a man of forty, broad-shouldered, well-knit, wary.
"Have at you, Sir John!" said Nigel, and the battle began.
They were both good swordsmen, but the fact that each had made up his mind to disarm the other without doing him much bodily hurt, engendered such an excess of caution as made it an affair of more length than bloodshed. Both men were winded before either had scored a scratch.
By mutual consent they dropped their points and took breath, but spoke never a word. Both had wrists of the hardest sinew, and both had learned most of the tricks of fence that Spain, Italy, and France could teach.
It was curious how each divined a change in the attack, and attuned his defence to meet it.
The one fact that emerged from the continual parry and thrust was that Nigel was the better able to recover his wind, and slightly the more agile, and so, given an equal fortune, would wear his opponent down.
"Faith! Nigel Charteris! ye're a wise chiel at the swords!" blurted Sir John at the end of the fourth bout.
Once more they crossed, and the sparks flew from their weapons, and this time indeed neither man came off scathless, though the wounds were too slight to hinder either, and then came Nigel's opportunity: for in making a new attack Sir John did not recover himself quickly enough to prevent fleet-footed Nigel slipping beneath his guard, and by a turn of the wrist making it necessary for Sir John to have his own broken, or to let go his sword. Nigel had him at his mercy.
"Do you yield yourself a prisoner, Sir John?"
"Aye! do I! But for no long time!" He picked uphis sword, and wiped it with a lace handkerchief and thrust it into its scabbard.
Nigel looked round. Coming at a sharp trot was a small troop of horsemen from the direction of Donauwerth.
"I doubt ye'd best cry quits and tak' your horse. They won't follow you if you're by yourself, but if you're hampered with a prisoner, I canna vouch for them." There was a kindly gleam in his eyes as he said it.
Nigel took the hint, and holding out his hand said, "Farewell, Sir John! And thanks for your courtesy."
"Farewell, Mr Charteris, and if at any time you should see fit to change camps, or need a friend in other ways, call upon Jock Hepburn!"
And while Nigel sought his horse, the other turned to his, and meeting the horsemen rode off with them.