The Red Axe

by S. R. Crockett

"It meets! It meets!" cried Dessauer, enthusiastically, as he glanced them over. "It is complete. It would stand probation in the Dict of the Emperor."

"But yet all that will not prevent Helene Gottfried dying at the stake!" cried my father, sadly, and fell back unconscious on his bed.

* * * * *

We spent this heaviest of nights at the palace of Bishop Peter—Dessauer with the prelate—I, praise to the holy pyx, in the kitchen with the serving men and maids. Peter of the Pigs was there, but no more eager to fight. The lay brother who had gone with the letter, and the conductor who had run away from the dread door of the Hall of Justice, had returned, and had spread a favorable report of our courage.

Certainly the house of Peter the Bishop might be a poor one and scantily provendered, but there was little sign of it that night. For if the master went fasting and his guests lived on pulse (as they said in Thorn), certainly not so Bishop Peter's servants.

For there were pasties of larks, with sauce of butter and herbs, most excellent and toothsome. There were rabbits from the sand-hills, and pigeons from the towers of the minster. The clear chill Rhenish vied with the more generous wine of Burgundy and the red juice of Assmanhauser. For me, as was natural, I ate little. I spoke not at all. But I looked so dangerous with my swarthy face and desperate eye, I dare say, also I was so well armed, that the roysterers left me severely alone.

But I drank—Lord, what did I not drink that night! I poured down my gullet all and sundry that was given me. And to render these Bishop's thralls their dues, there was no lack and no inhospitality. But the strange thing of it was that, though I am a man more than ordinarily temperate, that night I poured the Rhenish into me like water down a cistern-pipe and felt it not. God forgive me, I wanted to make me drunken and forgetful, and lo! the dog's swill would not bite.

So I cursed their drink, and asked if they had no Lyons Water-of-Life, stark and mordant, or social Hollands, or indeed anything that was not mere compound of whey and dirty water. Whereat they wondered, and held me thereafter in great respect as a good companion and approven worthy drinker.

Then they brought me of the strong spirit of Dantzig, with curious little flakes of gold dancing in it. It was raw and strong, and at first I had good hopes of it. But I drank the Dautzig like spring-water, all there was of it, and though it had a taste singularly displeasing to me, it took no more effect than so much warm barley-brew for the palates of babes. Upon this I had great glory. For the card-players and the dicers actually left their games and gazed open-jawed to see me drink. And I sat there and expounded the Levitical law and the wheels of the Prophet Ezekiel, the law of succession to the empire, and also the apostolic succession—all with surprising clearness and cogency of reasoning. So that before I had finished they required of me whether it was I or my master who was sent for to dispute before His Sovereign mightiness the Emperor.

Then I told them that the things I knew (that is, which the Hollands had put into my head) were but the commonest chamber-sweepings of my master's learning, which I had picked up as I rode at his elbow. And this bred a mighty wondering what manner of man he might be who was so wise. And I think, if I had gone on, Dessauer and I might both have found ourselves in the Bishop's prison, on suspicion of being the devil and one of his ministrants.