Joan of the Sword Hand Part 64

"One other revenge I have which I shall keep till the last. It shall be as sweet to me as yours to you. I shall draw it out lingeringly that I may drain all its sweetness. It concerns the upstart springald whom the Princess Margaret had the bad taste to prefer to me. Not that I cared a jot for the Princess. My taste is far other" (here he looked up tenderly); "but the Princess I must wed, as maid or widow I care not. I take her provinces, not herself; and these must be mine by right of fief and succession as well as by right of conquest. The way is clear. That piece of carrion which men called by a prince's name was carried out a while ago. Conrad the priest, who is a man, shall die like a man. And I, Ivan, and Holy Russia shall enter in. By the right of Margaret, sole heir of Courtland, city and province shall be mine; Kernsberg shall be mine; Hohenstein shall be mine. Then mayhap I will try a fall for Pla.s.senburg and the Mark with the Executioner's Son and his little housewife. But sweeter than all shall be my revenge upon the man I hate--upon him who took his betrothed wife from Ivan of Muscovy."

"Ah," said Theresa von Lynar, "it will indeed be sweet! And what shall be your worthy and terrible revenge?"

"I have thought of it long--I have turned it over, this and that have I thought--of the smearing with honey and the anthill, of trepanning and the worms on the brain--but I have fixed at last upon something that will make the ears of the world tingle----"

He leaned forward and whispered into the ear of Theresa von Lynar the terrible death he had prepared for her only son. She nodded calmly as she listened, but a wonderful joy lit up the woman's face.

"I am glad I came hither," she murmured, "it is worth it all."

Prince Ivan took her hand in both of his and pressed it fondly.

"And you shall be gladder yet," he said, "my Lady Theresa. I have something to say. I had not thought that there lived in the world any woman so like-minded, even as I knew not that there lived any woman so beautiful. Together you and I might rule the world. Shall it be together?"

"But, Prince Ivan," she interposed quickly, but still smiling, "what is this? I thought you were set on wedding the Princess Margaret. You were to make her first widow and then wife."

"Theresa," he said, looking amorously up at her, "I marry for a kingdom.

But I wed the woman who is my mate. It is our custom. I must give the left hand, it is true, but with it the heart, my Theresa!"

He was on his knees before her now, still clasping her fingers.

"You consent?" he said, with triumph already in his tone.

"I do not say you nay!" she answered, with a sigh.

He kissed her hand and rose to his feet. He would have taken her in his arms, but a noise in the pavilion disturbed him. He went quickly to the curtain and peeped through.

"It is nothing," he said, "only the men come to fetch the powder for the Margraf's cannon. But the night speeds apace. In an hour we a.s.sault."

With an eager look on his face he came nearer to her.

"Theresa," he said, "a soldier's wooing must needs be brisk and speedy.

Yours and mine yet swifter. Our revenge beckons us on. Do you abide here till I return--with those good friends whose names we have mentioned.

But now, ere I go forth, pledge me but once your love. This is our true betrothal. Say, 'I love you, Ivan!' that I may keep it in my heart till my return!"

Again he would have taken her in his arms, but Theresa turned quickly, finger on lip. She looked anxiously towards the back of the tent where lay the dead prince. "Hush! I hear something!" she said.

Then she smiled upon him--a sudden radiance like sunshine through rain-clouds.

"Come with me--I am afraid of the dark!" she said, almost like a child.

For great is the guile of woman when her all is at stake.

Theresa von Lynar opened the latch of a horn lantern which dangled at a pole and took the taper in her left. She gave her right hand with a certain gesture of surrender to Prince Ivan.

"Come!" she said, and led him within the inner pavilion. A dim light sifted through the open flap by which the men had gone out with their load of powder. Day was breaking and a broad crimson bar lay across the path of the yet unrisen sun. Theresa and Prince Ivan stood beside the dead. He had been roughly thrown down on the pile of boxes which contained the powder manufactured by the Margraf's alchemists according to the famous receipt of Bertholdus Schwartz. The lid of the largest chest stood open, as if the men were returning for yet another burden.

"Quick!" she said, "here in the presence of the dead, I will whisper it here, here and not elsewhere."

She brought him close to her with the gentle compulsion of her hand till he stood in a little angle where the red light of the dawn shone on his dark handsome face. Then she put an arm strong as a wrestler's about him, pinioning him where he stood. Yet the gracious smile on the woman's lips held him acquiescent and content.

She bent her head.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'The pa.s.sword, Prince--do not forget the pa.s.sword!'"

[_Page 379_]]

"Listen," she said, "this have I never done for any man before--no, not so much as this! And for you will I do much more. Prince Ivan, you speak true--death alone must part you and me. You ask me for a love pledge. I will give it. Ivan of Muscovy, you have plotted death and torture--the death of the innocent. Listen! I am the wife of Henry of Kernsberg, the mother of the young man Maurice von Lynar whom you would slay by horrid devices. Prince, truly you and I shall die together--and the time is _now_!"

Vehemently for his life struggled Prince Ivan, twisting like a serpent, and crying, "Help! Help! Treachery! Witch, let me go, or I will stab you where you stand." Once his hand touched his dagger. But before he could draw it there came a sound of rushing feet. The forms of many men stumbled up out of the gleaming blood-red of the dawn.

Then Theresa von Lynar laughed aloud as she held him helpless in her grasp.

"The pa.s.sword, Prince--do not forget the pa.s.sword! You will need it to-night at both inner and outer guard! I, Theresa, have not forgotten.

It is '_Henry the Lion_! _Remember!_'"

And Theresa dropped the naked candle she had been holding aloft into the great chest of dull black grains which stood open by her side.

And after that it mattered little that at the same moment beyond the Alla the trumpets of Hugo, Prince of Pla.s.senburg, blew their first awakening blast.

CHAPTER LIII

THE HEAD OF THE CHURCH VISIBLE

"So," said Pope Sixtus amicably, "your brother was killed by the great explosion of Friar Roger's powder in the camp of the enemy! Truly, as I have often said, G.o.d is not with the Greek Church. They are schismatics if not plain heretics!"

He was a little bored with this young man from the North, and began to remember the various distractions which were waiting for him in his own private wing of the Vatican. Still, the Church needed such young war-G.o.ds as this Prince Conrad. There were signs, too, that in a little she might need them even more.

The Pope's mind travelled fast. He had a way of murmuring broken sentences to himself which to his intimates showed how far his thoughts had wandered.

It was the Vatican garden in the month of April. Holy Week was past, and the mind of the Vicar of Christ dwelt contentedly upon the great gifts and offerings which had flowed into his treasury. Conrad could not have arrived more opportunely. Beneath, the eye travelled over the hundred churches of Rome and the red roofs of her palaces--to the Tiber no longer tawny, but well-nigh as blue as the Alla itself; then further still to the grey Campagna and the blue Alban Hills. But the Pope's eye was directed to something nearer at hand.

In an elevated platform garden they sat in a bower sipping their after-dinner wine. Beyond answering questions Conrad said little. He was too greatly astonished. He had expected a saint, and he had found himself quietly talking politics and scandal with an Italian Prince. The Holy Father's face was placid. His lips moved. Now and then a word or two escaped him. Yet he seemed to be listening to something else.

That which he looked at was an excavation over which thousands of men crawled, thick as ants about a mound when you thrust your stick among their piled pine-needles on Isle Rugen. Already at more than one point ma.s.sive walls began to rise. Architects with parchment rolls in their hands went to and fro talking to overseers and foremen. These were clad in black coats reaching below the waist, which made inky blots on the white earth-glare and contrasted with the striped blouses of the overseers and the naked bodies and red loin-cloths of the workmen.

Conrad blessed his former sojourns in Italy which enabled him to follow the fast-running river of the Pontiff's half-unconscious meditation, which was couched not in crabbed monkish Latin, but in the free Italic to which as a boy the Head of the Church had been accustomed.

"So your brother is dead!--(Yes, yes, he told me so before.) And a blessing of G.o.d, too. I never liked my brothers. Nephews and nieces are better, so be they are handsome. What, you have none? Then you are the heir to the kingdom--you must marry--you must marry!"

Conrad suddenly flushed fiery red.

"Holy Father," he said nervously, his eyes on the Alban Hills, "it was concerning this that I made pilgrimage to Rome--that I might consult your Holiness!"

The Pontiff nodded amicably and looked about him. At the far end of the garden, in a second creeper-enclosed arbour similar to that in which they sat, the Pope's personal attendants congregated. These were mostly gay young men in parti-coloured raiment, who jested and laughed without much regard for appearances, or at all fearing the displeasure of the Church's Head. As Conrad looked, one of them stood up and tossed over the wall a delicately folded missive, winged like a dart and tied with a ribbon of fluttering blue. Then, the moment afterwards, from beneath came the sound of girlish laughter, whereat all the young men, save one, craned their necks over the wall and shouted jests down to the unseen ladies on the balcony below.