My Lady Rotha: A Romance

by Stanley John Weyman

  CHAPTER XXXV.

  ST. BARTHOLOMEW'S DAY.

  That was a night that saw few in Nuremberg sleep soundly. Under themoon the great city lay waiting; watching and fasting through theshort summer night. Hour by hour the solemn voices of sentinels,tramping the walls and towers, told the tale of time; to men, who,hearing it, muttered a prayer, and, turning on the other side, sleptagain; to women, who lay, trembling and sleepless, their every breatha prayer. For who would see the next night? Who that went out wouldcome in? How many, parting at dawn, would meet again? The howling ofthe dogs that, wild as wolves, roved round the camp and scratched inthe shallow graveyards, made dreary answer. Many there were, even thenI remember, who thought the King foolhardy, and preached patience; andwould have had him still sit quiet and play the game of starvationagainst his enemy, even to the bitter end. But these were of theharder sort--men who, with brain, might have been Wallensteins. Andfew of them knew the real state of things. I say nothing of the city.Who died there in those months, in holes and corners and dark places,the magistrates may have known, no others. But in the camp, for manydays before the King marched out, a hundred men died of plague andwant every day; so that in the sum, twenty thousand men entered hislines who never left them. Moderate men set the loss of the city atten thousand more. Add to these items that the plague was increasing,that all stores of food were nearly exhausted, that if the issue werelonger delayed the cavalry would have no horses on which to advance orretreat, and it will be clear, I think, that the King, whose judgmenthad never yet deceived him, was right in this also. Or, if he erred,it was on the side of mercy.

  At dawn all the northern walls and battlements were covered withwhite-faced women, come together to see the army leave the camp, inwhich it had lain so many weeks. I went up with my lady to the Burg,whence we could command, not only the city with its necklace of wallsand towers, but the camp encircling it like another and greater city,encompassed in its turn with gates and ramparts and bastions. And,beyond this, we had an incomparable view of the country; of our ownstream, the Pegnitz, gliding away through the level plain, to fallpresently into the Rednitz; of the Rednitz, a low line of willows,running athwart the western meadows; and beyond this, a league and ahalf away, of the frowning heights of the Alta Veste, whereWallenstein hung, vulture-like, waiting to pounce on the city.

  As the sun rose behind us, the shadow of the Burg on which we stoodfell almost to the foot of the distant heights, and covered, as with apall, the departing army, which was beginning to pass out of the campby the northern and western gates. At the same time the level beamsshone on the dark brow of the Alta Veste, and caught there the flashof lurking steel. I think that the hearts of many among us sank at theomen.

  If so, it was not for long, for the sun rose swiftly in the summer skyand, as it overtopped our little eminence, showed us an innumerablehost pressing out of the camp in long lines, like ants from a hill.While we gazed, they began to swarm on the plain between the city andthe Rednitz. The colours of a thousand waving pennons, the sheen of aforest of lances, the duller gleam of cannon crawling slowly along theroads, caught the sun and the eye; but between them moved other anddarker masses--the regiments of East and West Gothland, the Smaelandhorse, Stalhanske's Finns, the Yellow and Blue regiments, the sombre,steady veterans of the Swedish force, marching with a neatness andwheeling with a precision, noticeable even at that distance.

  Doubtless it was a grand and splendid sight, this marching out of ahundred thousand men--for the army fell little short of thatprodigious number--under the first captain of the age, to fight beforethe walls of the richest city in the world. And I have often takenblame to myself and regretted that I did not regard it with closerattention, and imprint it more carefully on my memory. But at the timeI was anxious. Somewhere in that great host rode the Waldgrave andCount Leuchtenstein; and I looked for them, though I had no hope offinding them. Then little things continually diverted the mind. Asingle waggon, which broke down at the gate below us, and could notfor a time be removed, swelled into a matter that obstructed my viewof the whole army; an officer, whose horse ran away in an orchard atour feet, became, for a moment, more important than a hundred banners.When I had done with these trifles, the sun had climbed halfway up thesky, and the foremost troops were already crossing the Rednitz byFurth, with a sound of trumpets and the flashing of corselets.

  A cannon shot, and then another, and then long rolling thunder fromthe heights, over which a pillar of smoke began to gather. My ladysighed. Below us, in the streets, on the walls, on the towers, womenand men fell on their knees and prayed aloud. Across the plainhorsemen galloped this way or that, hurrying the laggards through thedust. The great battle was beginning.

  And then on a sudden the firing ceased; the pillar of smoke on theheights melted away; the rear-guard and the cloud of dust in which itmoved, rolled farther and farther towards the Rednitz and Furth--andstill the guns remained silent. It was noon by this time; soon it wasafternoon. But the suspense was so great that no one went away to eat;and still the silence prevailed.

  Towards two o'clock I persuaded the Countess to go to her lodgings toeat; but within the hour she was back again. An officer on the Burg,who had a perspective glass, reported that Wallenstein was moving;that cannon and troops could be seen passing through the trees on theAlta Veste, as if he were descending to meet the King; and for a timeour excitement rose to the highest pitch. But before sunset, news camethat he was quiet; that the King was forming a new camp beyond theRednitz, and almost under the enemy's guns; and that the battle wouldtake place on the morrow.

  The morrow! It seemed to some of us, it was always the morrow. Yet Ithink that we slept better that night. Earliest dawn saw us again onthe Burg, staring and straining our eyes westwards. But minutespassed, hours passed, the sun rose and declined, and still no sound ofbattle reached us. Women, with pinched faces, clutched babies to theirbreasts; men, pale and stern, gazed into the distance. Those who hadmurmured that the King was too hasty, murmured now that he dallied;for every day the grip of famine grew tighter, its signs more marked.This evening all my lady's horses were requisitioned and carried off,to mount the King's staff, it was said, of whom some were going afoot.

  A third day rose on the anxious city, and yet a fourth, and still thearmies stood inactive. Communication with the new camp was easy, butas each day, and all day, a battle was expected, such news as we heardrather heightened than relieved our fears. On this fourth morning, Ireceived a message from the Waldgrave, asking me to come to him in thecamp; that he had something to say to me, and could not leave.

  I was not unwilling to see for myself how things stood there; and Idetermined to go. I did not tell the Countess, however, nor Marie,thinking it useless to alarm them; but I left Steve in charge, and,bidding him be on his guard, promised to be back by noon at thelatest. As I had no horse, I had to do the journey on foot, and soonwas down in the plain myself, threading the orchards and ploddingalong the trampled roads, where so many thousands had preceded me. Theground in some spots was actually ploughed up; dust coveredeverything; the trees were bruised, the fences broken down. Oldboots and shattered pike-staves marked the route, and here andthere--saddest sight of all--dead horses, fast breeding the plague.The sky, for the first time for days, was clouded, and making the mostof the coolness I gained the river bank by nine o'clock, and crossingfound myself close to the new camp.

  The army had just marched out, yet the lines seemed full. The King hadstrictly forbidden all women and camp-followers to cross the Rednitz;but an army in these days needs so many drivers and sutlers that Ifound myself one among thousands. I asked for the Waldgrave, and gotas many answers as there were men within hearing. One said that he waswith his regiment of horse on the left flank; another, that he waswith Duke Bernard's staff; a third, that he was not with the army atall. Despairing of hearing anything in the confusion, I was in twominds about turning back; but in the end I took heart of grace
anddetermined to seek him in the field.

  Fortunately, the last regiments had barely cleared the lines, and afew minutes' rapid walking set me abreast of the rearmost, whichwas hastening into position. Here also at the first glance I sawnothing but confusion; but a second resolved the mass into twoparts, and then I saw that the King's army lay in two long linesfacing the heights. An interval of about three hundred pacesdivided the lines, but behind each was a small reserve. In thefirst were most of the German regiments, the second being composedof Finns, Swedes, and Northerners. The cavalry were grouped on theflanks, and seemed stronger on the left flank. In the rear of all,as well as in gaps left between the pikes and musketmen, were theKing's ordnance--drakes, serpents, falcons, and cartows, with thelight two- and four-pounders for which he was famous.

  Such an array--so many thousand men, gay with steel, and a thousandpennons--seemed to the eye to be invincible; and I looked for theenemy. He was not to be seen, but fronting the lines at a distance ofthree or four hundred paces rose the Alta Veste--a steep, rugged hill,scarred and seamed, and planted thickly with pines and jagged stumpsand undergrowth. Here and there among the trees great rocks peepedout, or dark holes yawned. The dry beds of two torrents furrowed thisnatural glacis; and opposite these I noticed that our strongestregiments were placed. But of the enemy I could see nothing, excepthere and there a sparkle of steel among the trees; I could hearnothing, except now and then the fall of a stone, that, slipping underan unseen foot, fell from ledge to ledge until it reached the plain.

  Everywhere the hush of expectation stirred the heart; for in thepresence of that great host silence seemed a thing supernatural. Asthe regiment I had joined, the last to arrive, wheeled into positionin the middle of the right wing, I asked one of the officers, whostood near me, if the enemy had retired.

  'Wait!' he said grimly--he spoke with a foreign accent--'and you willsee. But to what regiment do you belong, comrade?'

  'To none here,' I said.

  He looked astonished, and asked me what I was doing there, then.

  I had my lips apart to answer him, when a trumpet sounded, and in aninstant, all along the line, the Swedish cannon began to fire, shakingthe earth and filling the air round us with smoke, that in a twinklinghid everything. This lasted for two or three minutes with a deafeningnoise; but as far as I could hear, the enemy were still silent. I waswondering what would happen next, and hoping that they had given upthe position, when my new friend touched my arm and pointed to thefront. I peered through the smoke, and saw dimly that the regimentbefore us, a German brigade about eight hundred strong, was moving onat a run and making for the hill. A minute elapsed, the smoke rolledbetween. I listened, trembling. Afterwards I learned that at the samemoment two other parties sprang forward and dashed to the assault.

  Then, at last, with an ear-splitting roar that seemed to silence ourguns, the enemy spoke. The hill in front, hidden the second before bysmoke, became in a moment visible, lit up by a thousand dartingflames. Dark masses seemed to topple down, rocks hung midway in air,and involuntarily I stepped back and uttered a cry of horror. Out ofthat hell of fire came an answering wail of shrieks and curses--thefeeble voice of man!

  'Ach Gott!' I said, trembling. My hair stood on end.

  'Steady, comrade, steady!' muttered the man who had before spoken tome. 'Presently it will be our turn.'

  He had scarcely spoken, when a man came riding along the front withhis hat in his hand. He rode a white horse, and wore no back orbreast, nor, as far as I could see, any armour.

  'Steady, Swedes, steady!' he cried in a loud voice--he was a big,stout man with a fine presence. 'Your time will come by-and-by. Thenremember Breitenfeld!'

  It was the King of Sweden. In a moment he was gone, passing along thelines; and I drew breath again, wondering what would happen next. Ihad not long to wait. Men came straggling back across our front, somewounded, some helping their comrades along, all with faces ghastlyunder the powder-stains. And then like magic a new regiment stoodbefore us, where the other had stood. Again the King's guns pealedalong the line, again I heard the hoarse cry 'Vorwaerts!' waited aminute, and once more the hill seemed to be rent by the explosion.From every cave and ledge guns flashed forth, lighting up the smoke.The roar died away again--slowly, from west to east--in cries andshrieks; and presently a few men, scores where there had beenhundreds, came wandering back like ghosts through the reek.

  'This looks ill!' I muttered. I was no longer scared. The gunpowderwas getting into my head.

  'Pooh!' my friend answered. 'This is only the beginning. It will takemen to fill that gap. Wait till our turn comes.'

  By this time the Waldgrave and my errand were forgotten, and I thoughtonly of the battle. I watched two more assaults, saw two moreregiments hurl themselves vainly against the fiery breast of the hill;then came a diversion. As the scattered fragments of the last camereeling back, a sudden roar of many voices startled me. The groundseemed to shake, and right across our front came a charge ofhorse--out of the smoke and into the smoke! In an instant ourstragglers were trodden down, cut up, and swept away, before our eyesand within shot of us.

  The men round me uttered shouts of rage. The line swayed, there was aninstant's confusion. Then a harsh voice cried above the tumult,'Steady, Gothlanders, steady! Pikes forward! Blow your matches!Steady! steady!' and in a twinkling, with a crash, such as the ninthwave makes when it falls on a pebbly beach, the horse were on us. Ihad a glimpse through the smoke of rearing breasts, and floatingmanes, and grinning teeth, and of men's faces grim and white, held lowbehind the steel; and I struck out blindly with my half-pike. Stillthey came on, and something hit me on the chest and I fell: butinstantly a clash of long pikes met over my body, and I scrambled tomy feet unhurt! Then a dozen spurts of flame leapt out round me, andthe horsemen seemed to melt away.

  Into the smoke; but before I had time to know that they were gone,they had wheeled and were back again like the wind, led by a man on ablack horse, who came on so gallantly to the very pike-points, that Ithought it must be Pappenheim himself. He wore the black breastplateand helmet of Pappenheim's cuirassiers; and it was only when his horsereared up on end within a pike's length of me, and he fired his pistolamong us, wounding two men, that I espied under the helmet the sternface and flashing eyes of Tzerclas. He recognised me at the samemoment, and hurling his empty pistol in my face, tried to spur hishorse over me. But the long pikes meeting before me kept him off, hismen vanished, some falling, some flying, and in a moment he stoodalmost alone.

  Even then his courage did not fail him. Scornfully eyeing our linefrom end to end, he hurled a bitter taunt at us, and wheeling hishorse coolly, prepared to ride off. I think that we should have lethim go, in pure admiration of his courage. But a wounded man on whomhe trod houghed the horse with his sword. In a moment he was down, andtwo men running out of the line, fixed him to the earth with theirpikes.

  I confess, for myself, I would have spared him for his courage; and Iran to him to see if he was dead. He was not quite gone. He recognisedme, and tried to speak. Forgetting the dangers round me, the uproarand tumult, the dim figures of men and horses flying through thesmoke, I knelt down by him.

  'What is it?' I said. After all, he was my lady's cousin.

  'Tell him--tell him--the child! He will never get it!' he breathed.With each word the blood-stained froth rose to his lips, and heclutched my hand in a cold grip.

  He strove to say something more, and raised himself with a last efforton his elbow. 'Tell her,' he gasped, his dark face distorted--'tellher--I--I----'

  No more. His eyes turned, his head fell back. He was dead. What hewould have said of my lady, whether he would have sent her a messageor what, no man will know here. But I fancied it like the man, whomight have been great had he ever given a thought to others, that hislast word was--"I."

  His head was scarcely down before I had to run back within the pikes.A fresh charge of horse swept over him, we received them with avolley; they broke, and a Swedish re
giment, the West Gothland horse,rode them down. Meanwhile our man[oe]uvres had brought us insensiblyinto the first line. I found that we were close under the hill, and Iwas not surprised when a handful of horse whirled up to us out of the_melee_, and one, disengaging himself from the others, rode along ourfront. It was the King. His face was stained with powder, his horsewas bleeding, a ball had ripped up his boot; it was said that he hadbeen placing and pointing cannon with his own hands. But as theregiment greeted him with a hoarse cheer, he smiled as if he had beenin a ball-room.

  He raised his hand for silence; such silence as could be obtainedwhere every moment men shot off a cannon, and at no great distance amortal combat was in progress.

  'Men of Gothland!' he cried, in a clear, ringing voice, 'it is yourturn now! You are My children. Take me this hill! Be steady, strikehome, flinch not! Show these Germans what you can do! The word is, Godwith us. Remember St. Bartholomew's, and Forward! Forward! Forward!'

  My heart beat furiously; but there was no retreat. Rather than be leftstanding on the ground, I would have died there. In a moment we weremoving on elbow to elbow, with a stern, heavy step. Some one struck upa Swedish psalm, and to the thunder of its rhythm we strode on--on tothe very foot of the hill; on, until we reached the rough shale, andthe rugged steep stood above us. With a gallant shout an officer flunghis hat on to the slope, a score of Ritt-Meisters sprang forwardtogether; and then for a moment we and all things seemed to standstill. The wood above us belched fire, the eyes were blinded, the earsstunned, rocks and stones rolled down, all creation seemed to befalling on us in fearful ruin. Men were hurled this way and that, orfell in their places, or, reeling to and fro, clutched one another.For an instant, I say, we stood still.

  But for an instant only. Then with a shout of rage the Swedessprang forward, and grasping boughs, stumps, rocks, swung themselvesup, doing such things in their fury as no cool man could do.A row of jagged stakes barred the way; men set their naked breastsagainst them, and others climbed over on their shoulders. Bleeding,wounded, singed, torn by splinters, all who lived climbed. To getup--up--up--higher, in face of the storm of shot and iron; up, overthe bursting mines and through the smoke; up, to where they stood andbutchered us, was the only instinct left.

  And we did get up--to a bastion, jutting from the hillside, where acompany of picked men with pikes and three cannons waited for usbehind a breastwork. They thought to stop us, and stood firm; our menwere mad. Flinging themselves against the mouths of the cannon, theyscaled the work in a moment, and left not one defender alive!

  God with us!

  Stern and high the shout rang out; but breath was everything, and thescarp still rose above us and the shot still tore our ranks! On! Up atorrent bed now, round one corner and another, to where we were alittle out of the line of fire, and an overhanging shoulder coveredus. Here we had room to take breath; and for the first time, somehope of life, of ultimate escape, entered my breast. The officerwho led us--I learned afterwards that he was the great GeneralTorstensohn--cried, 'Well done, Swedes!' and with the confidence ofgiants we were once more breasting the ascent, when a witheringvolley, poured in at short range, checked the head of the column.Before we could recover way, a body of pikes rushed to meet us, and inan instant, having the vantage of the ground, rolled us, stillfighting desperately, down the steep. The general was swept away, theRitt-Meisters were down. Once we rallied, but ineffectually. The enemywere reinforced, and in a moment the rout was complete.

  At the moment the tide turned and our men fell back, I happened to beagainst the rock-wall, in something of a niche; and the stream passedme by. I had two slight wounds, and I stood an instant, giddy andconfused, taking breath. The instant showed me my comrades in the actof being slaughtered one by one, and a great horror seized me. I foundno hope anywhere. Below were the cruel pikes, in a moment their savagebearers would be reascending; above were the enemy. But above, if Iclimbed on, I might live a little while; and in that desperate hope Iscrambled out of the torrent bed and up the sheer hill on the right.Two or three saw me from the torrent bed, and fired at me; and othersshouted, and began to follow. But I only pressed on, right up thescarp, which was there like the side of a house.

  A dozen times I all but fell back; still in a fever of dread I kepton. The sweat poured down me; I had no hope or aim, I thought only ofthe pikes behind. Presently I came to a jutting shoulder that all butoverhung me; to pass it seemed to be impossible. But in my frenzy Idid the impossible. I swung myself from root to root; where one stonegave, I clutched another, and yet another; I hung on with tooth andnail. I flattened myself against the rock. I heard the pursuers railand curse, heard the bullets strike the earth round me, and then in amoment I was up.

  Up; but only to come instantly on a wall crossing the steep andbarring my way, and to find a dozen pikes levelled at my breast.Desperate, giving up hope at last--I had long dropped my weapon--Icried mechanically, 'God with us!' and threw up my arms.

  I nearly fell backwards--for what did it matter? But the men werequick. In a moment one had me by the collar. 'And God! They werefriends! They were friends, and I was saved.

  One of the first faces that I saw, as I leaned breathless against thewall, unable for the time to answer the questions that poured upon me,was the Waldgrave's--the Waldgrave's, with the light of battle in hiseyes, a laugh of triumph on his lips. He was wounded, bandaged,blackened, his fair hair singed; but he was happy. Presently Iunderstood why; and why I was safe and among friends.

  'A little earlier,' he said--he seemed in his exaltation not a whitsurprised to see me--'and you would have had a different reception,Martin. We only turned them out of this an hour ago!'

  All his superior officers had fallen, and his had been the voice thathad cheered on the forlorn, to which he was attached--acting from theright flank--and heartened them, just when all seemed lost, to makeone more effort, ending in the capture of this sconce. Joined to themass of the hill only by a narrow neck, it commanded the enemy'sposition.

  'We only want cannon!' he said, and in a moment I was as one of thegarrison. 'Three guns, and the day is ours. When will they come? Whenwill they come?'

  'You have sent for them?'

  'I have sent a dozen times.'

  And he sent as many times more; while we, a mere handful, tired andworn and famished, but every man with a hero's thoughts, leanedagainst the breastwork, and gazed down into the plain, where, underthe smoke, pigmy troops rushed to and fro, and Nuremberg's fate hungin the balance. In an hour it would be night. And still noreinforcements came, no cannon.

  Thrice the enemy tried to drive us out. But the neck was narrow,and, pressed along their front by three assaults, they came onhalf-heartedly and fell back lightly; and we held it. In the meantime, it became more and more clear that elsewhere the day was goingagainst us. Until night fell, and through long hours of darkness,forlorn after forlorn was flung against the heights--in vain. Regimentafter regiment, the core of the Swedish army, came on undaunted, onlyto be repulsed with awful loss; with the single exception of theWaldgrave's little sconce not a foot of the hill was captured.

  About nine o'clock reinforcements reached us, and some food, but noguns. Two hours later the King drew sullenly back into his lines, andthe attack ceased. Even then we looked to see the fight resumed withthe dawn; we looked still for victory and revenge. We could notbelieve that all was over. But towards three o'clock in the morningrain fell, rendering the slopes slippery and impassable; and with thefirst flush of sunrise came an order from Prince Bernard directing usto withdraw.

  Perhaps the defeat fell as lightly on the Waldgrave as on any man,though to him it was a huge disappointment. For he alone of all hadmade his footing good. I thought that it was that which made him lookso cheerful; but while the rank and file were falling in, he came tome.

  'Well, Martin,' he said. 'We are both veterans now.'

  I laughed. The rain had ceased. The sun was getting up, and the airwas fresh. Far off in the plain the city sparkled with
a thousandgems. I thought of Marie, I thought of life, and I thanked God that Iwas alive.

  'I have an errand for you,' he continued, a laugh in his eyes. 'Comeand see what we took yesterday, besides this sconce.'

  At the back of the work were two low huts, that had perhaps beenguardrooms or officers' quarters. He led the way into one, bending hishead as he passed under the low lintel.

  'An odd place,' he said.

  'Yes, my lord.'

  'Yes, but I mean--an odd place for what I found here,' he rejoined.'Look, man.'

  There were two low bunks in the hut, and on these and on the floor laya medley of soldiers' cloaks, pouches, weapons, and ammunition. Therewas blood on the one wall and the door was shattered, and in a corner,thrown one on another, were two corpses. The Waldgrave took no heed ofthese, but stepped to the corner bunk and drew away a cloak that layon it. Something--the sound in that place scared me as a cannon-shotwould not have--began to wail. On the bed, staring at us between tearsand wonder, lay a child.

  'So!' I said, and stared at it.

  'Do you know it?' the Waldgrave asked.

  'Know it? No,' I answered.

  'Are you sure?' he replied, smiling. 'Look again.'

  'Not I!' I said. 'How did it come here? A child! A baby! It ishorrible.'

  He shrugged his shoulders. 'We found it in this hut; in that bed. Aman to whom we gave quarter said it was----'

  'No!' I shouted.

  'Yes,' he answered, nodding.

  'Tzerclas' child! Count Leuchtenstein's child! Do you mean it?' Icried.

  He nodded. 'Tzerclas' child, the man said. The other's child, I guess.Nay, I am certain. It knows your girl's name.'

  'Marie's?'

  The Waldgrave nodded. 'Take it up,' he said. 'And take charge of it.'

  But I only stared at it. The thing seemed too wonderful to be true. Itold the Waldgrave of Tzerclas' death, and of what he had mutteredabout the child.

  'Yes, he was a clever man,' the Waldgrave answered. 'But, you see, Godhas proved too clever for him. Come, take it, man.'

  I took it. 'I had better carry it straight to the Count's quarters?' Isaid.

  The Waldgrave paused, looked away, then looked at me. 'No,' he said atlast, and slowly, 'take it to Lady Rotha. Let her give it to him.'

  I understood him, I guessed all he meant; but I made no answer, and wewent out together. The rain was still in the air, but the sky wasblue, the distance clear. The spire of the distant city shone like mylady's amethysts. Below us the dead lay in thousands. But we werealive.