The Red Axe

by S. R. Crockett

CHAPTER L

THE DUNGEON OF THE WOLFSBERG

And now I must see the Little Playmate. Judge ye whether or no my heart was torn in twain as I went up the long High Street of Thorn, back to the Wolfsberg, alone. For I had compelled Dessauer to return to Bishop Peter's, in order to avert popular suspicion, since our real names and errands were not yet known there.

And when I parted from him the old man was so worn out that I looked momently for him to drop on the rough causeway stones of the street.

Many pictures of my youth passed before me as I mounted towards the castle that night. I remembered the ride of the wild horsemen returning from the raid such long years agone, the old man who carried the babe, and the Red Axe himself, who now lay dead in the Tower—my father, Casimir's Justicer, clad now as then in crimson from head to heel.

Ere long I arrived at the Wolfsberg, and as I came near the Red Tower I saw that the gate was open. A little crowd of men with swords and partisans was issuing tumultuously from it. Then came six carrying a coffin. I stood aside to let them pass. And not till the last one brushed me did I ask what was their business abroad with a dead man at such a time of the night.

"'Tis one that had wrought much fear in his time," answered the soldier, for I had lighted on a sententious fellow—"one that made many swift ends, and now has come to one himself."

"You mean Gottfried Gottfried, the Duke's Justicer?" said I, speaking like one in a dream.

"Aye," he replied. "The Duke Otho is mightily afraid of the plague, and will not have a dead body over-night in his castle. Since they condemned the Saint Helena, God wot, the Duke is a fear-stricken man. He sleeps with half a dozen black riders at the back of his door, as though that made him any safer if a handful of minted gold were dealt out among the rascals. But when was a Prince ever wise?"

"My father's funeral," thought I. "Well, to-night it is, indeed, 'let the dead bury their dead'; Helene is yet alive!"

Surely I am not wanting in feeling, yet my heart was strangely chill and cold. Nevertheless, I turned and followed the procession a little way towards the walls. But even as I went, lo! the bell of the Wolfsberg slowly and brazenly clanged ten. I stopped. I had but two hours in which to visit the Little Playmate and tell her all.

"Good-bye, father," said I, standing with my hat off; "so you would wish me to do—you who met your God standing up—you who did an ill business greatly, because it was yours and you were born to it. Teach me, my father, to be worthy of you in this strait, to the like of which surely never was man brought before!"

The men-at-arms clattered roughly down the street, shifting their burden as if it had been so much kindling-wood, and quarrelling as to their turns. I heard their jests coming clear up the narrow street from far away.

I stood still as they approached a corner which they must turn.

I waved my hand to the coffin.

"Fare you well, true father; to-night and to-morrow may God help me also, like you, to meet my fate standing up!"

And the curve of the long street hid the ribald procession. My father was gone. I had made choice. The dead was burying his dead.

I went on towards the prison of the Wolfsberg; so it was nominated by a sort of grim superiority in that place which was all a prison—the castle which had lorded it so long over the red clustered roofs and stepped gables of Thorn, solely because it meant prisonment and death to the rebel or the refuser of the Duke's exactions.

Often had I seen the straggling procession of prisoners rise, head following head, up from that weary staircase, my father standing by, as they came up from the cells, counting his victims silently, like a shepherd who tells his flock as they pass through a gap in the sheepfold.

For me, alas! there was but one in that dread fold to-night. And she my one ewe lamb who ought to have lain in my bosom.

I clamored long at the gate ere I could make the drowsy jailer hear. As the minutes slipped away I grew more and more wild with fear and anger. At midnight I must face the Duke, and it was after ten—how long I knew not, but I feared every moment that I might hear the brazen clang as the hammer struck eleven.

For time seemed to make no impression on me at all that night.

At last the man came, shuffling, grumbling, and cursing, from his truckle-bed.

"What twice-condemned drunken roysterer may you be, that hath mistaken the prison of Duke Otho for a trull-house?

"An order from the Duke—to see a prisoner! Come to-morrow then, and, meanwhile, depart to Gehenna. Must a man be forever at the beck and call of every sleepless sot? 'Urgent'—is the Duke's mandate. Shove it through the lattice then, that a lantern may flash upon it."

I pushed under the door a broad piece of gold, which proved more to the purpose than much speech.

The door was opened and I showed my pass. That and the gold together worked wonders.

The jailer rattled his keys, donned a hood and woollen wrapper which he took down from a nail, and went coughing before me down the chill, draughty passages. I could hear the prisoners leaping from their couches within as the light of his cresset filtered beneath their doors. What hopes and fears stirred them! A summons, it might be, for some one in that dread warren to come up for a last look at the stars, a walk to the heading-place through the soft, velvet-dark night—then the block, the lightning flash of bright steel, a drench of something sweet and strong like wine upon the lips, and—silence, rest, oblivion.

But we passed the prison doors one by one, and the jailer of the
Wolfsberg went coughing and rasping by to another part of the prison.

"'Tis an ill place for chills," he grumbled. "I have never been free of them since first I came to this place, no—nor my wife neither. She has been dead these ten years, praises to the pyx! Ah, would you?" (The torch threatened to go out, so he held it downward in his hand till the pitch melted and caught again, and meanwhile we stood blinded in the smoke and glare which the strong draught forced in our faces.)

At last came the door, a low, iron-spiked grating, like any other of the hundred we had passed.

"Key-metal is not often weared on this cell," the man chuckled. "Those stay not long above ground that bide here."

The door swung back on its creaking hinges. I slipped the fellow another gold piece.

"I must come in with you," he said; "you might do the wench an ill turn which would cheat the Duke of his show and me of my head to-morrow."

I slipped him another piece of gold, and then three together.

"Risk it, man," I said. "Have I not the Duke's own pass? I will do her no harm."

"Well," he said, "pray remember I am a man with five poor motherless children. My wife died of falling down a flight of steps ten years agone—praise the Lord for His mercies. For He is ever mindful of us, the sinful children of men."

The sound of his voice died away as the door closed. I turned, and was alone with the Beloved. The jailer had stuck the cresset in its niche behind the door, and its glow filled the little cell.

At first I could not see the Little Playmate—only a rough pallet bed and something white at the head of it. But as the cresset burned up more clearly, and my eyes became accustomed to the bleared and streaky light, I saw Helene, my love, kneeling at her bed's head.

I stood still and waited. Was she asleep? Was she—was she dead? I almost hoped that she might be. Then the Duke's vengeance would be balked indeed.

"Helene!" I said, softly, as one speaks to the dying—"Helene, dear, dear Helene!"

Slowly she looked up. Her face dawned on me as one day the face of the blessed angel will shine when he calls me out of purgatory.

"My love—my love!" she said, sweetly, like the first note of a hymn when the choir breathes the sweet music rather than sings it.

Ah, Lord of Innocence, that pure loving face, the purple deepness in the eyes, the flush on the cheek as on that of a little child asleep, the soft curled hair which crisped in the hollow of the neck—the throat itself—Eternal God, that I should be alive to think of the horror!

But time was passing swiftly. The minutes were slipping by like men running for their lives.

I raised Helene from her knees, and she nestled her head on my shoulder.

"You have come to me! I knew you would come. I saw you on the day—the day when they condemned me to die."

I broke into an angry, desperate, protesting cry, so that I heard my own voice ring strangely through that dumb, horrible place. And it was I who sobbed in her arms with my head on her shoulder.

"Hush, dear love," she said, clasping her arms caressingly about my head; "do not fear for me. God will keep your little one. God has told me that He will bring me bravely through. Hush thee, then; do not so, Hugo, great playmate! This I cannot bear. Help me to be good. It will not be long nor painful. Do not weep for your little girl! I think, somehow, it is for our love that I suffer, and that will make it sweet!"

But still I sobbed like a child. For how—how could I tell her?

Presently the power returned slowly to me, seeing her smiling so bravely up at me, and rising on tiptoe to kiss my wet face.

Then I told her all—in what words I hardly remember now.

"Love of mine," I said, "I have but an hour or less to speak with you—and ah! such terrible things, such inconceivable things, to say; a horror to reveal such as never lover had to tell his love before."

She drew one of my hands down and softly patted her breast with it.

"Fear not," she said; "tell it Helene. If it be true that love conquers all, your little lass can bear it!"

"I came," said I, "with purpose to see you, and by treachery (it skills not to ask whose) I was taken at my dead father's bedside."

"Our father dead?" she cried, going a step away to look at me, but coming back again immediately; "then there are but you and me in the world, Hugo!"

"Aye," said I, "but how can I tell you the rest? My father died like a man, and then they took me, still holding the dead in my arms. I was confronted with a fiend of hell in the likeness of Duke Otho."

As I mentioned the Duke's name I could feel her shudder on my neck.

"And—But I cannot tell you what he has bidden me do, under penalties too fearful to conceive or speak of."

She put her hands up, and gently, timidly, lovingly stroked my cheek.

"Dear love, tell me! Tell the Little Playmate!" she said, as simply and sweetly as if she had been coaxing me to whisper to her some lightest childish secret of our plays together in the old Red Tower.

I was silent for a space, and then, spurred by the thought of the swiftly passing time, the words were wrenched out of me.

"He says that I, even I, Hugo Gottfried, my father's son, being now hereditary Red Axe of the Wolfmark, must strike off the head of the one I love. And if I will not, then to the vilest of devils for vilest ends he will deliver her. Ah, God, and he would do it too! I saw the very flame of hell's fire in his eyes."

Then I that write saw a strange appearance on the face that looked up in mine. As on a dark April day, with a lowering sky, you have seen the wind suddenly stir high in the heavens, and the sun look through on the dripping green of the young trees and the gay bourgeoning of the flowers, so, looking on my love's face as she took in my words, there awakened a kind of springtime joy. Nay, wherefore need I say a kind of joy only. It was more. It was great, overleaping, sudden-springing gladness. Her eyes swam in lustrous beauty. She smiled up at me as I had never seen her smile before.

"Oh, I am glad, Hugo—so glad! I love you, Hugo! It will be hard for you, my love. And yet you will be brave and help me. I had far rather die at your hand than live to be the bride of the greatest man in all the world. Do that which will save me from, shame; do it gladly, Hugo. I fear it. I saw it in the eyes of that man Otho von Reuss. But only to die will be easy, with you near by. For I love you, Hugo. And I could just say a prayer, and then—well, and then—Do not cry, Hugo—why, then you would put me to sleep, even as of old you did in the Red Tower!

"Nay, nay, dear love! You must not do so. This is not like my Hugo. See, I do not cry. Do you remember when you took me up and laid me on your bed, and our father came and looked? You said I was your little wife. So I was, even though I denied it, and now I can trust you, my husband. I have never been aught else but your little wife, you see—not in my heart, not in my heart of hearts!

"I have been proud with you, Hugo—spoken unkind things. For love, you know, is like that. It hurts that which it would die for. But now you will know, once for all, that I love you. For death tests all. And you will help me. You will not cry then, Hugo—not then, when we walk, you and I, by the shores of the great sea. You will only send me a little voyage by myself, as you used to make me go to the well in the court-yard, to teach me not to be frightened!

"And then you will be with me when I go. You will watch me; soon, soon you will come after me. Yes, I am glad, Hugo—so glad. For—bend down your ear, Hugo—I will confess. Your little girl is such a coward. She is afraid of the dark. But it will not be dark—and it will not be long, and it will be sure. If my love stand by, I shall not fear. And, after all, it is but a little thing to do for my love, when I love him so."

What I said, or what I did, I know not. But when I came a little to myself, I found my head on my knees, and Helene soothing and petting me, as if I had been a child that had fallen down and hurt itself.

"I would have been a good wife to you, Hugo; I had thought it all out. At first I would have been such an ignorant little house-keeper, and you would have needed—oh, such great patience with me! But so willing, so ready, Hugo! And how I should have listened for your foot! Do you know, I used to know it as it came across the court-yard at Plassenburg. But I could not run and meet you then. I could only slip behind the window-lattice and throw you a kiss. But when I was indeed your wife, how I should have flown to meet you!"

I think I cried out here for very agony.

"Hush, Hugo!" she said. "Hush, lad, and listen. There are stairs up aloft—I saw them in a dream. I saw the angels and the redeemed ascending and descending as I prayed, even when you came in to call me back. I shall ask God to let me wait at the stair-head a little while for you—till it should be time for you to come, my dear, my dear. You would not be very long, and I could wait. I would listen for your feet upon the stair, dear love. And when at last you came, I should know your footfall; yes, I should know it ever so far away. You would not be thinking of me just then. And when you came to the top of the golden stairs, there—there, all so suddenly, would be your little lass, with her arms ready to welcome you!"

The door of the cell creaked open.

The jailer appeared. "It is time!" he said, curtly, and stood waiting. We stood up, and I looked in her eyes. She was smiling, dry-eyed, but I—the water was running down my face.

"You will be brave, Hugo, for my sake. Next to life with you—to die by your dear hand, knowing that you love me, is the best gift they could have given me. They thought to hurt, but instead they have made me so happy. Till we meet again, dear love—till we meet soon again!"

And she accompanied me to the door, and kissed me as I went out, standing smilingly on tiptoe to do it, even as of old she was wont to do in the Red Tower.

And the last thing I saw of her, as the door closed upon the darkness of the cell, was my love standing smiling up at me, her eyes filled with the splendors of the love that casteth out fear.