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

had overpast so quickly that when Helene and I found ourselves alone in the Red Tower it seemed to both of us that we dreamed.
We sat in a kind of buzzing hush, on the low window-seat of the old room, hand in hand. The shouts of the people came up to us from the square beneath. We heard the tramp of the soldiers, who cheered us as they passed to and fro. Being at last alone, we looked into each other's eyes, and we could not believe in our own happiness.
"My wife!" I said, but in another fashion than I had said it on the scaffold.
"My husband!" answered Helene, looking up at me.
But I think, for all that we realized of the truth, we might as well have called each other King and Queen of Sheba.
We had been conducted with honor to the Red Tower. For since it was in virtue of my hereditary office that I had obtained the great deliverance, I dared for the present seek no other dwelling-place. For Helene's sake, indeed, I should have felt safer elsewhere. Besides, desperate and full of baffled hatred as I knew Duke Otho to be, I did not believe that he would dare to molest us--for some time at least. The rage of the people, their unbounded jubilation at the deliverance of their Saint Helena from the jaws of death on the very scaffold, were too recent to be trifled with by a prince sitting so insecure in his ducal seat as Otho of the Wolfmark.
So here in the ancient Red Tower, I thought, we might at least be safe enough till my good fellows of Plassenburg, with the Prince at their head, should swarm hammering at the gates of Thorn.
To us, sitting thus hand in hand, there entered the Bishop Peter.
"Hail!" he said, blandly, and in his grandest manner, as we knelt for his benediction; "hail, bride and bridegroom! God has been good to you this day. Bishop Peter, the least of His servants, greets you very well. May you have long life and prosperity unfailing."
I thanked him for his gracious words.
"The folk of the city are full of joy," he said. "I think they would almost proclaim you Duke to-day."
"I desire no such perilous honor," I replied, smiling; "it were indeed an ill-omen to have a Duke habited all in red."
"It is your marriage-dress, Hugo," said Helene; "I will not have you speak against it."
Ever since the strain of the scaffold she had not once broke down--no, nor wept--but only desired to sit very close beside me, touching me sometimes, as if to make sure that I was real. Deliverance had been too great and sudden, and those things which had come so near to us both--Death and the Beyond--had left a salt and bitter spray on our lips.
"And what of the Lady Ysolinde?" I asked of the Bishop.
Now the Bishop Peter was a good man, but, like many of his brethren, a lover of great, swelling words.
"The Lady Ysolinde," he said, oratorically, "by the immediate assistance of the city guard, was placed in a litter and deported, all unconscious as she was, to her father's house in the Weiss Thor, where she still remains. But her most seasonable extract from the laws of the Wolfmark, which so opportunely saved the life of your fair wife, and led to this present happy consummation, I have here by me, even in my hand."
And with that the Bishop drew the rolled parchment from his pocket and handed it to me, with all the original seals depending from it. Now I have small gift for the deciphering of such ancient documents, being only skilled in the common script of the day, and not over-well in that. So that I had to depend upon the offices of Bishop Peter for the interpretation.
"I think," said the Bishop, after he had finished reading it over, "that this document had best remain in my own possession. It may be safer under the seal and protection of the Church--even as, to speak truth, you and your wife would also be. I am a plain man," the Bishop continued, after a pause, "but remember that there is ever a place of refuge at the palace--and one which even Duke Otho is not likely to violate, remembering the experiences of his predecessor, Duke Casimir, when he crossed his sword against the crosier of this unworthy servant of Holy Church."
"I thank you," said I. "I would that it were possible to avail myself of your all too generous offer. But it will be necessary to abide at least this one night in the Red Tower."
"Ah," he said, "why this night?"
"Great things may happen this night, my Lord Bishop!" said I, and glanced significantly in the direction of Plassenburg.
"Ah," said the Bishop again, "so then the power of Holy Church may not be the only restraint upon Duke Otho by to-morrow at this time!"
And, calling his attendants, the suave and far-seeing prelate made his way with gravity and reverend ceremony down the streets of Thorn towards his palace.
So, bit by bit, the long day passed away, and I thought it would never end. For Helene and I sat and waited for that which might happen, with beating and anxious hearts. Ofttimes I ran to the top of the Red Tower, and sometimes it seemed that I could see a moving cloud of dust, and sometimes a flurry of startled cattle afar on the horizon. But till dusk there came to our aching eyes no better evidence that the lads of Plassenburg were coming to our rescue and to the deliverance of the down-trodden city of Thorn.
The soldiers of the garrison were still encamped in the great square. There was also a constant swarming and mustering of men upon the ramparts of the Wolfsberg. Duke Otho had certainly enough men to make a creditable resistance. True, they were Free Companions, and without other loyalty than that which they owed to their paymaster.
And beneath this warlike show lay the city, rebellious and turbulent to the core, the merchants longing for unhampered rights of trade and security in the enjoyment of the fruits of their labors, the craftsmen claiming freedom to work in their guilds without a payment of labor-bond tithes to the Duke, and especially without the fear of being snatched away at any moment from their benches and looms to join in his forays and incursions.
Towards the gloaming I had come down from the roof of the tower, and was standing, gloomy, and little like a bridegroom, at the little window whence I had so often looked down upon the playing children of Thorn. Suddenly a great hand was reached up from the pavement, a folded paper was thrust in at the lattice, and I saw the face of the Lubber Fiend looking up at me from the street below.
"Come up hither, good Jan," I cried to him. "I will run and open the gate!"
But the Lubber Fiend only shook his head till his ears flapped like burdocks in the wind by the wood edges.
"Jan will come none within that gate to tell where he has been," he said. "Jan may be a fool, but he knows better than that."
"And where have you been?" I asked, eagerly.
Jan the Lubber Fiend stood on his tiptoes and whispered up to me with his elbows on the sill.
"You are sure the Duke is not behind you?"
"There is none here--except my wife," I said, smiling. And I liked speaking the word.
"I have seen the great Prince," said Jan, nodding backward, and smiling mysteriously, "and he is coming, but not by himself. There are such a peck of mad fellows out there. There will not be much to eat in Thorn when they all come in. Better make a good dinner to-day, that is my advice to you. And I was bid to tell you that when all was ready for their coming a fire is to be lighted on a high place, and then the Prince will come to the gates."
I longed much to hear more of his adventures, but neither love nor money would induce the thrice cautious Jan to set a foot within the precincts of the Red Tower.
"I will light a bonfire when it is dark at the White Gate," he said, as he retracted himself into the dusk. "I know what will make a rare blaze. And the Prince cannot come too soon."
So indeed I thought also, as I looked out and saw the swarms of Duke Otho's men in the court-yard and about the square, and reflected on our helplessness here in the Red Tower within the defenced precincts of the Wolfsberg.


CHAPTER LIV
THE CROWNING OF DUKE OTHO
But at long and last the most tardy-footed day comes to an end. And so, just as fast as on any common day, the sun at last dropped to the edge of the horizon and slowly sank, leaving a shallowing lake of orange color behind.
The red roofs of Thorn grew gray, with purple veins of shadow in the interstices where the streets ran, or rather burrowed. The nightly hum of the city began. For, under the cruel rule of the wolves of the castle, Thorn was ever busiest in the right. Indeed, the cheating of the guard had become a business well understood of all the citizens, who had a regular code of signals to warn each other of its approach.
Lights winked and kindled in the Wolfsberg over against me. I could see the long array of lighted windows where the Duke would presently be dining with Michael Texel, High Councillor Gerard von Sturm, and most of his other intimates. There, beneath, were the stables of the Black Riders, and before them men were constantly passing and repassing with buckets and soldier gear.
I wondered if the Duke had news of the approach of the enemy.
So soon as I judged it safe I went to the top of the Red Tower and unfolded the paper which Jan the Lubber Fiend had brought me. It was without name and address or signature, and read as follows:
"To-night we shall be all in readiness. When the time is ripe let a fire be lighted upon some conspicuous tower or high place of the city. Then we will come."
Thereafter Helene, being lonely, climbed up and sat down beside me. I handed her the paper.
"To-night will be a stormy one in Thorn and the Wolfsberg, little one," said I. "I fear you and I are not yet out of the wood."
The Little Playmate read the letter and gave it back to me. I tore it up, and let the wind carry away the pieces one by one, small, like dust, so that scarce one letter clave to another.
Her hand stole into mine.
"Ah," she sighed, "I am beginning to believe in it now! To-night may be as dangerous as yesternight. But at least we are together, never to be separated. And to us two that means all."
It was a strange marriage night, this of ours--thus to sit on the roof of the Tower, under the iron beacon which had been placed there in my grandfather's time, and listen to the hum and murmur of the city, straining our eyes meanwhile through the darkness to catch the first spear-glint from the army of the Prince.
"If they do not come by midnight, or if Jan Lubber Fiend does not light his fire by the White Gate, we must e'en risk it and kindle this one here on the Red Tower."
So the night passed on till it was about eleven, or it might be a quarter of an