My Lady Rotha Part 41

I had to listen to their amazement, and a hundred guesses and fancies, which, G.o.d help me! had nothing certain in them, and gave me no help.

The men searched both sides of the road, and beat the moor for a distance, and tried to track the horse--for that was missing too, and there lay my only hope--but to no purpose. At last my lady came to me and said sorrowfully that nothing more could be done.

'In the morning!' I cried jealously.

No one spoke, and I looked from one to another. The men had returned from the search, and stood in a dark group round the body, which they had drawn to the side of the road. It wanted an hour of daylight yet, and I could not see their faces, but I read in their silence the answer that no one liked to put into words.

'Be a man!' Steve muttered, after a long pause. 'G.o.d help the girl.

But G.o.d help us too if we are found here!'

Still my lady did not speak, and I knew her brave heart too well to doubt her, though she had been the first to talk of going. 'Get to horse,' I said roughly.

'No, no,' my lady cried at last. 'We will all stay, Martin.'

'Ay, all stay or all go!' Steve muttered.

'Then all go!' I said, choking down the sobs that would rise. And I turned first from the place.

I will not try to state what that cost me. I saw my girl's face everywhere--everywhere in the darkness, and the eyes reproached me.

That she of all should suffer, who had never fainted, never faltered, whose patience and courage had been the women's stay from the first--that she should suffer! I thought of the tender, weak body, and of all the things that might happen to her, and I seemed, as I went away from her, the vilest thing that lived.

But reason was against me. If I stayed there and waited on the road by the old crone's body until morning, what could I do? Whither could I turn? Marie was gone and already might be half a dozen miles away.

So the bonds of custom and duty held me. Dazed and bewildered, I lacked the strength that was needed to run counter to all. I was no knight-errant, but a plain man, and I reeled on through the last hour of the night and the first grey streaks of dawn, with my head on my breast and sobs of despair in my throat.

CHAPTER XXV.

NUREMBERG.

If it had been our fate after that to continue our flight in the same weary fashion we had before devised, lying in woods by day, and all night riding jaded horses, until we pa.s.sed the gates of some free city, I do not think that I could have gone through with it. Doubtless it was my duty to go with my lady. But the long hours of daylight inaction, the slow brooding tramp, must have proved intolerable. And at some time or other, in some way or other, I must have snapped the ties that bound me.

But, as if the loss of my heart had rid us of some spell cast over us, by noon of that day we stood safe. For, an hour before noon, while we lay in a fir-wood not far from Weimar, and Jacob kept watch on the road below, and the rest slept as we pleased, a party of horse came along the way, and made as if to pa.s.s below us. They numbered more than a hundred, and Jacob's heart failed him, lest some ring or buckle of our accoutrements should sparkle and catch their eyes. To shift the burden he called us, and we went to watch them.

'Do they go north or south?' I asked him as I rose.

'North,' he whispered.

After that they were nothing to me, but I went with the rest. Our lair was in some rocks overhanging the road. By the time we looked over, the hors.e.m.e.n were below us, and we could see nothing of them; though the sullen tramp of their horses, and the jingle of bit and spur, reached us clearly. Presently they came into sight again on the road beyond, riding steadily away with their backs to us.

'That is not General Tzerclas?' my lady muttered anxiously.

'Nor any of his people!' Steve said with an oath.

That led me to look more closely, and I saw in a moment something that lifted me out of my moodiness. I sprang on the rock against which I was leaning and shouted long and loudly.

'Himmel!' Steve cried, seizing me by the ankle. 'Are you mad, man?'

But I only shouted again, and waved my cap frantically. Then I slipped down, sobered. 'They see us,' I cried. 'They are Leuchtenstein's riders. And Count Hugo is with them. You are safe, my lady.'

She turned white and red, and I saw her clutch at the rock to keep herself on her feet. 'Are you sure?' she said. The troop had halted and were wheeling slowly and in perfect order.

'Quite sure, my lady,' I answered, with a touch of bitterness in my tone. Why had not this happened yesterday or the day before? Then my girl would have been saved. Now it came too late! Too late! No wonder I felt bitterly about it.

We went down into the road on foot, a little party of nine--four women and five men. The hors.e.m.e.n, as they came up, looked at us in wonder.

Our clothes, even my lady's, were dyed with mud and torn in a score of places. We had not washed for days, and our faces were lean with famine. Some of the women were shoeless and had their hair about their ears, while Steve was bare-headed and bare-armed, and looked so huge a ruffian the stocks must have yawned for him anywhere. They drew up and gazed at us, and then Count Hugo came riding down the column and saw us.

My lady went forward a step. 'Count Leuchtenstein,' she said, her voice breaking; she had only seen him once, and then under the mask of a plain name. But he was safety, honour, life now, and I think that she could have kissed him. I think for a little she could have fallen into his arms.

'Countess!' he said, as he sprang from his horse in wonder. 'Is it really you? Gott im Himmel! These are strange times. Waldgrave! Your pardon. Ach! Have you come on foot?'

'Not I. But these brave men have,' my lady answered, tears in her voice.

He looked at Steve and grunted. Then he looked at me and his eyes lightened. 'Are these all your party?' he said hurriedly.

'All,' my lady answered in a low voice. He did not ask farther, but he sighed, and I knew that he had looked for his child. 'I came north upon a reconnaissance, and was about to turn,' he said. 'I am thankful that I did not turn before. Is Tzerclas in pursuit of you?'

'I do not know,' my lady answered, and told him shortly of our flight, and how we had lain two days and a night in the osier-bed.

'It was a good thought,' he said. 'But I fear that you are half famished.' And he called for food and wine, and served my lady with his own hands, while he saw that we did not go without. 'Campaigner's fare,' he said. 'But you come of a fighting stock, Countess, and can put up with it.'

'Shame on me if I could not,' she answered.

There was a quaver in her voice, which showed how the rencontre moved her, how full her heart was of unspoken grat.i.tude.

'When you have finished, we will get to horse,' he said. 'I must take you with me to Nuremberg, for I am not strong enough to detach a party. But this evening we will make a long halt at Hesel, and secure you a good night's rest.'

'I am sorry to be so burdensome,' my lady said timidly.

He shrugged his shoulders without compliment, but I did not hear what he answered. For I could bear no more. Marie seemed so forgotten in this crowd, so much a thing of the past, that my gorge rose. No word of her, no thought of her, no talk of a search party! I pictured her forlorn, helpless little figure, her pale, uncomplaining face--I and no one else; and I had to go away into the bushes to hide myself. She was forgotten already. She had done all for them, I said to myself, and they forgot her.

Then, in the thicket screened from the party, I had a thought--to go back and look for her, myself. Now my lady was safe, there was nothing to prevent me. I had only to lie close among the rocks until Count Hugo left, and then I might plod back on foot and search as I pleased.

In a flash I saw the poplars, and the road running beneath the ash-tree, and the woman's body lying stiff and stark on the sward. And I burned to be there.

Left to myself I should have gone too. But the plan was no sooner formed than shattered. While I stood, hotfoot to be about it, and pausing only to consider which way I could steal off most safely, a rustling warned me that some one was coming, and before I could stir, a burly trooper broke through the bushes and confronted me. He saluted me stolidly.

'Sergeant,' he said, 'the general is waiting for you.'

'The general?' I said.

'The Count, if you like it better,' he answered. 'Come, if you please.'

I followed him, full of vexation. It was but a step into the road. The moment I appeared, some one gave the word 'Mount!' A horse was thrust in front of me, two or three troopers who still remained afoot swung themselves into the saddle; and I followed their example. In a trice we were moving down the valley at a dull, steady pace--southwards, southwards. I looked back, and saw the fir trees and rocks where we had lain hidden, and then we turned a corner, and they were gone.

Gone, and all round me I heard the measured tramp of the troop-horses, the swinging tones of the men, and the clink and jingle of sword and spur. I called myself a cur, but I went on, swept away by the force of numbers, as the straw by the current. Once I caught Count Hugo's eye fixed on me, and I fancied he had a message for me, but I failed to interpret it.

Steve rode by me, and his face too was moody. I suppose that we should all of us have thanked G.o.d the peril was past. But my lady rode in another part with Count Leuchtenstein and the Waldgrave; and Steve yearned, I fancy, for the old days of trouble and equality, when there was no one to come between us.