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

the lost Princess!" he cried; "the little Princess of Plassenburg!"
And, laying them one above the other, each group of six bars read thus:
With delight on his face, like that of a mathematician when his calculations work out truly, Dessauer reached over his hand for the papers also, but my father stayed him.
"Who may you be that has a chain to match mine?" he asked, with his mighty hand on Dessauer's wrist.
"I am the State's Chancellor of Plassenburg, and it needed but this to show me our true Princess."
"Here, then," said my father, "is more and better."
And he handed him the papers.
"It meets! It meets!" cried Dessauer, enthusiastically, as he glanced them over. "It is complete. It would stand probation in the Dict of the Emperor."
"But yet all that will not prevent Helene Gottfried dying at the stake!" cried my father, sadly, and fell back unconscious on his bed.
* * * * *
We spent this heaviest of nights at the palace of Bishop Peter--Dessauer with the prelate--I, praise to the holy pyx, in the kitchen with the serving men and maids. Peter of the Pigs was there, but no more eager to fight. The lay brother who had gone with the letter, and the conductor who had run away from the dread door of the Hall of Justice, had returned, and had spread a favorable report of our courage.
Certainly the house of Peter the Bishop might be a poor one and scantily provendered, but there was little sign of it that night. For if the master went fasting and his guests lived on pulse (as they said in Thorn), certainly not so Bishop Peter's servants.
For there were pasties of larks, with sauce of butter and herbs, most excellent and toothsome. There were rabbits from the sand-hills, and pigeons from the towers of the minster. The clear chill Rhenish vied with the more generous wine of Burgundy and the red juice of Assmanhauser. For me, as was natural, I ate little. I spoke not at all. But I looked so dangerous with my swarthy face and desperate eye, I dare say, also I was so well armed, that the roysterers left me severely alone.
But I drank--Lord, what did I not drink that night! I poured down my gullet all and sundry that was given me. And to render these Bishop's thralls their dues, there was no lack and no inhospitality. But the strange thing of it was that, though I am a man more than ordinarily temperate, that night I poured the Rhenish into me like water down a cistern-pipe and felt it not. God forgive me, I wanted to make me drunken and forgetful, and lo! the dog's swill would not bite.
So I cursed their drink, and asked if they had no Lyons Water-of-Life, stark and mordant, or social Hollands, or indeed anything that was not mere compound of whey and dirty water. Whereat they wondered, and held me thereafter in great respect as a good companion and approven worthy drinker.
Then they brought me of the strong spirit of Dantzig, with curious little flakes of gold dancing in it. It was raw and strong, and at first I had good hopes of it. But I drank the Dautzig like spring-water, all there was of it, and though it had a taste singularly displeasing to me, it took no more effect than so much warm barley-brew for the palates of babes. Upon this I had great glory. For the card-players and the dicers actually left their games and gazed open-jawed to see me drink. And I sat there and expounded the Levitical law and the wheels of the Prophet Ezekiel, the law of succession to the empire, and also the apostolic succession--all with surprising clearness and cogency of reasoning. So that before I had finished they required of me whether it was I or my master who was sent for to dispute before His Sovereign mightiness the Emperor.
Then I told them that the things I knew (that is, which the Hollands had put into my head) were but the commonest chamber-sweepings of my master's learning, which I had picked up as I rode at his elbow. And this bred a mighty wondering what manner of man he might be who was so wise. And I think, if I had gone on, Dessauer and I might both have found ourselves in the Bishop's prison, on suspicion of being the devil and one of his ministrants.
But suddenly, as with a kind of recoil or back stroke, all that I had drunken must have come upon me. The clearness of vision went from me like a candle that is blown out. I know not what happened after, save that I found myself upon my truckle-bed, with my leathern money-pouch clasped in my hand with surprising tightness, as if I had been mortally afraid that some one would mistake my poor satchel for his own pocket.
So in time the morrow came, and by all rules I ought to have had a racking headache. For I saw many of those that had been with me the night before pale of countenance and eating handfuls of baker's salt. So I judged that their anxiety and the turmoil of their hearts had not burned their liquor up, as had been the case with me.
Now it is small wonder that all my soul cried out for oblivion till I should be able to do something for the Beloved--break her prison, hasten the troops from Plassenburg, or in some way save my love.
Hardly had I looked out of the main door that morning, desiring no more than to pass away the time till the trial should begin again, before I saw the Lubber Fiend, smirking and becking across the way. He had squatted himself down on the side of the street opposite, looking over at the Bishop's palace.
He pointed at me with his finger.
"Your complexion runs down," he said. "I know you. But go to the spring there by the stable, wash your face, and I shall know you better."
This was fair perdition and nothing less. For one may stay the tongue of a scoundrel with money, or the expectation of it, until opportunity arrive to stop it with steel or prison masonry. But who shall curb or halter the tongue of a fool?
Then, swift as one that sees his face in a glass, I bethought me of a plan.
"See," I said, "do you desire gold, Sir Lubber Fiend?"
He wagged his great head and shook his cabbage-leaf ears till they made currents in the heavy air, to signify that he loved the touch of the yellow metal.
"See then, Lubber," said I, "you shall have ten of these now, and ten more afterwards, if you will carry a letter to the Prince at Plassenburg, or meet him on the way."
"Not possible," said he, shaking his head sadly; "my little Missie has come to Thorn."
"But," said I, "little Missie would desire it; take letter to the Prince, good Jan, then Missie will be happy."
"Would she let poor Jan Lubberchen kiss her hand, think you?" he asked, looking up at me.
"Aye," said I; "kiss her cheek maybe!"
He danced excitedly from side to side.
"Jan will run--Jan will run all the way!" he cried.
So I pulled out a scrap of parchment and wrote a hasty message to the Prince, asking him, for the love of God and us, to set every soldier in Plassenburg on the march for Thorn, and to come on ahead himself with such a flying column as he could gather. No more I added, because I knew that my good master would need no more.
Then I went down with my messenger to the Weiss Thor, and with great fear and pulsation of the midriff I saw the idiot pass the house of Master Gerard. Then, at the outer gate, I gave him his ten golden coins, and watched him trot away briskly on the green winding road to Plassenburg.
"Mind," he called back to me, "Jan is to kiss her cheek if Jan takes letter to the Prince!"
And I promised it him without wincing. For by this time lying had no more effect upon me than dram-drinking.


CHAPTER XLIII
THE TRIAL FOR WITCHCRAFT
The Bed of Justice was set by eight of the morning. For they were ever early astir in the city of Thorn, though, like most early risers, they did little enough afterwards all day.
With a sadly beating heart, I accompanied Dessauer in the same guise as on the previous day. The crowd was even greater in and about the Hall of Judgment. And when the Duke had taken his seat and his tools set themselves down on either side, they brought in the Little Playmate.
She was dressed all in white, clean and spotless, in spite of prison usage. She glanced just once about her, right and left, high and low, as if seeking for a face she could not see, and from thenceforth she looked down on the ground.
The argument as to torture had been concluded on the day before, and it had been held inadmissible--not because of any kindly thought for the prisoner, but because, according to the laws of the Wolfmark, in the absence of the Hereditary Executioner, there was no one legally capable of inflicting it.
Then came the evidence.
The first witness against the Little Playmate was old Hanne. She was brought in by a cowled monk of dark and sinister appearance--in fact, as my heart leaped to observe, I saw that she was accompanied by Friar Laurence--he who had taught me my learning in the old days, and who even then had watched the Little Playmate with no friendly eyes.
As she passed the judges I saw the deadly fear mount to agony on the face of old Hanne. The look in her eyes of physical pain suffered and overpassed was the same which I had often seen in the wars after the surgeon has done his horrid work. That same look I saw now on the face of Hanne. So I knew that somewhere in the dark recesses under the Hall of Judgment the Extreme Question had been put to her, and to all appearance answered according to the liking of the persecutors, though they dared not torture so notable a public prisoner as Helene.
I saw a look of satisfied vindictiveness pass over the brutal features of Duke Otho. He changed his position and whispered to his colleagues.
It was Master Gerard von Sturm who rose to put the questions to the witness. And as he did so, I heard the steady sough of talk among the people rise mutteringly in a low growl of anger and contempt. The Duke's lictors struck right and left among the crowd, as men bent forward with fierce hate in their voices, lowing like oxen, as if to clear their lungs of a weight of contempt.
It was not thus in the old days, when there was no people's arbiter in all the Wolfmark so famous or so popular as Master Gerard of the Weiss Thor.
"What is the reason of that turmoil?" said I to my neighbor.
"This is the man who was her first accuser. Why, he dares not go outside his house without a guard of the Duke's riders," said the man, picking at his finger-nail with his teeth, as if it were a bone and he did not think much of its savoriness.
"You have already confessed," said the advocate to old Hanne, when they had propped up the poor