The Red Axe Part 12

The Lady Ysolinde looked up quickly.

"Ah, the Little Playmate!" she said, in a low voice, curiously distinct from that which she used when she had interpreted her visions to me. "The Little Playmate! That sounds as though it might be interesting. Who is the Little Playmate?"

"She is a maid whose folks were slain long ago by the Duke in a foray, and the little one being left, my father begged her life. And she has been brought up with me in the Red Tower."

"How old is she now?" The Lady Ysolinde's next question leaped out like the flash of a dagger from its sheath.

"That," answered I, meditatively, "I know not exactly, because none could tell how old she was when she came to us."

"Tut," she said, impatiently tossing her head, "do not twist your answers to me--only wise men and courtiers have the skill to do that and hide it.

As yet you are neither. Is she ten, or is she twenty, or is she mid-way betwixt the two?"

"I think she may be a matter of seventeen years of age."

"Is she pretty?" was the next question.

"No," said I, not knowing well what to say.

Her face cleared as she heard that, and then, in a little, her eyes being still bent steadily on me, reading my very heart, it clouded over again.

"You think her not merely pretty, then, but beautiful?" she asked.

I nodded.

"More beautiful than I?"

'Fore G.o.d I denied not my love, though I own I have many a time been less tempted, and yet have lied back and forth like a Frankfort Jew.

"Yes," said I, "I think so."

"You love her, then?" said the Lady Ysolinde, rising quickly to her feet; "and you told me that you loved none in this city."

"I love her, indeed," I said. "She is my little sister. As you mean love, I do not love her. But I love her notwithstanding. All my life I have never thought of doing anything else. And that she is beautiful, all who have eyes in their head may see."

This appeased her somewhat. I think it must have been looking for my fortune in the crystal and the ink-pool that made her so eager to know all that concerned me--which none had ever been so importunate to find out before.

"I must come and see this Little Playmate of yours," she said. "It is an ill-done thing that so fair a maid should be shut up in the tower of such a pagan castle--the Wolfsberg; it is indeed well named. Word has reached me to-day that the Princess of Pla.s.senburg has need of a bower maiden.

Now the Princess can make her choice from many n.o.ble families. But if the Little Playmate be as beautiful as you say, 'tis high time that she should not be left immured in the Red Tower of the Wolfsberg. True, the Duke, like a careful man, neither makes nor mells with womankind. 'Tis his only virtue. But any questing Ritterling or roaring free companion might bear her off."

"I think not," said I, smiling, "so long as the Red Axe of the Mark has a polished edge and Gottfried Gottfried can send it sheer through an ox's neck as he stands chewing the cud."

I hardly think that I ever boasted of my father's prowess before.

And, indeed, I had some skill in the axe-play myself, but only in the way of sport.

"All one," said Ysolinde. "Your father, like great Caesar and Duke Casimir, is but mortal, and may stumble across the wooden stump some day himself and find his neck-bone in twain! None so wise that he can tell when the Silent Rider shall meet him in the wood, leading by the bridle the pale horse whose name is Death, and beckoning him to mount and ride."

The Lady Ysolinde paused a while, touching her lips thoughtfully with her fingers.

"Let your Playmate come," she said. "There is room, I warrant, for her and you both at Pla.s.senburg. You shall keep each other company when you have the homesickness, and on the journey she can ride with us side by side."

Then going to the curtain she summoned the servitor who had first opened the door for me. He bowed before the girl with infinite respect. She bade him conduct me upon my way. I will not deny that I had hoped for a tenderer leave-taking. But all at once she seemed to have slipped back into the great lady again, and to be desirous of setting me in my own sphere and station ere I went, lest perchance I should presume overmuch upon her favors.

Yet not altogether so. For, relenting a little as I turned to leave her, she stood holding the curtain aside for me to pa.s.s, and, as it had been by accident, in dropping it her fingers rested a moment against my cheek. Then the heavy curtain of blue fell into its place, and I found myself following the eminently respectable domestic of Master Gerard down the stairs.

At the outer door, but before he opened it, the man put a sealed packet in my hand.

"From Doctor Gerard von Sturm," he said, bowing respectfully, yet with a certain sense of being a party in a favor conferred.

I thrust the letter into my inner pocket and went out into the street.

The sun was still s.h.i.+ning, yet somehow I felt that it must be another day, another world. The houses seemed hard and dry, the details of the architecture insufferably mean and insultingly familiar. I longed with all my heart to get away from Thorn into the new world which had opened to me--a world of perfumes and flowers and flower-like scents and Oriental marvels, of low voices, too, and the touching of soft hands upon cheeks.

In all the world of young men there was no greener or more simple Simon than I, Hugo Gottfried, as, playing a tune on the pipe of my own conceit, I marched up the High Street of Thorn to the entrance gate of the Wolfsberg.

The Little Playmate was standing at the door as I approached, sweet as a June rose. When she saw me she went into the sitting-room to show that she had not yet forgiven me. Though I think by this time, as was often the way with Helene, she had forgotten almost what was the original matter of my offending.

But I pretended to be careless and heart-free. And so--G.o.d forgive me!--I went whistling up the steps of the Red Tower to my room without so much as looking within the chamber where my Little Playmate had withdrawn herself.

Which thing I suffered grievously for or all was done. And an excellent dispensation of Providence it had been if I had lost my right hand, all for making that little heart sore, or so much as one tear drop from those deep gray eyes.

CHAPTER XIII

CHRISTIAN'S ELSA

It was about this time, and after we had made our quarrel up, that Helene began to call me "Great Brother." After all, there is manifest virtue in a name, and the Little Playmate seemed to find great comfort in thus addressing me.

And after that I had called her "Little Sister" once or twice she was greatly a.s.sured and treated me quite differently, having ascertained that between young men and women there is the utmost safety in such a relations.h.i.+p.

And as all ways were alike to me, I was willing enough. For indeed I loved her and none other, and so did all the days of my life. Though I know that my actions and conceits were not always conformable to the true love that was in my heart, neither wholly worthy of my dear maid.

But, then, what would you? Nineteen and the follies of one's youth! The mercy of G.o.d rather than any virtue in me kept these from being not only infinitely more numerous, but infinitely worse. Yet I had better confess them, such as they are, in this place. For it was some such nothings as those which follow that first brought Helene and me into one way of thinking, though by paths very devious indeed.

To begin with the earliest. There was a maid who dwelt in the Tower of the Wolfsberg opposite, called the Tower of the Captain of the Guard. And the maid's name was Elsa, or, as she was ordinarily called, "Christian's Elsa." She was a comely maid enough, and greatly taken notice of. And when I went to my window to con over my task for Friar Laurence, there at the opposite window would be--strange that it should always he so--Christian's Elsa. She was a little girl, short and plump, but with merry eyes and so bright a stain upon either cheek that it seemed as if she had been eating raspberry conserve, and had wiped her fingers upon the smiling plumpness there.

At any rate, as sure as ever I betook me to the window, there would be Christian's Elsa, busy with her needles.

And to tell truth I misliked it not greatly. Why, indeed, should I? For there is surely no harm in looking across twenty yards of s.p.a.ce at a maid, and as little in the maid looking at you--that is, if neither of you come any nearer. Besides, it is much pleasanter to look at a pretty la.s.s than at a vacant wall and twenty yards of uneven cobble-stones.

Now the girl was harmless enough--a red and white maid, plump as a partridge in the end of harvest. She was forever humming at songs, singing little choruses, and inventing of new melodies, all tunefully and prettily enough. And she would bring her dulcimer to the window and play them over, nodding her head to the instrument as she sang.

It was pleasant to watch her. For sometimes when the music refused to run aright, she would frown at the dulcimer, as if the discord had been entirely its fault and it was old enough to know better. Then sometimes she would look across abstractedly to the Red Tower, trying to recall a strain she had forgotten, with her finger all the while making the most bewitching dimple on her plump cheek. It was most sweet and innocent to see. And withal so entirely unconscious that any one could possibly be observing her.

I confess that I sat often and conned my book by the window, long after I knew my portion by heart, in order to watch her deft fingers upon the dulcimer sticks and the play of her dimples. But on my part also this was in all innocence and wholly thoughtless of guile.

Then would I be taken with a spasm of desire to play upon the recorders or the Bavarian single flute, and would pester my father to let me learn.