Joan of the Sword Hand Part 19

"Men of Hohenstein," said the d.u.c.h.ess, in a clear, far-reaching alto, "you have followed me, asking no word of why or wherefore. I have told you nothing, yet is an explanation due to you."

There came the sound as of a hoa.r.s.e unanimous muttering among the soldiers. Joan looked at Von Orseln as a sign for him to interpret it.

"They say that they are Joan of the Sword Hand's men, and that they will disembowl any man who wants to know what it may please you to keep secret."

"Aye, or question by so much as one lifted eyebrow aught that it may please your Highness to do," added Captain Peter Balta, from the right of the first troop.

"I said that our d.u.c.h.ess could never live in such a dog's hole as their Courtland," quoth George the Hussite, who, before he took service with Henry the Lion, had been a heretic preacher. "In Bohemia, now, where the pines grow----"

"Hold your prate, all of you," growled Von Orseln, "or you will find where hemp grows, and why! My lady," he added, altering his voice as he turned to her, "be a.s.sured, no dog in Kernsberg will bark an interrogative at you. Shall our young d.u.c.h.ess Joan be wived and bedded like some little burgheress that sells laces and tape all day long on the Axel-stra.s.se? Shall the daughter of Henry the Lion be at the commandment of any Bor-Russian boor, an it like her not? Shall she get a burr in her throat with breathing the raw fogs of the Baltic? Not a word, most gracious lady! Explain nothing. Extenuate nothing. It is the will of Joan of the Sword Hand--that is enough; and, by the word of Werner von Orseln, it shall be enough!"

"It is the will of Joan of the Sword Hand! It is enough!" repeated the four hundred lances, like a cla.s.s that learns a lesson by rote.

A lump rose in Joan's throat as she tried to shape into words the thoughts that surged within. She felt strangely weak. Her pride was not the same as of old, for the heart of a woman had grown up within her--a heart of flesh. Surely that could not be a tear in her eye? No; the wind blew shrewdly out of the west, to which they were riding. Von Orseln noted the struggle and took up his parable once more.

"The pact is carried out. The lands united--the will of Henry the Lion done! What more? Shall the free Princess be the huswife of a yellow Baltic dwarf? When we go into the town and they ask us, we will say but this, 'Our Lady misliked the fashion of his beard!' That will be reason good and broad and deep, sufficient alike for grey-haired carl and prattling bairn!"

"I thank you, n.o.ble gentlemen," said Joan. "Now, as you say, let us ride into Kernsberg."

"And pull down that flag!" cried Maurice, pointing to the black Courtland Eagle which flew so steadily beside the coronated lion of Kernsberg and Hohenstein.

"And pray, sir, why?" quoth Joan of the Sword Hand. "Am I not also Princess of Courtland?"

From woman's wilfulness all things somehow have their beginning. Yet of herself she is content with few things (so that she have what she wants), somewhat Spartan in fare if let alone, and no dinner-eating animal. Wine, tobacco, caviare, Strasburg goose-liver--Epicurus's choicest gifts to men of this world--are contemned by womankind. Left to their own devices, they prefer a drench of sweet mead or hydromel laced with water, or even of late the China brew that filters in black bricks through the country of the Muscovite. Nevertheless, to woman's wantings may be traced all restraints and judgments, from the sword flaming every way about Eden-gate to the last merchant declared bankrupt and "dyvour"

upon the exchange flags of Hamburg town. Eve did not eat the apple when she got it. She hasted to give it away. She only wanted it because it had been forbidden.

So also Joan of Hohenstein desired to go down with Dessauer that she might look upon the man betrothed to her from birth. She went. She looked, and, as the tale tells, within her there grew a heart of flesh.

Then, when the stroke fell, that heart uprose in quick, intemperate revolt. And what might have issued in the dull compliance of a princess whose life was settled for her, became the imperious revolt of a woman against an intolerable and loathsome impossibility.

So in her castle of Kernsberg Joan waited. But not idly. All day long and every day Maurice von Lynar rode on her service. The hillmen gathered to his word, and in the courtyard the stormy voices of George the Hussite and Peter Balta were never hushed. The shepherds from the hills went to and fro, marching and countermarching, wheeling and charging, porting musket and thrusting pike, till all Kernsberg was little better than a barracks, and the maidens sat wet-eyed at their knitting by the fire and thought, "Well for Her to please herself whom she shall marry--but how about us, with never a lad in the town to whistle us out in the gloaming, or to thumb a pebble against the window-lattice from the deep edges of the ripening corn?"

But there were two, at least, within the realm of the d.u.c.h.ess Joan who knew no drawbacks to their joy, who rubbed palm on palm and nudged each other for pure gladness. These (it is sad to say) were the military _attaches_ of the neighbouring peaceful State of Pla.s.senburg. Yet they had been specially cautioned by their Prince Hugo, in the presence of his wife Helene, the hereditary Princess, that they were most carefully to avoid all international complications. They were on no account to take sides in any quarrel. Above all they must do nothing prejudicial to the peace, neutrality, and universal amity of the State and Princedom of Pla.s.senburg. Such were these instructions.

They promised faithfully.

But, their names being Captains Boris and Jorian, they now rubbed their hands and nudged each other. They ought to have been in their chamber in the Castle of Kernsberg, busily concocting despatches to their master and mistress, giving an account of these momentous events.

Instead, how is it that we find them lying on that spur of the Jagernbergen which overlooks the pa.s.ses of Alla, watching the gathering of the great storm which in the course of days must break over the domains of the d.u.c.h.ess Joan--who had refused and slighted her wedded husband, Louis, Prince of Courtland?

Being both powerfully resourceful men, long lean Boris and rotund Jorian had found a way out of the apparent difficulty. There had come with them from Pla.s.senburg a commission written upon an entire square of sheepskin by a secretary and sealed with the seal of Leopold von Dessauer, High Councillor of the United Princedom and Duchy, bearing that "In the name of Hugo and Helene our well-loved lieges Captains Boris and Jorian are empowered to act and treat," and so forth. This momentous deed was tied about the middle with a red string, and presented withal so courtly and respectable an appearance to the uncritical eyes of the ex-men-at-arms themselves, that they felt almost anything excusable which they might do in its name.

Before leaving Kernsberg, therefore, Boris placed this great red-waisted parchment roll in his bed, leaning it angle-wise against his pillow.

Jorian tossed a spare dagger with the arms of Pla.s.senburg beside it.

"There--let the civil power and the military for once lie down together!" he said. "We delegate our authority to these two during our absence!"

To the silent Pla.s.senburgers who had accompanied them, and who now kept their door with unswerving attention, Boris explained himself briefly.

"Remember," he said, "when you are asked, that the envoys of Pla.s.senburg are ill--ill of a dangerous and most contagious disease. Also, they are asleep. They must on no account be waked. The windows must be kept darkened. It is a great pity. You are desolated. You understand. The first time I have more money than I can spend you shall have ten marks!"

The men-at-arms understood, which was no wonder, for Boris generally contrived to make himself very clear. But they thought within them that their chances of financial benefit from their captain's conditional generosity were worth about one sole stiver.

So these two, being now free fighting-men, as it were, soldiers of fortune, lay waiting on the slopes of the Jagernbergen, talking over the situation.

"A man surely has a right to his own wife!" said Jorian, taking for the sake of argument the conventional side.

"_Narren-possen_, Jorian!" cried Boris, raising his voice to the indignation point. "Clotted nonsense! Who is going to keep a man's wife for him if he cannot do it himself? And he a prince, and within his own city and fortress, too. She boxed his ears, they say, and rode away, telling him that if he wanted her he might come and take her! A pretty spirit, i' faith! Too good for such a dried stockfish of the Baltic, with not so much soul as a speckled flounder on his own mud-flats!

Faith! if I were a marrying man, I would run off with the la.s.s myself.

She ought at least to be a soldier's wife."

"The trouble is that so far she feels no necessity to be any one's wife," said Jorian, shifting his ground.

"That also is nonsense," said Boris, who, spite his defence of Joan, held the usual masculine views. "Every woman wishes to marry, if she can only have first choice."

"There they come!" whispered Jorian, whose eyes had never wandered from the long wavering lines of willow and alder which marked the courses of the sluggish streams flowing east toward the Alla.

Boris rose to his feet and looked long beneath his hand. Very far away there was a sort of white tremulousness in the atmosphere which after a while began to give off little luminous glints and sparkles, as the sea does when a shaft of moonlight touches it through a dark canopy of cloud.

Then there arose from the level green plain first one tall column of dense black smoke and then another, till as far as they could see to the left the plain was full of them.

"G.o.d's truth!" cried Jorian, "they are burning the farms and herds'

houses. I thought they had been Christians in Courtland. But these are more like Duke Casimir's devil's tricks."

Boris did not immediately answer. His eyes were busy seeing, his brain setting in order.

"I tell you what," he said at last, in a tone of intense interest, "these are no fires lighted by Courtlanders. The heavy Baltic knights could never ride so fast nor spread so wide. The Muscovite is out! These are Cossack fires. Bravo, Jorian! we shall yet have our Hugo here with his axe! He will never suffer the Bear so near his borders."

"Let us go down," said Jorian, "or we shall miss some of the fun. In two good hours they will be at the fords of the Alla!"

So they looked to their arms and went down.

"What do you here? Go back!" shouted Werner von Orseln, who with his men lay waiting behind the floodbanks of the Alla. "This is not your quarrel! Go back, Pla.s.senburgers!"

"We have for the time being demitted our office," Boris exclaimed. "The envoys of Pla.s.senburg are at home in bed, sick of a most sanguinary fever. We offer you our swords as free fighting-men and good Teuts. The Muscovites are over yonder. Lord, to think that I have lived to forty-eight and never yet killed even one bearded Russ!"

"You may mend that record shortly, to all appearance, if you have luck!"

said Von Orseln grimly. "And this gentleman here," he added, looking at Jorian, "is he also in bed, sick?"

"My sword is at your service," said the round one, "though I should prefer a musketoon, if it is all the same to you. It will be something to do till these firebrands come within arm's length of us."

"I have here two which are very much at your service, if you know how to use them!" said Werner.

The men-at-arms laughed.

"We know their tricks better than those of our sweethearts!" they said, "and those we know well!"