Before leaving Kernsberg, therefore, Boris placed this great red-waisted parchment roll in his bed, leaning it angle-wise against his pillow. Jorian tossed a spare dagger with the arms of Plassenburg beside it.
"There—let the civil power and the military for once lie down together!" he said. "We delegate our authority to these two during our absence!"
To the silent Plassenburgers who had accompanied them, and who now kept their door with unswerving attention, Boris explained himself briefly.
"Remember," he said, "when you are asked, that the envoys of Plassenburg are ill—ill of a dangerous and most contagious disease. Also, they are asleep. They must on no account be waked. The windows must be kept darkened. It is a great pity. You are desolated. You understand. The first time I have more money than I can spend you shall have ten marks!"
The men-at-arms understood, which was no wonder, for Boris generally contrived to make himself very clear. But they thought within them that their chances of financial benefit from their captain's conditional generosity were worth about one sole stiver.
So these two, being now free fighting-men, as it were, soldiers of fortune, lay waiting on the slopes of the Jägernbergen, talking over the situation.
"A man surely has a right to his own wife!" said Jorian, taking for the sake of argument the conventional side.
"Narren-possen, Jorian!" cried Boris, raising his voice to the indignation point. "Clotted nonsense! Who is going to keep a man's wife for him if he cannot do it himself? And he a prince, and within his own city and fortress, too. She boxed his ears, they say, and rode away, telling him that if he wanted her he might come and take her! A pretty spirit, i' faith! Too good for such a dried stockfish of the Baltic, with not so much soul as a speckled flounder on his own mud-flats! Faith! if I were a marrying man, I would run off with the lass myself. She ought at least to be a soldier's wife."
"The trouble is that so far she feels no necessity to be any one's wife," said Jorian, shifting his ground.
"That also is nonsense," said Boris, who, spite his defence of Joan, held the usual masculine views. "Every woman wishes to marry, if she can only have first choice."