The Red Axe

by S. R. Crockett

CHAPTER XLVII

THE RED AXE DIES STANDING UP

How I stumbled down the stairs and found myself outside the house in the Weiss Thor I do not know. Whether the servitor, Sir Respectable, showed me out or not has quite passed from me. I only remember that I came upon myself waiting outside the gate of Bishop Peter's palace ringing at a bell which sounded ghostly enough, tinkling like a cracked kettle behind the door.

The lattice clicked and a face peeped out.

"Get hence, night-raker!" cried a voice. "Wherefore do you come here so untimeously, profaning the holy quiet of our minster-close?"

"There was no very holy calm in the kitchen t'other night, Peter Swinehead!" said I, my wits coming mechanically back to me at the familiar sound.

"Ha, Sir Blackamoor, 'tis you; surely your chafts have grown strangely white, or else are my eyes serving me foully in the torchlight."

Instinctively I covered as much of my face as I could with my cloak's cape, for indeed I had washed it ere I went forth to see the Lady Ysolinde.

"'Tis that you have slipped too much of the Rhenish down thy gullet, old comrade," said I, slapping Peter on the back and getting before him so that he might remark nothing more.

At that, being well pleased with my calling him comrade, he lighted me cordially to my chamber, and there left me to the sleepless meditation of the night.

The next day was one of great quietness in the city of Thorn. An uneasy, sultry pause of silence brooded over the lower town. Men's heads showed a moment at door and window, looked furtively up and down the street, and then vanished again within. Plots were being hatched and plans laid in Thorn; yet, while there was the lowering silence in the city, up aloft the Wolfsberg hummed gayly like a hive. Once I went up that way to see if I could win any news of my father. But this day the door into the Red Tower stood closed, nor would any within open for all my knocking. So perforce I had to return unsatisfied. Several times I went to the Weiss Thor to spy the horizon round for the troops of Plassenburg. But only the gray plain of the Mark stretched itself out so far as the eye could penetrate—hardly a reeking chimney to be seen, or any token of the pleasant rustic life of man, such as in my youth I remembered to have looked down upon from the Red Tower. Beneath me the city of Thorn lay grimly quiescent, like a beast of prey which has eaten all its neighbors, and must now die of starvation because there are no more to devour.

The day passed on feet that crept like those of a tortoise, as the sullen minutes dragged by, leaden-clogged and tardy. But the evening came at last. And with it, knocking at the door of the Bishop's quadrangle and interrupting my long talk with Dessauer, lo! a messenger, hot-foot from the castle.

"To the learned Doctor and his servant, Gottfried Gottfried, being in death's utmost extremities, sends greeting, and desires greatly to have speech with them."

Thus ran my father's message in that testing hour where he had seen so many! Yet I was but little surprised. There was no wonder in the fact save the wonder that it should all seem so natural. Dessauer rose quickly.

"I will go with you," he said; "it will be safer. For at least I can keep the door while you speak with your father."

So, without further word, we followed the messenger up the long, narrow, wooden-gabled street, and heard the folk muttering gloomily in the darkness within, or talking softly in the dull russet glow of their hearth-fires. For there were but few lighted candles in Thorn that night. And I wondered how near or how far from us tho men of Plassenburg might be encamping, and thrilled to think that at any moment a spy might ride in to warn Duke Otho of the spy within his city, or the near approach of his foe.

But so far all was quiet at the Red Tower. The wicket-gate in the angle of the wall was open, and we passed in without difficulty. As I mounted the stairs I heard the key turn behind us. Obviously, therefore, we were expected. The gate of the Red Tower had been left open for our entrance; and so soon as the birds were in the snare, it was shut, and the silly goslings trapped.

Nevertheless we climbed up and up the dark stairs till we came to the door of my father's garret. I pushed it open without knocking, and entered.

"The most learned the Doctor Schmidt," I announced, lest there should be some stranger in the room. And indeed my precaution was necessary enough. For, from my father's bed-head, disengaging himself reluctantly, like a disturbed vulture napping up from the side of a dying steer, Friar Laurence rose out of the darkness, and, folding his robe about him, stalked to the door without a word or nod to either of us. I stood holding the edge of it till I had watched him well down the stairs. Then Dessauer relieved me at the stair-head as I went to approach my father.

I saw a change in him, very startling, indeed, to see. "In the uttermost extremity" he was, indeed, as he had written. A ghastly pallor overspread his face; his eyes were wild, his breathing came both quick and hard. The fire cast nickering lights over his face and on the outlines of his lank figure under the scarlet mantle which had been cast over him. One corner of it was cast aside, as if for air or coolness, and I could see a thing which gave me a cold chill in the marrow of my spine.

My father still wore the dress which he only donned when some poor soul was about to die and pay the forfeit.

At first Gottfried took no notice of me whatever, but lay looking at the ceiling, his lips muttering something steadily, though what the words were I could not hear.

"Father," I said at last, bending over him gently, "I have come to see you."

He turned to me, as if suddenly and regretfully summoned back from very far away. It was a movement I had seen in many dying men. He looked at me, a strange, luminous comprehension growing up gradually in his eyes.

"Hugo," he said, "you have come home at last! The Little Playmate has come home, too. We three will make a merry party in the old Red Tower. We have not been all together for so long. Lord Christ, but I have been a man much alone! Hugo, why did you leave me so long? Ah, well, I do not blame you, my son. You have been pushing your fortunes, doubtless, and you have—so they tell me—become a great man in Plassenburg. And the little maid is a lady of honor, and very fair to see. But now you two have come to the old garret, like birds homing to the nest."

"Yes, father," I said to him, "we have both come home to you, the Little
Playmate and I. And now you will give us your blessing!"

"The Little Playmate—say rather the Little Princess," he cried, cheerfully, as, with the air of one who brings good tidings, he sat up in bed. Then he pointed to a chair on which a pillow had carelessly been flung. "Little Maid," he said, looking at the cushion as if it had been Helene, "I am glad you have come back to be wedded to my boy. That was like you. I ever wished it, indeed. But I never expected to see my children thus happy. Yet I always knew you and Hugo were made for each other. You are at your sewing, little maid. Well, 'tis natural. I mind me when my own love sat making dainties of just such delicate and wreathed whiteness."

He paused, and then, his countenance suddenly changing, he looked fearfully and fixedly at the chair.

"But, little maid, my own Helene," he cried, in a loud, gasping, alarmed tone, "what is this, best beloved? Why, you are sewing at a shroud? Surely such funeral-trappings become not bridals. A shroud—and there is blood upon it! Put it down—put it down, I pray you!"

The red flames on the fire crackled suddenly up about the back log and cast dancing shadows on his face.

"Lie down and rest, dear father," I said softly to him, "the Little
Playmate is not here—I, Hugo, your son, am alone beside you."

"Hugo," he said, instantly appeased, and passing a lean arm about me, "my good son, my brave boy! You will be kind to the little Princess. She loves you. There is no man so beloved as you in all the city of Thorn. Many would have loved her besides Otho. Ah, but I threw him out of the window there. I threw a Grand Duke out of a window! Ha! ha! it was the bravest jest!"

He laughed a little at intervals, as at a tale that will bear infinite repetition. "I, Gottfried Gottfried, threw a proximate reigning Prince out of the window! How Casimir laughed! The thing pleased him well. And the little maid, do you remember her, Hugo? How she would teach me—me, the Red Axe of Thorn—how to dance that first night, and how totteringly she carried the Red Axe? The little one took heart that night. She will have a happy future, I know; so blessed, far away from this dark and damned place of the Wolfsberg. I am glad she is not here to see me die. That is a sight for men, not for fair young loving women."

"Hush, my father," I said, touching his dank brow; "you are not going to die. You will yet live to be strong and well, a man among men."

For one tells these things to dying men. And they smile and pass us by, amused at our childish ignorance, as you and I shall one day smile upon those others. And even thus did my father.

"Nay, Hugo, I am sped," he answered. "This night ends all. The door I have oped for so many is opening from within for me. God's mercy be on a sinful man! Ere the light of to-morrow's dawn the Duke's Justicer must face the Tribunal that has no assessor and no court of appeal."

He threw back the cloak which served him as a mantle, and crying, "Give me your hand, Hugo!" Gottfried Gottfried staggered to his feet.

"I will die standing up," he said, bending his brows and gazing about him uncertainly. He pointed to the walls of the garret. The fire was flickering low, but still making the place light enough to see easily. There beside the bed was the Red Axe, with its shining edge undimmed, leaning against the block. There across it was the crimson mask which was never more to bind his eyes as he did the office of final dread.

"Do you see them, son Hugo?" he cried, leaning heavily on my shoulder and pointing with his finger; "they are gibbering at me, mowing, processioning by, and pointing mockingly at me. Do you hear them laughing? That horrid one there with his head under his arm? Laughing as if there were no God! But I am not afraid. Mercy of Jesu! Hath God Himself no Justicer, that He should punish me because I have fulfilled my charge? I have all my life been merciful, ever giving the blow of mercy first, and the drop of stupefaction before the Extreme Question. Hence, fiends! Shapes inhuman, torment me not! For in my day I was merciful to you and never struck twice. I will die standing up. The devil shall not fright me—no, nor all his angels!

"God Himself shall not fright me! I appeal to His judgment throne! Get hence, false accusing spirits! I stand at Caesar's judgment-seat. Give me the axe, boy—I will cut down the evil, I will spare the good. Here is the Red Axe, my son. Take it! Strike with it strong and well. Strike, strike, and spare not!"

Totteringly he handed me the axe, and, clasping his hands, he stood looking up.

"God! God!" he cried in a great voice. "I see my Judge face to face; I am not afraid! But I will die standing up!"

And in this manner, even as I tell it, died Gottfried Gottfried, a strong man, standing up and not afraid. And these arms received him, as, being dead, he fell headlong.