I passed out of the house, without alarming any one, and was not surprised to find Jacob pinning a captive against the wall with one hand, while he threatened him with his pike. There was just light enough to see this, and no more, the wide eaves casting a black shadow on the prisoner’s face.
‘What is it, Jacob?’ I said, going to his assistance. ‘Whom have you got?’
‘I do not know,’ he answered sturdily, ‘but I’ll keep him. He was trying to get in or out. Steady now,’ he added gruffly to his captive, ‘or I will spoil your beauty for you!’
‘In or out?’ I said.
‘Ay, I think he was coming out.’
There was a fire burning in the road a score of paces away. I ran to it and fetched a brand, and blowing the smouldering wood into a blaze, threw the light on the fellow’s face. Jacob dropped his hand with a cry of surprise, and I recoiled. His prisoner was a woman — Marie Wort.
She hung down her head, trembling violently. Jacob had thrust back the hood from her face, and her loosened hair covered her shoulders.
‘What does it mean?’ I cried, struggling with my bewilderment. ‘Why are you here, girl?’
Instead of answering she cowered nearer the wall, and I saw that she was trying to hide something behind her under cover of her cloak.
‘What have you got there?’ I said quickly, laying my hand on her wrist.
She flashed a look at me, her small teeth showing, a mutinous glare on her little pale face. ‘Not my chain!’ she snapped.
I dropped her arm and recoiled as if she had struck me; though the words did not so much hurt as surprise me. And I was quick to recover myself. ‘What is it, then?’ I said, returning to the attack. ‘I must know, Marie, and what you are doing here at this time of night.’
As she did not answer I put her cloak aside, and discovered, to my great astonishment, that she was holding a platter full of food. It shook in her hand. She began to cry.
‘Heavens, girl!’ I exclaimed in my wonder, ‘have you not had enough to eat?’
She lifted her head and looked at me through her tears, her eyes sparkling with indignation. ‘I have!’ she said almost fiercely. ‘But what of these?’ — and she flung her disengaged hand abroad, with a gesture I did not at once comprehend. ‘Can you sleep in their beds, and lie in their houses, and eat from their meal-tubs, and think of them starving, and not get up and help them? Can you hear them whining for food like dogs, and starve them as you would not starve a dog? I cannot. I cannot!’ she repeated wildly. ‘But you, you others, you of the north, you have no hearts! You lie soft and care nothing!’
‘But what — who are starving?’ I said in amazement. Her words outran my wits. ‘And where is the man in whose bed I am lying?’
‘Under the sky! In the ditch!’ she answered passionately. ‘Are you blind?’ she continued, speaking more quietly and drawing nearer. ‘Do you think your general built this village? If not, where are the people who lived in it a month ago? Whining for a crust at the camp gate. Living on offal, or starving. Fighting with the dogs for bones. I heard a man outside this house cry that it was all his, and that he was starving. You drove him off. I heard his wife and babes wailing outside a while ago, and I came out. I could not bear it.’
I looked at Jacob. He nodded gravely. ‘There was a woman here, with a child,’ he said.
‘Heaven forgive us!’ I cried. Then— ‘Go in, girl,’ I continued. ‘I will see the food put where they will get it; but do you go to bed.’
She obeyed meekly, leaving me wondering at the strange mixture of courage and fearfulness which makes up some women, and those the best; who fly from a rat, yet face every extremity of pain without flinching. A Romanist? And what of that? It seemed to me a small thing, as I watched her gliding in. If she knew little and that awry, she loved much.
I looked at Jacob and he at me. ‘Is it true, do you think?’ I said.
‘I doubt it is,’ he answered stolidly, dropping the smouldering brand on the ground and treading, it out with his heel. ‘I have seen soldiers and sutlers and women since I came into camp; and beggars. But peasants not one. I doubt we have eaten them out, Master Martin. But soldiers must live.’
The little heap of red embers glowed dully in the road and gave no light. The darkness shut us in on every side, even as the camp shut us in. I looked out into it and shuddered. It seemed to my eyes peopled with horrors: with gaping mouths that cursed us as they set in death, with lean hands that threatened us, and tortured faces of maids and children; with the despair of the poor. Ghosts of starving men and women glared at us out of spectral eyes. And the night seemed full of omens.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE OPENING OF A DUEL.
I never knew where the Waldgrave spent that night, but I think it must have been with the fairies. For when he showed himself early next morning, before my lady appeared, I noticed at once a change in him; and though at first I was at a loss to explain it, I presently saw that that had happened which might have been expected. The appearance of a rival had laid the spark to his heart, and while the love-light was in his eyes, a new gravity, a new gentleness added grace to his bearing. The temper and pettiness of yesterday were gone. Other things, too, I saw — that his face flushed when my lady’s voice was heard at the door, that his eyes shone when she entered. He had a nosegay of flowers for her — wild flowers he had gathered in the early morning, with the dew upon them — which he offered her with a little touch of humility.
Doubtless the fret and passion of yesterday had not been thrown away on him. He had learned in the night both that he loved, and the lowliness that comes of love. It wanted but that, it seemed to me, to make him perfect in a woman’s eyes; and I saw my lady’s dwell very kindly on him as he turned away. A little, I think, she wondered; his tone was so different, his desire to please so transparent, his avoidance of everything that might offend so ready. But such service wins its way; and my lady’s own kindness and gaiety disposing her to meet his advances, she seemed in a few moments to have forgotten whatever cause of complaint he had given her.
The general’s band came early, to play while she ate, but I noticed with satisfaction that the music moved her little this morning, either because she was taken up with talking to her companion, or because the romantic circumstances of the evening, darkness and vague surroundings, and the lassitude of fatigue, were lacking. With the sunshine and fresh air pouring in through the open windows, the strains which yesterday awoke a hundred associations and stirred mysterious impulses fell almost flat.
The Waldgrave made no attempt to resume the conversation he had held with me by the fallen tree. Either love, or respect for his mistress, made him reticent, or he was practising self-control. And I said nothing. But I understood, and set myself keenly to watch this duel between the two men. If I read the general’s intentions aright, the young lord’s influence with the Countess could scarcely grow except at the general’s expense; his suit, if successful, must oust that which the elder man, I was sure, meditated. And this being so, all my wishes were on one side. My fear of the general had so grown in the night, that I suspected him of a hundred things; and could only think of him as an antagonist to be defeated — a foe from whom we must expect the worst that force or fraud could effect.
He came soon after breakfast to pay his respects to my lady, and alighted at the door with great attendance and endless jingling of bits and spurs. He brought with him several of his officers, and these he presented to the Countess with so much respect and politeness that even I could find no fault with the action. One or two of the men, rough Silesians, were uncouth enough; but he covered their mistakes so cleverly that they served only to set off his own good breeding.
He had not been in the room five minutes, however, before I saw that he remarked the change which had come over the Waldgrave, and perhaps some corresponding change in my lady’s manner; and I saw that it chafed him. He did not lose his air of composure, but he grew less talkative and more watchf
ul. Presently he let drop something aimed at the young man; a light word, inoffensive, yet likely to draw the other into a debate. But the Waldgrave refrained, and the general soon afterwards rose to take leave.
He had come, it seemed, to invite my lady’s presence at a shooting-match which was to take place outside the camp at noon. He spoke of the match as a thing arranged before our arrival, but I have no doubt that the plan had its origin in a desire to please my lady and fill the day. He spoke, besides, of a hunting-party to take place next morning, with a banquet at his quarters to follow; of a review fixed for the day after that; and, in the still remoter distance, of races and a trip to a neighboring waterfall, with other diversions.
I heard the arrangements made, and my lady’s frank acceptance, with a sinking heart; for under the perfect courtesy of his manner, behind the frank desire to give her pleasure which he professed, I felt his power. While he spoke, though I could find no fault with him, I felt the steel hand inside the silk glove. And these plans? Even my lady, though her eyes sparkled with anticipation — she loved pleasure with a healthy, honest love — looked a little startled.
‘But I thought that you were marching southwards, General Tzerclas,’ she said. ‘At once I mean?’
‘I am,’ he answered, bowing easily — he had already risen. ‘But an army, Countess, marches more slowly than a travelling party. And I am expecting despatches which may vary my route.’
‘From the King of Sweden?’
‘Yes,’ he answered. ‘The King has arrived at Nuremberg, and expects shortly to be attacked by Wallenstein, who is on the march from Egra.’
‘But shall you be in time for the battle?’ she asked, her eyes shining.
‘I hope so,’ he replied, smiling. ‘Or my part may be less glorious — to cut off the enemy’s convoys.’
‘I should not like that!’ she exclaimed.
‘Nevertheless, it is a very necessary function,’ he said. ‘As the Waldgrave Rupert will tell your excellency.’
The young lord agreed, and a moment later the general with his jingling attendants took his leave and clattered out and mounted before the door. My lady went to the window and waved adieu to him, and he lowered his great plumed hat to his stirrup.
‘At noon?’ he cried, making his horse curvet in the roadway.
‘Without fail!’ my lady answered gaily, and she stood at the window looking out until the last gleam of steel sank in a cloud of dust and the beggars closed in before the door.
The Waldgrave leaned against the wall behind her with his lips set and a grave face. But he said nothing, and when she turned he had a smile for her. It seemed to me that these two had changed places; the Waldgrave had grown older and my lady younger.
A few minutes before noon, Captain Ludwig and a sub-officer of the same rank, a Pole with long hair, came to conduct my lady to the scene of the match. They were arrayed in all their finery, and made a show of such etiquette as they knew. For our part we did not keep them waiting; five minutes saw us mounted and riding through the camp. This wore, to-day, a more martial and less disorderly appearance. The part we traversed was clear of women and gamesters, while sentries stationed at the gate, and a guard of honour which fell in behind us at the same spot, proved that the eye of the master could even here turn chaos into order. I do not know that the change pleased me much, for if it lessened my dread of the cutthroats by whom we were surrounded, it increased the awe in which I held their chief.
The shooting was fixed to take place in a narrow valley diverging from the river, a mile or more from the camp. It was a green, gently-sloping place, such as sheep love; but the sheep had long ago been driven into quarters, and the shepherd to the listing-sergeant or the pike. A few ruined huts told the tale; the hills which rose on either side were silent and untrodden.
Not so the valley itself, which lay bathed in sunshine. It roared with the babel of a great multitude. A straight course, two hundred yards in length, had been roped off for the shooting, and round this the crowd thronged and pushed, or, breaking here or there into fragments, wandered up and down outside the lines, talking and gesticulating, so that the place seemed to swarm with life and movement and colour.
I had seen such a spectacle and as large a crowd at Heritzburg — once a year, it may be. But there the gathering had not the wild and savage elements which here caught the eye; the hairy, swarthy faces and black, gleaming eyes, the wild garb, and brandished weapons and fierce gestures, that made this crowd at once curious and formidable. The babel of unknown tongues rose on every side. Poland and Lithuania, Scotland and the Rhine, equally with Hungary, Italy, and Bohemia, had their representatives in this strange army.
General Tzerclas and his staff occupied a mound near the lower end of the valley. On seeing our party approach, he rode down to meet us, followed by thirty or forty officers, whose dress and equipments, even more than those of their men, fixed the attention; for while some wore steel caps and clumsy cuirasses, with silk sashes and greasy trunk-hose, others, better acquainted with the mode, affected huge flapped hats and velvet doublets, with falling collars of lace, and untanned boots reaching to the middle of the thigh. One or two wore almost complete armour; others, gay silks, stained with wine and weather. Their horses, too, were of all sizes, from tall Flemings to small, wiry Hungarians, and their arms were as various. One huge fat man, whose flesh swayed as he moved, carried a steel mace at his saddle-bow. Another swept along with a lance, raking the sky behind him. Great horse-pistols were common, and swords with blades so long that they ploughed the ground.
Varying in everything else, in one thing these warlike gentry agreed. As they came prancing towards us, I did not see a face among them that did not repel me, nor one that I could look at with respect or liking. Where dissipation had not set its seal so plainly as to oust all others, or some old wound did not disfigure, cruelty, greed, and recklessness were written large. The glare of the bully shone alike under flapped hat and iron cap. One might show a swollen visage, flushed with excess, and another a thin, white, cruel face; but that was all the odds.
The sight of such a crew should have opened my lady’s eyes and enlightened her as to the position in which we stood. But women see differently from men. Too often they take swagger for courage, and recklessness for manhood. And, besides, the very defects of these men, their swashbuckling manners and banditti guise, only set off the more the perfect dress and quiet bearing of their leader, who, riding in their midst, seemed, with his cold, calm face and air of pride, like nothing so much as the fairy prince among the swine.
He wore a suit of black velvet, with a falling collar of Utrecht lace, and a white sash. A feather adorned his hat, and his furniture and sword-hilt were of steel. This, I afterwards learned, was a favourite costume with him. At odd times he relapsed into finery, but commonly he affected a simplicity which suited his air and features, and lost nothing by comparison with the tawdriness of his attendants.
He sprang from his horse at the foot of the slope, and, resigning it to a groom, took my lady’s rein and, bareheaded, led her to the summit of the mound. The Waldgrave with Fraulein Anna followed, and the rest of us as closely as we could. The officers crowded thick upon us and would have edged us out, but I had primed my men, and though they quailed before the others’ scowls and curses, they kept together, so that we not only had the advantage of watching the sport from a position immediately behind the Countess, but heard all that passed.
At the end of the open space I have mentioned stood three targets in a line. These were peculiar, for they consisted of dummies cased in leather, shaped so exactly to the form of men, that, at a distance of two hundred yards, it was only by the face I could tell that they were not men. Where the features should have been was a whitened circle, and on, the breast of each a heart in chalk. They were so life-like that they gave an air of savagery to the sport, and made me shudder. When I had scanned them, I turned and found Captain Ludwig at my elbow.
‘What is it?’
he said, grinning. ‘Our targets? Fine practice, comrade. They are the general’s own invention, and I have known them put to good use.’
‘How?’ I asked. He spoke under his breath. I adopted the same tone.
‘You will know by, and by,’ he answered, with a wink. ‘Sometimes we find a traitor in the camp; or we catch a spy. Then — but you need not fear. Drawing-room practice to-day. There is no one in them.’
‘In them?’ I muttered, unable to take my eyes from his face.
He nodded. ‘Ay, in them,’ he answered, smiling at my look of consternation. ‘Time has been I have known one in each, and cross-bow practice. That makes them squeal! With powder and a flint-lock — pouf! It is all over. Unless you put the butter-fingers first; then there is sport, perhaps.’
Little wonder that after that I paid no attention to the shooting, which had begun; nor to the brawling and disagreement which from the first accompanied it, and which it needed all the general’s authority to quell. I thought only of our position among these wretches. If I had felt any doubt of General Tzerclas’ character before, the doubt troubled me no more.
But it did occur to me that Ludwig might be practising on me, and I turned to him sharply. ‘I see!’ I said, pretending that I had found him out. ‘A good joke, captain!’
He grinned again. ‘You would not call it one,’ he said dryly, ‘if you were once in the leather. But have it your own way. Come, there is a good shot, now. He is a Swiss, that fellow.’
But I could take no interest in the shooting, with that ghastly tale in my head. I felt for the moment the veriest coward. We were ten in the midst of two thousand — ten men and four helpless women! Our own strength could not avail us, and we had nothing else under heaven to depend upon, except the scruples, or interest, or fears of a mercenary captain; a man whose hardness the thin veil of politeness barely hid, who might be scrupulous, gentle, merciful — might be, in a word, all that was honourable. But whence, then, this story? Why this tale of cruelty, passing the bounds of discipline?
Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman Page 140
