My Lady Rotha Part 50

'Upstairs, your excellency, upstairs!' he cried. 'You will find him there. Why should I----'

'Hush!' one of the other men said, and I felt his grasp on my arm relax. 'What is that, captain--that noise?'

But Ludwig was intent on the Waldgrave. 'Upstairs!' he continued to cry, waving his hand in that direction. 'I a.s.sure you, my lord----'

'Steady!' the man who had cut him short before exclaimed. 'They are at the door, Ludwig. Listen, man, listen, or we shall be taken like wolves in a trap!'

This time Ludwig condescended to listen, scowling. A noise like that made by a rat gnawing at wood could be heard. My heart beat fast and faster. The man who had given the alarm had released my arm altogether. The other held me carelessly.

With a yell which startled all, I burst suddenly from him and sprang past the Waldgrave. Bound as I was, I had the start and should have been on the stairs in another second, when, with a crash and a blinding glare, a shock, which loosened the very foundations of the house, flung me on my face.

I lay a moment, gasping for breath, wondering where I was hurt. Out of the darkness round me came a medley of groans and shrieks. The air was full of choking smoke, through which a red glare presently shone, and grew gradually brighter. I could see little, understand less of what was happening; but I heard shots and oaths, and once a rush of charging feet pa.s.sed over me.

After that, growing more sensible, I tried to rise, but a weight lay on my legs--my arms were still tied--and I sank again. I took the fancy then that the house was on fire and that I should be burned alive; but before I had more than tasted the horror of the thought, a crowd of men came round me, and rough hands plucked me up.

'Here is another of them!' a voice cried. 'Have him out! To the churchyard with him! The trees will have a fine crop!'

'Halloa! he is tied up already!' a second chimed in.

I gazed round stupidly, meeting everywhere vengeful looks and savage faces.

A butcher, with his axe on his shoulder, hauled at me. 'Bring him along!' he shouted. 'This way, friends! Hurry him. To the churchyard!'

My wits were still wool-gathering, and I should have gone quietly; but a man pushed his way to the front and looked at me. 'Stop! stop!' he cried in a voice of authority. 'This is a friend. This is the man who got in by the roof. Cut the ropes, will you? See how his hands are swollen. That is better. Bring him out into the air. He will revive.'

The speaker was Herr Krapp. In a moment a dozen friendly arms lifted me up and carried me through the crowd, and set me down in the little court. The cool night air swept my brow. I looked up and saw the stars shining in the quiet heaven, and I leant against the wall, sobbing like a woman.

CHAPTER x.x.x.

THE END OF THE DAY.

Ludwig was found dead in the hall, slain on the spot by the explosion of the petard which had driven in the door. His two comrades, less fortunate, were taken alive, and, with the hag who kept the house, were hanged within the hour on the elms in St. Austin's churchyard.

The Waldgrave and Neumann, both wounded, the former by the explosion and the latter in his desperate resistance, were captured and held for trial. But Tzerclas, the chief of all, arch-tempter and arch-traitor, vanished in the confusion of the a.s.sault, and made his escape, no one knew how. Some said that he went by way of a secret pa.s.sage known only to himself; some, that he had a compact with the devil, and vanished by his aid; some, that he had friends in the crowd who sheltered him.

For my part, I set down his disappearance to his own cool wits and iron nerves, and asked no further explanation.

For an hour the little dark court behind the ill-omened house seethed with a furious mob. No sooner were one party satisfied than another swept in with links and torches and ransacked the house, tore down the panels, groped through the cellars, and probed the chimneys; all with so much rage, and with gestures so wild and extravagant, that an indifferent spectator might have thought them mad. Nor were those who did these things of the lowest cla.s.s; on the contrary, they were mostly burghers and traders, solid townsfolk and their apprentices, men who, with wives and daughters and sweethearts, could not sleep at night for thoughts of storm and sack, and in whom the bare idea that they had amongst them wretches ready to open the gates, was enough to kindle every fierce and cruel pa.s.sion.

I stood for a time unnoticed, gazing at the scene in a kind of stupor, which the noise and tumult aggravated. Little by little, however, the cool air did its work; memory and reason began to return, and, with anxiety awaking in my breast, I looked round for Herr Krapp. Presently I saw him coming towards me with a leather flask in his hand.

'Drink some of this,' he said, looking at me keenly. 'Why so wild, man?'

'The girl?' I stammered. I had not spoken before since my release, and my voice sounded strange and unnatural.

'She is safe,' he answered, nodding kindly. 'I was at my window when she swung herself on to the roof by the rope which you left hanging.

Donner! you may be proud of her! But she was distraught, or she would not have tried such a feat. She must inevitably have fallen if I had not seen her. I called out to her to stand still and hold fast; and my son, who had come upstairs, ran down for a twelve-foot pike. We thrust that out to her, and, holding it, she tottered along the pike to my window, where I caught her skirts, and we dragged her in in a moment.'

I shuddered, remembering how I had suffered, hanging above the yawning street. 'I suppose that it was she who warned you and sent you here?'

I said.

'No,' he answered. 'This house had been watched for two days, though I did not tell you so. We had been suspicious of it for a week or more, or I should not have helped you into a neighbour's house as I did.

However, all is well that ends well; and though we have not got that bloodthirsty villain to hang, we have stopped his plans for this time.'

He was just proposing that, if I now felt able, I should return to my lady's, when a rush of people from the house almost carried me off my feet. In a moment we were pushed aside and squeezed against the wall.

A hoa.r.s.e yell, like the cry of a wild beast, rose from the crowd, a hundred hands were brandished in the air, weapons appeared as if by magic. The glare of torches, falling on the raging sea of men, picked out here and there a scared face, a wandering eye; but for the most part the mob seemed to feel only one pa.s.sion--the thirst for blood.

'What is it?' I shouted in Herr Krapp's ear.

'The prisoners,' he answered. 'They are bringing them out. Your friend the Waldgrave, and the other. They will need a guard.'

And truly it was a grim thing to see men make at them, striking over the shoulders of the guard, leaping at them wolf-like, with burning eyes and gnashing teeth, striving to tear them with naked hands. Down the narrow pa.s.sage to the churchyard the soldiers had an easy task; but in the open graveyard, whither Herr Krapp and I followed slowly, the party were flung this way and that, and tossed to and fro--though they were strong men, armed, and numbered three or four score--like a cork floating on rapids. Their way lay through the Ritter Stra.s.se, and I went with them so far. Though it was midnight, the town, easily roused from its feverish sleep, was up and waking. Scared faces looked from windows, from eaves, from the very roofs. Men who had s.n.a.t.c.hed up their arms and left their clothes peered from doorways. The roar of the mob, as it swayed through narrow ways, rose and fell by turns, now loud as the booming of cavern-waves, now so low that it left the air quivering.

When it died away at last towards the Burg, I took leave of Herr Krapp, and hurried to my lady's, pa.s.sing the threshold in a tumult of memories, of emotions, and thankfulness. I could fancy that I had lived an age since I last crossed it--eight hours before. The house, like every other house, was up. Herr Krapp had sent the news of my escape before me, and I looked forward with a tremulous, foolish expectation that was not far from tears to the first words two women would say to me.

But though men and women met me with hearty greetings on the threshold, on the stairs, on the landing, and Steve clapped me on the back until I coughed again, _they_ did not appear. It was after midnight, but the house was still lighted as if the sun had just set, and I went up to the long parlour that looked on the street. My heart beat, and my face grew hot as I entered; but I might have spared myself. There was only Fraulein Max in the room.

She came towards me, blinking. 'So Sancho Panza has turned knight-errant,' she said with a sneer, 'as well as Governor?'

I did not understand her, and I asked gently where my lady was.

She laughed in her gibing way. 'You beg for a stone and expect bread,'

she said. 'You care no more where my lady is than where I am! You mean, where is your Romanist chit, with her white face and wheedling ways.'

I saw that she was bursting with spite; that Marie's return and the stir made about it had been too much for her small, jealous nature, and I was not for answering her. She was out of favour; let her spit, her venom would be gone the sooner. But she had not done yet.

'Of course she has had some wonderful adventures!' she continued, her face working with malice and ill-nature. 'And we are all to admire her. But to a lover does she not seem somewhat _blandula, vagula?_ Here to-day and gone to-morrow. _Dolus latet in generalibus_, the Countess says'--and here the Dutch girl mimicked my lady, her eyes gleaming with scorn. 'But _dolus latet in virginibus_, too, Master Martin, as you will find some day! Oh, a great escape, a heroic escape,--but from her friends!'

'If you mean to infer, Fraulein----' I said hotly.

'Oh, I infer nothing. I leave you to do that!' she replied, smirking.

'But pigs go back to the dirt, I read. You know where you found her and the brat!'

'I know where we should all be to-day,' I cried, trembling with indignation, 'if it had not been for her!'

'Perhaps not worse off than we are now,' she snapped. 'However, keep your eyes shut, if it pleases you.'

My raised voice had reached the Countess's chamber, and as Fraulein Max, giggling spitefully, went out through one door the other opened and stood open. My anger melted away. I stood trembling, and looking, and waiting.

They came in together, my lady with her arm round Marie, the two women I loved best in the world. I have heard it said that evil runs to evil as drops of water to one another. But the saying is equally true of good. Little had I thought, a few weeks back, that my lady would come to treat the outcast girl from Klink's as a friend; nor I believe were there ever two people less alike, and yet both good, than these two.

But that one quality--which is so quick to see its face mirrored in another's heart--had brought them close together, and made each to recognise the other; so that, as they came in to me, there was not a line of my lady's figure, not a curve of her head, not a glance of her proud eyes, that was not in sympathy with the girl who clung to her--Romanist stranger, low born as she was. I looked and worshipped, and would have changed nothing. I found the dignity of the one as beautiful as the dependence of the other.

Not a word was spoken. I had wondered what they would say to me--and they said nothing. But my lady put her into my arms, and she clung to me, hiding her face.

The Countess laughed, yet there were tears in her voice. 'Be happy,'

she said. 'Child, from the day you were lost he never forgave me.