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

smiled.
"Ye will live but sparely there!" said he, with a flicker of his ancient smile.
"Tell us how you came to this," said I, "and, if you can, why Helene, our little Helene, stands so terribly accused."
My father paused a long time before he began to answer.
"It is not easy for me to tell you all," he said. "I know and I have the words, but, somehow, when I try to fit the words to the thing, they run asunder and will not mix, like water and oil. But see, Hugo, here is an elixir of rare value. Drop a drop or two on my tongue if ye see me wander. It will bring me back for a time."


CHAPTER XLII
PRINCESS PLAYMATE
Then began my father to tell the story slowly, with many a pause and interruption, now searching for words, now racked with pain, all of which I need not imitate, and shall leave out. But the substance of his tale was to this effect:
"After you had left us, the Dukedom went from bad to worse--no peace, no rest, no money. Duke Casimir took less and less of my advice, but, on the contrary, began again his old horrors--plundering, killing, living by terror and in terror. He threatened Torgau. He attacked Plassenburg. He stirred up hornets' nests everywhere. At home he made himself the common mark for every assassin.
"Then suddenly came his nephew back, and almost immediately he grew great in favor with him. Uncle and nephew drank together. They paraded the terraces arm in arm. I was never more sent for save to do my duty. Otho von Reuss rode abroad at the head of the Black Horsemen.
"But, at the same time, to my great joy, arrived the Little Playmate back to me. She was safer with me, she said. So that, having her, I needed naught else. She came with good news of you, making the journey not alone, for two men of the Princess's retinue brought her to the city gates."
"The Princess!" I cried; "aye, I thought so. I judged that it was the Princess who sent her back."
Dessauer motioned with his hand. He saw that it was dangerous to throw my father off the track. And, indeed, this was proven at once, for my unfortunate interruption set my father's mind to wandering, till finally I had to drop certain drops of the red liquid on his tongue. These, indeed, had a marvellous effect upon him. He sat up instantly, his eyes flashing the old light, and began to speak rapidly and to clear purport, even as he used to do in the old days when Duke Casimir would come striding across the yard at all hours of the night and day to consult his Justicer.
"What was I telling?" he went on. "Yes, I remember, of the home-coming of Helene under honorable escort. And she was beautiful--but all her race were beautiful, all the women of them, at any rate. But that is another matter.
"So things went well enough with us till, as she went across the yard one day to meet me at the door of the hall as I came out, who should see her but the Count Otho von Reuss. And she turned from him like a queen and took hold of my arm, clasping it strongly. Then he gazed fixedly at us both, and his look was the evil-doer's look. Oh, I know it. Who knows that look, if not I? And so we passed within. But my Helene was quivering and much afraid, nestling to me--aye, to me, old Gottfried Gottfried, like a frightened dove.
"After this she went not out into the court-yard or city any more, save with me by her side, and Otho von Reuss lingered about, watching like a wolf about the sheepfold. For, as I say, he was in high favor with Duke Casimir, and had already equal place with him on the bed of justice.
"Then there came a night, lightning peeping and blazing, alternate blue and ghastly white--God's face and the devil's time about staring in at the lattice. I lay alone in my chamber. But I was not asleep. As you know, I do not often sleep. But I lay awake and thought and thought. The lightning showed me faces I had not seen for thirty years, and forms I remembered, black against eternity. But all at once, in a certain after-clap of silence that followed the roaring thunder, I heard a voice call to me.
"'My father--my father" it cried.
"It was like a soul in danger calling on God.
"I rose and went, clad as I was in the red of mine office (for that day I had done the final grace more than once); even so, I ran down the stairs to the room of my little Helene.
"The lightning showed me my lamb crouched in the corner, her lips open, white, squared with horror, her arms extended, as though to push some monstrous thing away. A black shape, whose, I could not tell, I saw bending over her. Then came blackness of darkness again. And again my Helene's voice. Ah, God, I can hear it now, calling pitifully, like a woman hanging over hell and losing hold: 'Father--my father!'
"'I am here!' I cried, loudly, even as on the scaffold I cry the doom for which the malefactors die.
"And the room lit up with a flame, white as the face of God as He passed by on Mount Sinai, flash on continuous flash. And there before me, with a countenance like a demon's, stood Otho von Reuss."
I uttered a hoarse cry, but Dessauer again checked me. My father went on:
"Otho von Reuss it was--he saw me in my red apparel, and cried aloud with mighty fear. If God had given me mine axe in my hand--well, Duke or no Duke, he had cried no more. But even as he turned and fled from the room I seized him about the waist, and, opening the window with my other hand, I cast him forth. And as he went down backward, clutching at nothing, God looked again out of the skylights of heaven, and showed me the face of the devil, even as Michael saw it when he hurled him shrieking into the nether pit.
"Then I went back and took in my arms my one ewe lamb.
"Many days (so they brought me word) Otho lay at the point of death, and Duke Casimir came not near me nor yet sent for me. But by that very circumstance I knew Otho had not revealed how his accident had befallen. Yet he but bided his time. And as he grew well, Duke Casimir grew ill. He waxed more and more like an armored ghost, and one day he came here and sat on the bed as in old times.
"'I know my friends now,' he said, 'good Red Axe of mine, friend of many years. I have had mine eyes blinded, but this morning there has come a mighty clearness, and from this day forth you and I shall stand face to face and see eye to eye again, as in the days of old!'
"Then being athirst, he asked for something to drink. Which, when our sweet Helene had brought, he patted her cheek. 'A maid too good for a court--one among a thousand, a fair one !' he said; and passed away down the stairs, walking with his old steady tread.
"But even at the steps of the Hall of Justice he stumbled and fell. They carried him in, and there in the robing chamber he lay unconscious for a week, and then died without speech.
"When he was dead, and ere he had been embalmed, there arose a clamor, first among the followers of Otho von Reuss, and after that among those of the Wolfsberg who expected that they would be favored by the new Duke. It was first whispered, and then cried aloud, that the death of Duke Casimir had been compassed by witchcraft and potions.
"Cunningly and with subtlety was spread the report how my daughter and I had worked upon Duke Casimir. How he had gone to our house, drunken a draught, and then died ere he could come to his own chamber. But as for me, I went on my way and heeded them not. For just then the plague, which had stricken the Duke first, stalked athwart the city unchecked, and all through it this Helene of ours was as the angel of God, coming and going by night and day among the streets and lanes of the town. And the common folk almost worshipped her. And so do unto this day.
"Now perhaps I did not heed this babble as I ought to have done. But there came one night--how long ago I have forgotten--and with it a clamor in the court-yard. The Black Riders, the worst of them, fiends incarnate that Otho had of late gathered about him, thundered upon us without, and presently burst in the door.
"I met them with mine axe at the stair-head, and for the better part of an hour I kept them at a distance. And some died and some were dismembered. For at that business I am not a man to make mistakes. Then came Otho limping from his fall and shot me with a bolt from behind his men. And so over my body as I lay at the stair-head they took my love and left me here to die. And the new Duke will not kill me, for he desires that I shall see her agony ere my own life is taken. For that alone the fiend keeps me in life!
"And that," said my father, feebly, "is all."
But just as he seemed to ebb away a wild fear startled him.
"No," he cried, "there is yet something more. Hugo, Hugo, keep me here a little! Hold me that my mind may not wander away among the racking-wheels and the faces mopping and mowing. I have something yet to tell."
I held him up while Dessauer poured a drop or two of the potent liquid into his mouth. As before, it instantly revived him. The color came back to his cheeks.
"Quick, Hugo, lad!" he cried; "give me that black box which sits behind the block." I brought it, and from this he extracted a small key, which he gave me.
"Unlock the panel you see there in the wall," he said.
I looked, but could find none.
"The oaken knob!" he cried, sharply, as to a clumsy servitor.
I could only see a rough knob in the wood-work, a little worm-eaten, and in the centre one hole a little larger than the rest.
"Put in the key!" commanded my father, making as if he would come out of bed and hasten me himself.
I thrust in the key, indeed, but with no more faith than if I had been bidden to put it into a mouse-hole.
Nevertheless, it turned easy as thinking, and a little door swung open, cunningly fitted. Here were dresses, books, parchments huddled together.
"Bring all these to me," he said.
And I brought them carefully in my arms and laid them on the bed.
The eye of old Dessauer fell on something among them and was instantly fascinated. It was a woman's waist-belt of thick bars of gold laid three and three, with crests and letters all over it.
The Chancellor put his hand forward for it, and my father allowed him to take it, following him, however, with a questioning eye.
Then Dessauer put his hand into his bosom and drew out a chain of gold--the necklace of the woodman, in-deed--and laid the two side by side. He uttered a shrill cry as he did so.
"The belt of