The Red Axe Part 51

"You lie, fool!" she cried--"you lie! You think to frighten me. And even if it were true--thrice, four times fool to tell me! For shall not I, the Princess of Pla.s.senburg, the wife of the reigning Prince, stand for my own name and dignity. I would not help you now though a thousand fair heads, well-beloved, the desire of men, the envy of women, were to be rolled in the dust."

"Then farewell, Princess," I cried; "you are wronging to the death of deaths two that never did you wrong, who loved each other with the love of man and woman before ever you crossed their paths, and who since then have only sought your good. You wrong G.o.d also, and you lose your soul, divorcing it from the mercy of the Saviour of men. For be very sure that with that measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again."

She did not answer, but stood with her hand still against the door-post, her head raised, and her lips curling scornfully, looking after me as I retired with a smiling and malicious pleasure.

So, without further speech, I went out from the presence of the Lady Ysolinde. And thus she had the first part of her revenge.

CHAPTER L

THE DUNGEON OF THE WOLFSBERG

And now I must see the Little Playmate. Judge ye whether or no my heart was torn in twain as I went up the long High Street of Thorn, back to the Wolfsberg, alone. For I had compelled Dessauer to return to Bishop Peter's, in order to avert popular suspicion, since our real names and errands were not yet known there.

And when I parted from him the old man was so worn out that I looked momently for him to drop on the rough causeway stones of the street.

Many pictures of my youth pa.s.sed before me as I mounted towards the castle that night. I remembered the ride of the wild hors.e.m.e.n returning from the raid such long years agone, the old man who carried the babe, and the Red Axe himself, who now lay dead in the Tower--my father, Casimir's Justicer, clad now as then in crimson from head to heel.

Ere long I arrived at the Wolfsberg, and as I came near the Red Tower I saw that the gate was open. A little crowd of men with swords and partisans was issuing tumultuously from it. Then came six carrying a coffin. I stood aside to let them pa.s.s. And not till the last one brushed me did I ask what was their business abroad with a dead man at such a time of the night.

"'Tis one that had wrought much fear in his time," answered the soldier, for I had lighted on a sententious fellow--"one that made many swift ends, and now has come to one himself."

"You mean Gottfried Gottfried, the Duke's Justicer?" said I, speaking like one in a dream.

"Aye," he replied. "The Duke Otho is mightily afraid of the plague, and will not have a dead body over-night in his castle. Since they condemned the Saint Helena, G.o.d wot, the Duke is a fear-stricken man. He sleeps with half a dozen black riders at the back of his door, as though that made him any safer if a handful of minted gold were dealt out among the rascals. But when was a Prince ever wise?"

"My father's funeral," thought I. "Well, to-night it is, indeed, 'let the dead bury their dead'; Helene is yet alive!"

Surely I am not wanting in feeling, yet my heart was strangely chill and cold. Nevertheless, I turned and followed the procession a little way towards the walls. But even as I went, lo! the bell of the Wolfsberg slowly and brazenly clanged ten. I stopped. I had but two hours in which to visit the Little Playmate and tell her all.

"Good-bye, father," said I, standing with my hat off; "so you would wish me to do--you who met your G.o.d standing up--you who did an ill business greatly, because it was yours and you were born to it. Teach me, my father, to be worthy of you in this strait, to the like of which surely never was man brought before!"

The men-at-arms clattered roughly down the street, shifting their burden as if it had been so much kindling-wood, and quarrelling as to their turns. I heard their jests coming clear up the narrow street from far away.

I stood still as they approached a corner which they must turn.

I waved my hand to the coffin.

"Fare you well, true father; to-night and to-morrow may G.o.d help me also, like you, to meet my fate standing up!"

And the curve of the long street hid the ribald procession. My father was gone. I had made choice. The dead was burying his dead.

I went on towards the prison of the Wolfsberg; so it was nominated by a sort of grim superiority in that place which was all a prison--the castle which had lorded it so long over the red cl.u.s.tered roofs and stepped gables of Thorn, solely because it meant prisonment and death to the rebel or the refuser of the Duke's exactions.

Often had I seen the straggling procession of prisoners rise, head following head, up from that weary staircase, my father standing by, as they came up from the cells, counting his victims silently, like a shepherd who tells his flock as they pa.s.s through a gap in the sheepfold.

For me, alas! there was but one in that dread fold to-night. And she my one ewe lamb who ought to have lain in my bosom.

I clamored long at the gate ere I could make the drowsy jailer hear. As the minutes slipped away I grew more and more wild with fear and anger.

At midnight I must face the Duke, and it was after ten--how long I knew not, but I feared every moment that I might hear the brazen clang as the hammer struck eleven.

For time seemed to make no impression on me at all that night.

At last the man came, shuffling, grumbling, and cursing, from his truckle-bed.

"What twice-condemned drunken roysterer may you be, that hath mistaken the prison of Duke Otho for a trull-house?

"An order from the Duke--to see a prisoner! Come to-morrow then, and, meanwhile, depart to Gehenna. Must a man be forever at the beck and call of every sleepless sot? 'Urgent'--is the Duke's mandate. Shove it through the lattice then, that a lantern may flash upon it."

I pushed under the door a broad piece of gold, which proved more to the purpose than much speech.

The door was opened and I showed my pa.s.s. That and the gold together worked wonders.

The jailer rattled his keys, donned a hood and woollen wrapper which he took down from a nail, and went coughing before me down the chill, draughty pa.s.sages. I could hear the prisoners leaping from their couches within as the light of his cresset filtered beneath their doors. What hopes and fears stirred them! A summons, it might be, for some one in that dread warren to come up for a last look at the stars, a walk to the heading-place through the soft, velvet-dark night--then the block, the lightning flash of bright steel, a drench of something sweet and strong like wine upon the lips, and--silence, rest, oblivion.

But we pa.s.sed the prison doors one by one, and the jailer of the Wolfsberg went coughing and rasping by to another part of the prison.

"'Tis an ill place for chills," he grumbled. "I have never been free of them since first I came to this place, no--nor my wife neither. She has been dead these ten years, praises to the pyx! Ah, would you?" (The torch threatened to go out, so he held it downward in his hand till the pitch melted and caught again, and meanwhile we stood blinded in the smoke and glare which the strong draught forced in our faces.)

At last came the door, a low, iron-spiked grating, like any other of the hundred we had pa.s.sed.

"Key-metal is not often weared on this cell," the man chuckled. "Those stay not long above ground that bide here."

The door swung back on its creaking hinges. I slipped the fellow another gold piece.

"I must come in with you," he said; "you might do the wench an ill turn which would cheat the Duke of his show and me of my head to-morrow."

I slipped him another piece of gold, and then three together.

"Risk it, man," I said. "Have I not the Duke's own pa.s.s? I will do her no harm."

"Well," he said, "pray remember I am a man with five poor motherless children. My wife died of falling down a flight of steps ten years agone--praise the Lord for His mercies. For He is ever mindful of us, the sinful children of men."

The sound of his voice died away as the door closed. I turned, and was alone with the Beloved. The jailer had stuck the cresset in its niche behind the door, and its glow filled the little cell.

At first I could not see the Little Playmate--only a rough pallet bed and something white at the head of it. But as the cresset burned up more clearly, and my eyes became accustomed to the bleared and streaky light, I saw Helene, my love, kneeling at her bed's head.

I stood still and waited. Was she asleep? Was she--was she dead? I almost hoped that she might be. Then the Duke's vengeance would be balked indeed.

"Helene!" I said, softly, as one speaks to the dying--"Helene, dear, dear Helene!"

Slowly she looked up. Her face dawned on me as one day the face of the blessed angel will shine when he calls me out of purgatory.

"My love--my love!" she said, sweetly, like the first note of a hymn when the choir breathes the sweet music rather than sings it.

Ah, Lord of Innocence, that pure loving face, the purple deepness in the eyes, the flush on the cheek as on that of a little child asleep, the soft curled hair which crisped in the hollow of the neck--the throat itself--Eternal G.o.d, that I should be alive to think of the horror!