My Lady Rotha Part 30

'Because my first duty is to your excellency,' I stammered. 'And as long as you are here, I dare not--and will not leave you!'

'As long as I am here!' she retorted, red with anger and surprise.

'You have still that maggot in your head, then? By my soul, Master Martin, if we were at home I would find means to drive it out! But I know what it is! What you really want is to stay by the side of that puling girl! Oh, I am not blind,' my lady continued viciously, seeing that she had found at last the way to hurt me. 'I know what has been going on.'

'But Count Leuchtenstein----' I muttered.

'Don't bring him in!' my lady cried, in such a voice that I dared go no farther. 'General Tzerclas has told me of him. I understand what is between them, and you do not. Presumptuous b.o.o.by!' she continued, flas.h.i.+ng at me a glance of scorn, which made me tremble. 'But I will thwart you! Since you will not leave me, I will go myself. I will go, but Mistress Marie shall stay here till we return.'

'But if there is to be fighting?' I said humbly.

'Ah! So you have changed your note, have you!' she cried triumphantly.

I had seldom seen her more moved. 'If there is to be fighting'--she mocked my tone. 'Well, there is to be, but I shall go. And now do you go, and have all ready for a start at daybreak, or it will be the worse for you! One of my women will accompany me. Fraulein Anna will stay here with your--other mistress!'

She pointed to the door as she spoke, and once more charged me to be ready; and I went away dazed. Everything seemed on a sudden to be turned upside down--the child lost, my lady offended, the Waldgrave desperate, the general in favour. It was hard to see which way my duty lay. I would fain have stayed in the camp a day to make farther search for the child, but I must go. I would gladly have got clear of the camp, but we were to travel in the general's company. As to leaving Marie, my lady wronged me. I knew of no special danger which threatened the girl, nor any reason why she should not be safe where she was. If the child were found she would be here to receive it.

On the other hand, there was my discovery of the beggar's fate, from the immediate consequences of which Count Hugo's arrival had saved me.

This sudden expedition should favour me there; the general would have his hands full of other things, and Ludwig be hard put to it to gain his ear. I might now, if I pleased, discover the matter to my lady, and open her eyes. But I had no proof; even if time permitted, and I could take the Countess to that part of the camp, I could not be sure that the body was still there. And to accuse General Tzerclas of such a thing without proof would be to court my own ruin.

While I was puzzling over this, I saw the Waldgrave outside, and, thinking to profit by his advice, I went to meet him. But I found him in a peculiar mood, talking, laughing, and breaking into s.n.a.t.c.hes of song; all with a wildness and _abandon_ that frightened while they puzzled me. He laughed at my doubts, and walking up and down, while his servants scoured his breast-piece and cleaned his harness by the light of a lantern, he persisted in talking of nothing but the expedition before us and the pleasure of striking a blow or two.

'We are rusting, man!' he cried feverishly, clapping me on the back.

'You have the rust on you yet, Martin But--

"Clink, clink, clink!

Sword and stirrup and spur!

Ride, ride, ride, Fast as feather or fur!"

To-morrow or the next day we will have it off.'

'You have heard about the child, my lord,' I said gravely, trying to bring him back to the present.

'I have heard that Von Werder, the dullest man at a board I ever met, turns out to be Hugo of Leuchtenstein, whom G.o.d preserve!' he answered recklessly. 'And that your girl's brat of a brother turns out to be his brat! And no sooner is the father found than the son is lost; and that both have gone as mysteriously as they came. But Himmel! man, what's the odds when we are going to fight to-morrow! What compares with that? ca! ca! steady and the point!'

I thought of Marie; and it seemed to me that there were other things in the world besides fighting. For love makes a man both brave and a coward. But the argument would scarcely have been to the Waldgrave's mind, and, seeing that he would neither talk nor hear reason, I left him and went away to make my preparations.

But on the road next day I noticed that though now and then he flashed into the same wild merriment, he was on the whole as dull as he had been gay. Our party rode at the head of the column, that we might escape the dust and have the best of the road, the general and his princ.i.p.al officers accompanying us and leaving the guidance of the march to inferiors. Our force consisted of about six hundred horse and four hundred foot; and as we were to return to the camp, we took with us neither sutlers nor ordinary baggage, while camp followers were interdicted under pain of death. Yet the amount of our impedimenta astonished me. Half a dozen sumpter horses were needed to carry the general's tent and equipage; his officers required a score more. The ammunition for the foot soldiers, who were sufficiently burdened with their heavy matchlocks, provided farther loads; and in fine, while supposed to be marching in light fighting order, we had something like a hundred packhorses in our train. Then there were men to lead them, and cooks and pages and foot-boys and the general's band, and but that our way lay through woodland tracks and by-routes, I verily believe that we should have had his coach and dwarf also.

The sight of all these men and horses in motion was so novel and exhilarating, and the morning air so brisk, that I soon recovered from my parting with Marie, and began to take a more cheerful view of the position. I came near to sympathizing with my lady, whose pleasure and delight knew no bounds. The long lines of hors.e.m.e.n winding through the wood, the trailing pikes and waving pennons, gratified her youthful fancy for war; while as our march lay through the forest, she was shocked by none of those traces of its ravages which had appalled us on first leaving Heritzburg. The general waited on her with the utmost attention, riding by her bridle-rein and talking with her by the hour together. Whenever I looked at them I noticed that her eye was bright and her colour high, and I guessed that he was unfolding the plan of ambition which I was sure he masked under a cold and reserved demeanour. Alas! I could think of nothing more likely to take my lady's fancy, no course more sure to enlist her sympathy and interest.

But I was helpless; I could do nothing. And for the Waldgrave, if he still had any power he would not use it.

My lady gave him opportunities. Several times I saw her try to draw him into conversation, and whenever General Tzerclas left her for a while she turned to the younger man and would have talked to him. But he seemed unable to respond. When he was not noisily gay, he rode like a mute. He seemed half sullen, half afraid; and she presently gave him up, but not before her efforts had caught Tzerclas' eye. The general had been called for some purpose to the rear of the column, and on his return found the two talking, my lady's att.i.tude such that it was very evident she was the provocant. He did not try to resume his place, but fell in behind them; and riding there, almost, if not quite, within earshot, cast such ugly glances at them as more than confirmed me in the belief that in his own secret way he loved my mistress; and that, after a more dangerous fas.h.i.+on than the Waldgrave.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The general waited on her with the utmost attention, riding by her bridle-rein ...]

This was late in the afternoon, and another hour brought us who marched at the head of the column to our camping-ground for the night.

We lay in a rugged, wooded valley, not very commodious, but chosen because only one high ridge divided it from a second valley, through which the main road and the river had their course. Our instructions were that the convoy, which was bound for Wallenstein's army then marching on Nuremberg, would pa.s.s through this second valley some time during the following day; but until the hour came for making the proper dispositions, all persons in our force were forbidden to mount the intervening ridge under pain of death. We had even to do without fires--lest the smoke should betray our presence--and for this one night lay under something like the strict discipline which I had expected to find prevailing in a military camp. The only fire that was permitted cooked the general's meal, which he shared with my lady and the Waldgrave and the princ.i.p.al officers.

Even so the order caused trouble. The pikemen and musketeers did not come in till an hour before midnight, when they trudged into camp dusty and footsore and murmuring at their leaders. When, in this state, they learned that fires were not to be lighted, disgust grew rapidly into open disobedience. On a sudden, in half a dozen quarters at once, flames flickered up, and the camp, dark before, became peopled in a moment with strange forms, whose eighteen-foot weapons and c.u.mbrous headpieces flung long shadows across the valley.

We had lain down to rest, but at the sound of the altercation and the various cries of 'Pikes! Pikes!' and 'Mutiny!' which broke out, we came out of our lairs in the bracken to learn what was happening.

Calling young Jacob and three or four of the Heritzburg men to my side, I ran to my lady to see that nothing befell her in the confusion. The noise had roused her, and we found her at the door of her tent looking out. The newly-kindled fires, flaming and crackling on the sloping sides of the valley, lit up a strange scene of disorder--of hurrying men and plunging horses, for the alarm had extended to the horse lines--and for a moment I thought that the mutiny might spread and cut the knot of our difficulties, or whelm us all in the same ruin.

I had scarcely conceived the thought, when the general pa.s.sed near us on his way from his tent, whence he had just been called; and at the sight my new-born hopes vanished. He was bare-headed; he carried no arms, and had nothing in his hand but a riding-switch. But the stern, grim aspect of his face, in which was no mercy and no quailing, was worth a thousand pikes. The firelight shone on his pale, olive cheek and brooding eyes, as he went by us, not seeing us; and after that I did not doubt what would happen, although for a moment the tumult of oaths and cries seemed to swell rather than sink, and I saw more than one pale-lipped officer climbing into his saddle that he might be able to fly, if necessary.

The issue agreed with my expectations. The heart of the disorder lay in a part of the camp separated from our quarters by a brook, but near enough in point of distance; so that we saw, my lady and all, pretty clearly what followed. For a moment, for a few seconds, during which you could hear a pin drop through the camp, the general stood, his life in the balance, unarmed in the midst of armed men. But he had that set courage which seems to daunt the common sort and paralyse the finger on the trigger; and he prevailed. The knaves lowered their weapons and shrank back cowering before him. In a twinkling the fires were beaten out by a hundred eager feet, and the general strode back to us through the silent, obsequious camp.

He distinguished my lady standing at the door of her tent, and stepped aside. 'I am sorry that you have been disturbed, Countess,' he said politely. 'It shall not occur again. I will hang up a dozen of those hounds to-morrow, and we shall have less barking.'

'You are not hurt?' my lady asked, in a voice unlike her own.

He laughed, deigning no answer in words. Then he said, 'You have no fire? Camp rules are not for you. Pray have one lit.' And he went on to his tent.

I had the curiosity to pa.s.s near it when my lady retired. I found a dozen men, cuira.s.siers of his privileged troop, peeping and squinting under the canvas which had been hung round the fire. I joined them and looked; and saw him lying at length, wrapped in his cloak, reading 'Caesar's Campaigns' by the light of the blaze, as if nothing had happened.

CHAPTER XIX.

IN A GREEN VALLEY.

He was as good as his word. Before the sun had been up an hour six of the mutineers, chosen by lot from a hundred of the more guilty, dangled from a great tree which overhung the brook, and were already forgotten--so short are soldiers' memories--in the hurry and bustle of a new undertaking. The slope of the ridge which divided us from the neighbouring valley was quickly dotted with parties of men making their way up it, through bracken and furze which reached nearly to the waist; while the horse under Count Waska rode slowly off to make the circuit of the hill and enter the next valley by an easier road.

My lady chose to climb the hill on foot, in the track of the pikemen, though the heavy dew, which the sun had not yet drunk up, soon drenched her skirts, and she might, had she willed it, have been carried to the top on men's shoulders. The fern and long gra.s.s delayed her and made our progress slow, so that the general's dispositions were in great part made when we reached the summit. Busy as he still was, however, he had eyes for us. He came at once and placed us in a small coppice of fir trees that crowned one of the k.n.o.bs of the ridge.

From this point, where he took up his own position, we could command, ourselves unseen, the whole valley, the road, and river--the scene of the coming surprise--and see clearly, what no one below could discern, where our footmen lay in ambush in parties of fifty; the pikemen among some black thorns, close to the north end of the valley, the musketmen a little farther within and almost immediately below us. The latter, p.r.o.ne in the fern, looked, viewed from above, like lines of sheep feeding, until the light gleamed on a gun-barrel or sword-hilt and dispelled the peaceful illusion.

The sun had not yet risen above the hill on which we stood, and the valley below us lay cool and green and very pleasant to the eye. About a league in length, it was nowhere, except at its southern extremity, where it widened into a small plain, more than half a mile across. At its northern end, below us, and a little to the right, it diminished to a mere wooded defile, through which the river ran over rocks and boulders, with a dull roar that came plainly to our ears. A solitary house of some size, with two or three hovels cl.u.s.tered about it, stood near the middle of the valley; but no smoke rose from the chimney, no c.o.c.k crowed, no dog barked. And, looking more closely, I saw that the place was deserted.

So quiet it seemed in this peaceful Thuringian valley, I shuddered when I thought of the purpose which brought us. .h.i.ther; and I saw my lady's face grow sad with a like reflection. But General Tzerclas viewed all with another mind. The stillness, the suns.h.i.+ne, the very song of the lark, as it rose up and up and up above us, and, still unwearied, sang its song of praise, touched no chord in his breast.

The quietude pleased him, but only because it favoured his plans; the lark's hymn, because it covered with a fair mask his lurking ambush; the suns.h.i.+ne, because it seemed a good augury. His keen and vigilant eye, the smile which curled his lip, the set expression of his face, showed that he saw before him a battle-field and no more; a step upwards--a triumph, a victory, and that was all.

I blamed him then. I confess now, I misjudged him. He who leads on such occasions risks more than his life, and bears a weight of responsibility that may well crush from his mind all moods or thoughts of weather. At least, I did him, I had to do him, this justice: that he betrayed no anxiety, uttered no word of doubt or misgiving.

Standing with his back against a tree and his eyes on the northern pa.s.s, he remained placidly silent, or talked at his ease. In this he contrasted well with the Waldgrave, who continually paced up and down in the background, as if the fir-grove were a prison and he a captive waiting to be freed.

'At what hour should they be here?' my lady asked presently, breaking a long silence.

She tried to speak in her ordinary tone, but her voice sounded uncertain. A woman, however brave, is a woman still. It began to dawn upon her that things were going to happen which it might be unpleasant to see, and scarcely more pleasant to remember.

'I am afraid I cannot say,' the general answered lightly. 'I have done my part; I am here. Between this and night they should be here too.'

'Unless they have been warned.'

'Precisely,' he answered,' unless they have been warned.'