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

of the Wolfmark are out again, and have left their ancient trail behind them in slain men and frantic women--and on our borders, too, among our kindly husbandmen, our honest, sunburnt peasants. Bitterly shall Casimir Ironteeth rue the day that he meddled with Karl Miller's Son."
"Your Highness," I said, "this is indeed madness. We have but to collect our forces, choose a time, and, lo! we are within the town of Thorn! Once there, we would be welcomed by man, woman, and child. We could then besiege the Wolfsberg, and in three days make an end."
"Aye, that is it," said the Prince, grimly; "you have hit it, Hugo. We _will_ make an end."
"Also, my Prince," I went on, boldly, "so ye give me leave and approve of my design, I will go alone to the town of Thorn, and bring you back word of their power and dispositions. Save the Count von Reuss, there is none who could now recognize me within the city walls."
"What think ye, Dessauer?" said the Prince, looking over at the High Chancellor.
"I think well," said he, a little doubtfully; "but would it not be better that two should go than that one should adventure alone into the wolf's den ?"
"Surely it were better to keep the matter between our three selves," the Prince made answer; "not even the Princess must know of our attempt. Keep a candle flame within the hollow of your palm, and though the wind blow the sparks will not fly far."
"I will go with the lad, Prince Karl," said the Chancellor, firmly. "In my youth I had some practice as a leech. I am acquainted with the art of healing. I could travel either as a doctor of healing, as a travelling philosopher seeking disputation with the scholars of each country, or, perhaps best of all, in mine own quality of a doctor of law. And in any case this young man might with all safety be my pupil or servant, whichever best liketh him."
"Servant, then," said I, "for the art of disputation I have hitherto chiefly undertaken with my fists and side-irons. And as to surgery, I am more practised in the giving of wounds than in the healing of them."
The Prince leaned his head upon his hand. He thought carefully over our proposal, taking up point after point, resolving difficulty after difficulty in his mind, as was his wont.
"How long would you be away?" he asked, looking up at us.
"Ten days, Prince," said I. "Give us but ten days and we will return."
"I will give you eight, and if ye are not home again on the eve of the last, as sure as I am Karl Miller's Son, the army of Plassenburg will be thundering on the walls of Thorn seeking for a wandering Chancellor and a lost Hugo Gottfried!"
And so it was arranged. We of the Prince's staff were indeed in great need of such a mission, for we had heard nothing from Thorn or the Wolfmark during many months; no tidings, at all events, that could be relied upon. For the cutting up of our frontiers by new raids, and the severance of all relations between us and the dwellers in the Wolfmark, through fear of reprisals, caused us to hear little news but such as was manifest lies.
As thus: Duke Casimir was collecting a great army, magnificent with cannon and munitions of war. He was shut up tight in the Wolfsberg, not daring to show his face to his own citizens. He would appear some fine day before the Palace of Plassenburg and slay every man of us. He was in a madman's cell, and Otho von Reuss was Duke of the Mark in his place.
These were only a few of the stories which were brought to regale us daily. And since there was no certainty anywhere, we were all in the dark concerning the military matters which it behooved us greatly to be acquainted with. Therefore I was honestly eager for my master's sake to undertake the perilous journey. But to tell the whole truth, the fact that I had not had a word from the Little Playmate, not so much as a line of script nor a verbal message since her disappearance, made me more eager to go than the high politics of a dozen provinces.
Since the duel, and the final declaring of my love for Helene, I had seen but little of the Princess. Indeed, I kept out of her way, so far at least as I could. And the Lady Ysolinde remained mostly in her own domains--to which, of late, I had been less and less invited. Nevertheless, when we met, she was more than kind to me--gentle, forbearing, pathetic almost in bearing and demeanor, like as a woman wronged, slighted, misconstrued.
Also there was sent to my quarters a new banner for my following, broidered and blazoned in yellow and blue, a saddle-cloth of silk for my horse, fine as a woman's robe, with a crowned Y faint and small in the corner, lettered in straw-colored gold. No man could help being touched by such kindly thought, which, after all, is more than mere liberality.
Yet I saw a sight upon her stairs one night which awoke me with a sudden start to the fact that we had one to reckon with in our journeying to the city of Thorn whom we had not as yet taken into consideration.
For it chanced that I was passing up to the Prince's apartments by the quicker way, through corridors and by stairs to which he had given me private access. And there, upon the steps leading to the Lady Ysolinde's rooms, I saw the decent servitor of Master Gerard stand waiting. He stared as hard at me as I did at him. But whereas his smooth, silent, secret face remained with me, and I knew him at a glance, it was, I judged, clean impossible that he could know the beardless stripling in the mustached leader of soldiers, walking well-accustomed and unafraid through palaces.
The man had a letter in his hand, and I saw him deliver it to a maid who came to the dividing curtain to take it.
So there was later news from the city of Thorn within the Palace of Plassenburg than we of the Prince's council of three possessed. Should I tell our Karl of this encounter? I thought it might be safer not. Because the Prince was the last man to attempt to obtain aught from his wife by compulsion, and any question, direct or indirect, might only put her upon her guard.
If I let him into the secret, the Prince would be most likely to stride straight into the Princess's rooms with the brusque words: "Gottfried has seen a letter come to you from your father--what were its contents?"
And that would not suit us at all.
So, rightly or wrongly, I kept the matter from my master, speaking of it only to Dessauer. And if aught befel from my reticence, it was at least I myself who bore the burden, and, in the final event, paid the penalty.


CHAPTER XXXVI
YSOLINDE'S FAREWELL
The next morning early, as I went about making my dispositions, and putting men of trust in positions fit for them--for the Prince has given me the command of all the soldiers within the city--the Lady Ysolinde came to me upon the terrace.
"Walk with me a while," she said, "in the lower garden. It is a quiet place, and I would speak with you."
It was a command that I dared not refuse to obey, yet my greatest enemy would not accuse me that I went lightly or willingly to such a tryst.
The Lady Ysolinde passed on daintily and proudly before me, and I followed, more like a condemned criminal lamping heavily to the scaffold than a lad of mettle accompanying a fair lady to a rendezvous of her own asking under the greenwood-tree.
But I need not have feared. The Princess's mood was mild, and I saw her in a humor in which I had never seen her before.
She moved before me over the grass, with her head a little turned up to the skies, as though appealing out of her innocence to the Beings who sat behind and sorted out the hearts of men and women.
At a great weeping-elm, under which was a seat, she turned. It formed a wide canopy of shade, grateful and cool. For the breezes stirred under the leaves, and the river moved beneath with a pleasant, meditative hush of sound.
"Hugo Gottfried, once you were my friend," she began; "what have I done that you should be my friend no more? Tell me plainly. I liked you when as a lad, the son of the Red Axe, you had come to my father's house about some boyish freak. I have not done ill by you since that day. And now that you are a leader of men and of rank and honor here in my husband's country of Plassenburg, I would be your well-wisher still. I am conscious of no reason for my having forfeited your liking. But that I would know for certain--and now."
As she threw back her head and let her clear emerald eyes rest upon me, I never saw woman born of woman look more innocent. Indeed, in these days of mistrust, it is innocence under suspicion which usually looks most guilty, knowing what is expected of it.
"Lady Ysolinde," I made answer, "you try me hard and sore. You put me by force in the wrong. You do me indeed great honor, as you have ever done all these years. In reverence and high respect I shall ever hold you for all that you have done--for your kindness to me and to Helene, the orphan girl who came from our father's roof with me. I know no reason why there should be any break in our friendship--nor shall there be, if you will pardon my folly and--"
"Tush!" she said, impetuously; "you speak things empty, vain, the rattling of knuckle-bones in a bladder--not live words at all. Think you I have never listened to true men? Do not I, Ysolinde of Plassenburg, know the sound of words that have the heart behind them? I have heard you speak such yourself. Do not insult me then with platitudes, nor try to divert me with the piping of children in the market-place. I will not dance to them, nor yet, like a foolish kitchen-wench, smile at the jingling of your trinketry."
"Your Highness--" I began again.
She waved her hand as if putting a light thing away.
"I was a woman to you before you knew that I was a Princess," she said; "you need not forget that I am a woman still, cursed with the plate-mail of rank added to the weariness and inaction of a woman's breaking heart."
I grew acutely conscious that I was not distinguishing myself in this interview. So I dashed again at the wall, and this time, for a moment at least, overbore interruption.
"Ysolinde, my dear lady," I said to her, "you are the Prince's and my good master's wife. And if I have stood aloof, it is that I wished that he should have the companionship which one day I desire to find for myself--and also that I might always have the right to look straight into my master's eyes."
"Now you talk like a silly prating priestling," she said. "You are both mighty careful of your honesty, your virtue, your companionship--your precious master and you. But you do not think what it is to starve a woman's heart, to bid her find her level among broiderers of bannerets and stitchers in tapestry. Ah! if the particular God who happened to be