And meanwhile right haughtily flew the red lion upon the citadel of Kernsberg. Never had the Lady Duchess, Joan of the Sword Hand, approven herself so brave and determined. In her forester's dress of green velvet, with the links of chain body-armour glinting beneath its frogs and taches, she went everywhere on foot. At all times of the day she was to be seen at the half-moons wherein the cannon were fixed, or on horseback scouring the defenced posts along the city wall. She seemed to know neither fear nor fatigue, and the noise of cheering followed her about the little hill city like her shadow.
Three only there were who knew the truth—Peter Balta, Alt Pikker, and George the Hussite. And when the guards were set, the lamps lit, and the bars drawn, a stupid faithful Hohensteiner set on watch at the turnpike foot with command to let none pass upon his life—then at last the lithe young Sparhawk would undo his belt with huge refreshful gusting of air into his lungs, amid the scarcely subdued laughter of the captains of the host.
"Lord Peter of the Keys!" Von Lynar would cry, "what it is to unbutton and untruss! 'Tis very well to admire it in our pretty Joan, but 'fore the Lord, I would give a thousand crowns if she were not so slender. It cuts a man in two to get within such a girdle. Only Prince Wasp could make a shift to fit it. Give me a goblet of ale, fellows."
"Nay, lad—mead! Mead of ten years alone must thou have, and little enough of that! Ale will make thee fat as mast-fed pigs."
"Or stay," amended George the Hussite; "mead is not comely drink for a maid—I will get thee a little canary and water, scented with millefleurs and rosemary."
"Check your fooling and help to unlace me, all of you," quoth the Sparhawk. "Now there is but a silken cord betwixt me and Paradise. But it prisons me like iron bars. Ah, there"—he blew a great breath, filling and emptying his lungs with huge content—"I wonder why we men breathe with our stomachs and women with their chests?"
"Know you not that much?" cried Alt Pikker. "'Tis because a man's life is in his stomach; and as for women, most part have neither heart, stomach, nor bowels of mercy—and so breathe with whatever it liketh them!"
"No ribaldry in a lady's presence, or in a trice thou shalt have none of these, either!" quoth the false Joan; "help me off with this thrice-accursed chain-mail. I am pocked from head to heel like a Swiss mercenary late come from Venice. Every ring in this foul devil's jerkin is imprinted an inch deep on my hide, and itches worse than a hundred beggars at a church door. Ah! better, better. Yet not well! I had thought our Joan of the Sword Hand a strapping wench, but now a hop-pole is an abbot to her when one comes to wear her carapace and justaucorps!"
"How went matters to-day on your side?" he went on, speaking to Balta, all the while chafing the calves of his legs and rubbing his pinched feet, having first enwrapped himself in a great loose mantle of red and gold which erstwhile had belonged to Henry the Lion.
"On the whole, not ill," said Peter Balta. "The Muscovites, indeed, drove in our outposts, but could not come nearer than a bowshot from the northern gate, we galled them so with our culverins and bombardels."