Joan of the Sword Hand Part 28

The girl did not start, but rather pa.s.sed immediately into full consciousness with a little shudder and a quick gesture of the hand, as if she pushed something or some one from her. Then, from the pillow on which his head lay, Joan of Hohenstein saw the eyes of the Prince Conrad gazing at her, dark and solemn, from within the purplish rings of recent peril.

"You are my brother's wife!" he said softly, but yet in the same rich and thrilling voice she had listened to with so many heart-stirrings in the summer palace, and had last heard ring through the cathedral church of Courtland on that day when her life had ended.

A chill came over the girl's face at his words.

"I am indeed the d.u.c.h.ess Joan of Hohenstein," she answered. "My father willed that I should wed Prince Louis of Courtland. Well, I married him and rode away. In so much I am your brother's wife."

It was a strange awaking for a man who had pa.s.sed from death to life, but at least her very impetuosity convinced him that the girl was flesh and blood.

He smiled wanly. The light of the lamp seemed to waver again before his eyes. He saw his companion as it had been transformed and glorified. He heard the rolling of drums in his ears, and merry pipes played sweetly far away. Then came the hush of many waters flowing softly, and last, thrumming on the parched earth, and drunk down gladly by tired flowers, the sound of abundance of rain. The world grew full of sleep and rest and refreshment. There was no longer need to care about anything.

His eyes closed. He seemed about to sink back into unconsciousness, when Joan rose, and with a few drops from Dessauer's phial, which she kept by her in case of need, she called him back from the misty verges of the Things which are Without.

As he struggled painfully upward he seemed to hear Joan's last words repeated and re-repeated to the music of a chime of fairy bells, "_In so much--in so much--I am your brother's wife--your brother's wife!_" He came to himself with a start.

"Will you tell me how I came here, and to whom I am indebted for my life?" he said, as Joan stood up beside him, her shapely head dim and retired in the misty dusk above the lamp, only her chin and the shapely curves of her throat being illumined by the warm lamplight.

"You were picked up for dead on the beach in the midst of the storm,"

she answered, "and were brought hither by two captains in the service of the Prince of Pla.s.senburg!"

"And where is this place, and when can I leave it to proceed upon my journey?"

The girl's head was turned away from him a trifle more haughtily than before, and she answered coldly, "You are in a certain fortified grange somewhere on the Baltic sh.o.r.e. As to when you can proceed on your journey, that depends neither on you nor on me. I am a prisoner here.

And so I fear must you also consider yourself!"

"A prisoner! Then has my brother----?" cried the Prince-Bishop, starting up on his elbow and instantly dropping back again upon the pillow with a groan of mingled pain and weakness. Joan looked at him a moment and then, compressing her lips with quick resolution, went to the bedside and with one hand under his head rearranged the pillow and laid him back in an easier posture.

"You must lie still," she said in a commanding tone, and yet softly; "you are too weak to move. Also you must obey me. I have some skill in leechcraft."

"I am content to be your prisoner," said the Prince-Bishop smiling--"that is, till I am well enough to proceed on my journey to Rome, whither the Holy Father Pope Sixtus hath summoned me by a special messenger."

"I fear me much," answered Joan, "that, spite of the Holy Father, we may be fellow-prisoners of long standing. Those of my own folk who hold me here against my will are hardly likely to let the brother of Prince Louis of Courtland escape with news of my hiding-place and present hermitage!"

The young man seemed as if he would again have started up, but with a gesture smilingly imperious Joan forbade him.

"To-morrow," she said, "perhaps if you are patient I will tell you more.

Here comes our hostess. It is time that I should leave you."

Theresa von Lynar came softly to the side of the bed and stood beside Joan. The young Cardinal thought that he had never seen a more queenly pair--Joan resplendent in her girlish strength and beauty, Theresa still in the ripest glory of womanhood. There was a gentler light than before in the elder woman's eyes, and she cast an almost deprecating glance upon Joan. For at the first sound of her approach the girl had stiffened visibly, and now, with only a formal word as to the sick man's condition, and a cold bow to Conrad, she moved away.

Theresa watched her a little sadly as she pa.s.sed behind the deep curtain. Then she sighed, and turning again to the bedside she looked long at the young man without speaking.

CHAPTER XXVII

WIFE AND PRIEST

"I have a right to call myself the widow of the Duke Henry of Kernsberg and Hohenstein," said Theresa von Lynar, in reply to Conrad's question as to whom he might thank for rescue and shelter.

"And therefore the mother of the d.u.c.h.ess Joan?" he continued.

Theresa shook her head.

"No," she said sadly; "I am not her mother, but--and even that only in a sense--her stepmother. A promise to a dead man has kept me from claiming any privileges save that of living unknown on this desolate isle of sand and mist. My son is an officer in the service of the d.u.c.h.ess Joan."

The face of the Prince-Bishop lighted up instantaneously.

"Most surely, then, I know him. Did he not come to Courtland with my Lord Dessauer, the Amba.s.sador of Pla.s.senburg?"

The lady of Isle Rugen nodded indifferently.

"Yes," she said; "I believe he went to Courtland with the emba.s.sy from Pla.s.senburg."

"Indeed, I was much drawn to him," said the Prince eagerly; "I remember him most vividly. He was of an olive complexion, his features without colour, but graven even as the Greeks cut those of a young G.o.d on a gem."

"Yes," said Theresa von Lynar serenely, "he has his father's face and carriage, which are those also of the d.u.c.h.ess Joan."

"And why," said the young man, "if I may ask without offence, is your son not the heir to the Dukedom?"

There was a downcast sadness in the woman's voice and eye as she replied, "Because when I wedded Duke Henry it was agreed between us that aught which might be thereafter should never stand between his daughter and her heritage; and, in spite of deadly wrong done to those of my house, I have kept my word."

The Prince-Cardinal thought long with knitted brow.

"The d.u.c.h.ess is my brother Louis's wife," he said slowly.

"In name!" retorted Theresa, quickly and breathlessly, like one called on unexpectedly to defend an absent friend.

"She is his wife--I married them. I am a priest," he made answer.

A gleam, sharp and quick as lightning jetted from a thunder cloud, sprang into the woman's eye.

"In this matter I, Theresa von Lynar, am wiser than all the priests in the world. Joan of Hohenstein is no more his wife than I am!"

"Holy Church, the mother of us all, made them one!" said the Cardinal sententiously. For such words come easily to dignitaries even when they are young.

She bent towards him and looked long into his eyes.

"No," she said; "you do not know. How indeed is it possible? You are too young to have learned the deep things--too certain of your own righteousness. But you will learn some day. I, Theresa von Lynar, know--aye, though I bear the name of my father and not that of my husband!" And at this imperious word the Prince was silent and thought with gravity upon these things.

Theresa sat motionless and silent by his bed till the day rose cool and untroubled out of the east, softly aglow with the sheen of clouded silk, pearl-grey and delicate. Prince Conrad, being greatly wearied and bruised inwardly with the buffeting of the waves and the stones of the sh.o.r.e, slumbered restlessly, with many tossings and turnings. But as oft as he moved, the hands of the woman who had been a wife were upon him, ordering his bruised limbs with swift knowledgeable tenderness, so that he did not wake, but gradually fell back again into dreamless and refreshing sleep. This was easy to her, because the secret of pain was not hid from Theresa, the widow of the Duke of Hohenstein--though Henry the Lion's daughter, as yet, knew it not.

In the morning Joan came to bid the patient good-morrow, while Werner von Orseln stood in the doorway with his steel cap doffed in his hand, and Boris and Jorian bent the knee for a priestly blessing. But Theresa did not again appear till night and darkness had wrapped the earth. So being all alone he listened to the heavy plunge of the breakers on the beach among which his life had been so nearly sped. The sound grew slower and slower after the storm, until at last only the wavelets of the sheltered sea lapsed on the shingle in a sort of breathing whisper.

"Peace! Peace! Great peace!" they seemed to say hour after hour as they fell on his ear.

And so day pa.s.sed and came again. Long nights, too, at first with hourly tendance and then presently without. But Joan sat no more with the young man after that first watch, though his soul longed for her, that he might again tell the girl that she was his brother's wife, and urge her to do her duty by him who was her wedded husband. So in her absence Conrad contented himself and salved his conscience by thinking austere thoughts of his mission and high place in the hierarchy of the only Catholic and Apostolic Church. So that presently he would rise up and seek Werner von Orseln in order to persuade him to let him go, that he might proceed to Rome at the command of the Holy Father, whose servant he was.