‘Tonight, my lord? Certes, thou knowest well I will not fail to bring the silver, but we wed within the hour, and the Pulitzberg is three leagues distant——’
‘Tonight, my Wolfgang,’ broke in young Graf Otho. ‘It is my pleasure that I have the forfeit ere thou hast the maid.’
Now it was the law, and had been since the days of Charlemagne the Great, that when a vassal wed, the lord of Pulitzberg, if he desired, might occupy the bridal chamber in the husband’s stead upon the wedding night, and this was called the droit de seigneur, or lord’s right. Not in the memory of living man had any lord of Pulitzberg exacted payment of the droit in kind. Graf Otho’s father and grandfather and great-grandsire had compromised their claims for silver, and for more than ninety years a bag of thalers had been offered and accepted as a quit-claim settlement.
So Wolfgang louted low and bent his head in assent to his lord’s command. ‘The silver shall be in thy hand before the castle horologe strikes ten, my liege,’ he promised.
Against the purple backdrop of the night the Pulitzberg loomed like a darker shadow in the midst of shadows. Here and there a lighted window showed like an orange point pricked in the sky above the towering rim of the great rock on which the castle stood. From the ravine where a rill ran brawling past the Berg’s base rose the evening mist, whorl swirling lazily on whorl until the valley and the great trees growing on the lower slopes were shrouded like the sheeted dead, and through the thickening brume the harvest moon shone faintly, its golden light transmuted into faded silver by the gathering haze. The broad-flanked palfrey’s hooves made rhythmic music on the roadway flints as Wolfgang with Gertruda on the pillion at his back rode at easy gait toward the castle.
Up from the ravine came a faint halloo as villeins’ brats called back and forth across the rock-spiked gulch while they sought mollusks by the flare of rushlight torches. Gertruda clutched her husband’s arm between convulsive hands and shuddered against the rough stuff of his jerkin.
‘Art chilled, my sweetling?’ he asked with a bridegroom’s solicitude. ‘The mist is rising from the valley, but we shall be there eftsoons——’
‘Nay, husband,’ came her whispered interruption, ‘it was no chill of night that shook me. I felt a sudden inward tremor, such as the old wives say we feel when one steps on the spot where we shall die. Oh, Wolfgang’—her hold upon his great arm tightened—‘if I should die this night, upon my wedding eve—meseems this joy is too great to endure. What if it proves to be like fairy gold that turns to withered leaves and ashes in the holder’s hand——’
‘Tush, little silly one, what is there to be feared of? Am I not with thee——’
‘Nathless, husband, I am frighted. The way the young graf looked at us ere we were wed——’
‘Graf Otho, quotha?’ Wolfgang’s laugh drowned out her frightened, half-articulated words. ‘If we need fear no other more than him our path of life will be a smooth one, little bride o’ mine. We be more than lord and liegeman, he and I. We be true friends and comrades, and have been since our youth. I am beholden to him for my lands, but he is debtor to me for his life. Think ye he would do us wrong?’
‘His life? How sayest thou, Wolfgang?’
Again his chuckle answered her. ‘’Twas when we were but lads scarce breeched that he and I went hunting in the woods beyond the Tanneberg. It was forbidden ground to us, for there were bears and wolves—aye, robbers, too—among those trees, but danger ever was more lure than warning to us. Eh, we had not gone far when we heard a crackling in the brush, and on the trail before us stood a monster old he-bear with yellow fangs and little eyes that glared with rage and hate. He was a roamer of the woods, that one, an outcast from his kind who mated not and killed whatever crossed his path. He had been searching for a honey-tree, but now he sought no honey.
‘Graf Otho was a step before me, and when the bruin rushed at him he thrust out bravely with his boar-spear, but the monster struck the shaft aside as if it had been a reed, and towered over him a moment ere it dropped to rend him. But in that instant I let out a shout of mingled rage and fear and hurled a stone which struck the beast square on its tender snout so that it turned on me instead.’
Gertruda snuggled closer to her bridegroom’s massive shoulder and laid her cheek against the rough frieze of his jerkin. Her frightening premonitions were forgotten; surely she was safe with such a man for husband. ‘And wert thou not afeared?’ she whispered breathlessly.
‘Aye, more than ever I have been before or since, weibchen. When the brute turned on me I felt as if I had been stuffed with naught but water, and that aleak so sorely I must collapse like a burst wine-skin, but those who act the quickest live the longest in the wildwood, and, Gott sei dank, I had the wit to act. So I drave with my grisarme straight at his hairy breast, and he did not snap my spear as he had lashed away Count Otho’s; so the iron fleshed itself clear to the haft in him, and when he struck at me he stumbled over Otho’s prostrate body so he fell upon the spire and broke the shaft, but drove the blade clear through him so it thrust out of his back. So he fell upon his side and kicked and moaned his life away.
‘Then Otho and I named ourselves great huntsmen and the conquerors of monsters, and made shift to skin the brute and take its pelt and head for trophies. But ere we did this Otho thanked me graciously for my part in the work, and sware that from that day he was my true friend and companion, and that when we were men grown and he had reached his heritage there was nothing which I might ask that he would not give me freely. Think’st thou that we have aught to fear from him, my sweet? ’Tis but a whim that prompts him to exact the silver molmen on our bridal night instead of waiting for the payment as was the wont of his sire and grandsire.’
Graf Otho sat at late meat with his cronies of the chase. The remnants of a roasted pig’s face garnished with stewed plums, part of a haunch of venison, and the remains of a cast of bread were on the table, and by the Count’s hand stood a cruye of wine from which he replenished the silver rummers of himself and guests.
‘Body o’ Judas,’ swore von Dessaur between hiccups as his host renewed the ruby liquid in his flagon, ‘this is no Rheingau, no vintage of our valleys. ’Tis sherris, as I’m a sinner hoping for the Lord His pardon, a very heading cup to steal the senses and befog the brain!’
Graf Otho smiled, a thin slow smile that raised his black mustaches at the corners of his mouth and showed a hard white line of teeth between his lips. ‘Mayhap ’tis conscience who is doomed to lay her neck upon the block tonight,’ he answered cryptically, his eyes upon a bear’s head mounted on the wall. Then, to von Plücher: ‘What say’st thou, Ludwig, can promises be binding on a man of gens if made by him to a churl?’
Von der Plücher drew a deep draft from his rummer and considered gravely. ‘The churl and villein know not faith and honor,’ he decided at length. ‘Unless they take an oath upon the rood they cannot be bound to a promise. Meseems a man of gentle blood need not fulfill a promise made a carl unless he too hath sworn upon the cross or taken value for its giving.’ The others nodded solemn agreement as Hohenschuh refilled the cups.
‘It was an old, decrepit beast,’ he muttered. ‘Belike I could have slain him unaided——’
‘What say’st thou?’ von Dessaur asked. ‘What beast, my Otho?’
‘Eh? I did but mutter in my cup,’ returned Graf Otho. ‘Forgive me, friends, but I would be alone. I have somewhat to attend to ere the horologe strikes ten, and we must ride betimes upon the morrow.’
One by one they rose and made unsteady bows and left him sitting in his oaken chair before the oaken table with the orange glare of rushlights brightening the blood-red of the spilled wine on its polished top.
Wolfgang made a leg and Gertruda dropped a low, respectful curtsy when they came into the wide hall where Graf Otho sat alone before the broken meats and spattered wine.
‘Here is the molmen, good my lord,’ the franklin announced as he slipped the thongs that held the leather
n sack of silver to his girdle. ‘A hundred and fifty and two broad thalers, minted with the picture of the angel Gabriel on ’em, as was paid by my sire to your sire and my grandsire to yours.’
‘Put by thy money, Wolfgang,’ ordered the Count with a smile. ‘Use it to buy a prettying for thy sweet bride; mayhap I shall give thee a like sum on the morrow or the day after——’
‘Thou wert ever generous, my lord,’ Wolfgang’s wide face broke into a smile as he put a hand out to retrieve the silver. But both the gesture and the smile were halted as Graf Otho finished speaking.
‘——after I have had my marriage rights as thy liege lord.’
Wolfgang licked dry lips with a tongue that seemed to have gone dry all suddenly. ‘My lord is pleased to jest,’ he stammered thickly. His heavy fingers twisted and untwisted on each other; there was about him the air of a bewildered child.
‘Nay, in good sadness, I am minded to assert my right and demand payment of the droit in kind,’ the Count returned, almost patiently. ‘Get thee to thy cot, good Wolfgang, and tomorrow when the cock hath crowed three times come thou to the castle for thy fair Gertruda. I can promise thee——’
‘Aye, as thou didst promise long ago, when I saved thee from the ravening bear!’ Wolfgang interrupted hotly. ‘On that day thou swore to be to me like any brother, and declared that whatsoever I might ask thee should be granted me. I claim thy promise now, Otho Hohenschuh. By the memory of our boyhood friendship, by the service which I did thee; by the sacredness of thy pledged word I conjure thee to let us go in peace, unscathed and undefiled. Take thy tale of silver as thy sire and grandsire did aforetime, and——’ In his excess of emotion Wolfgang laid his hand upon the heavy hanger belted to his waist, and:
‘Ho, guard, there!’ cried Count Otho. ‘Seize me this varlet who hath offered violence in mine own hall. Set him in the inner dungeon and lock his feet fast in the stocks until I bid ye loose him!’
Surprised, but obedient, twenty men-at-arms came rushing to perform their master’s bidding, and Wolfgang went down beneath an overpowering weight of burly armored bodies and the flailing of a score of fists.
Bound with a length of rope they set him on his feet and dragged him to the door, but ere they hustled him down to the dungeon cell he turned to shout: ‘Oath-breaker, perjurer, accursed of God and man; the doom of Judas be upon thee; may thou go to thy death unshriven and in fear——’ A guardsman’s gauntlet stopped his mouth, and, silenced and raging, but as helpless as a rabbit in a snare, they hurried him into the oubliette.
Gertruda faced the Count across the littered dining-board. Her pulses jumped like frightened hares with every quick-drawn breath, her heart was quivering and jerking like something in its death-throes. There was a dreadful, paralyzing weakness spreading through her, as if her insides were becoming unfastened. Her lower lip began to quiver and she caught it savagely between her teeth to hold it steady. The urge to pray rose in her, but she had no words to frame a prayer. God seemed terribly unreal . . . perhaps there was no God! Surely He would not let such things happen if He existed . . . what harm had she or Wolfgang ever done, what had they ever asked of Heaven but each other and a little time to enjoy life and love together?
Graf Otho’s softly uttered, suave words called her from the trance of horror that enchained her. He spoke gently, with a sort of soft persausion, as to a frightened child: ‘—the bridal couch is decked with flowers and a bedgown of the softest silk from far Cathay waits to caress thy gentle form——’
She beat her breast with her left fist to still the frantic feeling which seemed spreading like a blood-stain in the sand to smother the wild palpitation of her heart. With her right hand she sawed a cross-sign in the air between them.
‘Aroint thee, perjurer and foresworn friend,’ she gasped. ‘Come not near nor touch me——’
Graf Otho drew his breath in with a sibilating hiss. Her tense, pale face was set and immobile as the marble visage of a sculptured saint in the Cathedral at Cologne, but the glow of rushlights gleaming at her back shone through her wheat-blond hair and made it shine like minted gold, and the shadows of her brows gave added depth and luster to the deep blue of her eyes. The wench was fairer, even, than he’d thought.
‘Nay, lovely ’Truda,’ he began to wheedle, ‘flee not from me in affright, I beseech thee. See, I will be thy tiring-woman——’ He passed around the table and laid a hand upon her bodice, but she shook the lethargy of terror off and ran on faltering, stumbling feet to the wide windows overlooking the ravine that served the Pulitzberg in place of a moat.
‘Back—back!’ she panted as he halted by the casement. ‘Come but another step and I will throw myself——’
His laughter drowned her threat. ‘Not thou, my ’Truda—and mine thou art, as surely as the horse I stride or hound I course,’ he denied. ‘Look thou out and see what lies beyond that window, then say if thou’lt choose it instead of Otho Hohenschuh, his arms and lips.’
Gertruda cast a timorous glance across the two-foot stone sill of the window-place. Two hundred feet and more below, the mountain rill, high-swollen by a steady week of rain that fell before the harvest period, ran clattering and bawling on the needle-points of rock, and at the edges of the flood the white foam steamed and glistened as if the very force of friction of the water on the boulders set it boiling. She drew away with a gasp, for the chasm seemed to call and beckon to her, but even as she shuddered back she felt his touch upon her shoulder.
‘Hast made thy choice, Gertruda mine?’ he asked so softly that she scarce could hear his words above the clamor of the water shouting on the rocks below.
‘I thine?’ she answered in a voice gone hoarse with loathing and disgust. ‘Thine, Otho Hohenschuh? Sooner would I give myself to Barran-Sathanas! Hear me, thou who perjured thy true word and requited the savior of thy life with perfidy—look in mine eyes and read in them thy doom—heilige Maria!’ As Graf Otho’s fingers tightened on her shoulder and he made to draw her into his embrace she thrust him back with all her feeble might, leapt to the window-sill, and dropped herself into the abyss.
Out into the night she launched, a glimmer of white face and gleaming hair, pale hands clutching at the empty air, then turning slowly over as she fell.
Otho looked across the casement sill, his black eyes wide, his midriff twitching with incipient sickness. She lay face down upon the rocks that rimmed the swirling spray-plumed fall of a small cataract, her arms outstretched like those of a diver, her fair bright hair around her like an aureole, and her head bent at an utterly impossible angle. He saw one of her slim hands move a little, as if to reach another with its clasp. Then the fingers opened slowly, like the petals of a wilting flower—and moved no more.
They buried her slight, broken body in a grave dug at the crossroads. Coffinless and shroudless they put her in the earth, garbed in the blood-stained gown she wore upon her bridal night, with nothing but her bright hair for a winding-sheet. No linen bandages bound her chin, no cincture held her pale hands crossed upon her breast; there was neither bell nor book nor prayer nor perfumed incense at her burial, for as one self-slain she died outside the pale of religion, and might not have the holy office read for her, nor lie in consecrated ground. Her father and her mother stood afar off, weeping. Wolfgang labored in his fields, and took no more account of her burial than if it had been a stray dog they tumbled into the hole scooped out of the leaf-mold underneath the mighty oak that grew beside the crossways.
But in the dark of night when honest men lay snug abed with fires covered, prayers said, and doors barred fast, there came one to the crossroads grave who knelt and clasped his hands and besought pardon for the wife-maid who had forfeited her soul to save her body from defilement, and, rising, made the sacred sign above the dark, unhallowed earth in which they had laid the suicide.
A kindly man was Friar Hilderbrandt, and, according to his lights, a godly one; but no saint. Saints were knitted of a tougher fiber; their love of God was
all-exclusive. Hilderbrandt’s love of his fellow creatures had more of earthiness than Paradise about it.
From the dark shadows of the Tannenberg to the sun-washed valleys of the farm lands spread the dreadful word: A werewolf was abroad!
Flocks were set upon and decimated, the stoutest-hearted sheep dogs ran with lowered tails and craven whines to the shelter of the farmhouse, and the strongest bars were powerless to keep the monster from the folds.
A forester had met the devil-beast at night-fall as he hurried homeward through the Schwarzwald. Though he hewed at it with his short sword it overbore him with a mighty pounce and put its monstrous forepaws on his arms and pinned him helpless to the earth.
Then as he gave up hope and was commending himself to Heaven it took its muzzle from his throat and its great paws from his arms and trotted off into the bush. But ere it vanished it turned back and gave him a long look that made the scalp creep on his skull and turned the hot blood in his veins to ice; for its eyes were like a woman’s, big and blue and fringed with long, dark lashes, and in their depths he read a ridicule more dreadful than the bitterest hatred, and when it opened its dark lips and bared its gleaming fangs it did not howl or growl or whine, but laughed a scornful, mocking laugh, sweet as the music of a jonglar’s bells, but terrible to hear.
Graf Otho had been to the Emperor’s court at Warzburg to pay his devoir to his sovereign and take the Lady Margaretta von Orselm to wife. The Lady Margaretta was not highly favored as to looks, being somewhat wider than her height required, and inclined to be thick of wrist and ankle—some said head, as well. Her teeth were large, her mouth was small, her hair was scanty and of an uncertain color. But her dower was four pack-mules’ load of gold and silver coin, her family was an ancient one, and of much influence at court, and her brother was Count Werther von Orselm, one of the foremost knights in all the Empire’s ritterdom.
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