Red Axe, Samuel Rutherford Crockett [top novels TXT] 📗

and with Master Gerard von Sturm before me, had enough to do to tell my tale and answer his questions without troubling my head about green-eyed girls.
Master Gerard was as remarkable looking to the full as his daughter, with the same luminously green eyes. But the orbs which in the maid shone as steadily clear as the depths of the sea, in the father glittered opalescent where he sat in the dusk, like the eyes of Grimalkin cornered by dogs in some gloomy angle of the Wolfsberg wall.
As soon as I had set eyes on him I knew that I had to do with a man--not with a walking show like my Lord Duke Casimir. It struck me that for good or evil Master Gerard could carry through his intent to the bitter end, and that in council he would smile when he saw my father change his black vesture of trial for the red of beheading.
The Doctor Gerard was little seen in the streets of Thorn. Many citizens had never so much as set eyes on him. Nevertheless his hand was in everything. Some said he was a Jew, chiefly because none knew rightly what he was or whence he had come. Thirty years had gone by since he had suddenly appeared one day in the noble old house by the Weiss Thor, from which Graetz the wizard and his wife had been burned out by the fury of the populace. Twenty years of artistic labor had made this place what it now was. And the little impish maid who used to break unexpectedly upon the workmen of Thorn from behind doors, or who clapped hands upon their shoulders in dusky recesses, scaring them out of their wits with suggestions of witch-masters long dead and damned, had grown into this maid of the sea-green eyes and silken draperies.
"A good-day to you, Hugo Gottfried!" said Master Gerard, quietly, looking at me keenly across the table. He wore a skull-cap on his closely cropped head. One or two betraying locks of gray appeared under it in front, but did not conceal a flat forehead, which ran back at such an angle that, with the luminous eyes beneath it, it gave him the look of a serpent rearing his yellow head a little back in act to strike. This was a look his daughter had also. But in her the gesture was tempered by the free-playing curves of a beautiful throat and the forward thrust of a rounded chin--advantages not possessed by the angular anatomy and bony jaw of the famous doctor of law.
Master Gerard, clad in a long robe of black velvet from head to heel, sat bending his fingers gracefully together and looking at me. His head was thrown back, I have said, and the lights of the colored windows striking on his gray hair and black skull-cap, caused him to look much more like some lean ascetic ecclesiastic and prince of the church than the chief lawyer of the ancient capital of the Wolfmark.
"You were present at this child's play yester-eve in the hostel of the White Swan?" he asked, boring into me with his uncomfortable, triangular eyes.
"Aye, truly," said I, "and much they made of me!"
For since my father said that I was accounted a hero in this house, I had determined not to hide away my deeds in my leathern scrip. I had had enough practice in playing at modesty in the Tower of the Red Axe.
Master Gerard shook his shoulders as though he would have made me believe that he laughed.
"You were over many for thorn, I hear great silly fellows--children playing with fire yet afraid to burn themselves. Why, since ten this morning I have had them all here--stout burgomeister's sons, slim scions of the Burghershaft, moist-eyed corporation children, each more anxious than another to prove that he had nothing to do with any treason. He had but called in at the White Swan for a draught of Frederika's famous stone ale, and so--well, he found himself somehow in the rear, and, all against his will, was dragged into the Lair of the White Wolf!"
He looked at me quietly, without speaking, for a while.
"And you, Master Hugo, did you go thither to distinguish yourself by breaking up their child's folly, or, like the others, to taste the stone ale?"
It was a question I had not expected. But it was best to be very plain with Master Gerard.
"I went," I replied, "along with Michael Texel, because he asked me. I knew not in the least what I was to see, but I was ready for anything."
"And you acquitted yourself on the whole extremely well," he nodded; "so at least they are all very ready to say, hoping, I doubt not, for your good offices with the Duke when it comes to their turn. You flouted them right manfully and defied their mystery, they told me."
At this moment I became conscious that a door opposite me was open and the curtain drawn a little way back. There, in the half-light, I saw Mistress Ysolinde listening. She leaned her head aside as though it had been heavy with its weight of locks of burned gold. She pillowed her cheek against the door-post, and let her dreamy sea-green eyes rest upon me. And the look that was in them gave me a sense of pleasure strange and acute, as well as a restless uneasiness and vague desire to escape out under the blue sky, and mingle with the throng of every-day men on the streets of the city.
***


CHAPTER XI
THE VISION IS THE CRYSTAL
Master Gerard, however, did not seem to be aware of her presence, for he continued his catechism steadily.
"You mocked at their terrors, did you not, and told them that you, who had seen the teeth of the Duke's hounds, had nothing to fear from the bare gums of the White Wolf?"
"I knew that they but played," I answered, "and that I had little to fear."
For with Ysolinde von Sturm watching me with her eyes I could not for very shame's sake make myself great.
"You told them more than that," the girl cried, suddenly flashing on me a look keen as the light on a sword when it comes home from the cutler. "You told them that you too desired a freer commonwealth!"
"I did," said I, flushing quickly, for I had thought to keep my thumb on that.
Nevertheless I was not going back on my spoken word, even in the presence of Duke Casimir's inquisitor. Besides which I judged that my father had influence enough to bring me out scathless.
"That is well and bravely said!" he replied, smiling with thin lips which in all their constant writhings showed no vestige of teeth within; "but the sentiment itself is somewhat strange in the son of the Red Axe and the future Executioner of Justice in the Wolfmark."
Then for the first time I permitted my eyes to rest on the lithe figure of the girl in the doorway. Methought she inclined her head a little forward to catch my answer as if it had been a matter of interest to her.
"I am indeed son of the Red Axe," said I, "but my own head would underlie it rather than that I should ever be Hereditary Justicer of the Mark."
A smile that was meant for me passed over the girl's face and momently sweetened her lips. She straightened her body and set a hand more easily to her waist. A certain kindness dwelt in her emerald eyes.
"Never be Duke's Justicer!" cried Master Gerard, looking up with his hand on a skull. "This is unheard of! Are not you the only son of Gottfried Gottfried, right hand of Duke Casimir, highest in favor with his Grace? And within two years, according to the law of the headsman, must you not also don the Red and the Black and stand at the Duke's left hand, as your father at his right, when he sits in judgment?"
I bowed my head for answer.
"Even so," said I; "but long before that time I shall be either in a far country waging the wars of another lord, or in a country yet farther--that to which the men of my race have directed so many untimeously."
"Have you at all thought of the land or the lord to whom you would transfer your allegiance?" said Gerard von Sturm, carelessly rapping with his fingers on the bare white of the skull before him.
"I have not," I replied as easily.
He looked down a moment, and drew his black robe thoughtfully over his knee as if turning the matter over in his mind. "What think you of Plassenburg and the service of Prince Karl?" he said at last.
"The place is too near and the man a usurper," I replied, brusquely.
"I am not so sure," Master Gerard mused, slowly, "that it might not be advantageous to bide near home. Duke Casimir is mortal, after all--long and prosperously may he live!" (Here he inclined his head piously, while naming his master.) "But who knows how long he may be spared to reign over a loving people. And after that, why, there may be more usurpers. For by the name 'usurper' the ignorant mostly mean men of the strong heart and sure brain, who can hold that which they have with one hand and reach out for more with the other."
While he spoke thus he looked at me with his green eyes half closed.
"But," said I, calmly enough, though my heart beat fast, "I am but a lad untried. I may never rise beyond a private soldier. I may be killed at the first assault of my virgin campaign."
Master Gerard looked up quickly. He beckoned to his daughter. For though by no faintest gesture had he betrayed his knowledge of her presence, he had yet clearly known it all the time.
"Ysolinde," he said, "bring hither thy crystal!"
The maid disappeared and presently returned with a ball in her hand of some substance which looked like misty glass.
"I have been looking in it already," she said, "ever since Hugo Gottfried came out of the Red Tower."
Her voice was soft and even, with the same sough in it as of the wind among poplar-trees which I had heard in the rustle of her silken dress as she came up the stair.
"And what," asked her father, "have you seen in the crystal, child of my heart?"
He looked up at me with some little shamefacedness, or so I imagined.
"I am a dry old man of the law," he went on, "dusty of heart as these black books up yonder--books not of magic but of fact, of crime and pain and penalty. But this my daughter Ysolinde, wise from a child, solaces herself with the white, innocent magic, such as helps man and brings him nearer that which is unseen."
The maid knelt by her father's knee, and held the crystal ball in the hollow of her hands against the sable of his velvet robe. She passed one hand swiftly twice or thrice over her brow, as though to clear away some cobwebs, gossamer thin, that had folded themselves across her vision. Then, in the same wistful, wind-soft voice, she began to speak. And as she spoke all that I had loved and known began to pass from before me. I forgot my father. I forgot the Red Tower. I forgot (God forgive me, yet help it I could not!) the little Princess Playmate and her sweetest eyes. I forgot all else save this lithe, serpentine maiden with the massive crown of burned and tawny gold upon her head.
"I see," she began, "a long street and many men struggling on