The Red Axe

by S. R. Crockett

CHAPTER XLI

THE GARRET OF THE RED TOWER

I felt my temples, my ears, my neck tingling with cold. I seemed to have fallen into a sea of ice. I think I would have fallen and fainted but that at that moment my master sat down beside the Bishop, and I was left free to retire into a darksome corner, where I staggered against a beam, slimy with black sweat, and hung over it with my hand clasping my brow, trying to think what had happened.

I do not know how long I remained in this position, nor yet when I came to myself. All was a dream to me, a nightmare of horrid whirlings and infinite oppressions. The faces of the folk that watched, the garmentry of the Bishop and his priests, the red robes of the young Duke and his assessors, spun round me in a hideous phantasmagoria.

At last I was conscious that a trumpet had blown. Whereupon all rose up. The secretaries stacked their papers unconcernedly with the feathers of their pens in their mouths. And then in the solemn silence which ensued the Duke and his judges filed out of the door, while the power of the Church, represented by Bishop Peter and his priests, went forth by another. Before I could realize the situation, Helene had vanished, as it seemed, down a trap-door in the floor.

My master accompanied Bishop Peter. As for me, I hardly knew what I did. I did not even stand up, till our conductor, he who had gone forward to announce us at the first, ran across to me, and, plucking me by the arm from the beam on which I leaned, whispered, hurriedly: "Art dead or drunk, man, that thou riskest thine ears and thy neck? Stand up while the Judges and the new Duke go by!"

So, dazed and numb, I hent me up, and lo! coming arm in arm towards me were Otho von Reuss and his newly appointed Chief Justice and assessor—who but mine old friend Michael Texel! The Duke bent a searching look on me as I bowed low before him, but he saw only the tan of my skin and the close bristle of my hair. And so all passed on.

"Ho, blackamoor, thy master waits thee! Run, if thou wouldst avoid the whipping-post!" cried another of the rout of servitors, with a small sniggering laugh.

So, putting out a hand to stay myself, I staggered weakly after my master. I found him at the door, in talk with the confessor of the Bishop.

"And so," he was saying, "this girl was reared in the executioner's house. And she went away to a far country in order to learn the secrets of necromancy, it is not known where. I would see this Duke's Justicer. Does he dwell near by? What! In that very tower? It is of good omen. Let us go in thither."

But the confessor excused himself, being in no wise desirous to visit the
Red Axe, even in his time of sickness.

"I have business of the soul with Bishop Peter. I will speak with thee again at refection," he said, twitching his head up at the Red Tower with suspicious glances, as if he feared unseen ears might be listening, and that some of its fearful magic might even descend upon a man so notably holy as a Bishop's confessor.

Presently Dessauer and I were across the court-yard at the well-known door. I knocked, and listened, whereupon ensued silence. Again and yet again I made the quaint death's-head knocker thunder, and then, when the echoes ceased, there was once more a great silence in the tower.

I heard the blood-hounds of Duke Casimir howl. The indigo shadow of the pinnacled Hall of Justice stretched across and touched the Red Tower with an ominous finger.

"Let us go in," said I. And, pushing the unresisting door, I began to climb the stone stairs. Each smoothed hollow and chipped edge was familiar to me as my name. Indeed, much more so, for I was now passing under a false one. So I climbed, in a dazed way, up and up. There on my left was the sitting-room. It had been searched high and low, escritoires rudely tossed down, aumries rifled, household stuff, grain, white linen, empty bottles, all cast about and huddled together even as the searchers had left them.

Then above was the little room where Helene used to sleep. Here the wrack was indescribable—every hidingplace rifled, her pretty worked bedquilt lying across the doorway trampled and soiled, her dainty white clothing, some she had worn at Plassenburg, and even the tiny dresses of her childhood, all torn and confused together. And in the midst, what affected me more than everything else, a tiny puppet of wood my father had hewn her with his knife, and which she had dressed as a queen with red ribbons and crown of tinsel—ah, so long ago—and in such happy days.

"Father!" I called, loudly. "Father!"

But in this I forgot myself. There might have been enemies lurking anywhere in the house of pain and disaster.

My own room came next, and the way out upon the roof; but we tried not these. There remained only the garret of my father. I climbed up, with Dessauer behind me, and pushed the door open.

Then I stood in the entering-in, looking for the first time for years on the face of my father.

He lay on his conch, his head bound about with a napkin. The dark wisp of hair which rose like a cock's comb, sticking through the stained cloth which swathed his brow, was no longer blue-black, but of an iron-gray, splashed and brindled with pure white. His eyes were open, and shone, cavernous and solemn, above his fallen-in cheeks. It was like looking into the secrets of another world. That which he had so often caused other eyes to see, the Red Axe of Thorn was now to see for himself. The hand which lay—mere skin, muscle, and bone—on the counterpane had guided many to the door of the mysteries. Now at its own entrance it was to push the arras aside, for the Death-Justicer of the Mark was to go before the Judge of all the earth.

My father lay gazing at me with deep, mournful eyes. So sad they seemed that it was as if nothing in heaven or earth, neither joy nor sorrow, life nor death, could have power to change their expression of immeasurable sadness.

I entered, and my companion followed.

"You are alone? There is none with you here?" I said to my father, going to the bedside.

He started at the voice, and looked up even eagerly. But his eyes dulled and deadened again as he fell back.

"I did but dream!" he muttered, sadly.

"You have no one with you here, Gottfried Gottfried?" said I again, for in a matter of life and death it was as well to make sure even at risk of disturbing a dying man.

He set his hand to his brow as if trying to think.

"Who should be with me—except all these?" he answered, very solemnly. And swept his hand about the room as if he saw strange shapes standing in rows round the walls. "I wish," he went on, almost querulously, "whoever you may be, you would tell these people to keep their hands down. They point at me, and thrust their dripping heads forward, holding them like lanterns in their palms."

He turned away to the back of the bed, and then, as if he saw something there worse than all the rest, faced about again quickly, saying, with some pathetic intonation of his lost childhood, "There is no need for them to point so at me, is there? I did but my duty."

"Father!" said I, gently touching his cheek with my hand as I used to do.

"Ah, what is that?" he said, quickly. "Did some one call me father? Let me go! I tell you, sirs, let me go! She needs me. They are torturing her. I must go to her!"

"Father," I said again, putting him gently back, "it is I—your own son
Hugo—come back to speak with you, to help if it may be—to die for the
Little Playmate if need be."

"Hugo—Hugo!" he said. "Yes, yes—of course, I know—my little lad, my pretty boy!"

He pushed me back to look at me, eagerly, wistfully—and then thrust me sharply away.

"Bah!" he said; "you lie! What need to lie to a dying man? My Hugo had yellow hair and a skin like lilies. Yours is dark—"

"Father," said I, "I am here disguised. Help is coming, sure and strong, if we can only wait a little and delay the trial. But tell me all. Speak to me freely, if you love your daughter Helene—your daughter and my love."

He sat up now, and motioned me to come nearer. There was a dark, fierce, unworldly light in his eyes. I set a pillow to his back, and went and kneeled by the bed as I used to do at good-night time when I said my Paternoster.

Then for the first time he knew me.

"Say your prayers, child!" he commanded, in his old voice.

So, though with the stress of wars and other things I had mostly forgotten, yet I said not only that, but the little Prayer of Childhood he had taught me. And then I kissed him as I used to do when I bade him good-night.

"Yes," he said, softly, "it is true, after all. You are mine own only son. Hugo—I am glad you have come so far to see your father before he dies."

I told him how I had come, and brought Dessauer forward, introducing him as one great in the kingdom where I was, and to whom I was much beholden. He shook him by the hand with grave, intent courtesy, and again looked at me.

"Now, father," said I, "we have no long time to bide with you, lest the new Duke come upon us. We must hie us back to our lodging with the Bishop Peter, lest we be missed."

My father smiled.

"Ye will live but sparely there!" said he, with a flicker of his ancient smile.

"Tell us how you came to this," said I, "and, if you can, why Helene, our little Helene, stands so terribly accused."

My father paused a long time before he began to answer.

"It is not easy for me to tell you all," he said. "I know and I have the words, but, somehow, when I try to fit the words to the thing, they run asunder and will not mix, like water and oil. But see, Hugo, here is an elixir of rare value. Drop a drop or two on my tongue if ye see me wander. It will bring me back for a time."