For I knew that ere they were couched that night every maid of them would tell Helene, and with pleasure in the telling too.
"Devil take--" I began and stopped.
"What did you say?" asked Ysolinde, almost tenderly.
"That if I come not back again from the Wolfmark it will be the better for all of us!" I made answer, which was indeed the sense if not the exact text of my remark.
"Nay," she said, shuddering, "not better for me that am companionless!"
"Why so?" said I, boldly. "You do not love me. Deep at the bottom of your heart you love your husband, Karl the Prince. You know there is no man like him. Me you do not love at all."
"You will not let me," she said, softly, almost like a shy country maiden.
"Ah, if I had, you would have slain me long ere this," said I, "for I read you like a child"s horn-book that he plays battledore with. "Have not--_love_! Have--_hate_." There you are, all in brief, my Lady Ysolinde."
"It is false," laughed she; "but nevertheless I love greatly to hear you call me Ysolinde."
She netted her fingers in mine beneath the shawl. Well might the High Councillor say that she had a beautiful hand. Though, G.o.d wot, much he knew about it. For Ysolinde of Pla.s.senburg could speak with her hand, love with it, be angry with it, hate with it--and kill with it.
"I am an experiment," said I; "one indeed that has lasted you a little longer than the others, my Lady Ysolinde, only because you have not come to the end of me so soon."
"Pshaw!" she said, pushing me from her, for we were at the turning of a path, "you love another. That is the amulet against infection that you carry. Yet sometimes I think that that other is only your hateful, plain-favored, vainly conceited self!"
I saw the Prince sit alone, according to his custom, in an arbor behind us at that very moment--and judge if I blushed or no. But the Princess saw him not, being eager upon her flouting of me.
"I tell you," she cried, scornfully and disdainfully, "there is nothing interesting about you but the blueness of your eyes, and that any monk can make upon parchment, aye, and deeper and bluer, with his lapis-lazuli. An experiment!--Why should I, Ysolinde of Pla.s.senburg, experiment with you, the son of the Red Axe of the Wolfsberg ?"
"Nay, that I know not," I answered; "but yet I am indeed no more than your arrow-b.u.t.ts, your target of practice, your whipping-boy, to be slung at and arrow-drilled and bullet-pitted at your pleasure!"
"I dare say," she said, bitterly; "and all the time you go scathless--no more heart-stricken than if summer flies lighted on thee. Away with such a man; he is the ghost of a man--a simulacrum--no true lover!"
"At your will, Princess. I shall indeed go away. I will to-morrow seek the spears. But, after all, you will not send me forth in anger?" I said, with a strong conviction that I knew the answer.
"And why not?" said she.
"Because," I replied, looking at her, "I am, after all, the one man who believes thoroughly in your heart"s deep inward goodness. I believe in you even when you do not believe in yourself. I can affirm, for I know better than you know yourself. You cover the beauty of your heart from others. You flout and jeer. Above all, you experiment dangerously with words and actions. But, after all, I am necessary to you. You will not send me away in anger. For you need some one to believe in the soundness of your heart. And I, Hugo Gottfried, am that man!"
"Hence, flatterer!" cried the lady, smiling, but well pleased. "It is known to all that I am the Old Serpent--the deceiver--the ill fruit of the Knowledge of Evil. And now you say of Good also! And what is more and worse, you expect me to believe you. Wherein you also experiment! I pray you, do not so. That is to you the forbidden fruit. Good-night. Go, now, and pray for a more truthful tongue!"
And with that she went in, the copper spangles glancing at her waist red as the light on ripe wheat, and all her tall figure lissome as the bending corn.
CHAPTER x.x.x
INSULT AND CHALLENGE
Now, because there is still so much to tell, and so little time and s.p.a.ce to tell it in, I must go forward rapidly. In these dull times of grouting peace, when men become like penned pigs, waking up only at feeding-time, they have no knowledge of how swiftly life went when every day brought a new living friend or a new dead enemy, when love and hate awakened fresh and fresh with each morrow"s sun--and when I was young.
Perhaps that last is the true reason. But when the Baltic norther snorts without, and mine ancient thigh-wound twinges down where my hand rests, naturally I have no better resource than to fall to the goose-quill. And lo! long ere I am done with the first page, and have the ink no more than half-way to the roots of my hair, I am again in the midst of the ringing hoofs of the foray. I hear the merry dinting of steel on steel; the sullen _chug-chug_ of the wheels of Foul Peg, the Margrave"s great cannon, which more than once he lent our Prince; the oaths of the men-at-arms shouldering her up, apostrophizing most indecently her fat haunches, and the next moment getting tossed aside like ninepins by her unexpected lurches. Ah, the times that were when I was young!
I see these gallants about our later courts--Lord help them, sons of mine own, too, some of them--year in and year out, crossing their legs and staring at the gilded points of their shoon. All are grown so tame--none now to ride a-questing in the Baltic forest for border brigands --indeed, there be no brigands to quest for.
But I forget. Time was when I looked love, and I too had shoon, aye, with golden tips to match the armor of honor which the Prince gave me after I had led my first regiment to victory--even as the Lady Ysolinde had said.
And n.o.ble shoes of price they were.
And I could make love, too, when I had the chance. But, nevertheless, not more than one day in six--spending the rest in the new training of my men, the perfecting of their equipment, the choosing of their horses, and the providing for their stores.
G.o.d wot--it was a good time. I mind me the year when the Prince fell out with Duke Casimir, and we played over again the old tricks with him.
Never was I gladder of any quest than that to ride within sight of the Red Tower, and wave the blue and yellow of my master under the very ramparts of the Wolfsberg, and almost within hearing of the inhuman howling of its blood-hounds.
"Singe his beard!" said my master. And with a hundred riders I did it too. For though the burghers clattered to their gates, I rode to the very walls of the Wolfsberg, which for bravado I summoned to surrender. And the best of it was that no man knew me. For I had grown soldierlike and strong, and was most unlike the lad who had ridden away so meekly and almost in tears out of the gate of that very Wolfsberg.
Of my father, thank G.o.d, I saw nothing--though I doubt not he observed my troop. For doubtless he would be with his master--aged now, soured, and p.r.o.ne to cower about behind his guard, fearing the dagger or the poisoned bowl, seeing an enemy in every shadowy corner, and hearing the whistle of the a.s.sa.s.sin"s bullet in every wind.
And, save when an honest burgher was slain by the Black Riders, the beasts of the kennels were fed on diet more ordinary than of old.
So we rode back with our prisoners, and as much plunder as we could screw out of old Burgomeister Texel and his citizens by threats of sacking the city--a deed which I was main sorry for afterwards, in the light of that which happened at a later day. But I knew not the future then, and it was as well. For the guilders paid n.o.bly for the new-fashioned ordnance which stood us in such good stead that autumn, when we had sterner work in hand than singeing the gray beard of Duke Casimir.
Within Schloss Pla.s.senburg things went on much as usual. Perhaps I was lax in my wooing--I cannot tell; I loved sincerely enough, of a certainty. Nor, after this, was I backward in telling Helene of it, and sometimes she would love me well enough, and then again she would not. So that I could not tell what she would be at.
Looking back upon everything now, I see clearly how that the rankling secret thorn was the accursed understanding with the Prince, that for his peace"s sake I was to abide friendly with the Princess and let her try her fool experiments on me. Which she did, G.o.d wot, innocently enough--that is, for all the harm they did me. But, nevertheless, without knowing it, I kept the Little Playmate with a sore and aching heart for many and many a day.
But I made nothing of it--thinking, like a careless, ill-deserving soldier-lover, eager for success and dazzled with ambition, chiefly of my profession, of how to win battles and take fortresses against the surrounding princelings, our Karl"s enemies, till one day I found Helene with her cheeks wet and her pretty lips bitten till the blood had come.
"What is"t, little one? Tell me!" said I, going to her and putting my arm about her, as indeed I had some right to do, if no more than the right of having carried her up into the Red Tower in her white gown so long ago.
But she wrested herself determinedly out of my hold, saying: "Do not touch me, sir. "Tis all your fault!"
"What is my fault, dear la.s.s?" said I. "Tell me, and I will instantly amend it."
"Oh!" she cried, casting her hands out from her in bitter complaint, "there is nothing so meanly selfish as a man! He will say tender things--aye, and do them, too, when it liketh him. He can be, oh, so devoted and so full of his eternal affections. He is dying all for love!
And then, soon as he pa.s.ses out of the door he ties his sword-knot and points his mustache to his liking, and lo! there is no more of him. He goes and straightway forgets till it shall please his High Mightiness to call again. Oh! and we--we women, poor things, must stand about with our mouths open, like mossy carp in a pond, and struggle and push for such crumbs of comfort as he will deign to throw us from the full larder of his self-satisfaction!"
This was a most mighty speech for the Little Playmate, and took me entirely by surprise. For mostly she was still enough and quiet enough in her ways and speakings.
""Tis true, sweetheart, that some men are like that," I replied, gently, "but not Hugo Gottfried, surely. When did you ever find me unkind, unthankful, unfaithful? When went I ever away and left you alone?"
"Oh, you did--you did," she cried, the tears starting from her lovely eyes, "or I should never have been insulted--treated lightly, spoken to as a staled thing of courts and camps!"
And Helene sank down beside the garden wall in an abandonment of sorrow--so that my heart grew hot and angry at the cause of her grief, to me then unknown.
I knelt down beside her and touched her lightly on one rounded, heaving shoulder.
"Dearest," said I, "I knew nothing of this. Tell me who has insulted you.
As G.o.d is in His heaven, I will have my sword in his heart or nightfall, were it the Prince himself! Tell me, and by the Lord of the Innocents, I will make him eat cold steel and drink his own blood therewith!"