The Mercenary Part 3

"To what part?"

"To Eisenach, or, if not, then to any point on the frontiers!"

"And your business, madame?"

"To restore my friends to their families, and rest, after the horrors to which you have subjected us, Count."

Tilly made no sign of displeasure. The air of amused courtesy still sat in his eyes, in his manner.

"How long have you been in Magdeburg?" he asked.

"Ten days, reckoned by time," she said with meaning.

"You must have changed into a cat, or an owl, to get into the city ten days ago!" he said, surveying her calmly. "Yes. It was possible to _you_. Now, are you ready to start at once?"

"Within an hour, Count!"

"Good! Captain Charteris here will escort you and your party as far as Erfurt. After that you must make your own plans!"

The Lady Ottilie von Thuringen did not look overjoyed at the news. She stole a glance at the captain, who on his side evinced no rejoicing, and then at the general. One might have supposed that she suspected some design on the part of the elder man.

"It is the utmost I can hope for, I suppose," she said grudgingly.

"Women should stay at home!" said the Count. "Especially girls of your age and condition," he added, waving his hand in token of dismissal.

The lady's lips curled as she bowed and withdrew. It was plain she was accustomed to having her own way, and not accustomed to being rebuked by generals, however eminent.

"My young friend," the Count went on to Nigel, "you will have a curious convoy as far as Erfurt. When you leave them at Erfurt, see that some trustworthy men are to accompany them. I seldom forget faces, and more rarely voices. Be careful. Look closely after her. Find out what you can! Don't make love to her! It is of no importance to you what I think.

I may be misled by a resemblance. It is a thousand chances that I am.

But for you, the less you know at the outset the better for you. It is a great protection sometimes not to know anything. Here is an order for a lieutenant and twenty troopers. Take any travelling carriage and four horses you can lay hands on. And stay, here are a hundred gold crowns for your expenses. On leaving Erfurt you will go as fast as possible to Vienna, after which, G.o.d be with you till we meet again!"

Nigel pocketed the crowns and the blessing with a good grace, thanked Count Tilly, and saluted. It was not often that an officer found such favour with the dry old general.

He was too busy during the next hour with his preparations to trouble his head with the speculations of Count Tilly as to the ident.i.ty of "dark Ottilie," as he called her to himself. In point of fact he was rather disappointed to be called upon to act as escort even as far as Erfurt. He would so much more willingly have ridden by the shortest road to Vienna, where his ambition was already, if we may speak of a man's desire outstripping his body by three days or so.

For his secret heart sang "Wallenstein," and not "Ottilie" dark or fair.

Yet Wallenstein, for the little that Nigel Charteris had seen of him, or knew of him through others, was not a man to be beloved of men. He had been twice married, which might prove that he was beloved of women, or not, according to the side the pleader took. Nigel could recall without difficulty the long narrow face with the large ears set close back against the head, the high deeply-furrowed brow, the thoughtful scrutinising eyes from which all laughter was absent, the plain linen collar turned flatly down over his cuira.s.s, the little tuft on his chin, the look of solid power about the face as a whole, a face dominated by resolution rather than pride.

What was it then that drew Nigel Charteris to him? It was perhaps the sense of the orderliness and discipline that prevailed about the famous general and emanated from him. It was perhaps the audacity that had led him to offer, in the dark days of the empire, to raise an army of twenty thousand men which should cost the Emperor nothing but his mandate, or the sound foresight that in fact provided thirty thousand for the war of '26. Nigel Charteris had marched with him as a mere subaltern to the crus.h.i.+ng defeat of Mansfeld at Dessau on the Elbe, had joined in the resistless pursuit through Silesia, through Mahren into Hungary, where Mansfeld was striving to unite with Bethlem Gabor of Siebenburgen, most turbulent of Electors. Nigel had seen the army of thirty thousand grow into seventy thousand, and the Emperor able to dictate in the affairs of Europe. There had been nothing to equal Wallenstein's army in the world.

And then the Habsburger, listening to jealousies, to his own fears perhaps, to the Jesuits certainly, to Maximilian of Bavaria, had bidden Wallenstein, laden as he was with honours and riches, lay down his baton. Wallenstein had made no demur, raised no standard of rebellion, had gone into retirement. The army mouldered away regiment by regiment.

Some had joined Tilly, like Nigel. More had become idlers in the great cities. It had been Wallenstein's army. Without him to command even the Emperor could not keep the snows from melting.

And now came this mysterious message that Wallenstein would be summoned again. His old officers would be flocking back. Nigel felt it in his bones. Loyalty to a great leader is one of the strongest engines in the world, least visible to the eye, most potent in effect.

A travelling carriage was found, the body hung by leathern straps, steadied by light chains, to the solid box and hinder seats, which were just above the axles. From somewhere had sprung two serving maids, the one a plump, wide-chested, short Saxon girl, evidently a retainer of Elspeth Reinheit; the other, an older, slightly-wizened woman of dark complexion, with a certain air about her of one accustomed to the chambers of great ladies, of one above the common herd of waiting women, and as plainly the attendant of Ottilie of Thuringen. The two had probably been hidden in some garret of the house in Magdeburg, and followed their mistresses, having no other goal to make for, to the outskirts of the camp. The Saxon girl was already on terms of familiarity with the troopers. The other held herself pursed up and aloof.

Nigel mounted the two on the hinder seat of the coach, their mistresses within, and presently gave the order to the lieutenant, who sent on two men in advance. Nigel and the lieutenant followed at the head of ten troopers. The other eight rode behind as a rearguard.

They gave a glance back at the smoking ruins of Magdeburg, out of which still rose some spires of churches which had successfully defied the conflagration, and were no longer the objective of Tilly's cannon, and rode along the level road towards Stra.s.sfurt, comparing their military experiences of the last three days.

The young pastor had been mounted on a horse of indifferent mettle, and rode as well as he was able behind the coach just in front of the rearguard. It was clear that he was not in a grateful frame of mind, notwithstanding his freedom. Nor had he any great reason to be, for was not the fall of this great city of Magdeburg, this stronghold of Protestantism, an open and visible sign of the hated Edict?

CHAPTER IV.

ON THE ROAD TO ERFURT.

Let your journeying be never so brief, it need not be tedious. The road was as flat from Magdeburg to Stra.s.sfurt, and that was twenty miles, as is the great plain that stretches from the Zuider Zee to Warsaw and on and on. There were undulations. It was not as flat as a backgammon board, nor had it a hill that would have made an old horse out of breath.

It was a suns.h.i.+ny morning towards the end of May, and the sun rises early over the German lands in May, and s.h.i.+nes hotly towards noon on the great plain. There was little or no shelter, but horses and men, even the pastor, though he came from the pine forests of Thuringen, thought little of the heat and the dust. To the men it was a holiday jaunt after the military turmoils of the past two months. To the pastor it was a return to his flock with a wallet full, not of indulgences like that of Johann Tetzel, the Dominican, of Luther's day, but of doings and sufferings. How he would be able to point his sermons with what he had seen and heard! How he would inflame the whole forest with it! The fires, the murders, the even blacker horrors of the sack of Magdeburg, should be caught up into the trumpet of his prophecy and belched forth in his own sonorous, if not altogether silvery voice, till every valley of Thuringen and every hamlet in the hills rang with the fame and the shame of the Edict. He conceived himself as a brand plucked from a literal burning. As he rode, innumerable texts rose to his remembrance; and pathways of thought, full of intricacies, opened out therefrom, till his head almost ached by reason of the fixity with which he gazed upon the hinder seat of the coach, while in his imagination he saw a ma.s.s of upturned faces on the hillside upturned to _him_. The beauty of the morning and the monotony or interest of the road were not for him.

Nor did they affect the Saxon maid-servant, who from her high perch behind the coach could see every now and then the steel caps of the troopers in front glancing in the sun, and, when she felt sure the Herr Pastor was not thinking about her, she twisted her stout body about and twisted her short neck till she could win a good satisfying look at the foremost couple of hors.e.m.e.n behind him. As for her companion, the high-born lady's tiring woman, the Saxon girl could make nothing of her.

She belonged to the east, she said. The Saxon girl had once been to Dresden. Further east was a mystery of all manner of strange peoples.

The woman spoke German, but she did not look German, and she did not chatter, an unhealthy sign to the mind of the Saxon girl. She had not a look for the troopers nor for the country-side. She was thinking of the little h.o.a.rd of florins and kreuzers she had left in the hands of a respectable goldsmith before she set out on this ridiculous journey with the highly-born lady, who, subject to the G.o.d of greed, owned her body and soul. The writings relative to the h.o.a.rd were in a little bag, which she wore in a secure place beneath her outward and visible garments.

Every now and again she pinched the spot to make sure they were there: a fact the Saxon girl noticed, but forbore to question for the reason.

For the lady and the farmer's daughter the road had different messages.

Both in their ways felt the loveliness of the morning and the welling up of Spring in the blood. To the lowlier-born a little farmstead with its yellowish clayed walls and great black beams, its thatch of many seasons' straw, spoke of men and women and babes and kine. Then she remembered, and called softly out of the window "Pastor Rad," and the pastor urged his horse beside her and said a few words, but soon dropped behind again. She could make nothing of him. He did not even ask after her wound.

And "dark Ottilie" of Thuringen? The beauty of the morning set her pulses thrilling, and chanted in her ears a song of freedom. She knew well that she was not free, that she was playing the rebel against all orthodoxy of courts and the rule of princes for their women-folk. She had but these few weeks essayed the game of freedom, which had already led her into strange accidents, but danger and Spring and pride made a heady mixture. She loved this flat open road because it was new to her, and led to strange little towns. "Did that stupid old General Tilly recognise her?" She asked herself the question, and answered that these old generals and statesmen were all full of craft and ruse, and it was impossible to say. Why, if he did, should he let her go? Then her thoughts evidently fell upon the Scot: and, since he showed no sign of coming to her of his own accord, she had the word pa.s.sed to him. Nigel wheeled his horse and waited till the coach was abreast. The coach was high and he needed not to bend. He saluted and said--

"Madame?"

"What is the name of this place we make for?"

"Stra.s.sfurt!"

"Is it much farther?"

"A league or so, madame!"

"And then?"

"We shall dine and proceed to Aschersleben. Then, if you are not too fatigued, we shall go on to Sangershausen." Then he looked across to Elspeth and a look of friendliness came into his eyes. "How is your wound to-day, Fraulein?"

"Better! Much better, captain!" Elspeth had another access of blushes.

"Of a truth," said "dark Ottilie" to herself, "there must have been some pa.s.sages between this gentleman and our pastor's niece;" and she herself began to observe him more closely, how well he sat his horse, what a figure he had, as gallant a soldier as she remembered to have seen.

"Captain!" She threw aside her haughtiness for a moment as she would have dropped a cloak when she had loosed the clasp. "Whence came you?"

"From Scotland, madame!"

"The country of Marie Stuart?"