The Mercenary Part 28

"And this is Wallenstein!" said Nigel. "These are his bribes, his compliments, his wheedlers to set honest Landgraves and bishops and princes against his master, the Emperor! I cannot understand it."

"It is beyond the robber lord's understanding!" Again the scorn whipped him.

Again he flushed, and for a moment Ottilie von Thuringen trembled for the outburst. It did not come. She marvelled at the strength of his will. And then she caught her breath, for her eyes saw something. Her impulse was to s.n.a.t.c.h at it, beyond all the pride of race that was hers.

But she also quelled herself. He saw it too and drew it forth. He knew the hand. It was Wallenstein's. A sealed letter, and the superscription was to the high-born Baroness Ottilie von Thuringen.

With perfect coolness and grace he handed it to her.

"Our Caesar has strange postmen of his own!" he said.

This time it was the Lady Ottilie who flushed, but whether it was with anger, or with joy, or confusion as with a woman who, while entertaining one suitor hears another announced, there was no guessing. She hid the letter in her bosom.

"Then the Count was on his way to the Wartburg!" Nigel said aloud for her to hear.

"He will be here in a short while!" she said serenely.

"What do you mean, lady?"

"Just that! Have you done with the Count's saddle-bags?"

There was nothing else in writing. Nigel replaced everything.

"And you take nothing, tall captain? Neither gold, nor raiment, nor trinkets? What ails you?"

"Not a jot! He can come for his own if he can travel so far," said Nigel. "And for your sweet aid, your comfortable words, your hospitality, I pray you, sweet Ottilie, Star of the Night, and Serpent of the Morning, take this and this." And without more preamble he took her in his arms and kissed her w.i.l.l.y-nilly pa.s.sionately upon the brow, the eyes, the lips. And then in the same whirlwind he rushed down the stair and called for his horse, his man, his baggage, and in a few minutes rode down the hill at a breakneck speed.

Looking up at the great tower before he pa.s.sed out of sight he saw a white arm extended and a scarf waved in the morning breeze.

"G.o.d's truth! Where am I?" he exclaimed, and waved his sword in the sunlight.

CHAPTER XXIV.

MISTRESS AND ENEMY.

There had been two human obstacles to the advance of Gustavus Adolphus.

One was George William, Elector of Brandenburg, whose fortresses of Custrin and Spandau, held by any one but Gustavus, were awkward things in the way of a retreat, if the Swede had to make one. George William was very averse to the Edict. Magdeburg was one of the pearls of his princ.i.p.ality. But not being sure that Gustavus was strong enough to beat the Emperor, he s.h.i.+lly-shallied. Gustavus in his impetuous way had appeared at the gates of Berlin with a bodyguard of Swedes armed and trained to a fine point. George William saw them and hesitated no longer. Custrin and Spandau were lent to his friend Gustavus.

The advance of Gustavus southward was thus secured till he should come to the Elbe, and across fine flat country suitable for such a march.

Once across the Elbe, he would be between Tilly and the Emperor. He would also be in Saxony.

But the obvious crossings of the Elbe were at the bridge of Dessau and the bridge of Wittenburg, both in the hands of the Elector of Saxony, John George.

John George had not made up his mind. He was an Elector of the Empire.

He was also prince of a large territory. And the southern march of his lands was also the march of Bohemia, and the south-west was the upper Palatinate in the hands of Maximilian since the days of the Winter King.

He was also averse to Edicts and in favour of the pure Gospel as represented by Lutheranism. But like the young man in the days of the founder of the original Gospel, he had great possessions.

Unlike his brother Elector of Brandenburg, he was not liable to a sudden nocturnal visit from the impetuous Gustavus, since a very large and populous country lay between, but, apart from such forcible persuasion, the policy of Saxony was not as yet to break from the Emperor. In the days of the Winter King he had refrained from joining in the mad escapades of the Protestants. He had no desire to do so now. Neither was he inclined to bow to the Edict. And to meet the urgent demands of the Emperor on that head, he had bethought himself of the strong man armed.

He had armed accordingly. Through the kindly offices of Wallenstein, who was not unwilling to see the Saxons arming, he had been able to secure a good Lutheran general--one Arnim, who, like his old captain, Wallenstein, was without a command. The Elector of Saxony had forty thousand soldiers in spick and span new uniforms getting drilled by Arnim. But whether they would ultimately fight Gustavus, or merely grow fat and well-liking under the pay and treatment of Arnim, and never fight at all, John George was not at present sure.

There was the situation. Gustavus was entrenched in a fortified camp at Werben, where the Havel joins the Elbe, sixty miles north of Magdeburg, with smaller forces holding Spandau on the Havel and Custrin on the Oder, a line of a hundred and fifty miles from west to east. Tilly and Pappenheim (Maximilian's Pappenheim) were near Magdeburg. And sixty miles south of Magdeburg were the brand-new forty thousand of John George.

Colonel Nigel Charteris had seen enough in his journey to hasten his march northward to Tilly. From all directions he heard that the Landgrave of Hesse was marching to join Gustavus. And the news of the preparations of John George had reached Eisenach. The whole of Thuringia was in ferment.

But the reason of Nigel's uncommon haste down the hill to his camp outside Eisenach was on account of that curious amba.s.sador, Count von Teschen. Nigel feared some mischance. Ottilie! Star Ottilie had said ...

what matter? Nigel galloped into camp. Hildebrand handed him his own order brought earlier that morning by his own trooper, attended by one of the Landgrave's huntsmen--

"_Send the Count to the Wartburg under escort._

"#Nigel Charteris.#"

The colonel made a gesture of annoyance.

"A good imitation, Hildebrand! Confound him! The best thing we can do is to get on to Erfurt."

And on the road to Erfurt he had leisure to blame himself for listening to her whom he omitted to "confound."

One does not commit to the nether G.o.ds the woman one has kissed, and kissed in a very paroxysm of pa.s.sion, whether she would be kissed or not--the woman who has let her scarf flutter an adieu to one, the affront notwithstanding, as one rode away. Not even when she has tricked the affronter of a prisoner, an emissary of a traitor, who has sent the woman a letter full of ... the nether G.o.ds know what, treason or love.

What part was she playing in the political intrigue? It was clear that she had recognised the Count von Teschen as the hand of Wallenstein, that she knew him to be essential, so far as his possibilities went, to the furtherance of Wallenstein's designs. There might easily be a dozen Count von Teschens, foxes with firebrands at their tails, rus.h.i.+ng hither and thither, but foxes that knew their business and the right cornfields, and how themselves to escape the flames that they spread.

Nigel's own sense of duty permitted him no sympathy with Wallenstein.

Yet he could understand how Wallenstein, bereft of his command, hoping nothing more from the Catholics, impatient of inaction, unable to bear the loss of prestige, more akin in spirit to the great captains of _condottieri_ that had ravaged Italy, indifferent which prince they fought for, how such a Wallenstein might endeavour to curry favour with the Protestant princes rather than rust like an old ploughshare. It was intelligible, but only as the work of a man without grat.i.tude, without loyalty, without any conviction of his religion.

And what part was Ottilie playing? She was a Catholic. So was Wallenstein. She had friends among the Protestant princes. So had many members of Catholic families. She had gone so far as almost to jeopardise her life, and, what was more, her honour, in the siege of Magdeburg. To what had she trusted then to deliver her? She must indeed have been full of the ecstasy of religion if she supposed that G.o.d, who must have approved of the Catholic cause, would s.h.i.+eld her in the midst of carnage and the glutting of l.u.s.t which had strewn the ruins of Magdeburg with the bodies of the violated. Nigel had surprised her in the cathedral at Erfurt at her devotions. But even then, and especially in that walk afterwards together, he had not read her as devout; rather as a woman intensely capable, self-sufficing, made for love but not awakened to it, with the respect and instinct for religion that every woman should possess as part of her endowment.

Then she had spoken of Wallenstein, and he could recall her tones, proud, indignant: "What think you that Ottilie von Thuringen can have in common with that cold seeker after power?"

Yet she had stood by him, Nigel, full of taunts as he ransacked von Teschen's saddle-bags, knowing that, or at least expecting, that he would find a letter for her under Wallenstein's own hand and seal.

Was the Erfurt episode a piece of acting, and was she then Wallenstein's mistress, or bound to him by some tie of chivalry, some mimicry of the romances of Torquato Ta.s.so?

Mistress? At the very thought Nigel dug his spurs so savagely into his horse that the animal, disgusted and outraged, performed such a curvet as nearly threw him. No! Such supreme and n.o.ble loveliness had never soiled its freshness by any breath of desire! This Nigel would have sworn, and made good his oath, as any paladin of old time, with sword against sword. More, he would have sworn that his own lips in that frenzy, and gentle even in that frenzy, had been the first to ruffle the sweet fragrance and surprise the dewiness of hers, unconscious as she was that she had not merely suffered what she could not help. By that kiss he had sealed her his. And insensibly he began to regard her as in some measure two women,--one the star of his desire and wors.h.i.+p, the other the mysterious ally of the Emperor's enemies, against whom he must plot to unravel her designs and those of the arch-plotter Wallenstein.

From this point his thought jumped at a bound to that other mistress, the Archd.u.c.h.ess Stephanie, whose loveliness, no less than Ottilie's, impressed itself upon him, mingled with something of awe of the great Habsburgs. She too was interested in the destiny of Wallenstein. But of Wallenstein himself or his plans she had told him nothing. The mystic circles and ovals interested or amused her perhaps, but of any intimate understanding between her and the Duke of Friedland Nigel could not remember a trace. Doubtless at the Court of Vienna there was a Wallenstein party as well as a Maximilian party. It was almost certain; and the Archd.u.c.h.ess Stephanie might, as princesses have done, have flattered herself that she was leading a party, while in reality her name for a few aspiring n.o.bles was merely a lure used by wire-pullers, who let her know nothing of their real machinations.

Still at the one end stood the lofty Archd.u.c.h.ess, at the other her lovely and almost twin cousin, Ottilie von Thuringen, and between Wallenstein, the cold seeker after power, swaying, utilising both to further his schemes and ambition.

Nigel groaning in spirit, continued to ride on, and presently reached Erfurt.

At Erfurt he found the small garrison full of rumours of an impending attack from the Landgrave of Hesse Ca.s.sel, and although he had reason to believe that that prince was not yet in a posture to march, Nigel thought it wise to leave his regiment there with Hildebrand, partly to get further drilling and some rest for their horses, partly to overawe the townspeople and put the place in some condition to resist the Landgrave should he venture to attack it. In the meantime, with a small escort, he rode as fast as his horses could go to Wolmerstadt, where he found General Tilly.

The little great man received him with his customary grimness of demeanour. The thin hollow cheeks looked hollower than before, and the red feather in the small high peaked hat danced with a more sinister gaiety than ever.

"Well, Colonel Charteris?" Tilly never forgot his officers nor their names. "Where is your regiment?"