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

town of Thorn, and especially in the castle of the Wolfsberg.
Duke Casimir continued to move, as of yore, in cavalcade through his subject city. The burghers bowed as obsequiously as ever when they could not avoid meeting him. There were the old lordly perquisitions--thunderings at iron-studded doors, battering-rams set between posts, and the clouds of dust flying from the driven lintels, the screams of maids, the crying of women, a stray corpse or two flung on to the street, and then the procession as before, arms and legs, with a mercenary soldier between each pair, fore and aft. All this was repeated and repeated, till the dull monotony of tyranny began to wear through the long Teutonic patience to the under-quick of Wendish madness.
It chanced that one night I could not sleep. It was no matter of maids that kept me awake, though by this time I was sixteen or seventeen and greatly grown--running, it is true, mostly to knees and elbows, but nevertheless long of limb and stark of bone, needing only the muscle laid on in lumps to be as strong as any.
I had begun to steal out at nights too--not on any ill errand, but that I might have the company of those about my own age--'prentice lads and the wilder sons of burghers, who had no objection to my parentage, and thought it rather a fine thing to be hand-in-glove with the son of the Red Axe of Thorn. And there we played single-stick, smite-jacket, skittles, bowls--aye, and drank deep of the city ale--the very thinnest brew that was ever passed by a bribed and muzzy ale-taster. All this was mightily pleasant to me. For so soon as they knew that I had determined to be a soldier, and not the Red Axe of the Wolfmark, they complimented me greatly on my spirit.
Well, as I lay awake and waited for the chance to slip down a rope from my bedroom window, whose foot should I hear on the turret stairs but that of my Lord Duke Casimir! My very heart quailed within me. For the fear of him sat heavy on every man and woman in the land. And as for the children--why, as far as the Baltic shore and the land of the last Ritters, mothers frightened their bairns with the Black Duke of the Wolfsberg and his Red Axe.
So now the Duke and the Red Axe were to be in conference--as indeed had happened nearly every day and night since I could remember. So that people called my father the Duke's Private Devil, his Familiar Spirit, his Evil Genius. But I knew other of it--and this night, of all nights in the year, I was to know better still.
It was a summer midnight--not like the one I told of when the story began, white with snow and glittering with the keen polish of frost. But a soft, still night, drowsy yet sleepless, with an itch of thunder tingling in the air--and, indeed, already the pulsing, uncertain glow of sheet-lightning coming and going at long intervals along the south.
I crouched and nestled in the hole in the wall where I had long ago hidden the hated red cloak, pulling my knees up uncomfortably to my chin. And great lumps of bone they were, knotted as if a smith had made them in the rough with a welding hammer and had forgotten to reduce them with the file afterwards. At that time I was thoroughly ashamed of my knees.
But no matter for them now. Duke Casimir passed in and shut the door.
"Gottfried," I heard him say, "I am a dead man!"
These words from the great Duke Casimir startled me, and though I knew well enough that Michael Texel, the Burgomeister's son, was waiting for me by the corner of the Jew's Port, I decided that, as I might never hear Duke Casimir declare his secretest soul again, I should even bide where I was; and that was in the crevice of the wall among the old clothes, which gave off such a faint, musty, sleepy smell I could scarcely keep awake.
But the Duke's next words effectually roused me.
"A dead man!" repeated Casimir. "I have not a friend in all the realm of the Mark besides yourself. And there is none of all that take my bounty or eat my bread that is sorry for me. See here," he said, querulously, "twice have I been stricken at to-day--once a tile fell from a roof and dinted the crown of my helmet, and the second time a young man struck at my breast with a dagger."
"Did he wound you, Duke Casimir?" asked my father, speaking for the first time, but in a strangely easy and equal voice, not with the distance and deference which he showed to his lord in public.
"Nay, Gottfried," replied Duke Casimir; "but he bruised my shirt of mail into my breast."
And I heard plainly enough the clinking of the rings of chain-armor as the Duke showed his hurt to my father. Presently I heard his voice again.
"And the Bishop has touched me in a new place," he said. "He declares that he will lay his interdict upon me and my people--ill enough to hold in hand as they are even now. When that is done they will rise in rebellion. My very men-at-arms and knights I cannot depend upon--only upon you and the Black Riders."
"In the matter of the Bishop's interdict, or in other matters, do you mean that you can trust my counsel, Duke Casimir?" asked my father.
"'Tis in the burial of the dead that the shoe will pinch first with these burghers of Thorn and among our soldiers at the Wolfsberg. For mass, indeed, they care not a dove's dropping--but that the corpse should be carried to a dog's grave, that they cannot away with. Red Axe, I tell you we shall have the State of the Mark about our ears in the slipping of a hound's leash--and as for me, I know not what I shall do."
"Listen, and I will counsel you, Duke Casimir! Care you not though the east wind brought Bishop Peters whirling over the Mark, as many as the January snowflakes that come to us from Muscovy. I, Gottfried Gottfried, tell you what to do. In every parish of the Mark there is a parson. Every clerk of them hath a Presbytery, in which he dwells with those that are abiding with him. Bid you the soldiers that are obedient to you to carry all the corpses of the dead to the Presbytery, and leave them there under guard. Then let us see whether or no the parsons will give them burial. What think you of the counsel, Duke Casimir?"
I could hear the Duke rise and pace across the floor to where my father sat on his bed. And by the silence I knew that the two men were shaking hands.
"Red Axe," said the Duke, much moved, "of a truth you are a great man--none like you in the Dukedom. These beard-wagging, chain-jingling gentry I have small notion of. And would you but accept it, I would give you to-morrow the collar of gold which befits the Chancellor of the Mark. None deserves to wear it so well as thou."
My father laughed a low scornful laugh.
"Because I bid you teach the parsons their own religion, am I to be made Chancellor of the Mark? A great gray wolf out of the forest were as suitable a Chancellor of the Mark as Gottfried Gottfried, the fourteenth hereditary Red Axe of Thorn!"
Then I heard him reach over his bed for something. I stole out of the hole in the wall and crouched down till my eyes rested at the great latchet hole through which the tang of leather to lift the bolt ordinarily goes. I could see my father sitting on his bed and the Red Axe lying across his knees. He took it in hand, dangling it like an infant. He caressed it as he spoke, and ran his thumb lovingly along the shining edge.
"Ah," he said, "my beauty, 'tis you and not your master they should make High Chancellor of this realm. 'Tis you that have held the power of life and death, and laid the spirit of rebellion any time these twenty years. And well indeed wouldst thou look with a red robe about thee" (here he reached for a cloak that swung from the rafters contiguous to his hand); "a noble presence wouldst thou be in a tun-bellied robe and a collar of shining gold! Bravely, great State's Chancellor of the Wolfmark, wouldst thou then lead the processions and preside at the diets of justice--as indeed thou dost mostly as it is."
And he made the Red Axe bow like a puppet in his hands as he swept the cloak of red out behind the handle.
I could see Duke Casimir now. He had drawn up a stool and sat opposite my father, with his elbows on his knees. One hand was stroking the side of his head, and his haughtiness had all fallen from him like a forgotten overmantle. He looked another man from the cruel, relentless Prince who had ridden so sternly at the head of his men-at-arms and looked so callously on at the death of men and the yet more bitter agony of women.
He stared at the floor, absorbed in his own gloomy thoughts, while my father regarded him with his eyes as though he had been a lad in his 'prenticing who needed encouragement to persevere.
"Duke," he said, steadily, "you have borne the rule many years, and I have stood behind you. Have I ever advised you wrong? Make peace with the young man, your nephew; he is now only the Count von Reuss, but one day he will be Duke Otho. And if he be rightly guided he may be a brave ruler yet. But if not, and he gather in his hand the various seditions and confused turbulences in the Dukedom, why, a worse thing may befall."
"You advise me," said the Duke, lifting his head and looking at his Justicer, "to recall my nephew and risk all that threatened us ere he fled to the Prince of Plassenburg--Karl, the Miller's Son."
Gottfried Gottfried continued to run his thumb to and fro along the edge of the Red Axe.
"Even so," he replied, without raising his head; "give him the command of the Black Riders of the Guard, who, as it is, adore him. Let him try his 'prentice hand on Bamberg and Reichenan. And if he offend, why, then it will be time to apply for further advice to this chancellor in the Red Robe, whose face so shines with wisdom."
The Duke rose.
"Well, on your head be it!" he said.
"Nay," said my father, "I but advise, it is for you to decide, my Lord. If Duke Casimir sees a better way of it, why, then the words of his servant are but as the tunes that the east wind whistles through the key-hole."
And at the mention of key-holes I imagined that I saw my father's eyes rest on the latchet crevice. So I bethought me that it was time for me to be retiring to bed. To my room, therefore, I went straightway, tiptoeing on the points of my hose. And with ears cocked I heard my father attend the Duke to the door, and on across the yard, lest any night-wandering traitor should take a fancy to make a hole in the back of Duke Casimir of the Wolfmark.
Presently came my father in again, and I heard his foot climb steadily up to my room. The door opened, and never was I in so deep a sleep. He turned down the coverlet to see that