Hearty were the greetings when the soldiers found us all safe and sound.They shook us again and again by the hand. They clapped us on the back.They examined professionally the dead who lay strewn about.
"A good stroke! Well smitten!" they cried, as they turned them over, like spectators who applaud at a game they can all understand. Specially did they compliment me on my axe-work. Never had anything like it been seen in Plassenburg. The head of the yearling calf was duly exhibited, when the neatness of the blow and the exactness of the aim at the weakest jointing were prodigiously admired.
The good fellows, mellow with the Burgomeister's sinall-ale, were growing friendly beyond all telling, when, in the light of the offertory taper, now growing beguttered and burning low, there appeared the Lady Ysolinde.
You never saw so quick a change in any men. The heartiest reveller forthwith became silent and slunk behind his neighbor. Knees shook beneath stalwart frames, and there seemed a very general tendency to get down upon marrow-bones.
The Lady Ysolinde stood before them, strangely different from the slim, willowy maiden I had seen her. She looked almost imperial in her demeanor.
"You shall be rewarded for your ready obedience," she said; "the Prince will not forget your service. Take away that offal!"
She pointed to the dead rascals on the floor.
And the men, muttering something that sounded to me like "Yes, yourHighness !" hastened to obey.
"Did you say 'Yes, your Highness' ?" I asked one of them, who seemed, by his air of command, to be the superior among the archers.
"Aye," answered he, dryly, "it is a term usually applied to the LadyYsolinde, Princess of Plassenburg."
I was never more smitten dazed and dumb in my life. Ysolinde, the daughter of Master Gerard, the maid who had read my fate in the ink-pool, whom I had "made suffer," according to her own telling—she the Princess of Plassenburg '.
Ah, I had it now. Here at last was the explanation of the threadbare and inexplicable jest of Jorian and Boris, "The Prince hath a Princess, and she is oft upon her travels !"
But, after all, what a Wendish barking about so small an egg. I have heard an emperor proclaimed with less cackle.
Ysolinde, Princess of Plassenburg—yes, that made a difference. And I had taken her hand—I, the son of the Red Axe—I, the Hereditary Justicer of the Wolfmark. Well, after all, she had sought me, not I her. And then, the little Helene—what would she make of it? I longed greatly to find an opportunity to tell her. It might teach her in what manner to cut her cloth.
The archers of the Prince camped with us the rest of the night in the place of the outcast crew. They behaved well (though their forbearance was perhaps as much owing to the near presence of the Princess as to any inherent virtue in the good men of the bow) to the women and children who remained huddled in the corners.
Then came the dawn, swift-foot from the east. A fair dawn it was, the sun rising, not through barred clouds, with the lightest at the horizon (which is the foul-weather dawn), but through streamers and bannerets that fluttered upward and fired to ever fleecier crimson and gold as he rose.
We rode among a subdued people, and ere we went the Princess called for the Burgomeister and bade him send to Plassenburg the landlord, so soon as he should be found, and also the heads of the half-dozen houses on either side of the inn.
Then, indeed, there was a turmoil and a wailing to speak about. Women folk crowded out of the huts and kissed the white feet of the palfrey that bore the Lady Ysolinde.
"Have mercy!" they wailed; "show kindness, great Princess! Here are our men, unwounded and unhurt, that have lain by our sides all the night. They are innocent of all intent of evil—of every dark deed. Ah, lady, send them not to your prisons. We shall never see them more, and they are all we have or our children. 'Tis they bring in the bread to this drear spot!"
"Produce me your husbands, then!" said the Lady Ysolinde.
Whereat the women ran and brought a number of frowsy and bleared men, all unwounded, save one that had a broken head.
Then Ysolinde called to the Burgomeister. "Come hither, chief of a thievish municipality, tell me if these be indeed these women's husbands."
The Burgomeister, a pallid, pouch-mouthed man, tremulous, and brick-dusty, like everything else in the village of Erdberg, came forward and peeringly examined the men.
"Every man to his woman!" he ordered, brusquely, and the women went and stood each by her own property—the men shamefaced and hand-dog, the women anxious and pale. Some of the last threw a, protecting arm about their husbands, which they for the most part appeared to resent. In every case the woman looked the more capable and intelligent, the men being apparently mere boors.
"They are all their true husbands, at least so far as one can know!" answered the Burgomeister, cautiously.
"Then," said the lady, "bid them catch the innkeeper and send him to Plassenburg, and these others can abide where they are. But if they find him not, they must all come instead of him."
The men started at her words, their faces brightening wonderfully, and they were out of the door before one could count ten. We mounted our horses, and under the very humble guidance of the Burgomeister, who led the Princess's palfrey, we were soon again upon the high table-land. Here we enjoyed to the full the breezes which swept with morning freshness across the scrubby undergrowths of oak and broom, and above all the sight of misty wisps of cloud scudding and whisking about the distant peaks-behind which lay the city of Plassenburg.
We had not properly won clear of the ravines when we heard a great shouting and turmoil behind us—so that I hastened to look to my weapons. For I saw the archers instinctively draw their quarrels and bolt-pouches off their backs, to be in readiness upon their left hips.
But it was only the rabble of men and women who had been threatened, the dwellers in those twelve houses next the inn, who came dragging our brick-faced knave of a host, with that hard-polished countenance of his slack and clammy—slate-gray in color too, all the red tan clean gone out of it.
"Mercy—mercy, great lady!" he cried; "I pray you, do execution on me here and now. Carry me not to the extreme tortures. Death clears all. And I own that for my crimes I well deserve to die. But save me from the strappado, from the torment of the rack. I am an old man and could not endure."
The Lady Ysolinde looked at him, and her emerald eyes held a steely glitter in their depths.
"I am neither judge nor"—I think she was going to say "executioner," but she remembered in time and for my sake was silent, which I thought was both gracious and charming of her. She resumed in a softer tone: "What sentence, then, would you desire, thus confessing your guilt?"
"That I might end myself over the cliff there!" said the innkeeper, pointing to the wall of rock along the edge of which we were riding.
"See, then, that he is well ended!" said the Princess, briefly, toJorian.
"Good!" said Jorian, saluting.
And very coolly betook himself to the edge of the cliff, where he primed his piece anew, and blew up his match.
"Loose the man and stand back!" cried the Princess.
A moment the innkeeper stood nerving himself. A moment he hung on the thin edge of his resolve. The slack gray face worked convulsively, the white lips moved, the hands were gripped close to his sides as though to run a race. His whole body seemed suddenly to shrink and fall in upon itself.
"The torture! The terrible torture!" he shrieked aloud, and ran swiftly from the clutches of the men who had held him. Between the path and the verge of the cliff from which he was suffered to cast himself there stretched some thirty or forty yards of fine green turf. The old man ran as though at a village fair for some wager of slippery pig's tail, but all the time the face of him was like Death and Hell following after.
At the cliff's edge he leaped high into the air, and went headlong down, to our watching eyes as slowly as if he had sunk through water. None of us who were on the path saw more of him. But Jorian craned over, regarding the man's end calmly and even critically. And when he had satisfied himself that that which was done was properly done, as coolly as before he stowed away his match in his cover-fire, mounted his horse, and rode towards us.
He nodded to the Princess. "Good, my Lady!" quoth he, for all comment.
"I saved a charge that time!" said he to his companion.
"Good!" quoth Boris, in his turn.
We had now a safe and noble escort, and the way to Plassenburg was easy. The face of the country gradually changed. No more was it the gray, wistful plain of the Wolfmark, upon which our Red Tower looked down. No more did we ride through the marly, dusty, parched lands, in which were the ravines with their uncanny cavern villages, of which this Erdberg was the chief. But green, well-watered valleys and mountains wooded to the top lay all about us—a pleasant land, a fertile province, and, as the Princess had said, a land in which the strong hand of Karl the Prince had long made "the broom-bush keep the cow."
I had all along been possessed with great desire to meet the Prince of so noble and well-cared-for a land, and perhaps also to see what manner of man could be the husband of so extraordinary a Princess.
Yet now, when she was in her own country, and as good as any queen thereof, I found the Lady Ysolinde in no wise different from, what she had been in the city of Thorn and in her father's house. She called me often to ride beside her, Helene being on my other side, while the Lubber Fiend, who had saved all our lives, gambolled about and came to her to be petted like a lapdog of some monstrous sort. He licked his lips and twisted his eyes upward at her in ludicrous ecstasy till only the whites were visible whenever the Princess laid her hand on his head. So that it was as much as the archers of the guard could do to hide their laughter in their beards. But hide it they did, having a wholesome awe of the emerald eyes of their mistress, or perhaps of the steely light which sometimes came into them.
It was growing twilight upon the third day (for there were no adventures worth dwelling upon after that among the cavern dwellings of Erdberg) when for the first time we saw the towers of Plassenburg crowning a hill, with its clear brown river winding slow beneath. We were yet a good many miles from it when down the dusty road towards us came a horseman, and fifty yards or so behind him another.
"The Prince—none rides like our Karl!" said Jorian, familiarly, under his breath, but proudly withal.
"He comes alone!" said I, wonderingly. For indeed Duke Casimir of the Wolfsberg never went ten lances' length from his castle without a small army at his tail.
"Even so!" replied Jorian; "it is ever his custom. The officer who follows behind him has his work cut out—and basted. Not for nothing is our Karl called Prince Jehu Miller's Son, for indeed he rides most furiously."
Before there was time for more words between us a tall, grim-faced, pleasant-eyed man of fifty rode up at a furious gallop. The first thing I noticed about him was that his hair was exactly the same color as his horse—an iron-gray, rusty a little, as if it had been rubbed with iron that has been years in the wet.
He took off his hat courteously to the Princess.
"I bid you welcome, my noble lady," said he, smiling; "the cages are ready for the new importations."
The Lady Ysolinde reached a hand for her husband to kiss, which he did with singular gentleness. But, so far as I could see, she neither looked at him even once nor yet so much as spoke a word to him. Presently he questioned her directly: "And who may this fair young damsel be, who has done me the honor to journey to my country?"
"She is Helene, called Helene Gottfried of Thorn, and has come with me to be one of my maids of honor," answered the Lady Ysolinde, looking straight before her into the gathering mist, which began to collect in white ponds and streaks here and there athwart the valley.
The Prince gave the Little Playmate a kindly ironic look out of his gray eyes, which, as I interpreted it, had for meaning, "Then, if that be so, God help thee, little one—'tis well thou knowest not what is before thee!"
"And this young man?" said the Prince, nodding across to me.
But I answered for myself.
"I am the son of the Hereditary Justicer of the Wolfmark," said I. "I had no stomach for such work. Therefore, as I was shortly to be made my father's assistant, I have brought letters of introduction to your Highness, in the hopes that you will permit me the exercise of arms in your army in another and more honorable fashion."
"I have promised him a regiment," said the Princess, speaking quickly.
"What—of leaden soldiers?" answered the Prince, looking at her mighty soberly.
"Your Highness is pleased to be brutal," answered the Lady Ysolinde, coldly. "It is your ordinary idea of humor!"
A kind of quaint humility sat on the face of the Prince.
"I but thought that your Highness could have nothing else in her mind—seeing that our rough Plassenburg regiments will only accept men of some years and experience to lead them. But the little soldiers of metal are not so queasy of stomach."
"May it please your Highness," said I, earnestly, "I will be content to begin with carrying a pike, so that I be permitted in any fashion to fight against your enemies."
Jorian and Boris came up and saluted at this point, like twin mechanisms.Then they stood silent and waiting.
The Prince nodded in token that they had permission to speak.
"With the sword the lad fights well," said Boris. "Is it not so, Jorian?"
"Good!" said Jorian.
"But with the broadaxe he slashes about him like an angel from heaven—not so, Boris?" said Jorian.
"Good!" said Boris.
"Can you ride?" said the Prince, turning abruptly from them.
"Aye, sire!" said I. For indeed I could, and had no shame to say it.
"That horse of his is blown; give him your fresh one!" said he to the officer who had accompanied him. "And do you show these good folk to their quarters."
Hardly was I mounted before the Prince set spurs to his beast, and, with no more than a casual wave of his hand to the Princess and her train, he was off.
"Ride!" he cried to me. And was presently almost out of sight, stretching his horse's gray belly to the earth, like a coursing dog after a hare.
Well was it for me that I had learned to ride in a hard school—that is, upon the unbroken colts which were brought in for the mounting of the Duke Casimir's soldiery. For the horse that I had been given took the bit between his teeth and pursued so fiercely after his stable companion that I could scarce restrain him from passing the Prince. But our way lay homeward, so that, though I was in no way able to guide nor yet control my charger, nevertheless presently the Prince and I were clattering through the town of Plassenburg like two fiends riding headlong to the pit.
Within the town the lamps were being lit in the booths, the folks busy marketing, and the watchmen already perambulating the city and crying the hours at the street corners.
But as the Prince and I drove furiously through, like pursuer and pursued, the busy streets cleared themselves in a twinkling; and we rode through lanes of faces yellow in the lamplight, or in the darker places like blurs of scrabbled whiteness. So I leaned forward and let the beast take his chance of uneven causeway and open sewer. I expected nothing less than a broken neck, and for at least half a mile, as we flew upward to the castle, I think that the certainty of naught worse than a broken arm would positively have pleasured me. At least, I would very willingly have compounded my chances for that.
Presently, without ever drawing rein, we flew beneath the dark outer port of the castle, clattered through a court paved with slippery blocks of stone, thundered over a noble drawbridge, plunged into a long and gloomy archway, and finally came out in a bright inner palace court with lamps lit all about it.
I was at the Prince's bridle ere he could dismount.
"You can ride, Captain Hugo Gottfried!" he said. "I think I will make you my orderly officer."
And so he went within, without a word more of praise or welcome.
There came past just at that moment an ancient councillor clad in a long robe of black velvet, with broad facings and rosettes of scarlet. He was carrying a roll of papers in his hand.
"What said the Prince to yon, young sir, if I may ask without offence?" said he, looking at me with a curiously sly, upward glance out of the corner of his eye, as if he suspected me of a fixed intention to tell him a lie in any case.
"If it be any satisfaction to you to know," answered I, rather piqued at his tone, "the Prince informed me that I could ride, and that he intended to make me his orderly officer. And he called me not 'young sir,' but Captain Hugo Gottfried."
"How long has he known you?" said the Chief Councillor of State. For so by his habit I knew him to be.
"Half an hour, or thereby," answered I.
"God help this kingdom!" cried the old man, tripping off, flirting his hand hopelessly in the air—"if he had known you only ten minutes you would have been either Prime-Minister or Commander-in-Chief of the army."
It was in this strange fashion that I entered the army of the Prince of Plassenburg, a service which I shall ever look back upon with gratitude, and count as having brought me all the honors and most of the pleasures of my life.
Half an hour or so afterwards the blowing of trumpets and the thunder of the new leathern cannon announced that the Princess and her train were entering the palace. The Prince came down to greet them on the threshold in a new and magnificent dress.
"The Prince's officer-in-waiting to attend upon his Highness!" cried a herald in fine raiment of blue and yellow.
I looked about for the man who was to be my superior in my new office—that is, if Prince Karl should prove to have spoken in earnest.
"The Prince's orderly to attend upon him!" again proclaimed the herald, more impatiently.'
I saw every eye turn upon me, and I began to feel a gentle heat come over me. Presently I was blushing furiously. For I was still in my riding-clothes, and even they had not been changed after the adventure of the Brick-dust Town. So that they were in no wise fitting to attend upon a mighty dignitary.
The Prince of Plassenburg looked round.
"Ha!" he said; "this is not well—I had forgotten. My orderly ought to have been duly arrayed by this time."
"Pardon, my Prince," said I, "but all the apparel I have is upon my sumpter horse, which comes in the train of the Princess."
My master looked right and left in his quickly imperious and yet humorous manner.
"Here, Count von Reuss," he said to a tall, handsome, heavily jowled young man, "I pray you strip off thy fine coat for an hour, and lend it to my new officer-in-waiting. The ladies will admire thee more than ever in thy fine flowered waistcoat, with silk sleeves and frilled purfles of lace!"
The young man, Von Reuss, looked as if he desired much to tell the Prince to go and be hanged. But there was something in the bearing of Karl of Plassenburg, usurper as they called him, the like of which for command I have never seen in the countenance and manner of any lawfully begotten prince in the world.
So, beckoning me into an antechamber, and swearing evilly under his breath all the time, the young man stripped off his fine coat, and offered it to me with one hand, without so much as looking at me. He gave it indeed churlishly, as one might give a dole to a loathsome beggar to be rid of his importunity.
"I thank you, sir," said I, "but more for your obedience to the Prince than for the fashion of your courtesy to me."
Yet for all that he answered me never a syllable, but turned his head and played with his mustache till his man-servant brought him another coat.
I followed the Prince without another word, and when he received the Princess I had the happiness of taking the Little Playmate by the hand and conducting her as gallantly as I could into the palace. And I was glad, for it helped to allay a kind of reproachful feeling in my heart, which would keep tugging and gnawing there whenever I was not thinking of anything else. I feared lest, in the throng and press of new experiences, I might a little have neglected or been in danger of forgetting the love of the many years and all the sweetness of our solitary companionship.
Nevertheless, I knew well that I loved those sweetest eyes of hers more than all the words of men and women and priests.
And even as I helped her to dismount, I went over and told her so.
It was just when I held her in my arms for a moment as she dismounted.She clung to me, and methought I heard a little sob.
"Do not ever be unkind, Hugo," she said. "I am very lonely. I wish, with all my heart, I were back again in the old Red Tower."
"Unkind—never while I live, little one," I whispered in her ear. "Cheer your heart, and to-morrow your sorrows will wear off, and you and I both shall find friendship in the strange land."
"I hate the Princess! And I shall never like her as long as I live!" she said, with that certain concentrated dislike which only good women feel towards those a degree less innocent, specially when the latter are well to look upon.
There was no time to reply immediately as I conducted her up the steps. For I had to keep my eyes open to observe how the Prince conducted himself, and in the easy ceremonial of Plassenburg it chanced that I happened upon nothing extravagant.
"But, Helene, you said a while ago that you hatedme!" I said, after a little pause, smiling down at her.
"Did I?" she answered. "Surely nay!"
"Ah, but 'tis true as your eyes," I persisted. "Do you not remember when I had cut the calf's head off with the axe? You did not love the thought of the Red Tower so much then!"
"Oh,that!" she said, as if the discrepancy had been fully explained by the inflexion of her voice upon the word.
But she pressed my hand, so I cared not a jot for logic.
"You do not love her, you are sure?" she said, looking up at me when we came to the darker turn of the stairs, for the corkscrews were narrower in the ancient castle than in the new palace below.
"Not a bit!" said I, heartily, without any more pretence that I did not understand what she meant.
She pressed my hand again, momentarily slipping her own down off my arm to do it.
"It is not that I love you, Hugo, or that I want you to love me," she said, like one who explains that which is plain already, "except, of course, as your Little Playmate. But I could not bear that you should care about that—that woman."
It was evident that there were to be stirring times in the Castle ofPlassenburg, and that I, Hugo Gottfried, was to have my share of them.
As soon as we had arrived at the banqueting-hall, the Prince beckoned me and presented me formally to the Lady Ysolinde.
"Your Highness, this is Captain Hugo Gottfried, my new officer-in-waiting."
The Princess bowed gravely and held out her hand. Her aqua-marine eyes were bent upon me, suffused with a certain quick and evident pleasure which became them well.
"Your Highness has chosen excellently. I can bear witness that theCaptain Gottfried is a brave—a very brave man," she said.
And at that moment I was most grateful to her for the testimony. For behind us stood the young Von Reuss, pulling at his mustache and looking very superciliously over at me.
Then the Lady Ysolinde withdrew to her own apartments, and that day I got no more words with her nor yet with Helene.
The Prince also went to his room, and I remained where I was, deeming that for the present my duty was done.
The servant of the man whose coat I wore stood with another servitor close at hand—indeed, many of all ranks stood about.
"That is the fellow," I heard one say, tauntingly, meaning me to hear—"peacocking it there in my master's coat!"
His companion laughed contumeliously, at which the passion within me suddenly stirred. I gave one of them the palm of my hand, and as the other fell hastily back my foot took him.
"What ho, there! No quarrelling among the lackeys!" cried Von Reuss, insolently, from the other side of the room.
"Were you, by any chance, speaking to me?" said I, politely, looking over at him.
"Why, yes, fellow!" he said. "If you squabble with the waiting-men concerning cast-off clothes, you had better do it in the stables, where, as you say, your own wardrobe is kept."
"Sir," said I, "the coat I wear, I wear by the command of your Prince. It shall be immediately returned to you when the Prince permits me to go off duty. In the mean time, pray take notice that I am Captain Hugo Gottfried, officer-in-waiting to the Prince Karl of Plassenburg, and that my sword is wholly at your service."
"You are," retorted Von Reuss, "the son of my uncle Casimir's Hereditary Executioner, and one day you may be mine. Let that be sufficient honor for you."
"That I may be yours is the only part of my father's hereditary office I covet!" said I, pointedly.
And certainly I had him there, for immediately he turned on his heel and would have walked away.
But this I could not permit. So I strode sharply after him, and seizing him by his embroidered shoulder-strap, I wheeled him about.
"But, sir," said I, "you have insulted an officer of the Prince. Will you answer for that with your sword, or must I strike you on the face each time I meet you to quicken your sense of honor?"
Before he had time to answer the Prince came in.
"What, quarrelling already, young Spitfire!" he cried. "I made you my orderly—not my disorderly."
Von Reuss and I stood blankly enough, looking away from one another.
"What was the quarrel?" asked the Prince, when he had seated himself at table.
I looked to Von Reuss to explain. For indeed I was somewhat awed to think that thus early in my new career I had embroiled myself with the nephew of Duke Casimir, even though, like myself, he was in exile and dependent upon, the liberality of Prince Karl.
But, since he did not speak, I made bold to say: "Sire, the Count von Reuss taunted me with wearing a borrowed coat, and called me a servitor, because by birth I am the son of the Hereditary Executioner of the Wolfmark. So I told him I was an officer of your household, and that my sword was much at his service."
"So you are," cried the Prince—"so you are—a servitor! So is he—young fools both! And as for being son of the Hereditary Executioner, it is throughout all our German land an honorable office. Once I was assistant executioner myself, and wished with all my heart that I had been principal, and so pocketed the guilders. No more of this folly, Von Reuss. I am ashamed of you, and to a new-comer! Hear ye, sir, I will not have it! I will e'en resume my old trade and do a little justicing on my own account. Shake hands this instant, you young bantams!"
And the Prince sat back in his chair and looked grimly at us. I went a step forward. But Von Reuss held aloof.
"Provost Marshal!" cried the Prince, in a voice which made every one in the room jump and all the glasses ring on the table—"bring a guard!"
The Provost Marshal advanced, bowed, and was departing, when Von Reuss came forward and held his hand out, at first sulkily, but afterwards readily enough.
Then we shook hands solemnly and stiffly, of course loving each other not one whit better.
"Ah," said the Prince, "I thought you would! For if you had not, your uncle, Duke Casimir, might have been a Duke without either an heir to his Dukedom or a successor to his Hereditary Justicer."
"Now sit down, lads, sit down and agree!" he said, after a pause. "The ladies come not to table to-night. So now begin and tell me all the affair of the Earthhouses. I must ride and see the place. I declare I grow rotten and thewless in this dull Plassenburg, where they dare not stick so much as a knife in one another, all for fear of Karl Miller's Son! Since I cannot adventure forth on my own account, I am become a man that wearies for news. Tell me every part of the affair, concealing nothing. But if you can, relate even your own share in it as faithfully as becomes a modest youth."
So I told him at length all that hath already been told, giving as far asI could the credit to Jorian and Boris, as indeed was only their desert.
Whereupon the tale being finished, the Prince said: "Have the two archers up!"
And while the pursuivant had gone for them, the old Councillor leaned across the table and whispered: "Enter Field-Marshal Jorian and General Boris!"
But when the archers came in and stood like a pair of kitchen pokers, thePrince ordered them to tell the story.
Jorian turned his head to Boris, and Boris turned his head to Jorian.They both made a little impatient gesture, which said: "Tell it you!"
But neither appeared to be able to speak first.
"Wind them up with a cup of wine apiece!" cried the hearty Prince; "surely that will set one of them off."
Two great flagons of wine were handed to Jorian and Boris, and they drank as if one machine had been propelling their internal workings, throwing off the liquor with beautiful unanimity and then bringing their cups to the position of salute as if they had been musketoons at the new French drill. After which each of them, having finished, gave the little cough of content and appreciation, which among the archers means manners.
But nevertheless the Prince's information with regard to the affair ofErdberg was not increased.
"Go on!" he cried, impatiently, looking at Jorian and Boris sternly.
They were still silent.
"This officer, Captain Hugo Gottfried," said the Prince, looking at me, "tells me that the credit of the preservation of the Princess among the cave folk is due to you two brave men."
"He lies!" said Wendish Jorian, with a face like a blank wall.
"Good!" muttered Boris, approvingly.
"He did it himself!" said Boris, adding, after a pause—"with an axe!"
"Good!" quoth Jorian.
"He cut a calf's head off!" said Jorian, as a complete explanation of how the preserving of the Princess was effected.
Whereat all laughed, and the Prince more than any. For ever since he drank his first draught of wine, he had begun to mellow.
"Well, hearty fellows, what reward would you have for your great bravery?"
They turned their heads simultaneously inward without moving any other part of their bodies. They nodded to one another.
"Well," cried the Prince, "what reward do you desire?"
"Now for the Field-Marshal's wand!" said the Councillor near to me, under his breath.
"Twelve dozen Rhenish!" said Jorian.
The Prince looked at Boris.
"And you?" he said.
"Twelve dozen Rhenish!" said Boris, without moving a muscle.
"God Bacchus!" cried the Prince, "you will empty my cellars between you, and I shall not have a sober archer for a month. But you shall have it. Go!"
Jorian and Boris saluted with a wink to each other as they wheeled, which said, as plain as monk's script or plainer, "Good!"
In spite of all drawbacks and difficulties (and I had my share of them) I loved Plassenburg. And especially I loved the Prince. The son, so they said, of a miller in the valley of the Almer, he had entered the guard of the last Prince of Plassenburg, much as I had now entered his own service. Prince Dietrich had taken a fancy to him, and advanced him so rapidly that, after the disastrous war with Duke Casimir of the Mark and the death of the last legitimate Prince, Karl, the miller's son, having set himself to reorganize the army, succeeded so well that it was not long before he found himself the source of all authority in Plassenburg.
Thereafter he gave to the decimated and heartless land adequate defences and complete safety against foreign foes, together with security for life and property, under equal laws, within its own borders. So, in time, no man saying him nay, Karl Miller's Son became the Prince of Plassenburg, and his seat was more secure upon his throne than that of any legitimate prince for a thousand miles all round about.
After the quarrel with Von Reuss, the Prince, for reasons of his own, favored me with a great deal of his society. He was often graciously pleased to talk concerning his early difficulties.
"When I was an understrapper," he was wont to say, "the land was overswarmed and eaten up by officialdom. I could not see the good meat wasted upon crawlers. 'Get to work,' said I, 'or ye shall neither eat nor crawl!'
"'We must eat—to beg we are not ashamed, to steal is the right of our noble Ritterdom,' the crawlers replied.
"'So,' said I, 'bitte—as to that we shall see!'
"Then I made me a fine gallows, builded like that outside Paris, which I had seen once when on an embassy for Prince Dietrich. It was like a castle, with walls twelve feet thick, and on the beams of it room for a hundred or more to swing, each with his six feet of clearance, all comfortable, and no complaints.
"Then came the crawlers and asked me what this fine thing was for.
"'For the sacred Ritterdom of Plassenburg!' answered I, 'if it will not cease to burn houses and to ravish and carry off honest men's wives and daughters.'
"'But you must catch us!' quoth Crawlerdom. 'Walls fourteen feet thick!' said they.
"'Content,' cried I; 'there is the more fun in catching you. Only the end is the same—that is to say, my new, well-ventilated castle out there on the heath, fine girdles and neck-pieces and anklets of iron, and six feet of clearance for each of you to swing in.'
"So they went back to their castles, and robbed and ravished and rieved, even as did their fathers for a thousand years, thinking no evil. But I took my soldiers, whom in seven years' service I had taught to obey orders-two foot of clearance did well enough for the disobedient among them, not being either ritters or men of mark. And I, Karl the Miller's brat, as at that time they called me in contempt, borrowed cannon— great lumbering things—from my friend the Margrave George, down there to the south. A great work we had dragging them up to Plassenburg by rope and chain and laboring plough oxen. We shot them off before the fourteen-feet walls. Then arose various clouds of dust, shriekings, surrenderings, crying of 'Forgive us, great Prince, we never meant to do it,' followed, as I had said, by the six-feet clearances. But these in time I had to reduce to four—so great became the competition for places in my new Schloss Müllerssohn.
"But 'Once done, well done—done forever!' is my motto. So since that time the winds have mostly blown through my Schloss untainted, and the sons of Ritterdom, magnanimous captains and honest bailies of quiet bailiwicks, are my very good friends and faithful officers."
Prince Karl the Miller's Son was silent a moment.
"But I am still looking out for another man with a head-piece to come after me. I have no son, and if I had, the chances are ten to one that he would be either a milksop or a flittermouse painted blue. Milksops I hate, and send to the monkeries. I can endure flittermice painted blue, but they must wear petticoats—and pretty petticoats too. Have you observed those of the Princess?" said he, abruptly changing the subject.
"The Princess's flittermice?" I faltered, not well knowing what I said, for he had turned roughly and suddenly upon me.
"Aye, marry, you may say it! But I meant the Princess's wilicoats!"
"No," said I, as curtly as I could, for the subject had its obvious limitations.
"Ah, they are pretty ones," said Karl, "I assure you. She has at least an undeniable taste in lace and cambric. They say in other lands—not in this—though I would not hinder them if they did—that she wears the under-garments of men and rules the state. But I think not so. The Princess is a better Queen than wife, a better woman than either."
On this subject also I had nothing to say which I dared venture to the husband of the Lady Ysolinde.
"She read my horoscope," said I, weakly, searching for something in the corners of my brain to change the subject.
"How so?" said the Prince, quickly.
"First in a crystal and then in a pool of ink," I replied.
"It was a good horoscope and of a fortunate ending?"
"On the whole—yes!" said I; "though there was much in it that I could not understand."
"Like enow!" laughed the Prince; "I warrant she could not understand it herself! It is ever the way of the ink-pool folk."
Then ensued a silence between us.
Prince Karl remained long with his head resting on his hand. He looked critically at the twisted stem of his wineglass, twirling it between his thick fingers.
"The Princess loves you!" he said, at last, looking shrewdly at me from beneath his gray brows.
It was spoken half as a question and half as information.
"Loves me?" stammered I, the blood sucking back to my heart and leaving my head light and tingling.
The Prince nodded calmly.
"So they say!" said he.
"My Lord, it is a thing impossible!" cried I, earnestly. "I am but a poor lad—and she has been kind to me. But of love no word has been spoken. Besides—"
And I stopped.
"Out with it, man!" said the Prince, more like, as it seemed to me, a comrade inviting a confidence than a great Prince speaking to a newly made officer.
"Well, I—I love the Little Playmate."
It came out with a rush at last.
"Oh!" said he; "that is bad. I hope that is not a matter arranged, a thing serious. For if the Princess knows as much, the young woman will not have her troubles to seek in the Palace of Plassenburg."
I hung my head and said naught, save that Helene declared she loved me not, but that I thought she was mistaken.
"Ah, then," cried the Prince, like one exceedingly relieved, "it is but some boy and girl affair. That is better. She may change her mind, as you will certainly change yours—and that several times—among the ladies of the court. I was in hopes—"
And the Prince stopped in his turn, not from bashfulness, but rather like a man who desires more carefully to choose his words.
"I was in hopes," he went on, speaking slowly, "that if the Princess loved your boy's face and liked my conversation (which I may say without pride that I think she does) you and I together might have kept her at home. So over-much wandering is not good for the state. Also it gets her a name beyond all manner of ill-doing within-doors."
Once more I knew not well what to answer to this speech of the Prince's, so I remained discreetly silent.
"I have seen the Princess's flittermice about her before, often enough (I thank thee for the word, Sir Captain.), but this is the first time she has performed the ink-pool and crystal foolery with any man. There is no great harm in the Princess. In the things of love she is as inflammable as the ink, and as soft as the crystal. Fear not, Joseph, Potiphera may be depended upon not to proceed to extremities. But I was in some hopes that you and I could have arranged matters between us, being both men—aye, and honorable men."
I saw that Karl Miller's Son looked sad and troubled.
"Prince, you love the Princess!" said I, thrusting out my hand to him before I thought. He did not take it, but instead he thrust a flagon of wine into it, as if I had asked for that—yet the thing was not done by way of a rebuff. I saw that plainly.
"Pshaw! What does a grizzle-pate with love?" said he, gruffly."Nevertheless, I was in hopes."
"Prince Karl," said I, "I give you word of honor, 'tis not as you say or they say. The Princess has indeed done me the honor to be friendly—"
"To hold your hand!" he murmured, softly, like a chorus.
"Well, to be friendly, and—"
"To caress your cheek?" put in the Prince, gently as before.
"Done me the honor to be friendly—"
"To play with your curls, lad?"
"The Princess—" I began, all in a tremor. For anything more awkward than this conversation I had never experienced. It bathed me in a drip of cold sweat.
"To kiss you, perhaps, at the waygoing?" he insinuated.
"No!" thundered I, at last. "Prince, you do your Princess great wrong."
He lifted his hand in a gentle, deprecating way, most unlike the rider who had ridden so fast and so hotly that night of our coming.
"You mistake me, sir," he said. "On the contrary, I have the greatest respect for the Princess Ysolinde. I would not wrong her for the world. But I know her track of old. You are a brave lad, and, after all, I fear there is something in that calf-love of yours—devil take it!"
I thought I could now dimly discern whither the Prince's plans were tending.
"Your Highness," said I, "I am a young man and of little experience. I cannot tell why you have chosen to speak so freely to me. But I am your servant, and, in all that hurts not the essence and matter of my love for the Little Playmate, I will do even as you say."
Prince Karl grasped my hand.
"Ah, well said!" he cried. "You are running your head into a peck of troubles, though. And you are likely to have some experience of womenkind shortly—a thing which does no brisk young fellow any harm, unless he lets them come between him and his career. Women are harmless enough, so that you keep them well down to leeward. I am Baltic-bred, and have ever held to this—that you may sail unscathed through fleets of farthingales, so being that you keep the wind well on your quarter, and see the fair-way clear before you."
I did not at the time understand half he said, but I knew we had made some sort of a bargain. And I thought, with an aching, unsatisfied heart, that though it might be well enough for an iron-gray and cynical old Prince, the thing would hardly commend itself to Helene, my Little Playmate, to whom I had so recently spoken loving words, sweeter than ever before.
"Devil take all Princes and Princesses!" I said, as I thought, to myself.But I must have spoken aloud, for the Prince laughed.
"Do not waste good prayers needlessly," he said; "he will!"
And so, with a careless and humorsome wave of his hand to one side, he went down the staircase, and so out into the quadrangle of the Palace.
Now how this plan of my Lord Prince's worked in the Palace of Plassenburg I find it difficult to tell without writing myself down a "painted flittermouse," as the Prince expressed it. I was in high favor with my master; well liked also by most of the hard-driving, rough-riding young soldiers whom the miller's son had made out of the sons of dead and damned Ritterdom. I got my share of honor and good service, too, in going to different courts and bringing back all that Prince Karl needed. To exercise myself in the art of war, I hunted the border thieves and gave them short enough shrift. In a year I had made such an assault as that of the inn at Erdberg an impossibility all along the marches of our provinces.
The crusty old councillor, Leopold Dessauer, who had held office under the last Prince of the legitimate line, was ever ready to assist me with the kindest of deeds and the bitterest and saltest of words.
"What did I tell you about being Field-Marshal?" said he one day—"in Karl's kingdom the shorter the service, the higher the distinction. If you and the Prince live long enough, I shall see you carry a musketoon yet, and not one of the latest pattern, either. You will be promoted down, like a booby who has been raised by chance to the top of the class!"
"Well," said I, humbly, for I always reverenced age, "then I hope, High-Chancellor Dessauer, that I shall carry my musketoon as becomes a brave man!"
"I do not doubt it!" said he. "And that is the most hopeful thing I have seen about you yet. It is just possible, on the other hand, that you may yet rule and the Prince carry the piece."
"God forbid!" said I, heartily. For next to my own father, of all men I loved the Prince.
"The Princess hath a pretty hand," remarked Dessauer casually, as if he had said, "It will rain to-morrow!"
"I' faith, yes!" said I; "what have you been at to find out that?"
"Weak—weak!" he said, shaking his head. "I fear you will wreck on that rock. It is your blind peril!"
"My blind peril!" cried I. "What may that be, High Councillor?"
"Ah, lad," he said, smiling with that wise, all-patient smile which the aged affect when they mean to be impressive, yet know how useless is their wisdom, "it was never intended by the Almighty that any man should have eyes all round his head. That is why He fixed two in front, and made them look straight forward. That is also why He made us a little lower (generally a good deal lower) than the angels!"
I heard him as if I heard him not.
"You do me the honor to follow me?" he said, looking at me. He was, I think, conscious that my eyes wandered to the door, for indeed I was expecting the Little Playmate to come down every minute.
"Ah! yes, you follow indeed," he said, bitterly, "but it is the trip of feet, the flirt of farthingales down the turret steps. No matter! As I was saying, every man has his blind peril. He can see the thousand. He provides laboriously against them. He blocks every avenue of risk, he locks every dangerous door, and lo! there is the thousand-and-first right before him, yawning wide open, which he does not see—his Blind Peril!"
"And what, High-Councillor Dessauer, is my blind peril?"
"I will tell you, Hugo," he said; "not that you will believe or alter a hair. A man may do many things in this world, but one thing he cannot do. He cannot kiss the fingers of a Princess—dainty fingers, too, separating finger from finger—and kiss also the Princess's maid of honor on the mouth. The combination is certainly entertaining, but like the Friar's powder it is somewhat explosive."
"And how," asked I, "may you know all that ?"
The old man nodded his head sagely.
"Neither by ink-pool nor yet by scrying! All the same, I know. Moreover, your peril is not a blind peril only, but a blind man's peril. Ye must choose, and that quickly, little son—fingers or lips."
I heard the rustle of a skirt down the stair. It was the light, springing tread of the one I loved first and best, last and only.
"By the twelve gods, lips!" cried I, and made for the door.
And I heard the chuckling laughter of High-Chancellor Dessauer behind me as I followed Helene down the stairs. It sounded like the decanting of mellow wine, long hidden in darksome cellars, and now, in the flower of its age, bringing to the light the smiling of ancient vineyards and the shining of forgotten suns.
I found Helene arrived before me in the rose-garden. She did not turn round as I came, though she heard me well enough. Instead she walked on, plucking at a marguerite.
"Loves me—loves menot!" she said, bearing upon the last word with triumphant accent, as she continued to dismantle the poor flower.
And flashing round upon me with the solitary petal in her hand, she presented it with a low bow, in elfish mockery of the manner of the court exquisite.
"Ah, true flower!" she said, apostrophizing the bare stalk, "a flower cannot lie. It has not a glozing tongue. It cannot change back and forth. The sun shines. It turns towards the sun. The sun leaves the skies. It shuts itself up and waits his return. Ah,-true flower, dear flower, how unlike a man you are!"
"Helene," said I, "you have learned conceits from the catch-books. You quarrel by rote. Were I as eager to answer me, I might say: 'Ah, false flower, you grow out of the foulness underneath. You give your fragrance to all without discretion—a common lover, prodigal of favors, fit only to be torn to shreds by pretty, spiteful fingers, and to die at last with a lie in your mouth. Again I say—false flower!'"
"You can turn the corners, Sir Juggler, with the cup and ball of words," answered Helene. "So much they have already taught you in a court. But there is one thing that your fine-feathered tutors have not taught you—to make love to two women in one house and hide it from both of them. Hot and cold may not come too near each other. They will mix and make lukewarm of both."
A wise observation, and one that I wished I had made myself.
"May the devil take all princes and princesses!" I began, as I had done to the Prince himself.
Helene shook her head.
"Hugo," she said, "I was but a simpleton when I came hither, and knew nothing. Now I am wise, and I know!"
She touched her forehead with her finger, just where the curls were softest and prettiest.
"Oh, you have learned to be thrice more beautiful than ever you were!" I said, impetuously.
"So I am often told," answered she, calmly.
"Who dared tell you ?" cried I, quick as fire, laying my hand on my sword.
"The false common flowers by the wayside tell me!" said Helene, pertly.
"Let them beware, or I will take their heads off for rank weeds!"I answered.
For at that time, in the Court of Plassenburg, we talked in figures and romance words. We had indeed become so familiar with the mode that we could use no other, even in times of earnestness. So that a man would go to be hanged or married with a quipsome conceit on his lips.
"I think, Sir Janus Double-tongue," she said, "that you would not be the worse of a little medicine of your own concocting."
And with that she swept her skirts daintily about and tripped down in to the pleasaunce of flowers, to make which the Prince Karl had brought a skilled gardener all the way from France.
I prowled about the higher terrace, moodily watching the sky and thinking on the morrow's weather. And by-and-by I saw one come forth from among the cropped Dutch hedges, and stride across to where Helene walked with something white in her hand. I could see her again picking a flower to pieces, and methought I could hear the words. My jealous fancy conjured up the ending, "Loves me not—loves me! Loves me not!"
She turned even as she had done to me. The newcomer was that sneering Court fop, the Count von Reuss, Duke Casimir's nephew—still in hiding from the wrath of his uncle. For at that time hardly any court in Germany was without one or two of these hangers-on, and a bad, reckless, ill-contriving breed they were at Plassenburg, as doubtless elsewhere.
Then grew my heart hard and bitter, and yet, in a moment afterwards, was again only wistful and sad.
"She had been safer," thought I, "in the old Red Tower than playing flower fancies with such a man!"
For I had seen the very devil look out of his eye—which indeed it did as often as he cast it on a fair woman. In especial, I longed to throttle him each time he turned to watch Helene as she went by. And here she was walking with him, and talking pleasantly too, in the rose garden of the palace.
"Ah, devil take all princes and princesses!" said I. This one, it is true, was only a count, and disinherited. But I felt that the thing was the Prince's doing, and that it was for the sake of the covenant he had made with me that I was compelled to put up with such a toad as Von Reuss crawling and besliming the fair garden of my love.
It was an evening without clouds—everything shining clear after rain, the scent of the flowers rising like incense so full and sweet that you could almost see it. The unnumbered birds were every one awake, responsive and emulous. The deep silence of midsummer was broken up. It was like another spring.
The Princess Ysolinde came out to take the air. She was wrapped in her gown of sea-green silk, with sparkles of dull copper upon it. The dress fitted her like a snake's skin, and glittered like it too as she swayed her lithe body in walking.
"Ha, Hugo," she said, "I thought I should find you here!"
I did not say that if another had been kinder she might have found me elsewhere and otherwise employed. I had at least the discretion to leave things as they were. For the time to speak plainly was not yet.
She took my arm, and we paced up and down.
"Princess—" I began.
"Ysolinde!" corrected she, softly.
It was an old and unsettled contention between us.
"Well then, Ysolinde, to-morrow must I ride to fight the men of mine own country of the Wolfmark. I like not the duty. But since it must be, for the sake of the brave Prince, it shall be well done."
"You do not say 'For your sake, Ysolinde'?" she answered, pensively.
"No," I said, bluntly, "'for the Prince's sake.'"
"You would do all things for the Prince's sake—nothing for mine!" said the Princess, withdrawing her hand.
"On the contrary, Lady Ysolinde," I made answer, "I do all things for your sake. Save for the sake of your good-will, I should now be elsewhere."
Which was true enough. I should have been in the garden pleasaunce beneath, and probably with my sword out, arguing the case with Von Reuss.
But she pressed my arm, for she understood that I had delayed a day from my duty for her sake. So touched at heart was Ysolinde that she slipped her hand down from my arm and took my hand instead, flirting a corner of her shawl cleverly over both, to hide the fact from the men-at-arms—as Helene could not have done to save her life. But every maid of honor who passed noted and knew, lifting eyebrows at one another, I doubt not, as soon as we passed, which thing made me feel like a fool and blush hotly. For I knew that ere they were couched that night every maid of them would tell Helene, and with pleasure in the telling too.
"Devil take—" I began and stopped.
"What did you say?" asked Ysolinde, almost tenderly.
"That if I come not back again from the Wolfmark it will be the better for all of us!" I made answer, which was indeed the sense if not the exact text of my remark.
"Nay," she said, shuddering, "not better for me that am companionless!"
"Why so?" said I, boldly. "You do not love me. Deep at the bottom of your heart you love your husband, Karl the Prince. You know there is no man like him. Me you do not love at all."
"You will not let me," she said, softly, almost like a shy country maiden.
"Ah, if I had, you would have slain me long ere this," said I, "for I read you like a child's horn-book that he plays battledore with. 'Have not—love! Have—hate.' There you are, all in brief, my Lady Ysolinde."
"It is false," laughed she; "but nevertheless I love greatly to hear you call me Ysolinde."
She netted her fingers in mine beneath the shawl. Well might the High Councillor say that she had a beautiful hand. Though, God wot, much he knew about it. For Ysolinde of Plassenburg could speak with her hand, love with it, be angry with it, hate with it—and kill with it.
"I am an experiment," said I; "one indeed that has lasted you a little longer than the others, my Lady Ysolinde, only because you have not come to the end of me so soon."
"Pshaw!" she said, pushing me from her, for we were at the turning of a path, "you love another. That is the amulet against infection that you carry. Yet sometimes I think that that other is only your hateful, plain-favored, vainly conceited self!"
I saw the Prince sit alone, according to his custom, in an arbor behind us at that very moment—and judge if I blushed or no. But the Princess saw him not, being eager upon her flouting of me.
"I tell you," she cried, scornfully and disdainfully, "there is nothing interesting about you but the blueness of your eyes, and that any monk can make upon parchment, aye, and deeper and bluer, with his lapis-lazuli. An experiment!—Why should I, Ysolinde of Plassenburg, experiment with you, the son of the Red Axe of the Wolfsberg ?"
"Nay, that I know not," I answered; "but yet I am indeed no more than your arrow-butts, your target of practice, your whipping-boy, to be slung at and arrow-drilled and bullet-pitted at your pleasure!"
"I dare say," she said, bitterly; "and all the time you go scathless—no more heart-stricken than if summer flies lighted on thee. Away with such a man; he is the ghost of a man—a simulacrum—no true lover!"
"At your will, Princess. I shall indeed go away. I will to-morrow seek the spears. But, after all, you will not send me forth in anger?" I said, with a strong conviction that I knew the answer.
"And why not?" said she.
"Because," I replied, looking at her, "I am, after all, the one man who believes thoroughly in your heart's deep inward goodness. I believe in you even when you do not believe in yourself. I can affirm, for I know better than you know yourself. You cover the beauty of your heart from others. You flout and jeer. Above all, you experiment dangerously with words and actions. But, after all, I am necessary to you. You will not send me away in anger. For you need some one to believe in the soundness of your heart. And I, Hugo Gottfried, am that man!"
"Hence, flatterer!" cried the lady, smiling, but well pleased. "It is known to all that I am the Old Serpent—the deceiver—the ill fruit of the Knowledge of Evil. And now you say of Good also! And what is more and worse, you expect me to believe you. Wherein you also experiment! I pray you, do not so. That is to you the forbidden fruit. Good-night. Go, now, and pray for a more truthful tongue!"
And with that she went in, the copper spangles glancing at her waist red as the light on ripe wheat, and all her tall figure lissome as the bending corn.