CHAPTER XLII

PRINCESS PLAYMATE

Then began my father to tell the story slowly, with many a pause and interruption, now searching for words, now racked with pain, all of which I need not imitate, and shall leave out. But the substance of his tale was to this effect:

"After you had left us, the Dukedom went from bad to worse—no peace, no rest, no money. Duke Casimir took less and less of my advice, but, on the contrary, began again his old horrors—plundering, killing, living by terror and in terror. He threatened Torgau. He attacked Plassenburg. He stirred up hornets' nests everywhere. At home he made himself the common mark for every assassin.

"Then suddenly came his nephew back, and almost immediately he grew great in favor with him. Uncle and nephew drank together. They paraded the terraces arm in arm. I was never more sent for save to do my duty. Otho von Reuss rode abroad at the head of the Black Horsemen.

"But, at the same time, to my great joy, arrived the Little Playmate back to me. She was safer with me, she said. So that, having her, I needed naught else. She came with good news of you, making the journey not alone, for two men of the Princess's retinue brought her to the city gates."

"The Princess!" I cried; "aye, I thought so. I judged that it was the
Princess who sent her back."

Dessauer motioned with his hand. He saw that it was dangerous to throw my father off the track. And, indeed, this was proven at once, for my unfortunate interruption set my father's mind to wandering, till finally I had to drop certain drops of the red liquid on his tongue. These, indeed, had a marvellous effect upon him. He sat up instantly, his eyes flashing the old light, and began to speak rapidly and to clear purport, even as he used to do in the old days when Duke Casimir would come striding across the yard at all hours of the night and day to consult his Justicer.

"What was I telling?" he went on. "Yes, I remember, of the home-coming of Helene under honorable escort. And she was beautiful—but all her race were beautiful, all the women of them, at any rate. But that is another matter.

"So things went well enough with us till, as she went across the yard one day to meet me at the door of the hall as I came out, who should see her but the Count Otho von Reuss. And she turned from him like a queen and took hold of my arm, clasping it strongly. Then he gazed fixedly at us both, and his look was the evil-doer's look. Oh, I know it. Who knows that look, if not I? And so we passed within. But my Helene was quivering and much afraid, nestling to me—aye, to me, old Gottfried Gottfried, like a frightened dove.

"After this she went not out into the court-yard or city any more, save with me by her side, and Otho von Reuss lingered about, watching like a wolf about the sheepfold. For, as I say, he was in high favor with Duke Casimir, and had already equal place with him on the bed of justice.

"Then there came a night, lightning peeping and blazing, alternate blue and ghastly white—God's face and the devil's time about staring in at the lattice. I lay alone in my chamber. But I was not asleep. As you know, I do not often sleep. But I lay awake and thought and thought. The lightning showed me faces I had not seen for thirty years, and forms I remembered, black against eternity. But all at once, in a certain after-clap of silence that followed the roaring thunder, I heard a voice call to me.

"'My father—my father" it cried.

"It was like a soul in danger calling on God.

"I rose and went, clad as I was in the red of mine office (for that day I had done the final grace more than once); even so, I ran down the stairs to the room of my little Helene.

"The lightning showed me my lamb crouched in the corner, her lips open, white, squared with horror, her arms extended, as though to push some monstrous thing away. A black shape, whose, I could not tell, I saw bending over her. Then came blackness of darkness again. And again my Helene's voice. Ah, God, I can hear it now, calling pitifully, like a woman hanging over hell and losing hold: 'Father—my father!'

"'I am here!' I cried, loudly, even as on the scaffold I cry the doom for which the malefactors die.

"And the room lit up with a flame, white as the face of God as He passed by on Mount Sinai, flash on continuous flash. And there before me, with a countenance like a demon's, stood Otho von Reuss."

I uttered a hoarse cry, but Dessauer again checked me. My father went on:

"Otho von Reuss it was—he saw me in my red apparel, and cried aloud with mighty fear. If God had given me mine axe in my hand—well, Duke or no Duke, he had cried no more. But even as he turned and fled from the room I seized him about the waist, and, opening the window with my other hand, I cast him forth. And as he went down backward, clutching at nothing, God looked again out of the skylights of heaven, and showed me the face of the devil, even as Michael saw it when he hurled him shrieking into the nether pit.

"Then I went back and took in my arms my one ewe lamb.

"Many days (so they brought me word) Otho lay at the point of death, and Duke Casimir came not near me nor yet sent for me. But by that very circumstance I knew Otho had not revealed how his accident had befallen. Yet he but bided his time. And as he grew well, Duke Casimir grew ill. He waxed more and more like an armored ghost, and one day he came here and sat on the bed as in old times.

"'I know my friends now,' he said, 'good Red Axe of mine, friend of many years. I have had mine eyes blinded, but this morning there has come a mighty clearness, and from this day forth you and I shall stand face to face and see eye to eye again, as in the days of old!'

"Then being athirst, he asked for something to drink. Which, when our sweet Helene had brought, he patted her cheek. 'A maid too good for a court—one among a thousand, a fair one !' he said; and passed away down the stairs, walking with his old steady tread.

"But even at the steps of the Hall of Justice he stumbled and fell. They carried him in, and there in the robing chamber he lay unconscious for a week, and then died without speech.

"When he was dead, and ere he had been embalmed, there arose a clamor, first among the followers of Otho von Reuss, and after that among those of the Wolfsberg who expected that they would be favored by the new Duke. It was first whispered, and then cried aloud, that the death of Duke Casimir had been compassed by witchcraft and potions.

"Cunningly and with subtlety was spread the report how my daughter and I had worked upon Duke Casimir. How he had gone to our house, drunken a draught, and then died ere he could come to his own chamber. But as for me, I went on my way and heeded them not. For just then the plague, which had stricken the Duke first, stalked athwart the city unchecked, and all through it this Helene of ours was as the angel of God, coming and going by night and day among the streets and lanes of the town. And the common folk almost worshipped her. And so do unto this day.

"Now perhaps I did not heed this babble as I ought to have done. But there came one night—how long ago I have forgotten—and with it a clamor in the court-yard. The Black Riders, the worst of them, fiends incarnate that Otho had of late gathered about him, thundered upon us without, and presently burst in the door.

"I met them with mine axe at the stair-head, and for the better part of an hour I kept them at a distance. And some died and some were dismembered. For at that business I am not a man to make mistakes. Then came Otho limping from his fall and shot me with a bolt from behind his men. And so over my body as I lay at the stair-head they took my love and left me here to die. And the new Duke will not kill me, for he desires that I shall see her agony ere my own life is taken. For that alone the fiend keeps me in life!

"And that," said my father, feebly, "is all."

But just as he seemed to ebb away a wild fear startled him.

"No," he cried, "there is yet something more. Hugo, Hugo, keep me here a little! Hold me that my mind may not wander away among the racking-wheels and the faces mopping and mowing. I have something yet to tell."

I held him up while Dessauer poured a drop or two of the potent liquid into his mouth. As before, it instantly revived him. The color came back to his cheeks.

"Quick, Hugo, lad!" he cried; "give me that black box which sits behind the block." I brought it, and from this he extracted a small key, which he gave me.

"Unlock the panel you see there in the wall," he said.

I looked, but could find none.

"The oaken knob!" he cried, sharply, as to a clumsy servitor.

I could only see a rough knob in the wood-work, a little worm-eaten, and in the centre one hole a little larger than the rest.

"Put in the key!" commanded my father, making as if he would come out of bed and hasten me himself.

I thrust in the key, indeed, but with no more faith than if I had been bidden to put it into a mouse-hole.

Nevertheless, it turned easy as thinking, and a little door swung open, cunningly fitted. Here were dresses, books, parchments huddled together.

"Bring all these to me," he said.

And I brought them carefully in my arms and laid them on the bed.

The eye of old Dessauer fell on something among them and was instantly fascinated. It was a woman's waist-belt of thick bars of gold laid three and three, with crests and letters all over it.

The Chancellor put his hand forward for it, and my father allowed him to take it, following him, however, with a questioning eye.

Then Dessauer put his hand into his bosom and drew out a chain of gold—the necklace of the woodman, in-deed—and laid the two side by side. He uttered a shrill cry as he did so.

"The belt of the lost Princess!" he cried; "the little Princess of
Plassenburg!"

And, laying them one above the other, each group of six bars read thus:

With delight on his face, like that of a mathematician when his calculations work out truly, Dessauer reached over his hand for the papers also, but my father stayed him.

"Who may you be that has a chain to match mine?" he asked, with his mighty hand on Dessauer's wrist.

"I am the State's Chancellor of Plassenburg, and it needed but this to show me our true Princess."

"Here, then," said my father, "is more and better."

And he handed him the papers.

"It meets! It meets!" cried Dessauer, enthusiastically, as he glanced them over. "It is complete. It would stand probation in the Dict of the Emperor."

"But yet all that will not prevent Helene Gottfried dying at the stake!" cried my father, sadly, and fell back unconscious on his bed.

* * * * *

We spent this heaviest of nights at the palace of Bishop Peter—Dessauer with the prelate—I, praise to the holy pyx, in the kitchen with the serving men and maids. Peter of the Pigs was there, but no more eager to fight. The lay brother who had gone with the letter, and the conductor who had run away from the dread door of the Hall of Justice, had returned, and had spread a favorable report of our courage.

Certainly the house of Peter the Bishop might be a poor one and scantily provendered, but there was little sign of it that night. For if the master went fasting and his guests lived on pulse (as they said in Thorn), certainly not so Bishop Peter's servants.

For there were pasties of larks, with sauce of butter and herbs, most excellent and toothsome. There were rabbits from the sand-hills, and pigeons from the towers of the minster. The clear chill Rhenish vied with the more generous wine of Burgundy and the red juice of Assmanhauser. For me, as was natural, I ate little. I spoke not at all. But I looked so dangerous with my swarthy face and desperate eye, I dare say, also I was so well armed, that the roysterers left me severely alone.

But I drank—Lord, what did I not drink that night! I poured down my gullet all and sundry that was given me. And to render these Bishop's thralls their dues, there was no lack and no inhospitality. But the strange thing of it was that, though I am a man more than ordinarily temperate, that night I poured the Rhenish into me like water down a cistern-pipe and felt it not. God forgive me, I wanted to make me drunken and forgetful, and lo! the dog's swill would not bite.

So I cursed their drink, and asked if they had no Lyons Water-of-Life, stark and mordant, or social Hollands, or indeed anything that was not mere compound of whey and dirty water. Whereat they wondered, and held me thereafter in great respect as a good companion and approven worthy drinker.

Then they brought me of the strong spirit of Dantzig, with curious little flakes of gold dancing in it. It was raw and strong, and at first I had good hopes of it. But I drank the Dautzig like spring-water, all there was of it, and though it had a taste singularly displeasing to me, it took no more effect than so much warm barley-brew for the palates of babes. Upon this I had great glory. For the card-players and the dicers actually left their games and gazed open-jawed to see me drink. And I sat there and expounded the Levitical law and the wheels of the Prophet Ezekiel, the law of succession to the empire, and also the apostolic succession—all with surprising clearness and cogency of reasoning. So that before I had finished they required of me whether it was I or my master who was sent for to dispute before His Sovereign mightiness the Emperor.

Then I told them that the things I knew (that is, which the Hollands had put into my head) were but the commonest chamber-sweepings of my master's learning, which I had picked up as I rode at his elbow. And this bred a mighty wondering what manner of man he might be who was so wise. And I think, if I had gone on, Dessauer and I might both have found ourselves in the Bishop's prison, on suspicion of being the devil and one of his ministrants.

But suddenly, as with a kind of recoil or back stroke, all that I had drunken must have come upon me. The clearness of vision went from me like a candle that is blown out. I know not what happened after, save that I found myself upon my truckle-bed, with my leathern money-pouch clasped in my hand with surprising tightness, as if I had been mortally afraid that some one would mistake my poor satchel for his own pocket.

So in time the morrow came, and by all rules I ought to have had a racking headache. For I saw many of those that had been with me the night before pale of countenance and eating handfuls of baker's salt. So I judged that their anxiety and the turmoil of their hearts had not burned their liquor up, as had been the case with me.

Now it is small wonder that all my soul cried out for oblivion till I should be able to do something for the Beloved—break her prison, hasten the troops from Plassenburg, or in some way save my love.

Hardly had I looked out of the main door that morning, desiring no more than to pass away the time till the trial should begin again, before I saw the Lubber Fiend, smirking and becking across the way. He had squatted himself down on the side of the street opposite, looking over at the Bishop's palace.

He pointed at me with his finger.

"Your complexion runs down," he said. "I know you. But go to the spring there by the stable, wash your face, and I shall know you better."

This was fair perdition and nothing less. For one may stay the tongue of a scoundrel with money, or the expectation of it, until opportunity arrive to stop it with steel or prison masonry. But who shall curb or halter the tongue of a fool?

Then, swift as one that sees his face in a glass, I bethought me of a plan.

"See," I said, "do you desire gold, Sir Lubber Fiend?"

He wagged his great head and shook his cabbage-leaf ears till they made currents in the heavy air, to signify that he loved the touch of the yellow metal.

"See then, Lubber," said I, "you shall have ten of these now, and ten more afterwards, if you will carry a letter to the Prince at Plassenburg, or meet him on the way."

"Not possible," said he, shaking his head sadly; "my little Missie has come to Thorn."

"But," said I, "little Missie would desire it; take letter to the Prince, good Jan, then Missie will be happy."

"Would she let poor Jan Lubberchen kiss her hand, think you?" he asked, looking up at me.

"Aye," said I; "kiss her cheek maybe!"

He danced excitedly from side to side.

"Jan will run—Jan will run all the way!" he cried.

So I pulled out a scrap of parchment and wrote a hasty message to the Prince, asking him, for the love of God and us, to set every soldier in Plassenburg on the march for Thorn, and to come on ahead himself with such a flying column as he could gather. No more I added, because I knew that my good master would need no more.

Then I went down with my messenger to the Weiss Thor, and with great fear and pulsation of the midriff I saw the idiot pass the house of Master Gerard. Then, at the outer gate, I gave him his ten golden coins, and watched him trot away briskly on the green winding road to Plassenburg.

"Mind," he called back to me, "Jan is to kiss her cheek if Jan takes letter to the Prince!"

And I promised it him without wincing. For by this time lying had no more effect upon me than dram-drinking.