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

Thorn, hearing and seeing naught of my dear Playmate, though, as you may well imagine, I asked at every wayside place.
It was at the entering in of the strange country of the brick-dust that I met Jorian and Boris. They were riding excellent horses, unblown, and in good condition--the which, when I asked how they came by such noble steeds, they said that a man gave them to them.
"Jorian," said I, sharply, "where have you been?"
"To the city of Thorn," said he, more briskly than was his wont, so that I knew he had tidings to communicate.
"Saw you the Lady Helene?" I asked, eagerly, of them.
He shook his head, yet pleasantly.
"Nay," said he, "I saw her not. The Red Tower is not a healthy place for men of Plassenburg, nor yet the White Gate and the house of Master Gerard von Sturm. But Mistress Helene is in safety, so much Boris and I are assured of."
"Not with Von Reuss?" cried I, fear thrilling sudden in my voice that he had stolen her and now held her in captivity.
Boris held up his hand as a signal that I must not hurry his companion, who was clearly doing his best.
"She is with Gottfried Gottfried, the old man, your father, and is safe."
"Did she go to them of her own free will, or did my father send for her?" I went on, for much depended upon that question.
"Nay," answered Jorian, "that I know not. But certainly she is with him, and safe. The Count, too, is with his uncle, and they say also safe--under lock and key."
"Good!" quoth Boris.
"Let us all three go back to Plassenburg forthwith!" cried I.
"Good!" chorussed both of them together, unanimously slapping their thighs. "Choose one of our horses. He was a good man who gave us them. We wish we had known. We should have asked him for another when we were about it."
Nevertheless, I rode back to Plassenburg on the farmer's beast, sadly enough, yet somewhat contented. For Helene was with my father, and far safer, as I judged, than in the palace chambers of Plassenburg, and within striking distance of the Lady Ysolinde. And in that I judged not wrong, though the future seemed for a while to belie my confidence.


CHAPTER XXXIV
THE GOLDEN NECKLACE
The Chancellor Leopold von Dessauer, High Councillor of the Prince, with his head still bound up, was pacing the sparred gallery outside the private apartments of his master. It was in the heats of the late summer, before the ripening of the orchard fruits had had time to culminate, or the russet to come out slowly upon the apples, like a blush upon a woman's soft, dusky cheek.
The High Councillor was in a bad humor. For he had been kept waiting, and that by a man of no account. At last a forester in a uniform of dark green, with the Prince's bugle and sparrow-hawk in silver everywhere about him, made his appearance at the foot of the gallery, and stood waiting Dessauer's summons with his plumed hat of soft cloth in his hand.
"Hither, man!" cried the High Councillor, sharply. "What has kept you? Why were you not here half an hour ago? If this be the way you keep the Prince's forests, no wonder there are many deer taken by reiving rascals and the forest laws daily broken."
"High Mightiness," said the man, humbly, looking down, "it was my daughter--she would not give up the necklace. She hath had it for her own since she was a child, and she would not deliver it, though I threatened her with your well-born anger."
"And have you got it with you? Surely you and she have not dared to keep it!" began the Chancellor, with gathering fury on his eyebrow.
"Yea, truly, truly, an you will have patience, my Lord, I have it here,"-said the man, drawing a necklace of golden bars curiously arranged from his leathern wallet; and, kneeling on his knee, he presented it to the Chancellor.
"How did you prevail with the maid?" he asked, as soon as he had it in hand--"you used no constraint or force, I hope?"
"Nay, sir," said the man, "for my wife being dead and my daughter marriageable, she keeps house for me; and having a sweetheart betrothed a year ago she hath been laying aside plenishing gear and women's dainty gewgaws. So these I took one by one, beginning with a mirror of polished brass, and made as if I would dash them in pieces if she discovered not where the chain of gold was hid."
"And she revealed it?" said Dessauer.
"Aye," said the man, "but none so willingly, as you might suppose. I had Saint Peter's own trouble to get it from her. Indeed, I prayed to the Holy Apostle to aid me."
"What had Saint Peter to do with it?" said the Councillor, pausing and looking humorsomely at the man, like an ascetic sparrow with his head at one side.
"Because our Holy Saint Peter is the only saint who understands the trouble men have with the contrariness of women."
"Why so?" cried the Chancellor, rubbing his hand with a curious pleasure at the colloquy.
"Because he only among the Apostles was a married man and had experience of a mother-in-law."
"Art a wise forester. Where got you that wisdom?"
"Why," said the man, modestly, "partly by nature, partly because I also have been married, and so have graduated in the wars."
"It is the same thing," said the Chancellor, "according to your own telling."
"Aye, sir," quoth the man, "but yet the young fellows will take no warning. 'It is better to marry than to burn,' said the other Apostle. But methinks he knew nothing about it, being no better than a bachelor, or he would have amended it, 'It is better to burn than to marry _and_ burn.'"
"Ha! art also a theologe, Sir Woodman?" cried Dessauer. "But enough; this touches on the Inquisition and the Holy Office. Let us despatch."
All this time the High Councillor had been gazing by fits and starts at the links of the necklace, turning it about and viewing it from every-angle. It was composed of short bars of gold laid horizontally three and three together, and bound together with short chains of gold. And on each of the bars there was engraven a crest. Letters also were on the bars, cut in plain deep script.
"Now tell your tale and tell it briefly--that is, if brevity be in you, which I doubt," said Dessauer.
"As I said before," quoth the forester, "I was in the wars; I mean not only in the wars with womenkind, but also with mankind. And among other things I remember the night of the Duke Casimir's famous ride, when he took Plassenburg, because there was scarce a sober man within the walls."
"And his Highness the Prince Karl away on Baltic side with his men, else had Casimir never set foot within the city!" cried the High Chancellor.
"Ah, like enow," said the woodman, "I ken naught of that. But this I do know, Plassenburg was taken with much slaughter and grievous loss of goodly gear. They captivated many noble prisoners also, and, because I slept in the stables, they took me to help lead the horses. Yet I was not ill-treated, save that I had to keep pace with the horsemen upon my feet. But I saw the Prince--"
"Which Prince? Speak plainly," said the High Councillor, gruffly.
"Why, the Prince Dietrich Hohenfriedberg of Plassenburg," said the man. "He, as your well-born Wisdom remembers, was then the only Prince in these parts--a good man, and born of the noblest, though not of the capacity of his present Highness the Prince Karl."
"Proceed somewhat faster. Yon move as slowly as one of your own forest oxen at the wood-hauling," cried the well-born Councillor in a testy tone.
"We were long in riding over to Thorn--two days and nights upon the way. It was a terrible time, and all the while those condemned beasts of the Wolfmark, Casimir's Black Riders, driving us with their spears like prick-goads, till our backs were all bleeding, gentle and simple alike. So at midnight of the third day we came to the city of Thorn, and up through the streets to the Wolfsberg. There was no gladness in the town, such as there would have been in our city had there been news of a victory, or even of some hundreds of the enemy's horses well driven. For then as now the town hated its Duke. And so they were all silent.
"Then in the darkness we came to the castle, and the word was: 'Dismount, and to the shambles!' Me and my like they meddled not with, but only the great ones. And it was then, as I told you, that I saw Prince Dietrich with the little maid in his arms. I had carried her part of the way for him, and faithfully delivered her up again, feeding her with the choicest meats I could obtain when she could eat. But she was tired, mostly, and would not look at food. So for this he gave me her necklace from about her pretty neck. But the rest of her noble golden gear, the belt and the clasps, were upon the maid when the headsman of Thorn delivered her to one that stood near by. So, being almost asleep with weariness and exhausted with terror, they carried her away, and I saw the maid no more.
"But the Prince Dietrich Hohenfriedberg was beheaded within the hour, and, as is their hellish custom, his body was thrown to the Duke's blood-hounds that were clamoring all the time behind their fence.
"God help us--such a disaster that night was for Plassenburg! Will the Prince never set about wiping away the disgrace?"
"Aye, that he will!" cried the High Chancellor, suddenly bursting into a fury, strangely unlike him. "He will wash it away in the blood of Duke Casimir and all his evil brood--the Wolves of the Mark truly are they named. And the Wolfsberg shall go up in flaming fire to heaven, so that the ashes of it shall be cast abroad to make the Mark yet grayer and more desolate--like the fell of the beasts that dwelt within it."
"Amen! Let it come quick, say I--that I may see it before I die!" cried the forester, bowing low before the Chancellor.


CHAPTER XXXV
THE DECENT SERVITOR
"This grows past all bearing," cried the Prince one morning, when he had summoned into his hall the Chancellor Dessauer and myself. For, though the Prince was still wont to command in person in any important action, and in the general policy of his realm took counsel with none, yet it had somehow come about that we, the old man and the young, had been constituted an informal council of two which was liable to be summoned at any moment, whenever the Prince was weary or troubled.
He struck one clinched hand into the palm of the other before he spoke again.
"Duke Casimir is either in his dotage, or his riders have gotten out of hand since Hugo and you drove the young wolf over to help the old. Both are likely enough, with a people praying for deliverance and yearning for their Duke's death. A bare board and an empty treasury may render a new course of plunder necessary abroad, in order to keep his Dukedom from toppling about his ears at home. After all, 'tis natural enough. But I had thought that he would have had enough of sense to let the borders of Plassenburg alone so long as its Prince lived."
"And what, my lord, has befallen?" asked the High Councillor.
"Why," cried the Prince, "the Black Riders