The Mercenary Part 33

"In the next place, you can't get to Vienna!"

"Hardly without an escort! But you could persuade Count Tilly to give me a hundred men and two officers."

"It seems to me that Count Tilly would as soon go himself as part with half a company."

"He does not seem very willing, but I am relying on your persuasion, uncle."

"It is evident, Stephanie, that you cannot go at once. In a week or two more men may have come in. In a week or two the roads may be clear of the enemy. Promise me, dear niece, that you will defer the matter for ten days. You cannot grudge your old uncle ten days of your pleasant company!" The Bishop looked affectionately at her.

"For ten days longer, then, my uncle! Then escort or no escort, I must go."

"I will see what can be done!" said the Bishop.

The restlessness of the Archd.u.c.h.ess was by no means allayed. For in her mind events were singing "Wallenstein." Now or never, surely, did the portents point to Wallenstein. Where was the Emperor going to lay his hands on a weapon to defend himself even against Saxony? The Saxons were about to pour down into Bohemia. And after that Vienna lay defenceless.

As to Wallenstein's letter to Gustavus, so far from regarding it as evidence of treachery or of ingrat.i.tude, at the least she saw in it only design, design to lure Gustavus on to his own destruction by making him think that the greatest army-leader in all German lands was willing to serve him.

The Archd.u.c.h.ess told herself that the desire to see Wallenstein, to know his plans, to further them, was at the root of her eagerness to depart.

At Vienna she felt sure that in this crisis she would be strong enough to fight Father Lamormain on his own territory, and bring about the recall of the hero of her political dreams.

The Archd.u.c.h.ess repeated it to herself with an unnecessary insistence that bespoke questions arising within. When a woman acts from a single strong motive, the motive becomes less something perceived in the mind than felt in the heart, something that makes no room for gainsaying.

Whereas there was Nigel, this Scots colonel, this soldier without a fortune, who was so full of this thing, this vaporous thing, loyalty.

Colonel Charteris had not been brought up at court, still less any court in Europe. He had not acquired the ethics of the petty warfare that went on within every court, nor the still more elastic code of right and wrong as applied to the rivalries between court and court, nor a sympathy for the uncloaked knavery that dictated the moves in the game of treaties and alliances and attacks, provoked or unprovoked, that went on between the powers of France, of the United Provinces, of Spain, of Italy. To her all these things had been familiar. This soldier from the north country had seemed astounded that Wallenstein could act as he to all appearances had done. He had shown indignation, which not even her own royal presence had quelled. What a fiery soul beneath how n.o.ble a surface of manhood! She pictured him again and again with something of admiration, and admiration led her on, Archd.u.c.h.ess as she was, to ask which was the more commendable, the spirit of loyalty which was Nigel's, or the spirit of entirely personal ambition which she herself was fanning in Wallenstein. This question she answered by a subterfuge that loyalty was commendable in Nigel, the more so that nothing engaged him to it but his precious pay, but that personal ambition was the crown and essence of Wallenstein, and in him entirely laudable.

As to her ability to reach Vienna, the Archd.u.c.h.ess had no doubt. Whether she had an escort of six, or sixty, or six thousand, her daring and resolute mind would convey her body there in safety. Of that she was confident. A supremely beautiful woman, of high rank, possessed of money and of such resources of speech and intelligence as hers, would in the end defeat the Saxon, Swede, or Brandenburger who should endeavour to stay her path. The real danger of the journey lay more in ignorant soldiery or lawless freebooters than in generals or politicians. For this and this only she would continue to press for an escort.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

PREPARES THE GROUND.

Father Lamormain had sent for Nigel. This in itself was a relief from the daily dispiriting round. Nothing could have been duller than the court of Vienna six weeks or more after Breitenfeld. The news which, despite a disunited Germany in arms, came with frequency to Father Lamormain through his far-reaching Jesuit agencies as well as by the military messengers, was to the effect that Gustavus was besieging Wurzburg, and that the Elector of Saxony, John George, having recovered Leipzig, was now clearing his province of Lusatia of the Imperial troops, sent there under Rudolf von Tiefbach, before he set out to the conquest of Bohemia.

Nigel himself was fretting. For by this time Tilly had gathered an army and had reached the Rhine. Nigel would fain have been with him. He found employment in Vienna helping to enrol and drill the troops that were being enlisted with a view to resisting the threatened invasion of Bohemia by the Saxon Elector, but men came in slowly. And over every one and every action brooded a spirit of depression. The outlook since the crushing defeat of Breitenfeld was not a pleasant one. There was a vague belief that Tilly on the Rhine, Pappenheim, who had managed to reach Westphalia and raise men there, the Spaniards in Lorraine and the Rhenish Palatinate, and Maximilian in Bavaria, would in some way or other be too much for Gustavus. But there was no good news.

"How goes the recruiting, colonel?"

"Slowly! There is no spring in it, Father!"

"Ah! How many men do you think we shall have to meet John George?"

"That depends on Bohemia!"

"And Bohemia means?"

"Wallenstein!"

"I notice," said Father Lamormain, "that you do not p.r.o.nounce the name in the same tone of admiration you once used to?"

"It is, I suppose, Father, that my eyes have been opened since I first came to Vienna!"

"You have sent many faithful reports of his unfaith, of his encouragement of Protestant princes, even of his offers to serve Gustavus! And you think that if your belief is true, he is unworthy!"

"I should say vile!" Nigel broke in.

"Yet upon him rests the possibility of resistance in Bohemia?"

"He lives in state in Prague, so they say, with a court and a mult.i.tude of retainers. His name is still something to draw men!"

"And what do you say if I tell you that the Grand Turk meditates an invasion of Hungary?"

"You must make your peace with Saxony!"

"The Emperor has sent orders to Rudolf von Tiefbach to withdraw from Lusatia."

"Saxony will look upon that as a sign of weakness rather than amity, and will invade us the quicker."

"So I think!" said the Father with a sigh. "But the Emperor would have it so."

"When you spoke of Wallenstein as you did just now," he went on, "you showed that you did not understand Wallenstein's point of view." The Jesuit spoke in a contemplative, persuasive way.

"I cannot understand disloyalty!" Nigel interposed.

"But is it? This man was a Bohemian at a time when Bohemia was not even an appanage of the House of Austria. He offered to raise an army to a.s.sist the Catholic cause. He was successful. Wallenstein became great in name, in riches, with a great army marching to his orders, began to regard himself as one of the princes of Europe, one of the greatest. The Catholic League dismissed him. This was a great shock to his pride, but not to his riches or to his name. He still considered himself a prince, owning no hereditary allegiance to the Habsburgs, none, in fact, to any man, free to offer his services, his alliance, where he would. His plan has been to fan the wind of Protestantism, not because he loves it, but in order that he might raise the whirlwind of a gigantic war!"

"Yes?" Nigel was eagerly attentive.

"Then Gustavus came. Hesse, Saxony, all a.s.sisted in the incantation!

Tilly failed, Pappenheim failed! It is incredible how they failed."

Nigel said merely--

"Tilly failed because he departed from his original plan, and Pappenheim was out-fought. One mistake in a big battle is too many!"

"There is yet much that may happen. But we have still Saxony to deal with, and now the Grand Turk."

"It is possible that the Emperor might need Wallenstein again."

The Jesuit paused here and looked in a quizzical way at Nigel.

Nigel flushed. He could not understand Father Lamormain talking in this way, as if he was the defender of Wallenstein against obloquy, when a few months before the same Father Lamormain, in company with Maximilian, was resolutely opposed to Wallenstein, even against the Emperor's inclination.

"It is difficult to believe that the Emperor would not rather die on the battlefield at the head of a faithful few than submit to such a course!"