The Red Axe Part 4

The kennels of the blood-hounds especially were full of fascination for us. That fatal deep-mouthed clamoring at morn and even drew us like a magnet. Helene, in particular, never tired of gazing between the c.h.i.n.ks of the fence of cloven pine-wood at the great russet-colored beasts with their flas.h.i.+ng white teeth, over which the heavy dewlaps fell. And when my father, with his red livery upon him and a loaded whip in his hand, once a day opened the tall, narrow door and went within, we thought him brave as a G.o.d. Then the way the fierce beasts shrank cowering from him, the fas.h.i.+on in which they crouched on their bellies and heaved their shoulders up without taking their hind quarters off the ground, equally delighted and surprised us.

"Your father is almost as great a man as _my_ father," said the Princess Helene, who, however, was rapidly forgetting her dignity. Indeed, already it had become little more than a fairy-tale to her. And that was perhaps as well.

One day, when I was about thirteen, or a little older, my father came out with a new short mantle in his hand, red like his own.

"Come hither, Hugo Gottfried!" he said, for he had learned the trick of the name from Helene.

I went to him tardy-foot, greatly wondering.

"Here, chick," he said, in his kindly fas.h.i.+on, "it is time you were beginning to learn your duties. Come with me to-day into the kennels of the blood-hounds."

But I hung back, s.h.i.+fting the new mantle uneasily on my shoulders, yet not daring to throw it off.

"I do not want to go, father," said I, edging away in the direction of the Playmate.

"What, lad!" he cried, slapping me on the shoulder; "they will not hurt thee with that cloak on. They know their masters better--as their fathers and mothers knew our fathers. Have we, the Gottfrieds, been the Hereditary Justicers of the Wolfmark for six hundred years to be afraid now of the blood-hounds that are kept to hunt the Duke's enemies and to feed on the Duke's carrion?"

"It is not that I am afraid of the dogs, father," I made answer to him.

"I would quickly enough go among them, if only you would let me go without this scarlet cloak."

My father laughed heartily and loudly--that is, for him. A quick ear might have heard him quite three feet away.

"Silly one!" he exclaimed, "do you not know that even the Duke Casimir dares not set foot in the kennels--no, nor I myself, save in the garb they know and fear--as indeed do all men in this state."

Still I hung my head down and sc.r.a.ped the gravel with my foot.

"Haste thee," said my father, roughly. "Once it is permitted to a man to be afraid; to fear twice, and fear the same thing, is to be a coward. And no Gottfried ever yet was a coward. Let not my Hugo be the first."

Then I took courage and spoke to him.

"I do not wish to be executioner," I said; "I would rather ride a-soldiering far away, and be in the drive of battle and the front of danger. Let me be a soldier and a man-at-arms, my father. I am sure I could become a war-captain and a great man!"

Gottfried Gottfried stared blankly at me, and his blue-black hair rose in a crest--not with anger, of which he never showed any to me, but in sheer astonishment. He continued to rub it with his hand, as if in this manner he might possibly reach an explanation of the mystery.

"Not wish to be Hereditary Executioner? Why, are you not a Gottfried, the only son of a Gottfried, the only son of his father, who also was a Gottfried and Hereditary Red Axe of the Wolfmark? Why, lad, before there was a Duke at all in the Wolfsberg, before he and his folk came out of the land of the Poles to fight with the Ritterdom of the North, we, the Gottfrieds of Thorn, wore the sign of the Red Axe and dwelt apart from all the men of the Mark. For fourteen generations have we worn it!"

"But," said I, sadly, "the very children on the street hate me and spit on me as I pa.s.s; the maids will not so much as speak to me. They scyrry in-doors and slam the wicket in my face. Think you that is pleasant? And when as a lad of older years I set out to woo, whither shall I betake me?

For what door is open to a Gottfried, to him who carries the sign of the Red Axe?"

"Ah, lad," said my father, patiently, "life comes and life goes. It is nigh on to forty years since even thus my father held out the curt mantle for me. And even so said I. Time eats up all things but the hearts of men. And they abide ever the same--yearning for that which they cannot have, but nevertheless accepting with a sharp relish the things which are decreed to them; even as do the Duke's carrion-eaters yonder, which, by-the-way, are waiting most impatiently for their meal while we thus stand arguing."

He was about to move away when his eye fell on Helene. At sight of her he seemed to remember my last words, about going a-wooing.

He considered a moment and then said: "You are young yet to think of courting, Hugo, but have no fear either for the love-making or the wedding. Sweet maids a many shall surely come hither. Why, there is one growing up yonder that will prove as fair as any. I tell you the Gottfrieds have married great ladies in their time--dames and dainty damsels. They have had princesses to be their sweethearts ere now. Come, then, lad--no more words, but follow me."

And for that time I went after him obediently enough, but all the same my heart was rebellious within me. And I determined that if I had to ran to the ends of the earth, I should never be Hereditary Executioner nor yet handle the broadaxe on the bared necks of my fellow-men.

We went in among the dogs--great, lank, cowering, tooth-slavering brutes.

I followed my father till we came to the feeding-troughs. Then he bade me to stand where I was till he should set their meat in order. So he vanished behind, the barriers. Then, when he had prepared the beasts'

horrid victual, though I saw not what, he opened the narrow gate, and the howling, clambering throng broke helter-skelter for the troughs, cracking and crunching the thigh-bones, tearing at the flesh, and growling at one another till the air rang with the ear-piercing din.

And outside the little Helene flung herself frantically at the split pines of the enclosure, crying, bitterly, "Take off that hateful mantle, Hugo Gottfried! I hate it--I hate it! Take it off!"

My father stood behind the dogs, whose arched and bristling backs I could just manage to see over the fence of wooden spars, and dealt the whip judicially among them--at once as a warning to encroachers and a punishment for greed.

Then all unharmed we went out, and as soon as my father had gone up to his garret-room in the tower, I tore the red cloak off and trampled it in the dirt of the yard. Then I went and hid it in a little blind window of the tower opposite the foot of the ladder which led to my father's room.

For, because of my father's anger, I dared not destroy the badge of shame altogether, as both Helene and I wished to do.

Day by day the Little Playmate (for so I was now allowed to call her--the Princesshood being mostly forgotten) grew great and tall, her fair, almost lint-white hair darkening swiftly to coppery gold with the glint of ripe wheat upon it.

Old Hanne followed her about with eyes at once wistful and doubtful.

Sometimes she shook her head sadly. And I wondered if ever the poor old stumbling crone, wizened like a two-year-old winter apple, had been as light and gay a thing as our dainty rose-leaf girl.

One day I was laboring at the art of learning to write, along with Friar Laurence--a scrawny, ill-favored monk, who, for good deeds or misdeeds, I know not which, was warded in a cell opening out of the lower or garden court of the Wolfsberg, when I heard Helene dance down the stairs to the kitchen of the Red Tower.

"Hannchen!" she cried, merrily, "come and teach me that trick of the broidering needle. I never can do it but I p.r.i.c.k myself. Nevertheless, I can fas.h.i.+on the Red Axe almost as clearly as the pattern, and far finer to see."

Friar Laurence raised his great, softly solid face, blue about the jowls and padded beneath the eyes with craft.

"That little maid is over much with old Hanne," he said, as if he meditated to himself; "she will teach her other p.r.i.c.kings than the needle-play. The witch-p.r.i.c.king at the images of wax was what brought her here. Aye, and had it not been for your father wanting a house-keeper, the Holy Office would have burned the hag, and sent her to h.e.l.l, flaming like a torch of pine knots."

Now this was the first I had heard with exactness of the matter of old Hanne's having been a witch. And now that I knew it for certain I began to imagine all sorts of unholy things about the poor wretch, and grew greatly jealous of Helene being so often in the kitchen. Whereas before I had thought nothing at all about the matter, save that Hannchen was a dull, pleasant, muttering, shuffling-footed old woman, who could make rare good cream-cakes when you got her in the humor.

And that was not often.

CHAPTER VI

DUKE CASIMIR'S FAMILIAR

I mind it was some tale of years later that I got my first glimpse below the surface of things in the town of Thorn, and especially in the castle of the Wolfsberg.

Duke Casimir continued to move, as of yore, in cavalcade through his subject city. The burghers bowed as obsequiously as ever when they could not avoid meeting him. There were the old lordly perquisitions--thunderings at iron-studded doors, battering-rams set between posts, and the clouds of dust flying from the driven lintels, the screams of maids, the crying of women, a stray corpse or two flung on to the street, and then the procession as before, arms and legs, with a mercenary soldier between each pair, fore and aft. All this was repeated and repeated, till the dull monotony of tyranny began to wear through the long Teutonic patience to the under-quick of Wendish madness.

It chanced that one night I could not sleep. It was no matter of maids that kept me awake, though by this time I was sixteen or seventeen and greatly grown--running, it is true, mostly to knees and elbows, but nevertheless long of limb and stark of bone, needing only the muscle laid on in lumps to be as strong as any.

I had begun to steal out at nights too--not on any ill errand, but that I might have the company of those about my own age--'prentice lads and the wilder sons of burghers, who had no objection to my parentage, and thought it rather a fine thing to be hand-in-glove with the son of the Red Axe of Thorn. And there we played single-stick, smite-jacket, skittles, bowls--aye, and drank deep of the city ale--the very thinnest brew that was ever pa.s.sed by a bribed and muzzy ale-taster. All this was mightily pleasant to me. For so soon as they knew that I had determined to be a soldier, and not the Red Axe of the Wolfmark, they complimented me greatly on my spirit.

Well, as I lay awake and waited for the chance to slip down a rope from my bedroom window, whose foot should I hear on the turret stairs but that of my Lord Duke Casimir! My very heart quailed within me. For the fear of him sat heavy on every man and woman in the land. And as for the children--why, as far as the Baltic sh.o.r.e and the land of the last Ritters, mothers frightened their bairns with the Black Duke of the Wolfsberg and his Red Axe.

So now the Duke and the Red Axe were to be in conference--as indeed had happened nearly every day and night since I could remember. So that people called my father the Duke's Private Devil, his Familiar Spirit, his Evil Genius. But I knew other of it--and this night, of all nights in the year, I was to know better still.

It was a summer midnight--not like the one I told of when the story began, white with snow and glittering with the keen polish of frost. But a soft, still night, drowsy yet sleepless, with an itch of thunder tingling in the air--and, indeed, already the pulsing, uncertain glow of sheet-lightning coming and going at long intervals along the south.

I crouched and nestled in the hole in the wall where I had long ago hidden the hated red cloak, pulling my knees up uncomfortably to my chin.