Red Axe - Samuel Rutherford Crockett (books to read fiction .TXT) 📗

of me that which might condemn one who has trusted me, what am I to say?"
"Tut, boy," said my father, impatiently, "you mean young Michael Texel. Fear not for him. He was the first to inform. He was at Master von Sturm's by eight this morning, elbowing half a dozen others, all burning and shining lights of the famous Society of the White Wolf. You are the hero of the day down there, it seems."
"And lo! here I am flouted by a stripling girl, and set to carry water by the hour in the broiling sun!" I said within myself. I possessed, however, though without doubt a manifest hero, far too much of the unheroic quality of discretion to say this aloud to my father.
"I thank you, sir," I said, respectfully. "I will go at once and put on my finest coat and my shoes of silk."
My father smiled.
"You need not be particular as to the silk shoes. 'Tis to see Master von Sturm, not to court pretty Mistress Ysolinde, that I asked you to visit the lawyer's house by the Weiss Thor."
But I was not sorry to be able to proclaim my destination as loud as I dared without causing suspicion.
"Hanne," I cried down the turret stairs, "I pray you bring me the silken shoes with the ribbon bows of silk. I am going down to Master von Sturm's house; also my gold chain and bonnet of blue velvet with the golden feather in it which I won at the last arrow-shooting."
I saw the fluttering of the fan falter and stop. A light foot went pattering up the stairway and a door slammed in the tower.
Then I laughed, like the vain, silly boy I was.
"Mistress Helene," I said to myself, "you will find that poor Hugo, whom you flouted and despised, can yet pay his debts!"
So I put on the fine clothes which I wore on festal days and sallied forth. Now, though the lower orders still hated my father and all that came out of the Red Tower, or indeed, for the matter of that, out of the Wolfsberg, with hardly concealed malice--yet there were many in the city, specially among those of the upper classes, who began to think well of my determination to try another way of life than that to which I had been born. For I made no secret of the matter to Michael Texel and such of his comrades as joined us in our gatherings.
Indeed, now, when I come to think of it, it seems to me that my father was the only person of my acquaintance who did not suspect that I was resolved never to wear either the black robe of Inquisition or the crimson of Final Judgment.
Yet it wore round to within two years, and indeed rather less, of the time for my initiation into the mysteries of the Red Axe, and still I remained at home, an idle boy, playing at single-stick and fence with the men-at-arms, drinking beer in the evening with my bosom cronies, and in the well-grounded opinion of all honest people, likely enough to come to no good.
But I, Hugo Gottfried, had my eyes and my books open, and knew that I was but biding my time.
So it came about that I carried no taint of the dread associations of the Wolfsberg about me as I went down the bustling street to the Weiss Thor to call on that learned and well-reputed lawyer, Master Gerard von Sturm. So great was the fame of Master Gerard that he was often called in to settle the mercantile quarrels of the burghers among themselves, and was even chosen as arbiter between those of other towns. For, though accounted severe, he had universally the name of a just and wise man, who would not rob the litigants of all their valuables and then decide in favor of neither, as was too often the way with the "justice" of the great nobles.
As for Duke Casimir of the Wolfmark, no man or woman went near him on any plea whatsoever, save that of asking mercy or favor. And unless my father chanced to be at hand, mostly they asked in vain. For, as I now knew, he had to keep up the common bruit of himself throughout the country as a cruel, fearless, and implacable tyrant. Besides, his fears were so constant and so great, perhaps also so well-founded, that often he dared not be merciful.


CHAPTER X
THE LUBBER FIEND
At five of the clock I lifted the great wolf's-head knocker of shining brass which frowned above the door of Master Gerard von Sturm in the port of the Weiss Thor. Hardly had I let it fall again when a small wicket, apparently about two feet above my head, opened, and a huge round head with enormous ears at either side peeped out. So vast was the head and so small the aperture that one of the lateral wings of the chubby face caught on the sill, and the owner brought it away successfully with a jerk and a perfectly good-humored and audible "flip."
"Who are you, and what do you want?" said a wide-gashed mouth, which, with a squat, flattened-out nose and two merry little twinkling eyes, completed this wonderful apparition.
The words were in themselves somewhat rude. On paper I observe that they have an appearance almost truculent. But spoken as the thing framed in the window-sill said them, they were equal to a song of Brudershaft and an episcopal benediction rolled in one.
"I am Hugo Gottfried of the Red Tower, come to see Master Gerard," I replied. "Who may you be that asks so boldly?"
"I'll give you a stalk of rhubarb to suck if you can guess," was the unexpected answer.
As I had never in my life seen anything in the least like the prodigy, it was clearly impossible for me to earn the tart succulence of the summer vegetable on such easy terms.
"I should say," I replied, "if the guess savor not of insolence, that one might be forgiven for mistaking you for the Fool of the Family!"
The grin expanded till it wellnigh circumnavigated the vast head. It seemed first of all to make straight for the ears on either side. Then, quite suddenly, finding these obstacles insurmountable, it dodged underneath them, and the scared observer could almost imagine its two ends meeting with a click somewhere in the wilderness at the back of that unseen hemisphere of hairy thatch.
"Pinked in the white, first time--no trial shot!" cried the object in the doorway, cheerily. "I am the Fool of the Family. But not the only one!"
At this moment something happened behind--what, I could not make out for some time. The head abruptly disappeared. There was a noise as of floor-rugs being vigorously beaten, the door opened, and the most extraordinary figure was shot out into the street. The head which I had seen certainly came first, but so lengthy a body followed that it seemed a vain thing to expect legs in addition. Yet, finally, two appeared, each of which would have made a decent body of itself, and went whirling across the street till the whole monstrosity came violently into collision with the walls of the house opposite, which seemed to rock to its very foundations under the assault.
A decent serving-man, in a semi-doctorial livery of black cloth, with a large white collar laid far over his shoulders, and cuffs of the same upon his wrists, stood in the open doorway and smiled apologetically at the visitor. He was rather red in the face and panted with his exertions.
"I ask your pardon, young sir," he said. "That fool, Jan Lubber Fiend, will ever be at his tricks. 'Tis my young mistress that encourages him, more is the pity! For poor serving-men are held responsible for his knavish on-goings. Why, I had just set him cross-legged in the yard with a basket of pease to shell, seeing how he grows as much as a foot in the night--or near by. But so soon as my back is turned he will be forever answering the door and peeping out into the street to gather the mongrel boys about him. 'Tis a most foul Lubber Fiend to keep about an honest house, plaguing decent folks withal!"
By this time the great oaf had come back to the door of the house, and now stood alternately rubbing his elbow and rear, with an expression ludicrously penitent, at once puzzled and kindly.
"Ah, come in with you, will you?" said the man. "Certes, were it not for Mistress Ysolinde, I would set on the little imps of the street to nip you to pieces and eat you raw."
The angry serving-man held the door as wide as possible and stood aside, whereat the Lubber Fiend tucked his head so far down that it seemed to disappear into the cavity of his chest, and scurried along the passage bent almost double. As he passed the door he drew all the latter part of his body together, exactly like a dog that fears a kick in the by-going. The respectable man-servant stirred not a muscle, but the gesture told a tale of the discipline of the house by the White Gate at times when visitors were not being admitted by the main door, and when Mistress Ysolinde, favorer of the Fool Lubber Fiend, was not so closely at hand.
It was a grand house, too, the finest I had ever seen, with hangings of arras everywhere, many and parti-colored--red hunters who hunted, green foresters who shot, puff-cheeked boys blowing on hunting-horns; a house with mysterious vistas, glimpses into dim-lit rooms, wafts of perfume, lamps that were not extinguished even in the daytime, burning far within. All in mighty striking contrast to the bare stark strength of our Red Tower on the Wolfsberg with its walls fourteen feet thick.
As I followed the serving-man through the halls and stairways my feet fell without noise on carpets never woven in our bare-floored Germany, nor yet in England, where they still strew rushes, even (so they say) in the very dining-rooms of the great--surely a most barbarous and unwholesome country. Nevertheless, carpets of wondrous hue were here in the house of Master Gerard, scarlet and blue, and so thick of ply that the foot sank into them as if reluctant ever to rise again.
As I came to the landing place at the head of the stairway, one passed hastily before me and above me, with a sough and a rustle like the wind among tall poplar trees on the canal edges.
I looked up, and lo! a girl, not beautiful, but, as it were, rather strange and fascinating. She was lithe like a serpent and undulated in her walk. Her dress was sea-green silk of a rare loom, and clung closely about her. It had scales upon it of dull gold, which gave back a lustrous under-gleam of coppery red as she moved. She had a pale, eager face, lined with precision enough, but filled more with passion than womanly charm. Her eyes were emerald and beautiful, as the sea is when you look down upon it from a height and the white sand shines up through the clear depths.
Such was Ysolinde, daughter of Gerard von Sturm, favorer of Lubber Fiends and creator of this strange paradise through which she glided like a spangled Orient serpent.
As I made my way humbly enough across to Master Gerard's room his daughter did not speak to me, only followed me boldly, and yet, as it seemed to me, somewhat wistfully too, with her sea-green eyes. And as the door was closing upon me I saw her beckon the serving-man.
But I, on the inner side of the door,