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

THE MORN
Even as the dwarf on the ledge of the castle clocktower creaked his wires and clicked back his hammer to strike the midnight over the city, even as the first solemn toll of the hour reverberated over the Wolfsberg, I was at the door of the Duke's room waiting for admission.
The Chamberlain in attendance looked within, and seeing his master writing at a table, he was going out again without speech.
"Has Hugo Gottfried returned?" said the Duke, without looking up.
"Hugo Gottfried is here!" I replied, stepping unannounced into the room.
He looked up without smiling, a keen inquiring glance glittering from between eyelids so close together that only the faintest line of the pupil showed black under the lashes.
"Well?" he questioned.
"I will do the thing you have asked," answered I.
And said no more.
The Duke instantly became restless, and getting up, he began to pace about the floor like a caged beast.
"You have seen her?" he inquired, stopping in front of me, wide-nostrilled, like a dog that points the game.
"I _have_ seen her," I replied, as simply.
"Well?" he queried again, with a keen, eager note of anxiety in his voice.
"I am ready to do that which you have asked."
He seemed to be on the point of saying something else. But, changing his mind, he touched a little silver bell.
The usher appeared.
"Show the Hereditary Justicer of the Mark to the Red Tower. Give him all that is necessary to eat and drink. Bid a man-at-arms attend him, and set a sufficient guard at the door!"
So I went out from the presence, and the Duke and the Duke's new Justicer bowed to each other gravely as I stood a moment on the threshold.
"Till we meet again, Red Axe of the Wolfmark!" said Duke Otho.
"Till we meet again!" said I, countering him like blade meeting blade.
In little more than ten minutes after I had entered them, I stood outside the Duke's apartments, and with my escort I strode across to the empty Red Tower, the home of so many memories. My head was reeling, and with the overpress of excitement I could not sleep. So, bribing the soldier, my companion--who had been charged by the Duke not to lose sight of me--to accompany me, I went up to my father's garret.
There I found all things as they had been when my father died.
I set the windows wide, cast the tumbled bedclothes out upon the dust-heap beneath, and bared the whole to the clean, large, wholesome breezes of the night. I saw the fateful Red Axe lean as usual against the block, and, taking it up, I found it keen as a razor. It was spotless, and the edge gave back the long low room and our one glimmering candle like a mirror. It must have been my father's last work in this world to polish it.
Then I went down to my own room and cast myself down upon the bed in which, on that night of the first home-coming of the Playmate, I had laid my little wife.
The soldier couched across the door, rolled in his cloak and some chance wrapping he found about the house.
God keep me from ever spending such a night again! I thought it would never come to an end. Out in the square in front of the Wolfsberg I could hear a knocking--dull, continuous, reverberant. At first I thought it must be within my own head. So I asked the soldier, after a little, if he heard it also. I had some faint idea that it might be Prince Karl of Plassenburg with his army thundering at the gates of Thorn.
"'Tis but the scaffold going up in the Grand Place without!" said the soldier, carelessly; "I heard that the Duke had bidden them work all night by torch-light."
I tried to sleep, but the knocking continued, aching across my brows till I thought I must go mad. After a while I rose and went to the window from which I had so often looked down wistfully upon the play of the city children.
Opposite me, in the middle of the open space, loomed a dark mass--a platform, it seemed, raised a dozen feet above the road--the black silhouette of a ladder set anglewise against it, and that was all. Lower, plainer, somehow deadlier than a gibbet with its flamboyant beam, which one never sees empty without imagining the malefactor aswing upon it; the heading-block did not frown, it grinned--yes, grinned like the eye-holes of a skeleton with a candle behind them, while the torches glinted through the interstices of the framework as it was being nailed together.
All night the dull _dunt-dunting_ went on without. And I sat awake by the window and awaited the dawning.
The city seethed unslaked beneath. When first I looked from my chamber window the square was free to all who chose to enter it. But as the knocking went on the news spread through the town of Thorn.
"They are making the scaffold for our Saint Helena!" So the word ran.
And within an hour the courts and alleys of Thorn belched forth thousands of angry men. Pikes were carried like staves, the steel head hidden up the long white burgess sleeve. Working-men of the trades, 'prentices, and market porters drew their swords and came forth with the bare blades in their hands, leaving the scabbards at home to take care of themselves, as was their custom.
Wives cried from escalier windows to their men to come in by and lie decently down, to be ready for their work in the morning. And the men so addressed paid not the least heed, as the manner of men is. These things and many others I saw, scarce knowing what I saw.
And so, with the hum of gathering crowds, the hours passed slowly over. But the temper of the people in the square grew more and more difficult, and soon the guard had to be brought down from the castle. The great gates beneath me were open, and the Wolfsberg vomited the black men-at-arms to keep the Duke's peace.
But this brought only the quicker strife. Yells received them as soon as their steel partisans showed up in the square.
"Oppressors of the people, ye come to your reward!" cried many voices.
"We will give you your last breakfast--of cold, tempered steel!" cried another, from the bowels of the crowd.
"To the Wolfsberg--ho! Break in the doors! We will have our Saint Helena forth of their cursed prisons!"
It was no sooner said than done. Like a wave the people rushed in a black irregular mass at the front rank of the guard. The soldiers of the Duke were swept away like chaff; I could see one here and another there struggling in the vortices of the angry multitude.
"On to the Wolfsberg!" cried the crowd.
But when the first of them reached the castle gates, lo! they stood open, and there behind them stood file on file of matchlock men with their matches burning in their hands and their pieces trained upon their rests.
"Give them the fire!" cried a voice, that of Duke Otho, as the crowd halted a moment irresolute.
The bright red flame started out here and there from muzzle and touchhole, and then ran along the line in an irregular volley.
A terrible cry of fear went up from the folk. For though they had heard of the new ordnance, and even seen one or two, they had never realized the effect of a fusillade. And when a man on either side sank down with a hollow sound like a beast in shamble-thills, and the man in front fell over on his face without a sound, the multitude turned, broke into groups, fled, and disappeared in a moment like a whirl of snow which the wind canters down the street in a veering flurry.
Then the gates shut to, and the deep lines of matchlock men were hidden from view. After this the city thrilled and murmured worse than ever, humming like an angry hive. But the Wolfsberg kept its counsel. Not yet had deliverance arrived for the captives within its cells.
And the dread morning was coming fast.
At last, wearied out with crowding emotions, I went and cast me down on my bed, and, instantly falling asleep, I slept like a log till one touched me on the shoulder. Looking up, I saw the Duke Otho. He had come to make sure of his vengeance--the vengeance which I knew well was not his, but that of Ysolinde, Princess of Plassenburg.


CHAPTER LII
THE HEADSMAN'S RIGHT
"Rise, Justicer of the Wolfmark!" said Otho, smiling mockingly upon me like a fiend.
I started up and gazed about bewildered as the coming terrors of the morning broke upon me.
"'Tis scarcely an hour to sunrise," he continued, "and I warrant the noble Red Axe will desire to feel the edge of his tool and see that his assistants are in their places."
The Duke paused as he went out of the door, and looked at me.
"I can promise you a distinguished company at the first public performance of your honorable office," he said, with a polite gesture.
So soon as he was gone I rose to my feet. Across the broad, black oaken stool, whereon from boyhood it had been my habit to place my clothes neatly folded up, I found a suit of new red cloth, plain and rich, with an inscription upon a strip of vellum laid across the breast, bearing that these were a gift from the most Illustrious Duke Otho of the Wolfmark.
Since, after all, my fate was my fate, there was little use in straining at the gnat. So I set to and did upon me the garmentry of shame. They were made after the fashion of my father's, cap and hosen and shoon all of red, with a cloak of red to cover all.
Then I went to the Playmate's room, and before the niche where her little Prie-Dieu had stood, I kneeled me down and said such a prayer as at the moment I could compass. But little was needed. For I think God in heaven Himself was praying for us both that day.
When I went forth into the square, few there were who knew or remembered me, but all knew my attire. Then indeed it did my heart good to hear the great unanimous roar of execration which went up from the multitude as I came out. The soldiers had their work cut out to push a way for me to the scaffold.
"Butcher him--tear him to pieces--wolf's cub that he is--he that was her foster-brother to slay our Saint Helena!"
It made me proud to hear them. And as they rushed furiously against the escort, intent to kill me, we swayed from side to side.
"Down with the Red Axe!" they shouted. "Down with the bloody house of Gottfried and all that belong to it!"
And I felt inclined to cry "Amen!"
Then, when I had mounted the few steps which led to the platform on which stood the black headsman's block, I gazed about me in wonder, holding the Red Axe in my hand. And to my disordered vision I saw the crowd swell and whirl about me on earth and in the air, bubbling and tossing like a pot boiling furiously. Then I bethought me of the work I had to do, and prayed that I might be given strength to do it swiftly and featly, that the suffering of my love might not be long. Also I thought of the lecherous evil demons of the Black Riders, and thereat was somewhat comforted. At the worst I could give my love a better end than that.
Then appeared