My Lady Rotha Part 23

'But shall you be in time for the battle?' she asked, her eyes shining.

'I hope so,' he replied, smiling. 'Or my part may be less glorious--to cut off the enemy's convoys.'

'I should not like that!' she exclaimed.

'Nevertheless, it is a very necessary function,' he said. 'As the Waldgrave Rupert will tell your excellency.'

The young lord agreed, and a moment later the general with his jingling attendants took his leave and clattered out and mounted before the door. My lady went to the window and waved adieu to him, and he lowered his great plumed hat to his stirrup.

'At noon?' he cried, making his horse curvet in the roadway.

'Without fail!' my lady answered gaily, and she stood at the window looking out until the last gleam of steel sank in a cloud of dust and the beggars closed in before the door.

The Waldgrave leaned against the wall behind her with his lips set and a grave face. But he said nothing, and when she turned he had a smile for her. It seemed to me that these two had changed places; the Waldgrave had grown older and my lady younger.

A few minutes before noon, Captain Ludwig and a sub-officer of the same rank, a Pole with long hair, came to conduct my lady to the scene of the match. They were arrayed in all their finery, and made a show of such etiquette as they knew. For our part we did not keep them waiting; five minutes saw us mounted and riding through the camp. This wore, to-day, a more martial and less disorderly appearance. The part we traversed was clear of women and gamesters, while sentries stationed at the gate, and a guard of honour which fell in behind us at the same spot, proved that the eye of the master could even here turn chaos into order. I do not know that the change pleased me much, for if it lessened my dread of the cutthroats by whom we were surrounded, it increased the awe in which I held their chief.

The shooting was fixed to take place in a narrow valley diverging from the river, a mile or more from the camp. It was a green, gently-sloping place, such as sheep love; but the sheep had long ago been driven into quarters, and the shepherd to the listing-sergeant or the pike. A few ruined huts told the tale; the hills which rose on either side were silent and untrodden.

Not so the valley itself, which lay bathed in sunshine. It roared with the babel of a great mult.i.tude. A straight course, two hundred yards in length, had been roped off for the shooting, and round this the crowd thronged and pushed, or, breaking here or there into fragments, wandered up and down outside the lines, talking and gesticulating, so that the place seemed to swarm with life and movement and colour.

I had seen such a spectacle and as large a crowd at Heritzburg--once a year, it may be. But there the gathering had not the wild and savage elements which here caught the eye; the hairy, swarthy faces and black, gleaming eyes, the wild garb, and brandished weapons and fierce gestures, that made this crowd at once curious and formidable. The babel of unknown tongues rose on every side. Poland and Lithuania, Scotland and the Rhine, equally with Hungary, Italy, and Bohemia, had their representatives in this strange army.

General Tzerclas and his staff occupied a mound near the lower end of the valley. On seeing our party approach, he rode down to meet us, followed by thirty or forty officers, whose dress and equipments, even more than those of their men, fixed the attention; for while some wore steel caps and clumsy cuira.s.ses, with silk sashes and greasy trunk-hose, others, better acquainted with the mode, affected huge flapped hats and velvet doublets, with falling collars of lace, and untanned boots reaching to the middle of the thigh. One or two wore almost complete armour; others, gay silks, stained with wine and weather. Their horses, too, were of all sizes, from tall Flemings to small, wiry Hungarians, and their arms were as various. One huge fat man, whose flesh swayed as he moved, carried a steel mace at his saddle-bow. Another swept along with a lance, raking the sky behind him. Great horse-pistols were common, and swords with blades so long that they ploughed the ground.

Varying in everything else, in one thing these warlike gentry agreed.

As they came prancing towards us, I did not see a face among them that did not repel me, nor one that I could look at with respect or liking.

Where dissipation had not set its seal so plainly as to oust all others, or some old wound did not disfigure, cruelty, greed, and recklessness were written large. The glare of the bully shone alike under flapped hat and iron cap. One might show a swollen visage, flushed with excess, and another a thin, white, cruel face; but that was all the odds.

The sight of such a crew should have opened my lady's eyes and enlightened her as to the position in which we stood. But women see differently from men. Too often they take swagger for courage, and recklessness for manhood. And, besides, the very defects of these men, their swashbuckling manners and banditti guise, only set off the more the perfect dress and quiet bearing of their leader, who, riding in their midst, seemed, with his cold, calm face and air of pride, like nothing so much as the fairy prince among the swine.

He wore a suit of black velvet, with a falling collar of Utrecht lace, and a white sash. A feather adorned his hat, and his furniture and sword-hilt were of steel. This, I afterwards learned, was a favourite costume with him. At odd times he relapsed into finery, but commonly he affected a simplicity which suited his air and features, and lost nothing by comparison with the tawdriness of his attendants.

He sprang from his horse at the foot of the slope, and, resigning it to a groom, took my lady's rein and, bareheaded, led her to the summit of the mound. The Waldgrave with Fraulein Anna followed, and the rest of us as closely as we could. The officers crowded thick upon us and would have edged us out, but I had primed my men, and though they quailed before the others' scowls and curses, they kept together, so that we not only had the advantage of watching the sport from a position immediately behind the Countess, but heard all that pa.s.sed.

At the end of the open s.p.a.ce I have mentioned stood three targets in a line. These were peculiar, for they consisted of dummies cased in leather, shaped so exactly to the form of men, that, at a distance of two hundred yards, it was only by the face I could tell that they were not men. Where the features should have been was a whitened circle, and on, the breast of each a heart in chalk. They were so life-like that they gave an air of savagery to the sport, and made me shudder.

When I had scanned them, I turned and found Captain Ludwig at my elbow.

'What is it?' he said, grinning. 'Our targets? Fine practice, comrade.

They are the general's own invention, and I have known them put to good use.'

'How?' I asked. He spoke under his breath. I adopted the same tone.

'You will know by, and by,' he answered, with a wink. 'Sometimes we find a traitor in the camp; or we catch a spy. Then--but you need not fear. Drawing-room practice to-day. There is no one in them.'

'In them?' I muttered, unable to take my eyes from his face.

He nodded. 'Ay, in them,' he answered, smiling at my look of consternation. 'Time has been I have known one in each, and cross-bow practice. That makes them squeal! With powder and a flint-lock--pouf!

It is all over. Unless you put the b.u.t.ter-fingers first; then there is sport, perhaps.'

Little wonder that after that I paid no attention to the shooting, which had begun; nor to the brawling and disagreement which from the first accompanied it, and which it needed all the general's authority to quell. I thought only of our position among these wretches. If I had felt any doubt of General Tzerclas' character before, the doubt troubled me no more.

But it did occur to me that Ludwig might be practising on me, and I turned to him sharply. 'I see!' I said, pretending that I had found him out. 'A good joke, captain!'

He grinned again. 'You would not call it one,' he said dryly, 'if you were once in the leather. But have it your own way. Come, there is a good shot, now. He is a Swiss, that fellow.'

But I could take no interest in the shooting, with that ghastly tale in my head. I felt for the moment the veriest coward. We were ten in the midst of two thousand--ten men and four helpless women! Our own strength could not avail us, and we had nothing else under heaven to depend upon, except the scruples, or interest, or fears of a mercenary captain; a man whose hardness the thin veil of politeness barely hid, who might be scrupulous, gentle, merciful--might be, in a word, all that was honourable. But whence, then, this story? Why this tale of cruelty, pa.s.sing the bounds of discipline?

It so disheartened me that for some time I scarcely noticed what was pa.s.sing before me; and I might have continued longer in this dull state if the Waldgrave's voice, civilly declining some proposition, had not caught my ear.

I gathered then what the offer was. Among the matches was one for officers, and in this the general was politely inviting his guest to compete. But the Waldgrave continued firm. 'You are very good,' he answered with perfect frankness and good temper. 'But I think I will not expose myself. I shoot badly with a strange gun.'

It was so unlike him to miss a chance of distinction, or underrate his merits, that I stared. He was changed, indeed, to-day; or he thought the position very critical, the need of caution very great.

The general continued to urge him; and so strongly that I began to think that our host had his own interests to serve.

'Oh, come,' he said, in a light, gibing tone which just stopped short of the offensive. 'You must not decline. There are five compet.i.tors--two Bohemians, a Scot, a Pole, and a Walloon; but no German. You cannot refuse to shoot for Germany, Waldgrave?'

The Waldgrave shook his head, however. 'I should do Germany small honour, I am afraid,' he said.

The general smiled unpleasantly. 'You are too modest,' he said.

'It is not a national failing,' the Waldgrave answered, smiling also.

'I fancy it must be,' the general retorted. 'And that is the reason we see so little of Germans in the war!'

The words were almost an insult, though a dull man, deceived by the civility of the speaker's tone, might have overlooked it. The Waldgrave understood, however. I saw him redden and his brow grow dark. But he restrained himself, and even found a good answer.

'Germany will find her champions,' he said, 'when she seriously needs them.'

'Abroad!' the general replied, speaking in a flash, as it were. The instant the word was said, I saw that he repented it. He had gone farther than he intended, and changed his tone. 'Well, if you will not, you will not,' he continued smoothly. 'Unless our fair cousin can succeed where I have failed, and persuade you.'

'I?' my lady said--she had not been attending very closely. 'I will do what I can. Why will you not enter, Rupert? You are a good shot.'

'You wish me to shoot?' the Waldgrave said slowly.

'Of course!' she answered. 'I think it is a shame General Tzerclas has so few German officers. If I could shoot, I would shoot for the honour of Germany myself.'

The Waldgrave bowed. 'I will shoot,' he said coldly.

'Good!' General Tzerclas answered, with a show of _bonhomie_. 'That is excellent. Will you descend with me? Each compet.i.tor is to fire two shots at the figure at eighty paces. Those who lodge both shots in the target, to fire one shot at the head only.'

The young lord bowed and prepared to follow him.

'Comrade,' Ludwig said in my ear, as I watched them go, 'your master had better have stood by his first word.'

'Why?'