The Mercenary Part 14

"Yes, your Highness!"

"Did you see him?"

"I did, your Highness! He is my old commander. He wearies for a renewal of his service!"

"Ah!" It was almost a sigh. "It will come again. It was but yesterday I had a message from him asking me to use my offices with the Emperor. He spoke of you and sent me a packet to give you."

There was a cabinet much inlaid with ivory, from Milan, as the pages had told him, which stood near by, and the Archd.u.c.h.ess brought a little key from her chatelaine wallet and opened it, as if to show him the curious work within.

In one of the drawers which she pulled out was a leathern wallet.

Nigel's eye fastened greedily upon it. For it was the wallet in which he had carried the despatches.

"It looks," said Nigel, "as if it and I, your Highness, were old acquaintances thrust apart by circ.u.mstance. May I look within?"

The Archd.u.c.h.ess said, without any sign of interest, "It is for you, sir; open it."

Inside was the precious packet. Nigel could not restrain his eyes from glowing, his face from flushing, or his fingers from a little tremor. He turned it round. It was intact as he had lost it. The seal of Count Tilly was perfect.

"Your Highness is surely my good angel," he said gratefully, forgetting for the moment the old Ottilie von Thuringen in the new and glorious Archd.u.c.h.ess Stephanie. "This that Wallenstein has sent me will justify my coming hither. Without it I had been dubbed, and rightly, a blundering knave, for your Highness should know I was robbed of it in a forest while I slept, and with two sentries on guard."

"It was a fault Albrecht von Waldstein would have borne hardly, had he been Captain-General. But in this case Fortune has been kind to you."

Nigel bowed. "I would that your Highness would continue to represent the G.o.ddess in my regard."

She said nothing but some word of adieu, and pa.s.sed on her way solitary, gliding like a swan.

And before Nigel could form any opinion on this strange rencontre with the proud princess, one of the gentlemen-in-waiting came and begged his attendance in the audience-chamber.

CHAPTER XII.

NIGEL MEETS FATHER LAMORMAIN.

As Nigel pa.s.sed out of the gallery and crossed the landing at the top of another staircase, a door to the left of him opened from another gallery at right angles to the one he had just left, and two Jesuit priests came out in the dress of their order, shaven and tonsured. He saluted, and they acknowledged his salutation with a brief benediction in the Latin tongue and pa.s.sed on. The eyes of both seemed familiar to him, though for the moment, being bent upon his errand, he could not have told why.

The doors of the audience-chamber opened, and an officer of the household announced in a loud voice--

"Sire! The n.o.ble and high-born Captain Nigel Charteris with despatches from Tilly, Count of Tzerclaes!"

Nigel advanced, preceded by the gentleman-in-waiting, bowed three times as he did so, following the example set him, and presently stood at the Emperor's left hand, where stood the princ.i.p.al secretary, who received the despatches, and, having glanced at the seal, handed it to the Emperor, who, giving it to the Chancellor of the Empire, at his right hand, commanded him to break the seals.

The Emperor had acknowledged Nigel's presence at the side of his secretary with a slight but perceptible movement of the eyes, which rested upon him for a few seconds, and of the head, and then relapsed into an austere aloofness. Nigel, standing alert and ready for further business, if it should concern him, observed that Ferdinand was a man to all appearance of some fifty odd years, lean, of yellowish complexion, with eyes of a bluish tinge, dark-brown hair, a moustache twisted fiercely upwards, a short pointed beard with strands of grey in it, and dark scanty eyebrows. He wore a large stiff ruff about his neck. His doublet was of dark Genoese velvet, and a single gold chain suspended a medallion or badge of some order of knighthood. He sat in an easy att.i.tude, attentive, but as a man wearied of affairs, yet of that fixity of will that lets nothing go by him that he should set his hand to. The long, slightly aquiline nose, fleshy towards the point, together with the projecting tufted lower lip, proclaimed him Habsburg. His chair was raised upon a dais, so that he sat on a higher level by some inches than the great officers of the council who sat at the table.

Nigel could not help noticing the slenderness of his hands and the length of the tapering fingers, which were beyond the common measure of men's hands, and reminded him of the hands of Ottilie von Thuringen.

From the Emperor his gaze fell upon a familiar figure that of a man who sat back from the table, as if to give more play to his long legs, and at the Emperor's right hand.

It needed but a glance at the face, enn.o.bled by its fine expanse of forehead from which the hair had receded, and the flowing black locks, still making a brave show of plenty, which fell to his deep lace collar, to recognise Maximilian of Bavaria. The fine delicate dark brows, the large humorous dark eyes, the aquiline nose, the pointed chin decked with a pointed and unmistakably grey beard, the short upper lip with a soft flowing moustache, composed a face easy to remember, and somewhat suggestive of a life spent in thought and deep designs rather than in the field, where, however, he had borne no mean nor infrequent burden.

The Chancellor proceeded to read Count Tilly's despatch, which set forth with a brevity worthy of his reputation as a general the final operations before Magdeburg, the taking of the city, the number of men killed and wounded on both sides. Count Tilly here strongly commended the Bavarian General Pappenheim, who had rendered very notable a.s.sistance in the siege and storm. Then followed the roster of the army as it was on the morning of Nigel's departure, and an intimation that it was not possible to quarter the troops in the town itself on account of the destruction of the houses, and of the fear of pestilence. Pending further instructions, Count Tilly intimated that he should form a fortified camp not far from the city, making such excursions into the neighbouring country as might be necessary to continue the enforcement of the Edict, or to oppose the operations of Gustavus. In the event of the Electors of Saxony and Brandenburg, or either of them, declaring openly for Gustavus, he proposed to enter Saxony and endeavour to bring the Elector to submission.

The Emperor questioned Nigel as to the extent of the destruction of Magdeburg and the cause of it; and Nigel gave such answer as he was able, saying that, no quarter being given on either side, the entrance into the city was the cause of much bloodshed, owing to the tenacity of the burghers, many of whom set fire to their houses to entrap the soldiery and frustrate the sacking.

"You pa.s.sed through Erfurt, Plauen, and Eger?" the Emperor asked. "How was the Edict being received?"

"Erfurt and Eger, sire, are mainly of the Catholic faith, and have strong garrisons. Plauen would willingly have hung me and my escort, incited to rebellion by the news from Magdeburg!"

"But you escaped hanging, Captain?" the Emperor asked without a smile.

"I took the burghers unawares, and escaped by night!" said Nigel.

"You have our thanks, Captain! You will remain at Vienna some days till our plans are made, when you will receive our further orders. We shall recommend Count Tilly to advance you in rank for your services."

Nigel murmured a few words of thanks, and again bowing three times as he retreated, found himself outside the audience-chamber in company with the friendly gentleman-in-waiting who had ushered him in, very well pleased to have had such a favourable interview, and, where he had expected so lately as that very morning at least disgrace, to have received the promise of promotion, than which nothing could be more grateful to his ambition as a soldier.

The more he thought of the miraculous recovery of his wallet the less could he understand it. It must have been brought to Wallenstein by some emissary who had intercepted the robber. Or was it the man on the sorrel horse, that man of pots and phials and orbits and horoscopes, after all?

Had he sought to propitiate Wallenstein, and had Wallenstein, recognising his duty to the Emperor, taken this circuitous way of returning it to the messenger, knowing full well what penalty he might otherwise expect? Yes! That was the solution without doubt. His old admiration of Wallenstein as a commander was now strengthened by grat.i.tude towards him as a man.

And the Archd.u.c.h.ess? Pietro Bramante's conjuration was, if as inexplicable as ever, of the Archd.u.c.h.ess. Hence Wallenstein's exclamation, which he had only faintly heard in the midst of his own excitement. Some curious resemblance, no doubt, there must have been between the unknown Ottilie and the Archd.u.c.h.ess, but the method of sending the wallet proved that Wallenstein accepted the prediction in the faith that it was the Archd.u.c.h.ess Stephanie, who on her part had at least fulfilled the commission with a tact and secrecy that spoke of a willingness to respond to the wish of the sender.

He had, whilst working out this satisfactory conclusion, accompanied the gentleman aforesaid to the gardens of the palace, where, said his guide, he would probably find sufficient to amuse him for an hour or so, when he could easily find his way back to his quarters, and further arrangements would be made to entertain him.

There was a profusion of statuary. There were peac.o.c.ks. There were flowers arranged in precise beds, and short clipped hedges of green shrubs in the Italian fashion. The morning was sunny, and in his elation he found everything exceeding well. It was a golden day. He sauntered here and there.

And so by the merest chance did Father Lamormain, that peaceful refined priest, in a ca.s.sock which did credit to the tailor who fashioned it, though it was cut strictly according to the rule of the Jesuits.

Nigel had never set eyes on Father Lamormain, and, if he had heard of him, it was in the vague way in which people of middle station hear the name of the king's physician, or of the king's barber, and forget it.

Father Lamormain had not been at the audience. His duty was best done in the Emperor's private apartment, or in his own, to which even the Emperor repaired on occasions. But Father Lamormain knew quite well what had taken place, all that the Chancellor had read aloud and as much of it as the Chancellor had kept to himself. For Father Lamormain was not for nothing the most trusted Jesuit in the country east of the Rhine.

At first Nigel pa.s.sed the priest, who was to all appearance a Jesuit, with a bow. The priest desisted from telling his beads and bowed also.

In their saunter they bowed again, and the priest very gently expressed a hope that Nigel was "enjoying the beauty of the morning."

"Father," said Nigel, "it is indeed a fair morning, but good news makes the worst of mornings joyous!"

"Ah, youth! Ah, youth, the beautiful!" said the Father. "Youth is the season when one has good news! In after years the news never seems wholly good. There is always some little drawback."

Nigel inclined his head deferentially. Middle-aged men always spoke in this way. They were jealous of youth. But being in great spirits he thought to humour the priest, and said--

"There speaks a wide experience and a wide knowledge!"

"Surely," said the priest, "you are of the Scottish nation, and a soldier! Am I right, sir?"

"What makes you think so?" said Nigel, much amused.

"In the first place, the Scottish gentlemen are amongst the most courteous of men, and p.r.o.nounce German very well; and as to the second, one could not miss that you were a soldier by your bearing."