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

desperately against him.
"So," he said, "gentlemen both, I have caught you spying in my land. You know what those have to expect who are caught in hostile territory in disguise."
I thought it was as well to take the high hand at once, especially since I saw that humility would avail us nothing at any rate.
"Before now I have seen Otho von Reuss in hostile territory, and a right cowed traitor he looked!" said I, boldly.
The Duke smiled upon me, like a man that has a complete retort on his tongue but who is content for the present to reserve it.
"My friend," he said, suavely, "I will reply to you presently. I have a word to speak to your betters."
He turned him about to Dessauer.
"And what, Lord High Chancellor of Plassenburg, think you of this masquerading? Dignified, is it not? And your wondrous speech in court that was to have done such great things. Will you be pleased to abide with us here in the Wolfsberg? Or must you forsake us to pleasure the Emperor, who, poor man, cannot sleep of nights in his bed at Ratisbon till the eloquent Doctor is come to cheer him with the full-flowing river of speech?"
"Duke Otho," said Dessauer, "my life is indeed in your hands. I hold it forfeit. A few years less or more are but little to Leopold von Dessauer now. But there is one who will most bloodily avenge us if a hair of our heads falls to the ground."
"Who?" said Otho, sneeringly. "Karl Miller's Son, I suppose. Ah, fool that you are, I hold your poor Karl in the palm of my hand!"
"It is like enough," said Dessauer, with a quick look, the look of a keen fencer when he sees an advantage. "I have often enough seen the palm of your hand approach Karl Miller's Son's treasury when I kept the moneys."
I saw the face of Otho twitch angrily. But he had evidently made up his mind to command his temper, sure of having that up his sleeve which would sufficiently answer all taunts.
"You mistake me," he said, with more subtlety than I had expected from the brute. "I had not meant to prove ungrateful. I am but newly come to my own here in the Wolfmark. I have learned from your host, Bishop Peter, how precious a thing forgiveness is. And now I am resolved to practise it. There is a time to love and a time to hate; a time to war and a time to be at peace. This is the last news I had from the holy clerk whose revenues I pay. So lay it to heart, as I have done."
"Glad am I," said Dessauer, courteously, as if he had been turning a phrase on the terrace at Plassenburg--"glad am I that in your hour you are to be mindful of old friends, for they are like old wine, which grows better and mellower with the years."
"It is indeed well," said Otho von Reuss, ironically. "I have known the Chancellor Dessauer many years, and he grows more honorable and more wise with each decade.
"But now 'tis with this young man that I would speak," he said, changing his tone. "He at least is mine own servant, and so I have other words for him. Hugo Gottfried, you remember that you insulted me, striking me on the face with a glove, because I offered certain civilities to a maid of honor to the Princess of Plassenburg. You wounded me in the arm. Your father, of whose death I have heard but now, cast me forth like a cur-dog from a chamber window. Between you ye have shamed me, and would shame me worse--for the sake of the murderess of mine uncle, Duke Casimir."
"Well do you know that the Lady Helene is innocent of that crime, or any other," said I; "she is purer than your eyes can look upon or your heart conceive. Yet, solely because she knows you for the foul thing you are, Helene lies condemned in your dungeons to-night. I ask you to grant me but one boon--that I may die with her!"
"Nay, my friend, gentlest squire of dames, defender of the oppressed, I have better things in store for you and your maid than that!"
He paused and looked a long while at me, as it seemed, chewing the cud of revenge upon that which he had to say to me.
At last he came a step nearer, that he might look into my eyes.
"Hugo Gottfried," he said, slowly, "son of Gottfried Gottfried, you are my servant now. I said that I would forgive you all for the sake of old times in exile together. And now you and I are both again in our own land. They that kept us out of our offices are dead, and we standing in their places. There is a maid down there in the Wolfsberg dungeons who to-morrow must meet her fate."
He paused a moment and laid his hand on my shoulder impressively.
"And you, Hugo Gottfried, Hereditary Justicer of the Dukedom, Red Axe of the Wolfmark, art the man who must carry out that doom!"
Again he paused--and the world seemed instantly to dissolve into whirling vapor at his words. I had never once thought of such a conclusion. Yet I was indubitably, by my father's death, Hereditary Executioner of the Wolfmark. Red Axe of Thorn I was, and by a terrible chance I had returned in time to be installed in mine office, even as the Lady Ysolinde had foretold.
But a strong thought swelled triumphant in my heart.
"Well," said I, looking the sneering tormentor in the face, "if so be that I am your Hereditary Justicer, it will be long ere a sentence so monstrous shall be carried out by me. I will not slay the innocent, nor pour out the blood of a virgin saint, for a million deaths. You can torture me with all your hellish engines, and you will find that a Gottfried has learned how to suffer, as well as, how to make others suffer, in fourteen generations. As God strengthens me, I will never carry out your sentence--do with me what you will."
"Nobly said, Justicer of the Mark!" said Otho. "I had thought of that! But in case you should refuse to do your lawful office, it may be well for you to remember that I have other instruments that mayhap will please you less."
He threw open a door suddenly, and we looked into an underground hall, where a dozen men were carousing--Duke Casimir's Hussars of Death, black-browed, evil-faced, slack-jowled villains every man of them, cruel and sensual. A blast of ribald oaths came sulphurously up, as if the mouth of hell had been opened.
"Listen!" said Otho, with his hand on my shoulder.
And a jest struck to our ears concerning the prisoner, the Little Playmate--a jest which sticks in my memory to this day. And even yet I hope to cleave the jester through the brain, meet him when I may.
The Duke shut the door, and turned to me again. His eyes narrowed to a thin line which glittered with hate and triumph.
"If you, Hugo Gottfried, Hereditary Executioner of the Mark, refuse to do your duty at the time appointed upon the prisoner condemned, I, Duke Otho, solemnly declare that I will cast your fair and tender lamb into that den of wolves down there to work their wills upon. Hark to them! They will have no misgivings--no qualms, no noble renunciations."
Then he turned to me airily and confidently.
"Well, my good Justicer, will you carry out the just and merciful sentence of the law, and baptize your Red Axe with the blood of her for whose sake you chose to insult and wound a Duke of the Mark?"
I turned away, sick at heart.
"Give me time. God's mercy--give me time!" I cried. "At least let me see Helene. I will give you my answer to-night. But, first of all, let me see my beloved."
"I am forgiving and most merciful," he said, smiling till his teeth showed. "Observe, I do not even cast you into prison to make sure of you. Go your ways" (he sat down and wrote rapidly); "here is a pass which will enable you to visit the prisoner. At midnight I shall expect you to tell me that to-morrow you will fulfil your office."
He handed me the paper and motioned us away.
"We are free to go?" said I, wonderingly.
"Surely," he replied, smiling. "Are you not both my friends, and can Otho von Reuss be forgetful of old times? Come and go at your pleasure. Be sure to be here to give me your answer at midnight to-night--or--"
He pointed with his hand to the door he had again opened, and with the fingers of his other hand beat time to the blasphemous chorus which came belching up from below.


CHAPTER XLIX
THE SERPENT'S STRIFE
Dazed and death-stricken by the horror of the choice which lay before me, I hastened down the street, hardly waiting for Dessauer, who toiled vainly after me. I knew not what to do nor where to turn. I could neither think nor speak. But it chanced that my steps brought me to the house of the Weiss Thor. Almost without any will of mine own I found myself raising the knocker of the house of Master Gerard von Sturm. Sir Respectable instantly appeared. I asked of him if the Lady Ysolinde would see me--giving my name plainly. For since Duke Otho knew me, there was no need of concealment any more.
The Lady Ysolinde would receive me.
I followed my conductor, but not this time to the room in which I had seen her on the occasion of my last visit.
It was in her father's chamber that I met the Princess. The room was as I had first seen it. Only there was no ascetic old man with keen, deep-set eyes and receding forehead to rear his head back from the table as though he would presently strike across it like a serpent from its coil.
For the moment the room was empty, but, ere I had time to look around, the curtains moved and the Lady Ysolinde appeared. Without entering, she set a hand on the door-post, and stood poised against the heavy curtain, waiting for me to speak.
Her face was pale, her thin nostrils dilated. Anger and scorn sat white and deadly on every feature.
"So," she said, intensely, as I did not speak, "you have come back already, most noble Hereditary Justicer of the Mark! Even as I told you--so it is. You come to ask mercy from the woman you despised, from the woman whose love you refused. You would beg her to spare her enemy. Ere you go I shall see you on your knees; ah, that will be sweet. I have been on my knees--can I believe it? Nay, I shall not forget it. I, Ysolinde of Plassenburg, have pled in vain to you--to you!"
And the accent of chill hatred and malice turned me to stone.
"My lady," said I, "well do you know that I would never ask aught for my own life, though the Red Axe itself were at my neck. But it is for the maid I love, for the little child I carried home out of the arms of the man condemned. I ask for her life, who never wronged you or any in all this world. You have heard that task which the Duke hath laid on me, because it is my misfortune to be my father's son--I must take away my love's sweet life, or, if I do not--" I could proceed no further for the horror which rose in