The Red Axe Part 49

He laughed a little at intervals, as at a tale that will bear infinite repet.i.tion. "I, Gottfried Gottfried, threw a proximate reigning Prince out of the window! How Casimir laughed! The thing pleased him well. And the little maid, do you remember her, Hugo? How she would teach me--me, the Red Axe of Thorn--how to dance that first night, and how totteringly she carried the Red Axe? The little one took heart that night. She will have a happy future, I know; so blessed, far away from this dark and d.a.m.ned place of the Wolfsberg. I am glad she is not here to see me die.

That is a sight for men, not for fair young loving women."

"Hush, my father," I said, touching his dank brow; "you are not going to die. You will yet live to be strong and well, a man among men."

For one tells these things to dying men. And they smile and pa.s.s us by, amused at our childish ignorance, as you and I shall one day smile upon those others. And even thus did my father.

"Nay, Hugo, I am sped," he answered. "This night ends all. The door I have oped for so many is opening from within for me. G.o.d's mercy be on a sinful man! Ere the light of to-morrow's dawn the Duke's Justicer must face the Tribunal that has no a.s.sessor and no court of appeal."

He threw back the cloak which served him as a mantle, and crying, "Give me your hand, Hugo!" Gottfried Gottfried staggered to his feet.

"I will die standing up," he said, bending his brows and gazing about him uncertainly. He pointed to the walls of the garret. The fire was flickering low, but still making the place light enough to see easily.

There beside the bed was the Red Axe, with its s.h.i.+ning edge undimmed, leaning against the block. There across it was the crimson mask which was never more to bind his eyes as he did the office of final dread.

"Do you see them, son Hugo?" he cried, leaning heavily on my shoulder and pointing with his finger; "they are gibbering at me, mowing, processioning by, and pointing mockingly at me. Do you hear them laughing? That horrid one there with his head under his arm? Laughing as if there were no G.o.d! But I am not afraid. Mercy of Jesu! Hath G.o.d Himself no Justicer, that He should punish me because I have fulfilled my charge? I have all my life been merciful, ever giving the blow of mercy first, and the drop of stupefaction before the Extreme Question. Hence, fiends! Shapes inhuman, torment me not! For in my day I was merciful to you and never struck twice. I _will_ die standing up. The devil shall not fright me--no, nor all his angels!

"G.o.d Himself shall not fright me! I appeal to His judgment throne! Get hence, false accusing spirits! I stand at Caesar's judgment-seat. Give me the axe, boy--I will cut down the evil, I will spare the good. Here is the Red Axe, my son. Take it! Strike with it strong and well. Strike, strike, and spare not!"

Totteringly he handed me the axe, and, clasping his hands, he stood looking up.

"G.o.d! G.o.d!" he cried in a great voice. "I see my Judge face to face; I am not afraid! But I will die standing up!"

And in this manner, even as I tell it, died Gottfried Gottfried, a strong man, standing up and not afraid. And these arms received him, as, being dead, he fell headlong.

CHAPTER XLVIII

HUGO GOTTFRIED, RED AXE OF THE WOLFMARK

Then cried Dessauer from the door to me as I stood thus holding my father in my arms:

"Haste you, lad; there are men coming across the yard with torches. They are gathering in groups about the door. Now they are on the stairs--many soldiers--and with weapons in their hands!"

And scarcely had he spoken when the sound of the tramping of men in haste came to us up the turret, and the door of the garret was thrust violently open. A turmoil of men-at-arms burst in on us. I stood still, holding Gottfried Gottfried, his head on my shoulder, though I knew that he was dead. But as one came forward with a paper in his hand I stooped and laid my father gently on his bed.

An officer of the Black Hussars, fantastically dressed in their church-yard array, with skull and cross-bones slashed in silver across his breast, accosted me.

"Hugo Gottfried, son of Gottfried Gottfried, in the name of the Duke Otho and the State of the Wolfmark, I arrest you! Also you, Leopold von Dessauer, Chancellor of the Princedom of Pla.s.senburg. You are accused as spies and enemies of the commonweal. Yield yourselves therefore to me, without condition."

"I am indeed Hugo Gottfried," said I, "but you may see for yourselves the mission on which I have come hither. And for this hour, at least, you might have spared your brutal entry. Behold!"

I caught a torch from the nearest soldier, and let its light s.h.i.+ne on the dead face of the fourteenth Hereditary Justicer of the Wolfmark.

The men started back. The terrible countenance of the dead affected them even more than the grim figure of the Red Axe as they had seen him stalking from the Hall of Justice to the block.

"Ah," said the officer, not wholly irreverently, "Gottfried Gottfried has gone now to the dark place to which he hath sent so many. But, after all, he is dead--and I heard a monkish clerk prate the other day, 'Let the dead bury their dead.' I have my orders, and the Duke Otho waits.

Therefore I bid you follow me, Hugo Gottfried and Leopold von Dessauer."

So, leaving the body of my father lying on the bed in his garret, we were constrained to follow our captors down the stairs. Across the court-yard we were hurried, and through the Hall of Justice into the private apartments of the Duke.

Otho von Reuss, now Duke of the Wolfmark, was standing erect by the great chair in which, as my father had so often described him to me, Casimir had sat so many days with his head sunk on his breast. The new Duke stood up proudly, gazing at us with frowning brows and lowering, narrowed eyes.

This was mighty fine, but I could not help thinking of the poor appearance he had made on the hill above the Hirschga.s.se as he slunk off when he saw an evil cause going desperately against him.

"So," he said, "gentlemen both, I have caught you spying in my land. You know what those have to expect who are caught in hostile territory in disguise."

I thought it was as well to take the high hand at once, especially since I saw that humility would avail us nothing at any rate.

"Before now I have seen Otho von Reuss in hostile territory, and a right cowed traitor he looked!" said I, boldly.

The Duke smiled upon me, like a man that has a complete retort on his tongue but who is content for the present to reserve it.

"My friend," he said, suavely, "I will reply to you presently. I have a word to speak to your betters."

He turned him about to Dessauer.

"And what, Lord High Chancellor of Pla.s.senburg, think you of this masquerading? Dignified, is it not? And your wondrous speech in court that was to have done such great things. Will you be pleased to abide with us here in the Wolfsberg? Or must you forsake us to pleasure the Emperor, who, poor man, cannot sleep of nights in his bed at Ratisbon till the eloquent Doctor is come to cheer him with the full-flowing river of speech?"

"Duke Otho," said Dessauer, "my life is indeed in your hands. I hold it forfeit. A few years less or more are but little to Leopold von Dessauer now. But there is one who will most bloodily avenge us if a hair of our heads falls to the ground."

"Who?" said Otho, sneeringly. "Karl Miller's Son, I suppose. Ah, fool that you are, I hold your poor Karl in the palm of my hand!"

"It is like enough," said Dessauer, with a quick look, the look of a keen fencer when he sees an advantage. "I have often enough seen the palm of your hand approach Karl Miller's Son's treasury when I kept the moneys."

I saw the face of Otho twitch angrily. But he had evidently made up his mind to command his temper, sure of having that up his sleeve which would sufficiently answer all taunts.

"You mistake me," he said, with more subtlety than I had expected from the brute. "I had not meant to prove ungrateful. I am but newly come to my own here in the Wolfmark. I have learned from your host, Bishop Peter, how precious a thing forgiveness is. And now I am resolved to practise it. There is a time to love and a time to hate; a time to war and a time to be at peace. This is the last news I had from the holy clerk whose revenues I pay. So lay it to heart, as I have done."

"Glad am I," said Dessauer, courteously, as if he had been turning a phrase on the terrace at Pla.s.senburg--"glad am I that in your hour you are to be mindful of old friends, for they are like old wine, which grows better and mellower with the years."

"It is indeed well," said Otho von Reuss, ironically. "I have known the Chancellor Dessauer many years, and he grows more honorable and more wise with each decade.

"But now 'tis with this young man that I would speak," he said, changing his tone. "He at least is mine own servant, and so I have other words for him. Hugo Gottfried, you remember that you insulted me, striking me on the face with a glove, because I offered certain civilities to a maid of honor to the Princess of Pla.s.senburg. You wounded me in the arm. Your father, of whose death I have heard but now, cast me forth like a cur-dog from a chamber window. Between you ye have shamed me, and would shame me worse--for the sake of the murderess of mine uncle, Duke Casimir."

"Well do you know that the Lady Helene is innocent of that crime, or any other," said I; "she is purer than your eyes can look upon or your heart conceive. Yet, solely because she knows you for the foul thing you are, Helene lies condemned in your dungeons to-night. I ask you to grant me but one boon--that I may die with her!"

"Nay, my friend, gentlest squire of dames, defender of the oppressed, I have better things in store for you and your maid than that!"

He paused and looked a long while at me, as it seemed, chewing the cud of revenge upon that which he had to say to me.

At last he came a step nearer, that he might look into my eyes.

"Hugo Gottfried," he said, slowly, "son of Gottfried Gottfried, you are my servant now. I said that I would forgive you all for the sake of old times in exile together. And now you and I are both again in our own land. They that kept us out of our offices are dead, and we standing in their places. There is a maid down there in the Wolfsberg dungeons who to-morrow must meet her fate."

He paused a moment and laid his hand on my shoulder impressively.

"And you, Hugo Gottfried, Hereditary Justicer of the Dukedom, Red Axe of the Wolfmark, art the man who must carry out that doom!"