The Mercenary Part 24

"By whose authority?"

"The Emperor's, and with the goodwill of the princes his allies!"

"His Majesty takes strange measures to preserve their goodwill, sir. I am William of Hesse! These are my territories, not the Emperor's."

"Your Highness will surely of grace accord us a day's journey through your dominions, and such little provender as we pay for. It is a peaceful errand so far as your Highness is concerned."

"Then you should have stayed at the frontier till my guards had asked my will."

"I crave pardon, your Highness. I was told in Fulda that your Highness had set out on a journey; and I might have waited an ill-convenient time."

"It is possible, colonel. You might have gone other ways."

"The Emperor would doubtless be surprised to hear that the Landgrave of Hesse Ca.s.sel was unwilling to give his men pa.s.sage. But if it be denied to them, I have no instructions to make war."

"'Tis just as well!" said the Landgrave with a grim smile on his thick lips. "We have that about us that would stop you. You will go hence, if you so choose, across the river into Thuringia, and make what way you can. I am not ruler there. But further pa.s.sage through Hesse you cannot have."

Nigel showed no outward perturbation. He took one level, leisurely survey of the officers of the Landgrave, saluted, and said--

"Adieu, your Highness! It will please the Emperor to know that the hospitality, which is denied to him, is accorded to the Duke of Friedland."

The point of this remark lay in this, that Count von Teschen was seated on horseback among the suite of the Landgrave.

"One does not inquire into the quality of the merchant, but into the goodness of his wares!" was the quick reply. For all his sternness the Landgrave looked into Nigel's eyes with a half smile, and made a little motion of farewell with gauntleted hand. He was a man and knew a man.

Nigel and Hildebrand bade their regiment of rough-riders turn about and make for the river bank. The advance-guard was bidden to stop wherever the river should be fordable. Then they planned to cross into Thuringia and march north by the way of Erfurt, and thence to the camp of Gustavus.

The _contretemps_ at Hersfeld was a surprise to both of them. Nor was it to be explained by the presence of Count von Teschen. It was plain that the Landgrave was about to take up arms against the Emperor, and that the Emperor was ill-informed as to the real state of matters in the Protestant States, of which Hesse Ca.s.sel was one of the smallest.

As to Wallenstein, Nigel against his own inclination was beginning to have doubts of his loyalty. Father Lamormain had more than hinted them.

The Landgrave's irony about the merchant and his merchandise showed that at the opposite poles of policy and belief similar ideas were current.

And Nigel was honestly grieved. But his path at all events was plain. He was for the Emperor.

So having come to the ford he set his horse at the water, and though it reached his stirrups and ran swiftly, he made light of it. By the fall of evening they had reached the hamlet of Salzungen and bivouacked by the river Werra.

Water and green gra.s.s ripening into long hay were there in plenty, and Nigel had learned in the school of Wallenstein sufficient of the art of exacting creature-comforts for the men. It was merely an outskirt of the forest land, gently undulating from the hamlet church down to the river; and across the river farther down, where a wooden bridge spanned it, the road wound into gentle rising lands, behind which rose steeper pine-covered hills, and there was a great expanse of sky and comparatively open country. There was no chance of a surprise here, and except from equal numbers of cavalry, a thing unlikely to expect, there was nothing to fear.

At the ford near Hersfeld he had left a vedette of three picked men to watch and capture any one that crossed during the next five or six hours. There was still a hope that it might be the Count von Teschen.

And if his path lay in another direction, it might be some messenger to rouse the opposition of the people of the forest.

At midnight the vedette came in and reported that no one had crossed.

When the vedette came Nigel roused himself to hear their report, bade them take the refreshment provided for them, and go to sleep. The first sentinels had been relieved, and all was quiet save for the sound of horses tearing the rich gra.s.s as they took fresh mouthfuls, or the chant of some still unsated gra.s.shoppers. He was soon asleep again.

But not so heavily as before. The couch of hay on which he lay in an open shed did not, once his sleep was broken, prove quite so soft and alluring as it had three hours before. And at two o'clock, which sounded from the nearest steeple, he found himself cold and wakeful. Then from the main street of the hamlet his ear caught the sound of horse's hoofs, not of a horse being ridden but led. One horse! Two horses! It might be some early villager; or, again, it might be Count von Teschen.

Nigel got up, wrapped in his cloak as he was, went out and summoned the sentry who was on guard beside the hut. Taking the man's musket himself, he bade him go and see who the hors.e.m.e.n were, and himself walked to and fro in the cold air, musket on arm. Then after a few steps he stood still, for he had heard a low call. It was a familiar one, the call of the Bohemian to his horse. Some wakeful trooper might have uttered it in pure negligence. But it was repeated. And then from another direction, it was not easy to tell which, it was answered. Nigel was alert now, wondering what this might mean. Still dark, he had nothing but his ears to trust to, but down among the lines he thought he heard movements. So he roused the two nearest men, and sending one away in the direction of the noise he bade the other be on the alert. Then he resumed his place, appearing to sleep on his post but in reality watching with ears and eyes.

Two forms began to make themselves apparent, wriggling and crouching along the ground in between the sleeping troopers, mere shapes, but moving, and moving towards the hut. Of a sudden one sprang at him, knife in hand, to feel the b.u.t.t of the sentry's musket hit him one tremendous blow beneath the chin and then nothing more upon earth. The other who made straight into the hut was faced at the opening by a trooper, who, firing his musket point-blank, blew half the man's face away, and in doing so roused the camp.

"Seize all the Bohemians!" was the next order. But quickly as it was carried out in the almost total darkness, the confusion, the protests, the excitement among the horses, which threatened to stampede, all contributed to the partial success of the plot. For some twenty-five or thirty men galloped in wild disorder across the gra.s.slands and gained the wooded bridge before they could be stopped, and for the present it was hopeless to pursue. The sentry was found by the roadside leading to the village, stunned by a blow from a pistol b.u.t.t.

Nigel, except for Hildebrand, kept his own counsel. But at dawn, as soon as the troopers had broken their fast and horses were fed and watered, he made a close inquiry, released such of the Bohemians as seemed to have kept quiet, distributed them by twos and threes through the other troops, and the rest, about a dozen in all, he deprived of their arms and made them ride in the middle of the regiment, scowling and disconsolate.

So Count von Teschen had scored his first point, and the second point.

But Nigel was determined not to let him get too far ahead, to husband his horses with all the skill he could command, and follow his own road to Erfurt. If he could get even with von Teschen on the way so much the better.

It was a summer morning. Not a few of the village folk came out to look at the regiment from a respectful distance. And as Nigel and Hildebrand rode over the little bridge whence they could see in either direction the little river peacefully meandering, the line of tiny trees along its banks, the s.h.i.+mmering haze over the meadows, and heard the church bell summoning the faithful to early ma.s.s, all the world seemed at peace.

Over the low hill to another hamlet called Schweina, where they got a stirrup-cup, and then the road, still mounting, wound by an ascent that tried the horses towards the castle of Altenstein, which was nearly the highest point of the range of hills they had to cross, peering out of the thick woods. As yet they had seen no sign of the Count von Teschen.

A short halt to breathe the horses and then onward again, and after a short farther ascent they found on the ridge of the range a fair road, wooded to the left, and bounded on the right by gra.s.slands which sloped down to the valley, a world of greenery beneath a canopy of the bluest sky. A mile further on, to avoid a long detour, they had to clamber by a rough path over a spur of the woody hill before meeting the road again, and here they became aware they were not the only wayfarers, for, as Nigel was almost out of the woodland shade, he heard the murmur of many voices and the articulate sound of one strong resonant voice.

Nigel pa.s.sed the word to halt, while he looked upon the business that was forward, and to do that the better he forced his horse through the undergrowth some few dozen yards farther along. Upon a waggon, from which the horses had been taken, stood Pastor Rad.

At first Nigel saw vaguely a great mult.i.tude, and his first thought was that this was an a.s.semblage of the Lutherans for wors.h.i.+p in a place convenient to the many scattered hamlets. Then as his horse stood more steadily and he could choose his own window in the leaves, he saw that a great many of them were men, and that they were armed in some measure; and, thirdly, he noticed that whatever the ultimate business might be, that which was being transacted was a sort of trial.

There was Pastor Rad standing in an ox-waggon, his long yellow hair partly matted on his brow and partly hanging in disorder, for he was manifestly very hot. Down below, facing him, sat a girl, her hair flowing down to her waist, in a plain dusky blue robe. She was manifestly being talked at, preached at, the object of public ignominy.

In a ring round her at a little distance sat two rows of grim-faced elders, or whatever functionaries corresponded to that body in the Lutheran community.

"Come forth, Satan!" bellowed Pastor Rad, so that it reached even to the ears of Nigel and Hildebrand.

And all the ring of elders fell forthwith upon their knees and cried with a loud voice, "Come forth, Satan!"

The girl involuntarily put her hands to her ears because of the clamour.

"What in the name of heaven are they about?" Nigel asked.

"'Tis an exorcising. The girl has an evil spirit!" said Hildebrand, crossing himself. "'Tis none of our business! Let us get on!"

But the girl wept and stood up crying aloud for a deliverer. She evidently dreaded the next step of the exorcisers. And with good reason, for Pastor Rad issued some brief directions and two men seized the girl, and, thrusting her hands between the rails of the waggon, were proceeding to bind them; another stood forward with a whip of many thongs.

"G.o.d condemn the Lutherans!" said Hildebrand, and spat upon the ground.

"They are going to whip the devil out of her."

Once more the girl tried to wrench herself free, and in doing so turned her face, throwing back her flowing hair as she did so, in such wise that Nigel got a glimpse of it.

"By G.o.d's Son!" Nigel exclaimed, with a burst of pa.s.sionate indignation that almost startled Hildebrand. "Go back! lead the men into the open, halt them in three lines and await my order! Tschk!"

Bowing his head and urging his horse he broke through the saplings and galloped to the girl's side.

It needed but his brief "Loose her!" to make her torturers undo the clumsy fastening they had begun, and "Elspeth Reinheit!" for her to fling her arms around his saddle-peak.

"Take me away! Save me! Save me! Captain!"

Nigel unclasped her arms and bade her once more sit down upon the low bench. "Fear no more, maiden!" he added with such decision in his voice as poured fresh courage into her. Then he faced sternly up at the Pastor and asked him--

"What have you against this maiden?"

But the Pastor, full to overflowing with spiritual drunkenness, shouted--