The Red Axe

by S. R. Crockett

"Nay, Gottfried," replied Duke Casimir; "but he bruised my shirt of mail into my breast."

And I heard plainly enough the clinking of the rings of chain-armor as the Duke showed his hurt to my father. Presently I heard his voice again.

"And the Bishop has touched me in a new place," he said. "He declares that he will lay his interdict upon me and my people—ill enough to hold in hand as they are even now. When that is done they will rise in rebellion. My very men-at-arms and knights I cannot depend upon—only upon you and the Black Riders."

"In the matter of the Bishop's interdict, or in other matters, do you mean that you can trust my counsel, Duke Casimir?" asked my father.

"'Tis in the burial of the dead that the shoe will pinch first with these burghers of Thorn and among our soldiers at the Wolfsberg. For mass, indeed, they care not a dove's dropping—but that the corpse should be carried to a dog's grave, that they cannot away with. Red Axe, I tell you we shall have the State of the Mark about our ears in the slipping of a hound's leash—and as for me, I know not what I shall do."

"Listen, and I will counsel you, Duke Casimir! Care you not though the east wind brought Bishop Peters whirling over the Mark, as many as the January snowflakes that come to us from Muscovy. I, Gottfried Gottfried, tell you what to do. In every parish of the Mark there is a parson. Every clerk of them hath a Presbytery, in which he dwells with those that are abiding with him. Bid you the soldiers that are obedient to you to carry all the corpses of the dead to the Presbytery, and leave them there under guard. Then let us see whether or no the parsons will give them burial. What think you of the counsel, Duke Casimir?"

I could hear the Duke rise and pace across the floor to where my father sat on his bed. And by the silence I knew that the two men were shaking hands.

"Red Axe," said the Duke, much moved, "of a truth you are a great man—none like you in the Dukedom. These beard-wagging, chain-jingling gentry I have small notion of. And would you but accept it, I would give you to-morrow the collar of gold which befits the Chancellor of the Mark. None deserves to wear it so well as thou."

My father laughed a low scornful laugh.

"Because I bid you teach the parsons their own religion, am I to be made Chancellor of the Mark? A great gray wolf out of the forest were as suitable a Chancellor of the Mark as Gottfried Gottfried, the fourteenth hereditary Red Axe of Thorn!"