The Red Axe

by S. R. Crockett

CHAPTER XXXVII

CAPTAIN KARL MILLER'S SON

Black, blank, chill, confining night shut us in as Leopold Dessauer and I rode out of Plassenburg. Our horses had been made ready for us at the little water-gate in the lower garden. Fain would I have taken also Jorian and Boris, but on this occasion the fewer the safer. For to enter Thorn was to go with lighted matches into a powder-magazine.

The rushes in the river rustled dry and cold along the brink. The leaves of the linden-trees chuckled overhead, rubbing their palms together spitefully. There was mockery of our foolhardy enterprise in the soft whispering sough of the water, as I heard it lapper beneath the ferry-boat that lay ready to cross to the other side. Old Hans, the Prince's ferryman, snored in his boat. Above in the women's chambers a light went to and fro. I judged that it was in the bower of the Lady Ysolinde. But not a string of my heart moved. For pity is so weak and love so strong that all my nature was now on the strain forward towards Helene and the Wolfsberg, like an eager hound that pulls at the unslipped leash.

"My love! my love!" I cried in my heart, "I am coming to you, I am going out to find you! Though I give my life for it, I shall at least see and touch you ere I die."

For during these last days my love had grown greatly upon me, being of that kind which gathers within a man, banks up, fills out his crevices, and he know it not. In the Wolfmark there are oft, in the heart of the limestone, caverns where the water sleeps deep and cool, while above, on the thin, rocky crust, the sun beats and the very lizards die for lack of moisture. It was only now that I had broken up the crust of my nature and found the caverns under, where love was abiding all undreamed of, deep, and eternal as the sea. It is a great thing and a beautiful to meet love for the first time face to face, not to nod to only as to an acquaintance, and to know how great and masterful he is; to say, "Love, I am yours. Do with me that which seemeth good to you. I was strong—now in your hands am I become weak. I was proud—now am I glad to be humble and kneel, waiting your word. You have made life and death the same thing to me, for the sake of the Beloved. I am ready to take either from your hands!"

But enough! We were riding out of the dark pleasaunces of the palace, the leaves were rustling and the sedges blowing. That was what began it, carrying away my thoughts.

Dessauer rode behind me, letting his horse follow mine, nose to tail. For, being used to the visitation of the city outposts, I knew the ground thoroughly.

At every hundred yards we were halted, and I answered. For I had posted the men myself, making sure that Plassenburg should not again be taken by surprise. On the other hand, I had determined that the spoiler should now be made despoiled, and that the foul den of the Wolf should be cleansed as by fire.

Then, like the breaking up of the Baltic ice in spring, the thought ran through me—my father and the maid of the Red Tower, what of them?

Why, at the very first (so I told myself), I should set a guard of the best troops in Plassenburg about the Red Tower, and carry them all—Helene, my father, and old Hanne—to a safe place till Prince Karl and I had made an end. With our stark veterans swarming in Thorn, that would easily be done. And so the plan abode to be altered, broidered, and recast in the imagination of my heart.

We were soon out on the darksome, unguarded road, and after that I steered chiefly by the lights of the palace behind me, Dessauer saying no word, but riding like a man-at-arms close behind me.

We had reached the crown of the green hill over whose slopes the path to the Wolf markwinds—the path by which, doubtless, Helene had travelled the night of the duel.

As I came to the summit, mounting the steepest part slowly, I was aware of a figure dark against the sky, no more apparent than a blacker patch of night where all was dark. It was in shape as of a horseman sitting his steed on the crest of the hill.

Instantly I drew my pistol, in which I had become expert.

"Your name and business?" cried I to the shape on the hill-side. For, indeed, none had any right to be abroad so near the city of Plassenburg, armed cap-a-pie, at that time of the night. And for a moment the thought flashed upon me that the tales we had heard might after all be true, and the armies of the Wolfmark nearer than we dreamed of.

"Hugo—Von Dessauer!" quoth right jovially to my ear a voice well known and ever dear to me, the voice of my master, the Prince Karl.

"The Prince!" cried I. "My lord, what do you here? This is stark madness—you, who should be within the walls of the palace, with the guards watching three deep about you. What would come to the State of Plassenburg if it wanted you?"

"Oh," said he, lightly, falling in beside us in the most natural fashion, "you and Von Dessauer in dual control would be a singular improvement on the present head of the State. You, Hugo, would keep the soldiers to their work, and Von Dessauer could look nobly after the treasury."

"But who would command us and be a gracious and beloved master to us?" said I. "My Prince, we must instantly return and put you in safety!"

"Indeed, that will you not. By God's truth, if I am not to come all the way to the city of Thorn with you, I will at least convoy you to the edges of the Mark. It is so dull, dragging out month by month at ease within the castle, and not nearly so much fun as it used to be when I was a poor captain of a free company under the old Prince. Young rattling blades like Dessauer and yourself make no allowance for the distractions of an aged and gouty Prince."

Within myself I felt some amusement stir. It was almost exactly what the Princess, his wife, had alleged as a reason for her wanderings. I could not help marvelling why these two had not long ere this found out their great affinity to each other. But now I see that this very likeness of nature was the first cause of their lack of agreement. Like may, indeed, draw to like, as the saw hath it. But in the things of love like and like agree not well together. Fair desires dark, stout and stark desire slender, slow desires quick, severe desires gay (though this often secretly). And so the world goes on, and in another generation, sprung from these desirings, once more dark desireth fair and fair dark.

There I am at it again. Oh, but I, Hugo Gottfried, am the wise man when I set out on my disquisitions. I could new-make all the saws of the world, set instances to them, and never breathe myself.

"Nay," said the Prince, "all is safe set within and without, thanks to my brave commander and wise Chancellor, and these other matters can e'en bide till I go back to them. Consider that I am but a captain of horse going a-wooing and needing to talk gayly for good comradeship by the road. Call me honest Captain Miller's Son."

So Captain Miller's Son rode with Herr Doctor Schmidt and his servant Johann. And a merry time the three of us had till we arrived at the borders of the Mark.

Now I have not time nor yet space (though a great deal of inclination) to tell of the wondrous pranks we played—of the broad-haunched countrywomen we rallied (or rather whom Captain Miller's Son rallied, and who, truth to tell, mostly gave as good as they got, or better, to that soldier's huge delight), the stout yeoman families into whose midst we went, and their opinion of the Prince. Of the last I have a good tale to tell. "A good man and a kindly," so the man said; "he has given us safe horse, fat cow, and a quiet life. But yet the old was good too. The true race to reign is ever the anointed Prince."

"But then, did not Dietrich, the anointed Prince, harry you? And worse, let others plunder you? And that is not the fashion of Prince Karl, usurper though he be!" said the Prince.

"Nay," the honest man would reply, "usurper is he not—a God-sent boon to
Plassenburg rather. We love him, would fight for him, all my six sons and
I. Would we not, chickens?"

And the six sons rolled out a thunderous "Aye, fight—marry, that we would!" as they sat, plaiting willow-baskets and mending bows about the fire.

"But, alas! he is cursed with a mad wife, and, after all said and done, he is not of the ancient stock," said the ancient man, shaking his head.

And the Prince answered him as quickly, tapping his brow significantly with his forefinger, "Are not all wives a little touched? Or are yon passing fortunate in your part of the country? Faith, we of the city will all come courting to the Tannenwald if you prove better off."

"We are even as our neighbors!" cried the yeoman, shrugging his shoulders. "Maul, my troth, what sayest thou? Here is a brisk lad that miscalls thy clan."

The goodwife came forward, smiling, comely, and large of well-padded bone.

"Which?" said she, laconically.

The farmer pointed to the Prince. The matron took a good look at him.

"Well," she said, "he is the one that should know most about us. He has been married once or twice, and hath gotten certain things burned into him. As for this one," she went on, indicating Dessauer, "he may be doctor of all the wisdoms, as ye say, but he has never compassed the mystery of a woman. And this limber young spark with the quick eyes, he is a bachelor also, but ardently desires to be otherwise. I wot he has a pretty lass waiting for him somewhere."

"How knew you that of me, goodwife ?" I cried, greatly astonished.

"Why, by the way you looked up when my daughter came dancing in. You were in your lost brown-study, and then, seeing a pretty lass that most are glad to rest their eyes upon, you looked away disappointed or careless."

"And how knew you that I was of the ancient guild of the bachelors?" asked Dessauer.

"Why, by the way that you looked at the pot on the fire, and sniffed up the stew, and asked how long the dinner would be! The bachelor of years is ever uneasy about his meals, having little else to be uneasy about, and no wife, compact of all contrary whimsies, to teach him how to be patient."

"And how," cried the Prince, in his turn, "knew you that I had been wedded once?"

"Or twice," said the woman, smiling. "Man, ye cackle it like a hen on the rafters advertising her egg in the manger below. I knew it by the fashion ye had of hanging up your hat and eke scraping your feet—-not after ye entered, like these other good, careless gentlemen, but with your knife, outside the door. I see it by your air of one that has been at once under authority and yet master of a house."

"Well done, good wife!" cried the Prince. "Were I indeed in authority I would make you either Prime-Minister or chief of my thief-catchers."

And so after that we went to bed.