The Mercenary Part 21

Was it perchance precisely fair? The law of Archd.u.c.h.esses is sure their own, and no man can gainsay it.

Nigel, bewildered for a moment, stammered out--

"The Queen of Night!" and knelt to kiss her long slender fingers.

As he rose to his feet again she laid a hand lightly on his arm and said with a twinkle of merriment in her rich voice--

"Strange and inconsequent mixture are you, man! You face sword and fire, and lose not a heart-beat, nor a patch of colour. You meet a woman in the moonlight, and straightway your knees must knock, and you must tremble like a steeple in the wind."

"I crave pardon, your Highness!" said Nigel, recovering his boldness.

"Great supreme beauty such as yours, if there be any like it anywhere, must needs give a man more than a feeling of awe!"

"Now you talk like a bold wooer and a poet. Faith! you have more than a touch of the poet, though my skill in the English tongue is not great enough for me to put a right value on your verses. 'Tis seven years since my cousin, the Infanta, thought to wed England. We all learned English in those days."

"But your Highness understood!" said Nigel eagerly. "It is but a day or two at most and I must ride into the very teeth of Gustavus. I burned to see your Highness, to thank you for my fortunes, and say that if your Highness has need of me at any time--"

"You will drop your regiment of Rough-riders like a hot iron and ride for me? And this is loyalty to the House of Habsburg!" Her smile blunted the edge of her ridicule.

"Saving my duty as a soldier, your Highness is _my_ House of Habsburg!"

he rejoined with such an earnestness that broke down her fence of raillery.

"You Scots! Full of conceit! Sensitive! Brave to the degree that you do not even know you are brave! Kindly, so that you would die and not grudge the gift!... I shall not tempt you from your duty; but if I call you by this sign"--she drew out the figure from its hiding-place--"come what may ... I look to you. It will be no little matter."

Nigel's eyes were full upon her, for there was a solemnity in her voice, a note of strong appeal as from one high spirit calling to another and conscious of the other's attuning. He drew his sword and pressed the hilt to his lips in token of his fealty.

Then it pleased the Archd.u.c.h.ess to pace to and fro for a while beneath the trees in silence. She was in truth full of emotion, which was all but too strong for her. The nearness of Nigel, who walked beside her, was one cause of trouble. She had told herself that she loved Wallenstein, the dark, inscrutable organiser of armies, that she had always loved him. But did she sway the spirit of Wallenstein, the heart of Wallenstein, so that it vibrated, if heart or spirit can vibrate, to her touch? She did not seek to answer it. She knew that this stranger Scot with the eagle eyes and bearing was nearer to her in the spring of his years and of his intelligence, albeit one of her father's mercenaries, who might perchance become another Tilly, never a Wallenstein. "And why not?" she asked herself. Then she answered it.

"Too much heart!"

Of a sudden she broke the silence again--

"I like you, Colonel Nigel! I trust you! I am perhaps going into a nunnery for a season; perhaps for always!"

"Your Highness! Into a nunnery!" Nigel's astonishment and his sorrow were racing for the mastery.

"They wish me to marry Maximilian of Bavaria!"

"The Jesuits? Your Highness will not?"

"I have told them that asked, 'Sooner a nunnery, or to wed a private gentleman who is not of the blood royal.'"

The blood coursed like a river through the young officer's veins.

If---- He put the thought away sternly.

"Many things may happen. I must gain time. Some other league or bond may be formed and other interests may thwart it! I tell you so that if I be not here when you return, after you have driven Gustavus back to the Baltic, you will know. 'Tis the fate of princesses who cannot control their own destinies." She had stopped in her walk as if to say a word or two before dismissing him.

"I would I were to be nearer Vienna than Magdeburg!" said Nigel. "But I have promised. And your Highness is not an Infanta of Spain to be bartered here or there for an article in a treaty."

"So you think!" she said, evidently pleased. "But we women are all alike in one thing, we are all fatalists, like the Grand Turk."

"I have been very desirous of asking your Highness a question," said Nigel, drawing the little dagger from his belt and holding it so that she could see the hilt. "Whose arms are those?"

"Habsburg," she said. "How came you by it?"

"In Magdeburg a lady tried to stab me with it."

As her fingers closed round the hilt Nigel seemed to see the hand again just as he saw it and grasped it at Magdeburg.

"I wonder whether it was my cousin Ottilie von Thuringen," she said.

"She is suspected of strong sympathies for the Lutherans."

"Does she resemble your Highness in person?"

"Yes! She did as a girl! There is a coldness between the families and we do not meet as we used. Some say she is singularly like me. Her mother was sister to mine! I remember myself giving her this dagger for a gift. 'Tis very strange it should come into your hands and your eyes say that you wish it back in your own keeping. Colonel Nigel! I shall be jealous if you love my cousin Ottilie! It is the way of princesses!"

Her eyes fastened upon Nigel's: and his, fighting this uneven battle, drooped.

"I do not know if I love her! But I love none other! And then she is not a princess!"

"And one does not love the stars!" she interposed, rather with a touch of malice. "So you can wors.h.i.+p but not love me, Colonel Nigel!"

"What can I say, your Highness? I must be true at all costs!"

A mist came over her fine eyes. She gave him her hand. This time he bowed and kissed it.

With a quick movement she turned, walked into the shadows, and he saw no more of her that night nor till he departed for his journey.

CHAPTER XVIII.

NIGEL'S INSTRUCTIONS, WRITTEN AND UNWRITTEN.

It is not too much to say that the Emperor Ferdinand and the Jesuits, which may be taken to include the Duke of Bavaria, were intoxicated by the fall of Magdeburg. Ferdinand was bent on carrying out his Edict, bent on restoring to the Church of Rome its ancient possessions, bent on levelling the edifice of Protestantism till not one stone should be left in company with another, as witness that within the bounds of the empire there had once been such a heresy as Lutheranism, or such another heresy as Calvinism. Rather a tractless desert, which, for lack of a better name, he could call a Catholic state, than well-cultivated provinces, studded thickly with prosperous towns and cities, wherein men and women wors.h.i.+pped their Maker after any other fas.h.i.+on than his own. It was a dream of fanaticism.

Once the Emperor had deemed that he was within reach of his desires, when Wallenstein and his army had traversed the land driving the forces of Protestantism before him, not all Protestantism, mark you, but all that had courage enough to show an armed front in Germany. And the Diet of Ratisbon had said, "Your Majesty must dismiss Wallenstein." The Jesuits had been foremost, for they had weighed Wallenstein and found him wanting in their own kind of strenuousness. Reluctantly the Emperor had listened and agreed to let him go.

Gustavus had arisen. "Another little enemy," said Ferdinand, still full of the sensation of power that had crept into his heart with the aggrandis.e.m.e.nt of Wallenstein's army. Gustavus established himself in Mecklenburg and in Pomerania. "It is no great matter," said the Emperor.

"Let our General Tilly and your General Pappenheim, Duke Maximilian, go on with their work and enforce the Edict. Brandenburg lies between Gustavus and Magdeburg, and George William is no fire-eater. He will stand by the Empire. Saxony, broad and rich in cities and men, lies next in his path, and John George is, Protestant though he be, a staunch Elector of the Empire. Let Tilly and Pappenheim go onward, maugre the threats of these northern migrants. We have seen Christian of Denmark driven back to his flat lands. So shall we see Gustavus." And lo! Tilly and Pappenheim took Magdeburg, and, whether they could help it or not, the city was burned and twenty thousand of its citizens died the death of the heretic: and the bruit of it had sent a shudder through all Protestant Germany. Who indeed should stand at the last day against the arms of the Empire?

"And all without your vaunted Wallenstein!" said Duke Maximilian. They set it down to impotence on the part of Gustavus.

The Emperor Ferdinand was not indisposed to show some other parts of Germany that Vienna was active, keeping them in mind, and he was not altogether sure of Hesse Ca.s.sel and its Landgrave. He did not wish to send his new regiment to join Tilly by the straight path through Saxony, because Saxony might take umbrage. It would help to preach submission if it took the road through Hesse Ca.s.sel and came by the north side of the mountains into the south of Hanover, and got into sight of Gustavus from the west bank of the Elbe, it being presumed that the Swedish king was upon the other side, and came up stream to Tilly.

This time Nigel had no despatches to carry. The Grand Duke Lothar had summoned him to read in his presence the instructions of the Emperor, which he was to impart to Major Hildebrand von Hohendorf. The only papers he was furnished with were general authorities to quarter his troops where he thought it expedient. Money was given him, but not in such abundance as to c.u.mber his march. Last of all, he was bidden to Father Lamormain's apartments.