Joan of the Sword Hand Part 30

"On the whole, not ill," said Peter Balta. "The Muscovites, indeed, drove in our outposts, but could not come nearer than a bowshot from the northern gate, we galled them so with our culverins and bombardels."

"Duke George's famous Fat Peg herself could not have done better than our little leathern vixens," said Alt Pikker, rubbing his grey badger's brush contentedly. "Gott, if we had only provender and water we might keep them out of the city for ever! But in a week they will certainly have cut off our river and sent it down the new channel, and the wells are not enough for half the citizens, to say nothing of the cattle and horses. This is a great fuss to make about a graceless young jackanapes of a Jutlander like you, Master Maurice von Lynar, Count von Loen--wedded wife of his Highness Prince Louis of Courtland. Ha! ha!

ha!"

"I would have you know, sirrah," cried the Sparhawk, "that if you do not treat me as your liege lady ought to be treated, I will order you to the deepest dungeon beneath the castle moat! Come and kiss my hand this instant, both of you!"

"Promise not to box our ears, and we will," said Alt Pikker and George the Hussite together.

"Well, I will let you off this time," said Maurice royally, stretching his limbs luxuriously and putting one hosened foot on the mantel-shelf as high as his head. "Heigh-ho! I wonder how long it will last, and when we must surrender."

"Prince Louis must send his Muscovites back beyond the Alla first, and then we will speak with him concerning giving him up his wife!" quoth Peter Balta.

"I wonder what the craven loon will do with her when he gets her," said Alt Pikker. "You must not surrender in your girdle-brace and ring-mail, my liege lady, or you will have to sleep with them on. It would not be seemly to have to call up half a dozen l.u.s.ty men-at-arms to help untruss her ladyship the Princess of Courtland!"

"Perhaps your goodman will kiss you upon the threshold of the palace as a token of reconciliation!" cackled Hussite George.

"If he does, I will rip him up!" growled Maurice, aghast at the suggestion. "But there is no doubt that at the best I shall be between the thills when they get me once safe in Courtland. To ride the wooden horse all day were a pleasure to it!"

But presently his face lighted up and he murmured some words to himself--

"Yet, after all, there is always the Princess Margaret there. I can confide in her when the worst comes. She will help me in my need--and, what is better still, she may even kiss me!"

And, spite of gloomy antic.i.p.ations, his ears tingled with happy expectancy, when he thought of opportunities of intimate speech with the lady of his heart.

Nevertheless, in the face of brave words and braver deeds, provisions waxed scarce and dear in Castle Kernsberg, and in the town below women grew gaunt and hollow-cheeked. Then the children acquired eyes that seemed to stand out of hollow purple sockets. Last of all, the stout burghers grew thin. And all three began to dream of the days when the good farm-folk of the blackened country down below them, where now stood the leafy lodges of the Muscovites and the white tents of the Courtlanders, used to come into Kernsberg to market, the great solemn-eyed oxen drawing carts full of country sausages, and brown meal fresh ground from the mill to bake the wholesome bread--or better still when the stout market women brought in the lappered milk and the b.u.t.ter and curds. So the starving folk dreamed and dreamed and woke, and cried out curses on them that had waked them, saying, "Plague take the hands that pulled me back to this gutter-dog's life! For I was just a-sitting down to dinner with a haunch of venison for company, and such a lordly trout, b.u.t.tered, with green sauce all over him, a loaf of white bread, crisp and crusty, at my elbow, and--Holy Saint Matthew!--such a n.o.ble flagon of Rhenish, holding ten pints at the least."

About this time the Sparhawk began to take counsel with himself, and the issue of his meditations the historian must now relate.

It was in the outer chamber of the d.u.c.h.ess Joan, which looks to the north, that the three captains usually sat--burly Peter Balta, stiff-haired, dry-faced, keen-eyed--Alt Pikker, lean and leathery, the life humour within him all gone to fighting juice, his limbs mere bone and muscle, a certain acrid and caustic wit keeping the corners of his lips on the wicker, and, a little back from these two, George the Hussite, a smaller man, very solemn even when he was making others laugh, but nevertheless with a proud high look, a stiff upper lip, and a moustache so huge that he could tie the ends behind his head on a windy day.

These three had been speaking together at the wide, low window from which one can see the tight little red-roofed town of Kernsberg and the green Kernswater lying like a bright many-looped ribbon at the foot of the hills.

To them entered the Sparhawk, a settled frown of gloom upon his brow, and the hunger which he shared equally with the others already sharpening the falcon hook of his nose and whitening his thin nostrils.

At sight of him the three heads drew apart, and Alt Pikker began to speak of the stars that were rising in the eastern dusk.

"The dog-star is white," he said didactically. "In my schooldays I used to read in the Latin tongue that it was red!"

But by their interest in such a matter the Sparhawk knew that they had been speaking of far other things than stars before he burst open the door. For little George the Hussite pulled his pandour moustaches and muttered, "A plague on the dog-star and the foul Latin tongue. They are only fit for the gabble of fat-fed monks. Moreover, you do not see it now, at any rate. For me, I would I were back under the Bohemian pinetrees, where the very wine smacks of resin, and where there is a sheep (your own or another's, it matters not greatly) tied at every true Hussite's door."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "These three had been speaking together." [_Page 186_]]

"What is this?" cried the Sparhawk. "Do not deceive me. You were none of you talking of stars when I came up the stairs. For I heard Peter Balta's voice say, 'By Heaven! it must come to it, and soon!' And you Hussite George, answered him, 'Six days will settle it.' What do you keep from me? Out with it? Speak up, like three good little men!"

It was Alt Pikker who first found words to answer.

"We spoke indeed of the stars, and said it was six days till the moon should be gone, and that the time would then be ripe for a sally by the--by the--Pla.s.senburg Gate!"

"Pshaw!" cried the Sparhawk. "Lie to your father confessor, not to me. I am not a purblind fool. I have ears, long enough, it is true, but at least they answer to hear withal. You spoke of the wells, I tell you; I saw your heads move apart as I entered; and then, forsooth, that dotard Alt Pikker (who ran away in his youth from a monk's cloister-school with the nun that taught them stocking-mending) must needs furbish up some sc.r.a.ps of Latin and begin to prate about dog-stars red and dog-stars white. Faugh! Open your mouths like men, set truthful hearts behind them, and let me hear the worst!"

Nevertheless the three captains of Kernsberg were silent awhile, for heaviness was upon their souls. Then Peter Balta blurted out, "G.o.d help us! There is but ten days more provender in the city, the river is turned, and the wells are almost dried up!"

After this the Sparhawk sat awhile on the low window seat, watching the twinkling fires of the Muscovites and listening to the hum of the town beneath the Castle--all now sullen and subdued, no merry hucksters chaffering about the church porches, no loitering lads and la.s.ses linking arms and bartering kisses in the dusky corners of the linen market, no clattering of hammers in the armourers' bazaar--a m.u.f.fled buzzing only, as of men talking low to themselves of bitter memories and yet dismaller expectations.

"I have it!" said the Sparhawk at last, his eyes on the misty plain of night, with its twinkling pin-points of fire which were the watch-fires of the enemy.

The three men stirred a little to indicate attention, but did not speak.

"Listen," he said, "and do not interrupt. You must deliver me up. I am the cause of war--I, the d.u.c.h.ess Joan. Hear you? I have a husband who makes war upon me because I contemn his bed and board. He has summoned the Muscovite to help him to woo me. Well, if I am to be given up, it is for us to stipulate that the armies be withdrawn, first beyond the Alla, and then as far as Courtland. I will go with them; they will not find me out--at least, not till they are back in their own land."

"What matter?" cried Balta. "They would return as soon as they discovered the cheat."

"Let us sink or swim together," said Hussite George. "We want no talk of surrender!"

But grey dry Alt Pikker said nothing, weighing all with a judicial mind.

"No, they would not come back," said the Sparhawk; "or, at worst, we would have time--that is, you would have time--to revictual Kernsberg, to fill the tanks and reservoirs, to summon in the hillmen. They would soon learn that there had been no Joan within the city but the one they had carried back with them to Courtland. Pla.s.senburg, slow to move, would have time to bring up its men to protect its borders from the Muscovite. All good chances are possible if only I am out of the way.

Surrender me--but by private treaty, and not till you have seen them safe across the fords of the Alla!"

"Nay, G.o.d's truth;" cried the three, "that we will not do! They would kill you by slow torture as soon as they found out that they had been tricked."

"Well," said the Sparhawk slowly, "but by that time they _would_ have been tricked."

Then Alt Pikker spoke in his turn.

"Men," he said, "this Dane is a man--a better than any of us. There is wisdom in what he says. Ye have heard in church how priests preach concerning One who died for the people. Here is one ready to die--if no better may be--for the people!"

"And for our d.u.c.h.ess Joan!" said the Sparhawk, taking his hat from his head at the name of his mistress.

"Our Lady Joan! Aye, that is it!" said the old man. "We would all gladly die in battle for our lady. We have done more--we have risked our own honour and her favour in order to convey her away from these dangers.

Let the boy be given up; and that he go not alone without fit attendance, I will go with him as his chamberlain."

The other two men, Peter Balta and George the Hussite, did not answer for a s.p.a.ce, but sat pondering Alt Pikker's counsel. It was George the Hussite who took up the parable.

"I do not see why you, Alt Pikker, and you, Maurice the Dane, should hold such a pother about what you are ready to do for our Lady Joan. So are we all every whit as ready and willing as you can be; and I think, if any are to be given up, we ought to draw lots for who it shall be.

You fancy yourselves overmuch, both of you!"

The Sparhawk laughed.

"Great tun-barrelled dolt," he said, clapping Peter on the back, "how sweet and convincing it would be to see you, or that canting ale-faced knave George there, dressed up in the girdle-brace and steel corset of Joan of the Sword Hand! And how would you do as to your beard? Are you smooth as an egg on both cheeks as I am? It would be rare to have a d.u.c.h.ess Joan with an inch of blue-black stubble on her chin by the time she neared the gates of Courtland! Nay, lads, whoever stays--I must go.

In this matter of brides I have qualities (how I got them I know not) that the best of you cannot lay claim to. Do you draw lots with Alt Pikker there, an you will, as to who shall accompany me, but leave this present Joan of the Sword Hand to settle her own little differences with him who is her husband by the blessing of Holy Church."

And he threw up his heels upon the table and plaited his knees one above the other.

Then it was Alt Pikker's time.