The Red Axe Part 23

We waited. I have since that night fought many easier battles, and b.l.o.o.d.y battles, too. Now and then a face would look in momentarily from the great outer door and vanish before any one could put a shot into it.

Next, ere one was aware, an arrow would whistle with a "_Hisst_!" past one's breast-bone and stand quivering, head-covered in the clay. Vicious things they were, too, steel-pointed and shafted with iron for half their length.

But all waitings come to an end, even that of him who waits on a fair woman's arraying of herself. Erdberg evidently did not know of the little party down at the Burgomeister's below the pa.s.s of the ravine, or, knowing, did not care. For, just as our half-hour was crawling to an end, with a unanimous yell a crowd of wild men with weapons in their hands poured in through the great door and ran shouting at our position.

At the same time the window at the end of the pa.s.sage opened and a man leaped through. Him I sharply attended to with the axe, and stood waiting for the next. He also came, but not through the window. He ran at me, head first, through the door, and, being stricken down, completely blocked it up. Good service! And a usefully bulky man he was. But how he bled!--Saint Christopher! that is the worst of bulky men, they can do nothing featly--not even die!

One man won past me, indeed, darting under the stroke of my axe, but he was little advantaged thereby. For I fetched a blow at the back of his head with the handle which brought him to his knees. He stumbled and fell at the threshold of the maids' chamber. And, by my sooth, the Lady Ysolinde stooped and poignarded him as featly as though it had been a work of broidering with a bodkin. Too late, Helene wept and besought her to hold her hand. He was, she said, some one's son or lover. It was deucedly unpractical. But, 'twas my Little Playmate. And after all, I suppose, the crack he got from me in the way of business would have done the job neatly enough without my lady's dagger.

I tell you, the work was hot enough about those three doors during the next few moments. I never again want to see warmer on this side of Peter's gates--especially not since I got this wound in my thigh, with its trick of reopening at the most inconvenient seasons. But the broadaxe was a blessed thought of the little Helene's, and helped to keep the castle right valiantly.

Yet I can testify that I was glad with more than mere joy when I heard the "Trot, trot!" of the Prince's archers coming at the wolf's lope, all in each other's footsteps, along the narrow ledge of the village street.

"Hurrah, lads!" I shouted; "quick and help us!"

And then at the sound of them the turmoil emptied itself as quickly as it had come. The rabble of ill-doers melted through the wide outer door, where the archers received and attended to them there. Some precipitated themselves over the cliff. Others were straightway knocked down, stunned, and bound. Some died suddenly. And a few were saved to stretch the judicial ropes of the Bailiwick. For it was always thought a good thing by such as were in authority to have a good show on the "Thieves'

Architrave," or general gallows of the vicinity, as a thing at once creditable to the zeal of the worthy dispensers of local justice, and pleasing to the Kaiser's officer if he chanced to come spying that way.

CHAPTER XXV

MINE HOST RUNS HIS LAST RACE

Hearty were the greetings when the soldiers found us all safe and sound.

They shook us again and again by the hand. They clapped us on the back.

They examined professionally the dead who lay strewn about.

"A good stroke! Well smitten!" they cried, as they turned them over, like spectators who applaud at a game they can all understand. Specially did they compliment me on my axe-work. Never had anything like it been seen in Pla.s.senburg. The head of the yearling calf was duly exhibited, when the neatness of the blow and the exactness of the aim at the weakest jointing were prodigiously admired.

The good fellows, mellow with the Burgomeister's sinall-ale, were growing friendly beyond all telling, when, in the light of the offertory taper, now growing beguttered and burning low, there appeared the Lady Ysolinde.

You never saw so quick a change in any men. The heartiest reveller forthwith became silent and slunk behind his neighbor. Knees shook beneath stalwart frames, and there seemed a very general tendency to get down upon marrow-bones.

The Lady Ysolinde stood before them, strangely different from the slim, willowy maiden I had seen her. She looked almost imperial in her demeanor.

"You shall be rewarded for your ready obedience," she said; "the Prince will not forget your service. Take away that offal!"

She pointed to the dead rascals on the floor.

And the men, muttering something that sounded to me like "Yes, your Highness !" hastened to obey.

"Did you say 'Yes, your Highness' ?" I asked one of them, who seemed, by his air of command, to be the superior among the archers.

"Aye," answered he, dryly, "it is a term usually applied to the Lady Ysolinde, Princess of Pla.s.senburg."

I was never more smitten dazed and dumb in my life. Ysolinde, the daughter of Master Gerard, the maid who had read my fate in the ink-pool, whom I had "made suffer," according to her own telling--she the Princess of Pla.s.senburg '.

Ah, I had it now. Here at last was the explanation of the threadbare and inexplicable jest of Jorian and Boris, "The Prince hath a Princess, and she is oft upon her travels !"

But, after all, what a Wendish barking about so small an egg. I have heard an emperor proclaimed with less cackle.

Ysolinde, Princess of Pla.s.senburg--yes, that made a difference. And I had taken her hand--I, the son of the Red Axe--I, the Hereditary Justicer of the Wolfmark. Well, after all, she had sought me, not I her. And then, the little Helene--what would she make of it? I longed greatly to find an opportunity to tell her. It might teach her in what manner to cut her cloth.

The archers of the Prince camped with us the rest of the night in the place of the outcast crew. They behaved well (though their forbearance was perhaps as much owing to the near presence of the Princess as to any inherent virtue in the good men of the bow) to the women and children who remained huddled in the corners.

Then came the dawn, swift-foot from the east. A fair dawn it was, the sun rising, not through barred clouds, with the lightest at the horizon (which is the foul-weather dawn), but through streamers and bannerets that fluttered upward and fired to ever fleecier crimson and gold as he rose.

We rode among a subdued people, and ere we went the Princess called for the Burgomeister and bade him send to Pla.s.senburg the landlord, so soon as he should be found, and also the heads of the half-dozen houses on either side of the inn.

Then, indeed, there was a turmoil and a wailing to speak about. Women folk crowded out of the huts and kissed the white feet of the palfrey that bore the Lady Ysolinde.

"Have mercy!" they wailed; "show kindness, great Princess! Here are our men, unwounded and unhurt, that have lain by our sides all the night.

They are innocent of all intent of evil--of every dark deed. Ah, lady, send them not to your prisons. We shall never see them more, and they are all we have or our children. 'Tis they bring in the bread to this drear spot!"

"Produce me your husbands, then!" said the Lady Ysolinde.

Whereat the women ran and brought a number of frowsy and bleared men, all unwounded, save one that had a broken head.

Then Ysolinde called to the Burgomeister. "Come hither, chief of a thievish munic.i.p.ality, tell me if these be indeed these women's husbands."

The Burgomeister, a pallid, pouch-mouthed man, tremulous, and brick-dusty, like everything else in the village of Erdberg, came forward and peeringly examined the men.

"Every man to his woman!" he ordered, brusquely, and the women went and stood each by her own property--the men shamefaced and hand-dog, the women anxious and pale. Some of the last threw a, protecting arm about their husbands, which they for the most part appeared to resent. In every case the woman looked the more capable and intelligent, the men being apparently mere boors.

"They are all their true husbands, at least so far as one can know!"

answered the Burgomeister, cautiously.

"Then," said the lady, "bid them catch the innkeeper and send him to Pla.s.senburg, and these others can abide where they are. But if they find him not, they must all come instead of him."

The men started at her words, their faces brightening wonderfully, and they were out of the door before one could count ten. We mounted our horses, and under the very humble guidance of the Burgomeister, who led the Princess's palfrey, we were soon again upon the high table-land. Here we enjoyed to the full the breezes which swept with morning freshness across the scrubby undergrowths of oak and broom, and above all the sight of misty wisps of cloud scudding and whisking about the distant peaks-behind which lay the city of Pla.s.senburg.

We had not properly won clear of the ravines when we heard a great shouting and turmoil behind us--so that I hastened to look to my weapons.

For I saw the archers instinctively draw their quarrels and bolt-pouches off their backs, to be in readiness upon their left hips.

But it was only the rabble of men and women who had been threatened, the dwellers in those twelve houses next the inn, who came dragging our brick-faced knave of a host, with that hard-polished countenance of his slack and clammy--slate-gray in color too, all the red tan clean gone out of it.

"Mercy--mercy, great lady!" he cried; "I pray you, do execution on me here and now. Carry me not to the extreme tortures. Death clears all.

And I own that for my crimes I well deserve to die. But save me from the strappado, from the torment of the rack. I am an old man and could not endure."

The Lady Ysolinde looked at him, and her emerald eyes held a steely glitter in their depths.

"I am neither judge nor"--I think she was going to say "executioner," but she remembered in time and for my sake was silent, which I thought was both gracious and charming of her. She resumed in a softer tone: "What sentence, then, would you desire, thus confessing your guilt?"

"That I might end myself over the cliff there!" said the innkeeper, pointing to the wall of rock along the edge of which we were riding.

"See, then, that he is well ended!" said the Princess, briefly, to Jorian.

"Good!" said Jorian, saluting.