Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman

by Stanley J Weyman

  I could not see who was who in the darkness, but I caught at the nearest stirrup, and, narrowly escaping being ridden down, ran on beside the rider. The horses, spurred down the slope, had gained such an impetus that it was all I could do to keep up. I had no breath to ask questions, nor state my fear that there was danger ahead also. I had to stride like a giant to keep my legs and run.

  Some one else was less lucky. We had not swept fifty yards from where I joined them, when a dark figure showed for a moment in the road before us. I saw it; it seemed to hang and hesitate. The next instant it was among us. I heard a shrill scream, a heavy fall, and we were over it, and charging on and on and on through the darkness.

  To the foot of the hill and across the bottom, and up the opposite slope. I do not know how far we had sped, when Steve’s voice was heard, calling on us to halt.

  ‘Pull up! pull up!’ he cried, with an angry oath. ‘It is a false alarm! What fool set it going? There is no one behind us. Donner und Blitzen! where is Martin?’

  The horses were beginning to flag, and gladly came to a trot, and then to a walk.

  ‘Here! I panted.

  ‘Himmel! I thought we had ridden you down!’ he said, leaving my lady’s side. His voice shook with passion and loss of breath. ‘Who was it? We might all have broken our necks, and for nothing!’

  The Waldgrave — it was his stirrup I had caught — turned his horse round. ‘I heard them — close behind us!’ he panted. There was a note of wildness in his voice. My elbow was against his knee, and I felt him tremble.

  ‘A bird in the hedge,’ Steve said rudely. ‘It has cost some one dear. Whose horse was it struck him?’

  No one answered. I left the Waldgrave’s side and went back a few paces. The women were sobbing. Ernst and Jacob stood by them, breathing hard after their run. I thought the men’s silence strange. I looked again. There was a figure missing; a horse missing.

  ‘Where is Marie?’ I cried.

  She did not answer. No one answered; and I knew. Steve swore again. I think he had known from the beginning. I began to tremble. On a sudden my lady lifted up her voice and cried shrilly —

  ‘Marie! Marie!’

  Again no answer. But this time I did not wait to listen. I ran from them into the darkness the way we had come, my legs quivering under me, and my mouth full of broken prayers. I remembered a certain solitary tree fronting the poplars, on the other side of the way, which I had marked mechanically at the moment of the fall — an ash, whose light upper boughs had come for an instant between my eyes and the sky. It stood on a little mound, where the moorland began to rise on that side. I came to it now, and stopped and looked. At first I could see nothing, and I trod forward fearfully. Then, a couple of paces on, I made out a dark figure, lying head and feet across the road. I sprang to it, and kneeling, passed my hands over it. Alas! it was a woman’s.

  I raised the light form in my arms, crying passionately on her name, while the wind swayed the boughs overhead, and, besides that and my voice, all the countryside was still. She did not answer. She hung limp in my arms. Kneeling in the dust beside her, I felt blindly for a pulse, a heart-beat. I found neither — neither; the woman was dead.

  And yet it was not that which made me lay the body down so quickly and stand up peering round me. No; something else. The blood drummed in my ears, my heart beat wildly. The woman was dead; but she was not Marie.

  She was an old woman, sixty years old. When I stooped again, after assuring myself that there was no other body near, and peered into her face, I saw that it was seamed and wrinkled. She was barefoot, and her clothes were foul and mean. She had the reek of one who slept in ditches and washed seldom. Her toothless gums grinned at me. She was a horrible mockery of all that men love in women.

  When I had marked so much, I stood up again, my head reeling. Where was the man I had seen scouting up and down? Where was Marie? For a moment the wild idea that she had become this thing, that death or magic had transformed the fair young girl into this toothless hag, was not too wild for me. An owl hooted in the distance, and I started and shivered and stood looking round me fearfully. Such things were; and Marie was gone. In her place this woman, grim and dead and unsightly, lay at my feet. What was I to think?

  I got no answer. I raised my voice and called, trembling, on Marie. I ran to one side of the road and the other and called, and still got no answer. I climbed the mound on which the ash-tree stood, and sent my voice thrilling through the darkness of the bottom. But only the owl answered. Then, knowing nothing else I could do, I went down wringing my hands, and found my lady standing over the body in the road. She had come back with Steve and the others.

  I had to listen to their amazement, and a hundred guesses and fancies, which, God help me! had nothing certain in them, and gave me no help. The men searched both sides of the road, and beat the moor for a distance, and tried to track the horse — for that was missing too, and there lay my only hope — but to no purpose. At last my lady came to me and said sorrowfully that nothing more could be done.

  ‘In the morning!’ I cried jealously.

  No one spoke, and I looked from one to another. The men had returned from the search, and stood in a dark group round the body, which they had drawn to the side of the road. It wanted an hour of daylight yet, and I could not see their faces, but I read in their silence the answer that no one liked to put into words.

  ‘Be a man!’ Steve muttered, after a long pause. ‘God help the girl. But God help us too if we are found here!’

  Still my lady did not speak, and I knew her brave heart too well to doubt her, though she had been the first to talk of going. ‘Get to horse,’ I said roughly.

  ‘No, no,’ my lady cried at last. ‘We will all stay, Martin.’

  ‘Ay, all stay or all go!’ Steve muttered.

  ‘Then all go!’ I said, choking down the sobs that would rise. And I turned first from the place.

  I will not try to state what that cost me. I saw my girl’s face everywhere — everywhere in the darkness, and the eyes reproached me. That she of all should suffer, who had never fainted, never faltered, whose patience and courage had been the women’s stay from the first — that she should suffer! I thought of the tender, weak body, and of all the things that might happen to her, and I seemed, as I went away from her, the vilest thing that lived.

  But reason was against me. If I stayed there and waited on the road by the old crone’s body until morning, what could I do? Whither could I turn? Marie was gone and already might be half a dozen miles away. So the bonds of custom and duty held me. Dazed and bewildered, I lacked the strength that was needed to run counter to all. I was no knight-errant, but a plain man, and I reeled on through the last hour of the night and the first grey streaks of dawn, with my head on my breast and sobs of despair in my throat.

  CHAPTER XXV.

  NUREMBERG.

  If it had been our fate after that to continue our flight in the same weary fashion we had before devised, lying in woods by day, and all night riding jaded horses, until we passed the gates of some free city, I do not think that I could have gone through with it. Doubtless it was my duty to go with my lady. But the long hours of daylight inaction, the slow brooding tramp, must have proved intolerable. And at some time or other, in some way or other, I must have snapped the ties that bound me.

  But, as if the loss of my heart had rid us of some spell cast over us, by noon of that day we stood safe. For, an hour before noon, while we lay in a fir-wood not far from Weimar, and Jacob kept watch on the road below, and the rest slept as we pleased, a party of horse came along the way, and made as if to pass below us. They numbered more than a hundred, and Jacob’s heart failed him, lest some ring or buckle of our accoutrements should sparkle and catch their eyes. To shift the burden he called us, and we went to watch them.

  ‘Do they go north or south?’ I asked him as I rose.

  ‘North,’ he whispered.

  After that they were nothing to me, bu
t I went with the rest. Our lair was in some rocks overhanging the road. By the time we looked over, the horsemen were below us, and we could see nothing of them; though the sullen tramp of their horses, and the jingle of bit and spur, reached us clearly. Presently they came into sight again on the road beyond, riding steadily away with their backs to us.

  ‘That is not General Tzerclas?’ my lady muttered anxiously.

  ‘Nor any of his people!’ Steve said with an oath.

  That led me to look more closely, and I saw in a moment something that lifted me out of my moodiness. I sprang on the rock against which I was leaning and shouted long and loudly.

  ‘Himmel!’ Steve cried, seizing me by the ankle. ‘Are you mad, man?’

  But I only shouted again, and waved my cap frantically. Then I slipped down, sobered. ‘They see us,’ I cried. ‘They are Leuchtenstein’s riders. And Count Hugo is with them. You are safe, my lady.’

  She turned white and red, and I saw her clutch at the rock to keep herself on her feet. ‘Are you sure?’ she said. The troop had halted and were wheeling slowly and in perfect order.

  ‘Quite sure, my lady,’ I answered, with a touch of bitterness in my tone. Why had not this happened yesterday or the day before? Then my girl would have been saved. Now it came too late! Too late! No wonder I felt bitterly about it.

  We went down into the road on foot, a little party of nine — four women and five men. The horsemen, as they came up, looked at us in wonder. Our clothes, even my lady’s, were dyed with mud and torn in a score of places. We had not washed for days, and our faces were lean with famine. Some of the women were shoeless and had their hair about their ears, while Steve was bare-headed and bare-armed, and looked so huge a ruffian the stocks must have yawned for him anywhere. They drew up and gazed at us, and then Count Hugo came riding down the column and saw us.

  My lady went forward a step. ‘Count Leuchtenstein,’ she said, her voice breaking; she had only seen him once, and then under the mask of a plain name. But he was safety, honour, life now, and I think that she could have kissed him. I think for a little she could have fallen into his arms.

  ‘Countess!’ he said, as he sprang from his horse in wonder. ‘Is it really you? Gott im Himmel! These are strange times. Waldgrave! Your pardon. Ach! Have you come on foot?’

  ‘Not I. But these brave men have,’ my lady answered, tears in her voice.

  He looked at Steve and grunted. Then he looked at me and his eyes lightened. ‘Are these all your party?’ he said hurriedly.

  ‘All,’ my lady answered in a low voice. He did not ask farther, but he sighed, and I knew that he had looked for his child. ‘I came north upon a reconnaissance, and was about to turn,’ he said. ‘I am thankful that I did not turn before. Is Tzerclas in pursuit of you?’

  ‘I do not know,’ my lady answered, and told him shortly of our flight, and how we had lain two days and a night in the osier-bed.

  ‘It was a good thought,’ he said. ‘But I fear that you are half famished.’ And he called for food and wine, and served my lady with his own hands, while he saw that we did not go without. ‘Campaigner’s fare,’ he said. ‘But you come of a fighting stock, Countess, and can put up with it.’

  ‘Shame on me if I could not,’ she answered.

  There was a quaver in her voice, which showed how the rencontre moved her, how full her heart was of unspoken gratitude.

  ‘When you have finished, we will get to horse,’ he said. ‘I must take you with me to Nuremberg, for I am not strong enough to detach a party. But this evening we will make a long halt at Hesel, and secure you a good night’s rest.’

  ‘I am sorry to be so burdensome,’ my lady said timidly.

  He shrugged his shoulders without compliment, but I did not hear what he answered. For I could bear no more. Marie seemed so forgotten in this crowd, so much a thing of the past, that my gorge rose. No word of her, no thought of her, no talk of a search party! I pictured her forlorn, helpless little figure, her pale, uncomplaining face — I and no one else; and I had to go away into the bushes to hide myself. She was forgotten already. She had done all for them, I said to myself, and they forgot her.

  Then, in the thicket screened from the party, I had a thought — to go back and look for her, myself. Now my lady was safe, there was nothing to prevent me. I had only to lie close among the rocks until Count Hugo left, and then I might plod back on foot and search as I pleased. In a flash I saw the poplars, and the road running beneath the ash-tree, and the woman’s body lying stiff and stark on the sward. And I burned to be there.

  Left to myself I should have gone too. But the plan was no sooner formed than shattered. While I stood, hotfoot to be about it, and pausing only to consider which way I could steal off most safely, a rustling warned me that some one was coming, and before I could stir, a burly trooper broke through the bushes and confronted me. He saluted me stolidly.

  ‘Sergeant,’ he said, ‘the general is waiting for you.’

  ‘The general?’ I said.

  ‘The Count, if you like it better,’ he answered. ‘Come, if you please.’

  I followed him, full of vexation. It was but a step into the road. The moment I appeared, some one gave the word ‘Mount!’ A horse was thrust in front of me, two or three troopers who still remained afoot swung themselves into the saddle; and I followed their example. In a trice we were moving down the valley at a dull, steady pace — southwards, southwards. I looked back, and saw the fir trees and rocks where we had lain hidden, and then we turned a corner, and they were gone. Gone, and all round me I heard the measured tramp of the troop-horses, the swinging tones of the men, and the clink and jingle of sword and spur. I called myself a cur, but I went on, swept away by the force of numbers, as the straw by the current. Once I caught Count Hugo’s eye fixed on me, and I fancied he had a message for me, but I failed to interpret it.

  Steve rode by me, and his face too was moody. I suppose that we should all of us have thanked God the peril was past. But my lady rode in another part with Count Leuchtenstein and the Waldgrave; and Steve yearned, I fancy, for the old days of trouble and equality, when there was no one to come between us.

  I saw Count Hugo that night. He sent for me to his quarters at Hesel, and told me frankly that he would have let me go back had he thought good could come of it.

  ‘But it would have been looking for a needle in a bundle of hay, my friend,’ he continued. ‘Tzerclas’ men would have picked you up, or the peasants killed you for a soldier, and in a month perhaps the girl would have returned safe and sound, to find you dead.’

  ‘My lord!’ I cried passionately, ‘she saved your child. It was to her as her own!’

  ‘I know it,’ he answered with gravity, which of itself rebuked me. ‘And where is my child?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Yet I do not give up my work and the task God and the times have given me, and go out looking for it!’ he answered severely. ‘Leaving Scot, and Swede, and Pole, and Switzer to divide my country. For shame! You have your work too, and it lies by your lady’s side. See to it that you do it. For the rest I have scouts out, who know the country; if I learn anything through them you shall hear it. And now of another matter. How long has the Waldgrave been like this, my friend?’

  ‘Like this, my lord?’ I muttered stupidly.

  He nodded. ‘Yes, like this,’ he repeated. ‘I have heard him called a brave man. Coming of his stock, he should be; and when I saw him in Tzerclas’ camp he had the air of one. Now he starts at a shadow, is in a trance half his time, and a tremor the other half. What ails him?’

  I told him how he had been wounded, fighting bravely, and that since that he had not been himself.

  Count Hugo rubbed his chin gravely. ‘It is a pity,’ he said. ‘We want all — every German arm and every German head. We want you. Man alive!’ he continued, roused to anger, I suppose, by my dull face, ‘do you know what is in front of you?’

  ‘No, my lord,’ I said in apathy
.

  He opened his mouth as if to hurl a volley of words at me. But he thought better of it and shut his lips tight. ‘Very well,’ he said grimly. ‘Wait three days and you will see.’

  But in truth, I had not to wait three days. Before sunset of the next I began to see, and, downcast as I was, to prick up my ears in wonder. Beyond Romhild and between that town and Bamberg, the great road which runs through the valley of the Pegnitz, was such a sight as I had never seen. For many miles together a column of dust marked its course, and under this went on endless marching. We were but a link in a long chain, dragging slowly southwards. Now it was a herd of oxen that passed along, moving tediously and painfully, driven by half-naked cattle-men and guarded by a troop of grimy horse. Now it was a reinforcement of foot from Fulda, rank upon rank of shambling men trailing long pikes, and footsore, and parched as they were, getting over the ground in a wonderful fashion. After them would come a long string of waggons, bearing corn, and hay, and malt, and wines; all lurching slowly forward, slowly southward; often delayed, for every quarter of a mile a horse fell or an axle broke, yet getting forward.

  And then the most wonderful sight of all, a regiment of Swedish horse passed us, marching from Erfurt. All their horses were grey, and all their head-pieces, backs and breasts of black metal, matched one another. As they came on through the dust with a tramp which shook the ground, they sang, company by company, to the music of drums and trumpets, a hymn, ‘Versage nicht, du Häuflein klein!’ Behind them a line of light waggons carried their wives and children, also singing. And so they went by us, eight hundred swords, and I thought it a marvel I should never see beaten.