There was the situation. Gustavus was entrenched in a fortified camp at Werben, where the Havel joins the Elbe, sixty miles north of Magdeburg, with smaller forces holding Spandau on the Havel and Custrin on the Oder, a line of a hundred and fifty miles from west to east. Tilly and Pappenheim (Maximilian's Pappenheim) were near Magdeburg. And sixty miles south of Magdeburg were the brand-new forty thousand of John George.
Colonel Nigel Charteris had seen enough in his journey to hasten his march northward to Tilly. From all directions he heard that the Landgrave of Hesse was marching to join Gustavus. And the news of the preparations of John George had reached Eisenach. The whole of Thüringia was in ferment.
But the reason of Nigel's uncommon haste down the hill to his camp outside Eisenach was on account of that curious ambassador, Count von Teschen. Nigel feared some mischance. Ottilie! Star Ottilie had said ... what matter? Nigel galloped into camp. Hildebrand handed him his own order brought earlier that morning by his own trooper, attended by one of the Landgrave's huntsmen—
Send the Count to the Wartburg under escort.
"Nigel Charteris."
The colonel made a gesture of annoyance.
"A good imitation, Hildebrand! Confound him! The best thing we can do is to get on to Erfurt."
And on the road to Erfurt he had leisure to blame himself for listening to her whom he omitted to "confound."
One does not commit to the nether gods the woman one has kissed, and kissed in a very paroxysm of passion, whether she would be kissed or not—the woman who has let her scarf flutter an adieu to one, the affront notwithstanding, as one rode away. Not even when she has tricked the affronter of a prisoner, an emissary of a traitor, who has sent the woman a letter full of ... the nether gods know what, treason or love.
What part was she playing in the political intrigue? It was clear that she had recognised the Count von Teschen as the hand of Wallenstein, that she knew him to be essential, so far as his possibilities went, to the furtherance of Wallenstein's designs. There might easily be a dozen Count von Teschens, foxes with firebrands at their tails, rushing hither and thither, but foxes that knew their business and the right cornfields, and how themselves to escape the flames that they spread.