The Red Axe Part 41

"Now is your time," said I, "the hour and the Doctor!"

I lifted the skirt of his long black robe. He took hold of his marvellous beard, a triumph of the disguiser's art, and we stepped forward. I could hardly conceal a smile.

We had come in the very nick of time.

Then after this I have a vague remembrance of my master bowing this way and that. I seem to see the wise men of the law, the judges, the priests, and lictors rising and bowing in acknowledgment. I heard the hush of a thousand people all craning their necks to look round the heads of their neighbors, and the hum of whispered comment reach farther and farther back, till it lapped against the walls and ebbed out into the street from the great open door of the Hall of Judgment. It was a surprising sight, this great trial--the gloomy hall, black with age and deeds of darkness, lit by the rays of sunlight falling through windows of red gla.s.s, the faces of men flecked as with blood where the evening sunlight streamed luridly upon them.

In the midst there was a clear four-square s.p.a.ce. A lictor, with a bundle of rods, stood at each corner. I looked, and there, alone in the centre, attired in white, the cynosure of eyes, I beheld--Helene.

CHAPTER XLI

THE GARRET OF THE RED TOWER

I felt my temples, my ears, my neck tingling with cold. I seemed to have fallen into a sea of ice. I think I would have fallen and fainted but that at that moment my master sat down beside the Bishop, and I was left free to retire into a darksome corner, where I staggered against a beam, slimy with black sweat, and hung over it with my hand clasping my brow, trying to think what had happened.

I do not know how long I remained in this position, nor yet when I came to myself. All was a dream to me, a nightmare of horrid whirlings and infinite oppressions. The faces of the folk that watched, the garmentry of the Bishop and his priests, the red robes of the young Duke and his a.s.sessors, spun round me in a hideous phantasmagoria.

At last I was conscious that a trumpet had blown. Whereupon all rose up.

The secretaries stacked their papers unconcernedly with the feathers of their pens in their mouths. And then in the solemn silence which ensued the Duke and his judges filed out of the door, while the power of the Church, represented by Bishop Peter and his priests, went forth by another. Before I could realize the situation, Helene had vanished, as it seemed, down a trap-door in the floor.

My master accompanied Bishop Peter. As for me, I hardly knew what I did.

I did not even stand up, till our conductor, he who had gone forward to announce us at the first, ran across to me, and, plucking me by the arm from the beam on which I leaned, whispered, hurriedly: "Art dead or drunk, man, that thou riskest thine ears and thy neck? Stand up while the Judges and the new Duke go by!"

So, dazed and numb, I hent me up, and lo! coming arm in arm towards me were Otho von Reuss and his newly appointed Chief Justice and a.s.sessor--who but mine old friend Michael Texel! The Duke bent a searching look on me as I bowed low before him, but he saw only the tan of my skin and the close bristle of my hair. And so all pa.s.sed on.

"Ho, blackamoor, thy master waits thee! Run, if thou wouldst avoid the whipping-post!" cried another of the rout of servitors, with a small sn.i.g.g.e.ring laugh.

So, putting out a hand to stay myself, I staggered weakly after my master. I found him at the door, in talk with the confessor of the Bishop.

"And so," he was saying, "this girl was reared in the executioner's house. And she went away to a far country in order to learn the secrets of necromancy, it is not known where. I would see this Duke's Justicer.

Does he dwell near by? What! In that very tower? It is of good omen. Let us go in thither."

But the confessor excused himself, being in no wise desirous to visit the Red Axe, even in his time of sickness.

"I have business of the soul with Bishop Peter. I will speak with thee again at refection," he said, twitching his head up at the Red Tower with suspicious glances, as if he feared unseen ears might be listening, and that some of its fearful magic might even descend upon a man so notably holy as a Bishop's confessor.

Presently Dessauer and I were across the court-yard at the well-known door. I knocked, and listened, whereupon ensued silence. Again and yet again I made the quaint death's-head knocker thunder, and then, when the echoes ceased, there was once more a great silence in the tower.

I heard the blood-hounds of Duke Casimir howl. The indigo shadow of the pinnacled Hall of Justice stretched across and touched the Red Tower with an ominous finger.

"Let us go in," said I. And, pus.h.i.+ng the unresisting door, I began to climb the stone stairs. Each smoothed hollow and chipped edge was familiar to me as my name. Indeed, much more so, for I was now pa.s.sing under a false one. So I climbed, in a dazed way, up and up. There on my left was the sitting-room. It had been searched high and low, escritoires rudely tossed down, aumries rifled, household stuff, grain, white linen, empty bottles, all cast about and huddled together even as the searchers had left them.

Then above was the little room where Helene used to sleep. Here the wrack was indescribable--every hidingplace rifled, her pretty worked bedquilt lying across the doorway trampled and soiled, her dainty white clothing, some she had worn at Pla.s.senburg, and even the tiny dresses of her childhood, all torn and confused together. And in the midst, what affected me more than everything else, a tiny puppet of wood my father had hewn her with his knife, and which she had dressed as a queen with red ribbons and crown of tinsel--ah, so long ago--and in such happy days.

"Father!" I called, loudly. "Father!"

But in this I forgot myself. There might have been enemies lurking anywhere in the house of pain and disaster.

My own room came next, and the way out upon the roof; but we tried not these. There remained only the garret of my father. I climbed up, with Dessauer behind me, and pushed the door open.

Then I stood in the entering-in, looking for the first time for years on the face of my father.

He lay on his conch, his head bound about with a napkin. The dark wisp of hair which rose like a c.o.c.k's comb, sticking through the stained cloth which swathed his brow, was no longer blue-black, but of an iron-gray, splashed and brindled with pure white. His eyes were open, and shone, cavernous and solemn, above his fallen-in cheeks. It was like looking into the secrets of another world. That which he had so often caused other eyes to see, the Red Axe of Thorn was now to see for himself. The hand which lay--mere skin, muscle, and bone--on the counterpane had guided many to the door of the mysteries. Now at its own entrance it was to push the arras aside, for the Death-Justicer of the Mark was to go before the Judge of all the earth.

My father lay gazing at me with deep, mournful eyes. So sad they seemed that it was as if nothing in heaven or earth, neither joy nor sorrow, life nor death, could have power to change their expression of immeasurable sadness.

I entered, and my companion followed.

"You are alone? There is none with you here?" I said to my father, going to the bedside.

He started at the voice, and looked up even eagerly. But his eyes dulled and deadened again as he fell back.

"I did but dream!" he muttered, sadly.

"You have no one with you here, Gottfried Gottfried?" said I again, for in a matter of life and death it was as well to make sure even at risk of disturbing a dying man.

He set his hand to his brow as if trying to think.

"Who should be with me--except all these?" he answered, very solemnly.

And swept his hand about the room as if he saw strange shapes standing in rows round the walls. "I wish," he went on, almost querulously, "whoever you may be, you would tell these people to keep their hands down. They point at me, and thrust their dripping heads forward, holding them like lanterns in their palms."

He turned away to the back of the bed, and then, as if he saw something there worse than all the rest, faced about again quickly, saying, with some pathetic intonation of his lost childhood, "There is no need for them to point so at me, is there? I did but my duty."

"Father!" said I, gently touching his cheek with my hand as I used to do.

"Ah, what is that?" he said, quickly. "Did some one call me father? Let me go! I tell you, sirs, let me go! She needs me. They are torturing her.

I must go to her!"

"Father," I said again, putting him gently back, "it is I--your own son Hugo--come back to speak with you, to help if it may be--to die for the Little Playmate if need be."

"Hugo--Hugo!" he said. "Yes, yes--of course, I know--my little lad, my pretty boy!"

He pushed me back to look at me, eagerly, wistfully--and then thrust me sharply away.

"Bah!" he said; "you lie! What need to lie to a dying man? My Hugo had yellow hair and a skin like lilies. Yours is dark--"

"Father," said I, "I am here disguised. Help is coming, sure and strong, if we can only wait a little and delay the trial. But tell me all. Speak to me freely, if you love your daughter Helene--your daughter and my love."

He sat up now, and motioned me to come nearer. There was a dark, fierce, unworldly light in his eyes. I set a pillow to his back, and went and kneeled by the bed as I used to do at good-night time when I said my Paternoster.

Then for the first time he knew me.

"Say your prayers, child!" he commanded, in his old voice.