‘And Peter did?’
‘Yes,’ she answered simply. ‘May Our Lady reward him.’
‘We were the men you met,’ I said drowsily. ‘I remember now. You were carrying your brother.’
‘My brother?’
‘Yes, the child.’
‘Oh, yes,’ she answered, in rather a strange fashion; but I was too dull to do more than notice it. ‘The child of course.’
I could ask no more, for my head was already splitting with pain. I lay back, and I suppose went off into a swoon again, sleeping all that day and until the morning of the next was far advanced.
Then I awoke to find the place in which I lay changed from a cave of mystery to a low-roofed dingy room; the shutter of the window standing half-open, admitted a ray of sunshine and a breath of pure air. A small fire burned on the hearth, a black pot bubbled beside it. For the room itself, a litter of old iron stood in every corner; bunches of keys and rows of rusty locks — padlocks, fetter-locks, and door-locks — hung on all the walls. One or two chests, worm-eaten and rickety, but prized by their present possessor for the antiquity of their fastenings, stood here and there; with a great open press full of gun-locks, matchlocks, wheel-locks, spring-locks and the like. Half a dozen arquebuses and pistols decorated the mantel-piece, giving the room something of the air of an armoury.
In the midst of all this litter sat old Peter himself, working away, with a pair of horn glasses on his forehead, at a small lock; which seemed to be giving him a vast amount of trouble. A dozen times at least I watched him fit a number of tiny parts together, only to scatter them again in his leather apron, and begin to pare one or other of them with a little file. At length he laid the work down, as if he were tired, and looking up found my eyes fixed upon him.
He nodded cheerfully. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Now you look yourself, Martin. No more need of febrifuges. Another night’s sleep, and you may go abroad.’
‘What day is it?’ I said, striving to collect my thoughts.
‘Friday,’ he answered, looking at me with his shrewd, pleasant eyes. He was an old man, over sixty, a widower with two young children, and clever at his trade. I never knew a better man. ‘Wednesday night you came here,’ he continued, showing in his countenance the pleasure it gave him to see me recovering.
‘I must go to the castle,’ I exclaimed, rising abruptly and sitting up. ‘Do you hear? I must go.’
‘I do not see the necessity,’ he answered, looking at me coolly, and without budging an inch.
‘My lady will need me.’
‘Not at all,’ he answered, in the same quiet tone. ‘You may make your mind easy about that. The Countess is safe and well. She is in the castle, and the gates are shut.’
‘But she has not — —’ Then I stopped. I was going to say too much.
‘She has not half a dozen men with her, you would say,’ he replied. ‘Well, no. But one is a man, it seems. The young lord has turned a couple of cannon on the town, and all our valiant scoundrels are shaking in their shoes.’
‘A couple of cannon! But there are no cannon in the castle!’
‘You are mistaken,’ Peter answered drily. He had a very dry way with him at times. ‘I have seen the muzzles of them, myself, and you can see them, if you please, from the attic window. One is trained on the market-place, and one to fire down the High Street. To-morrow morning our Burgomaster and the Minister are to go up and make their peace. And I can tell you some of our brisk boys feel the rope already round their necks.’
‘Is this true?’ I said, hardly able to believe the tale.
‘As true as you please,’ he answered. ‘If you will take my advice you will lie quietly here until to-morrow morning, and then go up to the castle. No one will molest you. The townsfolk will be only too glad to find you alive, and that they have so much the less to pay for. I should not wonder if you saved half a dozen necks,’ Peter added regretfully. ‘For I hear the Countess is finely mad about you.’
At this mention of my lady’s regard my eyes filled so that I had much ado to hide my feelings. Affecting to find the light too strong I turned my back on Peter, and then for the first time became aware that I had a companion in misfortune. On a heap of straw behind me lay another man, so bandaged about the head that I could see nothing of his features.
‘Hallo!’ I exclaimed, raising myself that I might have a better view of him. ‘Who is this?’
‘Your man Steve,’ Peter said briefly. ‘But for him and another, Master Martin, I do not think that you would be here.’
‘You do well to remind me,’ I answered, feeling shame that I had not yet thanked him, or asked how I came to be in safety. ‘How was it?’
‘Well,’ he said, ‘it began with the girl. The doings on Wednesday night were not much to my mind, as you may suppose, and I shut up early and kept myself close. About seven, when the racket had not yet risen to its height, there came a knocking at my door. For a while I took no notice of it, but presently, as it continued, I went to listen, and heard such a sobbing on the step as the heart of man could not resist. So I opened and found the Papist girl there with a child. I do not know,’ Peter continued, pushing forward his greasy old cap and rubbing his head, ‘that I should have opened it if I had been sure who it was. But as the door was open, the girl had to come in.’
‘I do not think you will repent it!’ I said.
‘I don’t know that I shall,’ he answered thoughtfully. ‘However, she had not been long inside and the bolts shot on us, when there began a most tremendous skirmish in the lane, which lasted off and on for half an hour. Then followed a sudden silence. I had given the girl some food, and told her she might sleep with the children upstairs, and we were sitting before the fire while she cried a bit — she was all over of a shake, you understand — when on a sudden she stood up, and listened.
‘“What is it?” I said.
‘She did not answer for a while, but still stood listening, looking now at me and now towards the forge in a queer eager kind of way. I told her to sit down, but she did not seem to hear, and presently she cried, “There is some one there!”
‘“Well,” said I, “they will stop there then. I don’t open that door again to-night.”
‘She looked at me pitifully, but sat down for all the world as if I had struck her. Not for long, however. In a minute she was up again, and began to go to and fro between the kitchen and the forge door like nothing else but a cat looking for her kittens. “Sit down, wench,” I said. But this time she took no heed, and at last the sight of her going up and down like a dumb creature in pain was too much for me, and I got up and undid the door. She was out in a minute, seeming not a bit afraid for herself, and sure enough, there were you and Steve lying one on the top of the other on the step, and so still that I thought you gone. Heaven only knows how she heard you.’
‘Peter,’ I said abruptly, ‘have you any water handy?’
‘To be sure,’ he replied, starting up. ‘Are you thirsty?’
I nodded, and he went to get it, blaming himself for his thoughtlessness. He need not have reproached himself, however. I was not thirsty; but I could not bear that he should sit and look at me at that moment. The story he had told had touched me — and I was still weak; and I could not answer for it, I should not burst into tears like a woman. The thought of this girl’s persistence, who in everything else was so weak, of her boldness who in her own defence was a hare, of her strange instinct on our behalf who seemed made only to be herself protected — the thought of these things touched me to the heart and filled me with an odd mixture of pity and gratitude! I had gone to save her, and she had saved me! I had gone to shield her from harm, and heaven had led me to her door, not in strength but in weakness. She had fled from me who came to help her; that when I needed help, she might be at hand to give it!
‘Where is she?’ I muttered, when he came back and I had drunk.
‘Who? Marie?’ he asked.
‘Yes, if that is her name,’ I sa
id, drinking again.
‘She is lying down upstairs,’ he answered. ‘She is worn out, poor child. Not that in one sense, Master Martin,’ he continued, dropping his voice and nodding with a mysterious air, ‘she is poor. Though you might think it.’
‘How do you mean?’ I said, raising my head and meeting his eyes. He nodded.
‘It is between ourselves,’ he said; ‘but I am afraid there is a good deal in what our rascals here say. I am afraid, to be plain, Master Martin, that the father was like all his kind: plundered many an honest citizen, and roasted many a poor farmer before his own fire. It is the way of soldiers in that army; and God help the country they march in, be it friend’s or foe’s!’
‘Well?’ I said impatiently; ‘but what of that now?’ The mention of these things fretted me. I wanted to hear nothing about the father. ‘The man is dead,’ I said.
‘Ay, he is,’ Peter answered slowly and impressively. ‘But the daughter? She has got a necklace round her neck now, worth — worth I dare say two hundred men at arms.’
‘What, ducats?’
‘Ay, ducats! Gold ducats. It is worth all that.’
‘How do you know?’ I said, staring at him. ‘I have never seen such a thing on her. And I have seen the girl two or three times.’
‘Well, I will tell you,’ he answered, glancing first at the window and then at Steve to be sure that we were not overheard. ‘I’ll tell you. When we had carried you into the house the other night she took off her kerchief, to tear a piece from it to bind up your head. That uncovered the necklace. She was quick to cover it up, when she remembered herself, but not quick enough.’
‘Is it of gold?’ I asked.
He nodded. ‘Fifteen or sixteen links I should say, and each as big as a small walnut. Carved and shaped like a walnut too.’
‘It may be silver-gilt.’
He laughed. ‘I am a smith, though only a locksmith,’ he said. ‘Trust me for knowing gold. I doubt it came from Magdeburg; I doubt it did. Magdeburg, or Halle, which my Lord Tilly ravaged about that time. And if so there is blood upon it. It will bring the girl no luck, depend upon it.’
‘If we talk about it, I’ll be sworn it will not!’ I answered savagely. ‘There are plenty here who would twist her neck for so much as a link of it.’
‘You are right, Master Martin,’ he answered meekly. ‘Perhaps I should not have mentioned it; but I know that you are safe. And after all the girl has done nothing.’
That was true, but it did not content me. I wished he had not seen what he had, or that he had not told me the tale. A minute before I had been able to think of the girl with pure satisfaction; to picture with a pleasant warmth about my heart her gentleness, her courage, her dark mild beauty that belonged as much to childhood as womanhood, the thought for others that made her flight a perpetual saving. But this spoiled all. The mere possession of this necklace, much more the use of it, seemed to sully her in my eyes, to taint her freshness, to steal the perfume from her youth.
... she came presently to me with a bowl of broth in her hands and a timid smile on her lips....
For I am peasant born, of those on whom the free-companions have battened from the beginning; and spoil won in such a way seemed to me to be accursed. Whether I would or no, horrid tales of the storming of Magdeburg came into my mind: tales of streets awash with blood, of churches blocked with slain, of women lying dead with living babes in their arms. And I shuddered. I felt the necklace a blot on all. I shrank from one, who, with the face of a saint, wore under her kerchief gold dyed in such a fashion!
That was while I lay alone, tossing from side to side, and troubling myself unreasonably about the matter; since the girl was nothing to me, and a Papist. But when she came presently to me with a bowl of broth in her hands and a timid smile on her lips — a smile which gave the lie to the sadness of her eyes and the red rims that surrounded them — I forgot all, necklace and creed. I took the bowl silently, as she gave it. I gave it back with only one ‘Thank you,’ which sounded hoarse and rustic in my ears; but I suppose my eyes were more eloquent, for she blushed and trembled. And in the evening she did not come. Instead one of the children brought my supper, and sitting down on the straw beside me, twittered of Marie and ‘Go’ and other things.
‘Who is Go?’ I said.
‘Go is Marie’s brother,’ the child answered, open-eyed at my ignorance. ‘You not know Go?’
‘It is a strange name,’ I said, striving to excuse myself.
‘He is a strange man,’ the little one retorted, pointing to Steve. ‘He does not speak. Now you speak. Marie says—’
‘What does Marie say?’ I asked.
‘Marie says you saved his life.’
‘Well, you can tell her it was the other way,’ I exclaimed roughly.
Twice that night when I awoke I heard a light footstep, and turned to see the girl, moving to and fro among the rusty locks and ancient chests in attendance on Steve. He mended but slowly. She did not come near me at these times, and after a glance I pretended to fall asleep that I might listen unnoticed to her movements, and she be more free to do her will. But whenever I heard her and opened my eyes to see her slender figure moving in that dingy place, I felt the warmth about my heart again. I forgot the gold necklace; I thought no more of the rosary, only of the girl. For what is there which so well becomes a woman as tending the sick; an office which in a lover’s eyes should set off his mistress beyond velvet and Flanders lace.
CHAPTER VI.
RUPERT THE GREAT.
I have known a man very strong and very confident, whom the muzzle of a loaded pistol, set fairly against his head, has reduced to reason marvellously. So it fared with Heritzburg on this occasion. My lady’s cannon, which I went up to the roof at daybreak to see — and did see, to my great astonishment, trained one on the Market Square, and one down the High Street — formed the pistol, under the cooling influence of which the town had so far come to its senses, that the game was now in my lady’s hands. Peter assured me that the place was in a panic, that the Countess could hardly ask any amends that would not be made, and that as a preliminary the Burgomaster and Minister were to go to the castle before noon to sue for pardon. He suggested that I and the girl should accompany them.
‘But does Hofman know that we are here?’ I asked.
‘Since yesterday morning,’ the locksmith answered, with a grin. ‘And no one more pleased to hear it! If he had not you to present as a peace-offering, I doubt he would have fled the town before he would have gone up. As it is, they had fine work with him at the town-council yesterday.’
‘He is in a panic? Serve him right!’ I said.
‘I am told that his cheeks shake like jelly,’ Peter answered.
‘Two of the Waldgrave’s men are dead, you know, and some say that the Countess will hang him out of hand. But you will go up with him?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I see no objection.’
Some one else objected, however. When the plan was broached to the girl, she looked troubled. For a moment she did not speak, but stood before us silent and confused. Then she pointed to Steve.
‘When is he going, if you please?’ she asked, in a troubled voice.
‘He must go in a litter by the road,’ I answered. ‘Peter here will see to it this morning.’
‘Could I not go with him?’ she said.
I looked at Peter, and he at me. He nodded.
‘I see no reason why you should not, if you prefer it,’ I said. ‘Either way you will be safe.’
‘I should prefer it,’ she muttered, in a low tone. And then she went out to get something for Steve, and we saw her no more.
‘Drunken Steve is in luck,’ Peter said, looking after her with a smile. ‘She is wonderfully taken with him. She is a — she is a good girl, Papist or no Papist,’ he added thoughtfully.
I am not sure that he would have indorsed that later in the day. At the last moment, when I was about to leave the house to go up to the castle
my way, and Steve and his party were on the point of starting by the West Gate and the road, something happened which gave both of us a kind of shock, though neither said a word to the other. Marie had brought down the little boy, a brave-eyed, fair-haired child about three years old, and she was standing with us in the forge waiting with the child clinging to her skirt, when on a sudden she turned to Peter and began to thank him. A word and she broke down.
‘Pooh, child!’ Peter said kindly, patting her on the shoulder. ‘It was little enough, and I am glad I did it. No thank’s.’
She answered between her sobs that it was beyond thanks, and called on Heaven to reward him.
‘If I had anything,’ she continued, looking at him timidly, ‘if I had anything I could give you to prove my gratitude, I would so gladly give it. But I am alone, and I have nothing worth your acceptance. I have nothing in the world, unless,’ she added with an effort, ‘you would like my rosary.’
‘No,’ Peter said almost roughly. I noticed that he avoided my eye. ‘I do not want it. It is not a thing I use.’
She said she had nothing; and we knew she had that chain! Yet Heaven knows her face as she said it was fair enough to convert a Beza! She said she had nothing; we knew she had. Yet if ever genuine gratitude and thankfulness seemed to shine out of wet human eyes, they shone out of hers then.
What I could not stomach was the ingratitude. The fraud was too gross, too gratuitous, since she need have offered nothing. I turned away and went out of the forge without waiting for her to recover herself. I dreaded lest she should thank me in the same way.
I knew Peter, and knew he could have no motive for traducing her. He was old enough to be her grandfather, and a quiet good man. Therefore I was sure that she had the chain, three or four links of which should be worth his shop of old iron.
But besides I had the evidence of my own eyes. There was a crinkle, a crease in her kerchief, for which the presence of the necklace would account; it was such a crease as a necklace of that size would cause. I had marked it when she brought the child into the room in her arms. The boy’s right arm had been round her neck, and I had seen him relax his hold of her hair and steady himself by placing his little palm on that wrinkle, as on a sure and certain and familiar stay. So I knew that she had the necklace, and that she had lied about it.
Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman Page 131
