But it was not dull on Isle Rugen.
The osprey flashed and fell in the clear waters of the Haff, presently to re-emerge with a fish in his beak, the drops running like a broken string of pearls from his scales. Rough-legged buzzards screamed their harsh and melancholy cry as on slanted wings they glided down inclines of sunshine or lay out motionless upon the viewless glorious air. Wild geese swept overhead out of the north in V-shaped flocks. The sea-gulls tacked and balanced. All-graceful terns swung thwartways the blue sky, or plunged headlong into the long green swells with the curve and speed of falling stars.
It was a place of forgetting, and in the autumn time it is good to forget. For winter is nigh, when there will be time and enough to think all manner of sad thoughts.
So in the September weather Joan and Conrad walked much together. And as Joan forgat Kernsberg and her revenge, Rome and his mission receded into the background of the young man's thoughts. Soon they met undisguisedly without fear or shame. This Isle Rugen was a place apart—a haven of refuge not of their seeking. Mars had driven one there, Neptune the other.
Yet when Conrad woke in his little north-looking room in the lucid pearl-grey dawn he had some bad moments. His vows, his priesthood, his princedom of Holy Church were written in fire before his eyes. His heart weighed heavy as if cinctured with lead. And, deeper yet, a rat seemed to gnaw sharp-toothed at the springs of his life.
Also, when the falling seas, combing the pebbly beaches with foamy teeth, rattled the wet shingle, Joan would ofttimes wake from sleep and lie staring wide-eyed at the casement. Black reproach of self brooded upon her spirit, as if a foul bird of night had fluttered through the open window and settled upon her breast. The poor folk of Kernsberg—her fatherland invaded and desolate, the Sparhawk, the man who ought to have been the ruler she was not worthy to be, the leader in war, the lawgiver in peace—these reproachful shapes filled her mind so that sleep fled and she lay pondering plans of escape and deliverance.
But of one thing she never thought—of the cathedral of Courtland and the husband to whose face she had but once lifted her eyes.
The sun looked through between the red cloud bars. These he soon left behind, turning them from fiery islands to banks of fleecy wool. The shadows shot swiftly westward and then began slowly to shorten. In his chamber Prince Conrad rose and went to the window. A rose-coloured light lay along the sea horizon, darting between the dark pine stems and transmuting the bare sand-dunes into dreamy marvels, till they touched the heart like glimpses of a lost Eden seen in dreams. The black bird of night flapped its way behind the belting trees. There was not such a thing as a ghostly rat to gnaw unseen the heart of man. The blue dome of sky overhead was better than the holy shrine of Peter across the tawny flood of Tiber, and Isle Rugen more to be desired than the seven-hilled city itself. Yea, better than lifted chalice and wafted incense, Joan's hand in his——
And Conrad the lover turned from the window with a defiant heart.