The Childhood of King Erik Menved Part 8

"If you were ignorant of the law, and by a solemn oath could pledge yourself to that effect, the penalty is only a mark-penny to the governor, and one to the town. The same penalty is inflicted on the housekeeper who does not inform his guest of the law."

"But, now that I know this stupid ordinance, and yet will not allow myself to be disarmed, what great misfortune follows?"

"Without being displeased, allow me to answer you in the words of the law itself, Count Gerhard. 'If the guest is reminded, and wears his weapon nevertheless,' it says, 'then, with the same spear, sword, or knife, shall he be run through.'"

"Oh, what a mischance! Not through the heart or gizzard?"

"Through the hand, n.o.ble count. There hangs the table of the law: you can read it yourself."

"The devil take such stupidities! There lies my sword. You do the same, gentlemen." With these words Count Gerhard cast his sword into a corner. His knights followed his example.

Drost Peter took his own sword, and placed it by the side of the others. "I must submit to the same law," he said, with a courteous bow; "and I hope, my honoured guests, that you will not think ill of me, on account of its strictness here. Be seated, gentlemen, and let us be merry."

This invitation to merriment was supported by the jester, who had already seated himself, and now arose with a look of the most grave importance. He approached Drost Peter with solemn step, and, with a deep bow, handed him his wooden sword. "Take care of that, honoured sir host," he said: "it is the famous sword Tyrfing, which cannot be unsheathed without shedding blood. Look to it, that it does no mischief in this excellent city."

Drost Peter handed him his sword back again, as a mark of honour, at which they all laughed heartily, and took their places in the heavy, high-backed oaken chairs. The articles of silver, and the costly table appointments, testified that they were in the house of a person of opulence. Of male attendants, and supple pages, there was no lack; and yet it appeared extraordinary, that the polished floor was not swept, and that the dust lay thick on the backs of the chairs, and upon the window-sills.

"Where is old Dorothy?" asked Drost Peter of the squire, whilst Count Gerhard and the strangers were engaged with the viands. "She was wont to keep the house as bright as a s.h.i.+eld."

"Alas, that is true, sir," answered Skirmen; "but poor Dorothy Brushbroom has gone quite crazy. She took a little bit of lead from a window of Our Lady's Kirk, to cure a girl who was bewitched. She has been thrown into the thieves' hole, and, it is said, will be sentenced to-morrow."

"G.o.d pity her!" exclaimed Drost Peter, warmly, rising from the table.

"The unfortunate creature!"

"What is the matter, my worthy host?" inquired Count Gerhard. "Has anything disastrous happened in the house? With wife and child I know you are not embarra.s.sed. What household sorrow, then, can thus trouble a bachelor?"

"A greater affliction than any one trows," answered Drost Peter. "I have an old trusty nurse: she has loved and been with me since I was quite a child. She is a true affectionate soul, who would readily die for me. She is the best wife in the world, and has kept house for me with the greatest order and trustworthiness; but her head is filled with stories of goblins, witches, and dwarfs; and, as soon as any one is taken ill, she believes, in the simplicity of her heart, that they have seen the elfin-king, or have been bewitched by Nixes, and then will she have a remedy of holy church lead, or such-like singular means. Now she is taken and imprisoned for a bit of metal that cannot be worth a doit. The poor creature!"

Some of the gentlemen smiled, and the jester made one of his droll faces.

"Now, what great misfortune is there in this?" inquired Count Gerhard.

"The bit of lead you can outweigh with a silver penny. The old soul will be released in a day or two, and, in the meantime, another may sweep your floor."

"It is death to her, Count Gerhard, even if it had not happened in the church. You are not aware of the laws of Nyborg. Every man who is guilty of theft is hanged; but a woman is buried alive."

"And are you all mad, then?" demanded Count Gerhard. "Shall a woman be thus inhumanly punished? Is the crime more atrocious in her than in a man? You jest, sir drost."

"If you do not believe me, n.o.ble sir, read for yourself. There are the bye-laws affixed to the door-post. Read but the twenty-ninth article, and you will see that, unfortunately, I am not jesting."

"Read it, Longlegs!" cried out the count to his jester: "I have some difficulty in rising; and, truly, such confounded laws are not worth rising for."

"The twenty-ninth article," commenced the jester, taking up a candle, which threw a light upon the large table of laws on the door-post.

"Here I have it. Give ear, my masters: it is the golden word of justice, and a sufficient reason is alleged." He then began to read, in a grave judicial manner: "'_What woman soever shall be guilty of theft, and deserves to be hanged, with the stolen goods by her side, shall, for her womanly honour's sake, be buried alive_.' Now, in truth, this is an honour that one takes straightways with him to eternity. It is no transient honour, my masters; and, therefore, it has been reserved for the fair and more fortunate s.e.x."

"Are you, then, insane?" exclaimed the count. "What honour is there in being buried alive?"

"Where is your wisdom, my wellborn sir?" replied the jester: "for a woman, it is manifestly a far more honourable and becoming way of dying, than if she were to be hanged, like a man--like a male thief, on a gallows. Think of the scandal it would occasion her father confessor."

"It is, nevertheless, a madness," exclaimed the count. "Is it out of mere strait-laced modesty that they are so cruel here? May the foul fiend take all clerks and hang-the-heads who give out such laws and regulations! Are you alike scrupulous, Drost Peter? And will you suffer your good old nurse to be buried alive, merely that your wise king's law may not be transgressed?"

"She shall--she must be saved!" exclaimed the young drost, who had hitherto stood silent and thoughtful, with his hand on the doc.u.ment in his breast. "Excuse me, gentlemen: I must to the king." With these words, he left the room.

The seriousness which this circ.u.mstance had for a moment called forth was soon dispelled by the efforts of the jester, who, with comic gravity, began a legal discourse on the stern Ribe-Ret, wherein he dwelt more particularly on a certain notorious and scandalous punishment, setting it forth circ.u.mstantially, and not exactly in the most becoming manner. He concluded with the well-known Jutlandic joke: "Thank G.o.d you are out of the way of the Ribe-Ret, my child; as the old woman said when she saw her son hanging on the gibbet."

Count Gerhard laughed till his eyes ran over, and screamed with pain from the wound in his breast, which his violent laughter had caused to open. He became suddenly pale, and fell back on his chair, without consciousness.

The greatest grief and trouble took the place of the previous mirthfulness. Message after message was dispatched for the surgeon and physician, and all present were seriously alarmed for the count's life.

He was carried to bed, and Claus Skirmen undertook, in his master's absence, to tighten the bandages, and stanch the bleeding with wine.

Half an hour pa.s.sed away: the count still lay insensible, and no physician had arrived. The knights were impatient, and the lanky jester behaved like one out of his wits. He tore his hair, and accused himself of having killed his master with his accursed jokes. The door at length opened, and Drost Peter hurried in. He had been already advised of the critical condition of his guest, and had hastened to his aid. He found the wound properly bound up by his expert squire and pupil. By means of a burnt feather, he at length succeeded in restoring the count to a state of consciousness; and, as soon as he had opened his eyes, the drost's mind was at ease, and he declared him out of danger. For the greater satisfaction of the stranger knights, and of his afflicted, inconsolable jester, Drost Peter sent his squire to the palace, to bring the king's surgeon. In the meanwhile, he desired that they should all leave the apartment, and remained alone with the sick man.

As soon as Count Gerhard had completely recovered his senses, and saw Drost Peter by his bed, he held forth his hand, and nodded. "It was the fault of your cursed Ribe-Ret," he said; "but I must not think more about it, or I shall laugh myself ill again."

"This is not right: you talk too much," said the knightly leech, examining his pulse with satisfaction.

"Ay, but it is right. Although you did not exactly dub me a knight today, you certainly did not dub me a speechless animal. But how got you on with the king and the carlin? Is she to be hanged, or buried alive for her womanly honour's sake?" He was on the point of renewing his laughter, but repressed his desire on feeling the smart of his wound.

"G.o.d be praised, she is saved this time!" said Drost Peter; "but with some difficulty: the king was not to be spoken with."

"Then you took her out of prison yourself? That was settling the matter in the right way."

"Nay, Count Gerhard. Rather than I should have dealt so contumaciously with the laws, the unfortunate woman had been left to her fate."

"What the deuce have you done, then?"

"I went to the queen--"

"Aha! I can understand. Happy knight! But why did you not allow me to crave a boon for the poor old creature? I have still a heart in my body, I know; and I should not have risen from the queen's feet, nor taken her hand from my burning lips, till the carlin had been saved, even had it been till gray in the morning."

"You talk too much for your wound, n.o.ble count; and you think on matters that do not tend to calm your blood. I shall now send my liberated nurse to watch over you; and, if you must still talk enthusiastically of beauty, talk so, in G.o.d's name, only before her: and sleep well."

So saying, Drost Peter left his merry, sick guest, and immediately afterwards a wrinkled old woman hobbled into the apartment, and sat down by the count's pillow; but he closed his eyes in vexation, and would not notice her.

It was midnight, and Drost Peter walked restlessly up and down his chamber. He had rea.s.sured his knightly guests, and left them to repose.

But the royal surgeon had not arrived, and the jester would not believe that his master was out of danger. In a closet, by the side of the count's bed-chamber, sat the grave joker, listening at the door, to be at hand at the slightest disturbance he might hear. Drost Peter could not think of going to sleep. He was not, indeed, alarmed for his wounded guest, but still wished to be ready, at any moment, to go to his aid, should he be called by the nurse. His thoughts, besides, were in a tumult, that forbade him to think of repose. His adventure with Henner Friser and little Aase, and his strong suspicion of the king's partic.i.p.ation in the affair, disquieted him. The crafty Chamberlain Rane's escape, and the revenge he might, with reason, apprehend from this royal favourite, ran likewise in his thoughts. Deep suspicions of a conspiracy, of which he had in vain endeavoured to apprise the king, appeared to him now, in the night's loneliness, of greater importance, the more he dwelt upon it. His strife with Count Gerhard, and its occasion, also caused him the greatest uneasiness. The report, so injurious to his own and the queen's honour, which he had first learnt upon this occasion, troubled him more particularly; and he examined with scrupulous care the whole of the last year of his life, from the day he first held conversation with Queen Agnes, at Helsingborg tournament. He could not deny that her beauty and n.o.ble feminine graces, as well as her bold and resolute character, exercised a wonderful power over him. He owed, undeniably, to the queen's favour, his rapid rise from a simple knight to be drost of the kingdom; and, though it vexed him much, that he should, in consequence, be blamed as a fortunate adventurer, who had been raised to eminence through a woman's favour, these usual whisperings of envy were not of a nature to drown the voice of bold self-consciousness in his bosom. He was himself fully a.s.sured that he was perfectly competent for the high situation he filled, and that the royal house had not a more efficient servant in these dangerous times. Besides, his important vocation as tutor to the young Prince Erik, and as his master in the use of arms, gave to his life an activity, and a degree of importance both to himself and to the kingdom, that he could not regard without a degree of pride; and he entertained a confident expectation that, indirectly, the whole fate of a coming generation, and of Denmark, was in his hands. He stood on a lofty but dangerous eminence, near a tottering throne, and must take heed that he did not become giddy and fall. It was only necessary for some malicious foe to whisper in the king's ear what rumour said concerning the drost and Queen Agnes, to see him carried, within four and twenty hours, a prisoner for life, to the dungeons of Sjoberg, or, indeed, without law or trial, to the rack and wheel.

While these and similar distracting thoughts occupied his mind, a loud knocking was heard at the entrance of the apartment. He started involuntarily, but recovered himself, and opened the door. Astonished, he beheld his young squire, Claus Skirmen, standing, pale and breathless, on the threshold, with a parchment roll and two swords in his hands.

"What is this? What want you so late with me?" demanded the drost, hastily. "You are pale: has anything happened amiss? Say, youth, what is it?"

"Read, sir--read, and take your sword!" replied the squire, handing him the parchment and one of the swords.

He hastily seized both, and, going to the light, he turned pale on recognising the Gothic characters, and the king's well-known seal and signature.

"Deposed!" he said; "and not only so--condemned to secret imprisonment, without law or justice; and this to be carried into execution before the Dane-court commences! How came this unfortunate doc.u.ment into your hands, Skirmen? It is a royal private warrant. Carry it back, or it may cost thy life."

"It concerns your life still more, sir. When you are safe in prison, you are to be secretly murdered. I know it all: I have heard it with my own ears."