The Mercenary: A Tale of The Thirty Years' War

by W. J. Eccott

Strassfurt gave the travellers too poor an entertainment to make them tarry by it. They got a change of horses and pushed on another ten miles, the ground rising steadily as they began to leave the plains and cross the eastern spurs of the Harz mountains. At Aschersleben the air was noticeably purer and laden with the resinous smell of the pines. They made a long rest here for the evening meal and then rode slowly, for the troopers' horses were tired and sore with the weight of men and mail. The lieutenant made his men walk up the steep hills, but it was late when they clattered and rumbled into little Sangershausen and came to a good inn in the shadow of St Ulrich.

The inn was not large but the stables were spacious enough to take in all the troopers as well as their horses: a fortunate thing, since, at the late hour it was, to have made any endeavour to quarter them on the inhabitants would have been a possible cause of tumult. They were already sufficiently near to Thüringen, a Protestant state in the main, for Protestant feeling to be uppermost. Some news of the vengeance executed on Protestant Magdeburg would have preceded the travellers even at this remote town on the borders of the Harz, and Nigel and the lieutenant were both aware of the danger they ran, peaceful as their errand was.

Despite their fatigue they set off again early, covering the ten miles to Frankenhausen with ease. Then the road began to wind in and out among the hills, which lay across their path to Erfurt. The lower slopes of the hills already showed corn ripening; the grass stood knee-deep in the valleys, but above the cornlands on every hillside rose the forest. There were a few woodcutters in the forest, a labourer or two here and there in the fields, and at long intervals tiny hamlets, with perhaps a mill or an indifferent inn. To the travellers one and all, the continuous ascents to high ground, the long forest roads, the descents into new valleys, became monotonous and seemingly interminable. They made no haste. It was no countryside for haste. At the best Nigel expected to reach Erfurt at sundown: for the horses had not thrown off the weariness of yesterday, and they could not expect to get a relay for the coach. At the inn where they made what midday meal the place was capable of they could get nothing but smoked ham, little tough cheeses, rye-bread and beer. Fortunately there was plenty of the latter, and the troopers made no grumbling at its quality. Elspeth Reinheit appeared to be blessed with a good appetite, and found ham and rye-bread and cheese to her liking, for she did well by them. The other and more highly-born girl ate little and drank goat's milk, which has a sustaining quality for those who can put up with its richness. Pastor Rad was no more talkative than he had been the day before, and brooded alike in valley and on hill-top with a morose perseverance that foreboded a wealth of prophetic outburst, whenever he should come to his opportunity and to his flock. He watched Nigel in all his approaches and conversation with Elspeth, which the chance or the tedium of the journey brought about. Nigel was on his side quite natural and unconstrained in his behaviour to the girl, who had done him a vital service which he had in his turn requited. There was no feeling except that of human kindness, which perhaps runs a little thicker as between man and woman, more so still if the man be comely and the woman not less well-seeming than a woman should be.

The longest day of travel comes to an end: and at last they spied the cathedral and the sister church of Saint Severus perched on its eminence. Then the spires of St Martin, St Michael, St Laurence, and later on the walls of Erfurt, rose to view. There were gates to pass, two waterways to cross by little bridges, which let one see a wilderness of little streets, and then they drew rein at a demure hostelry in the Prediger Strasse, well thought of by the Protestant community of Erfurt.

Nigel and the lieutenant having seen their charges safely housed, rode on with their escort, and readily found quarters for them with the soldiers of the garrison; for Erfurt, if it showed no active partisanship at this time, was passively more for the Emperor than for the cause of Gustavus. Originally one of the free cities of the Hanseatic League, it had become annexed by some threads of service to the Electorate of Mainz, the Elector being the Archbishop, and so able to exercise influence, if not precisely dominion, by the spiritual arm as well as by his considerable secular forces. Despite Luther, Erfurt was still to be reckoned as a Catholic city, and not many months after this very day Gustavus treated it accordingly in the swift foray that followed his victory of Breitenfeld.

The lieutenant being by habit a good companion and a great man at a bottle, where he could find both company and bottle, having once sat down with the officers of the garrison, was in no mood to leave them. Nigel Charteris, on the other hand, like many of his fellow-countrymen, was prone to content himself with his own company rather than make himself profoundly uncomfortable for the sake of being sociable. Wine, Woman, and Song, as the triune object of German idolatry, especially in garrisons, camps, and universities, did not evoke any enthusiasm in him.

He drank wine for good cheer. Song he could bear rather than love, so it had a lilt in it. As for woman, as she followed the camp, or in the character of the helpless quarry of the licentious chase of officers and soldiers alike, or again as the fat helpmeet of the German burgher, redundant with all the virtues but lacking equally all the graces, Nigel Charteris paid her no heed. His gorge rose from one cause or another at all three. Through all the coarse scenes of camp life, the brutalities of the sack of cities, he had preserved with religious fervour the memory of his mother, and of the maidens of gentle quality whom he had known in his own land, tall, straight-limbed women with broad foreheads and blue-grey or dark-brown eyes, looking boldly out upon a world that dared not asperse them.

In Ottilie von Thüringen he had recognised at a glance one of their peers, with less of their frankness, with more of their pride of race, a woman of rare beauty, mysterious, tangible yet intangible. For the first time in his prime of manhood did he feel troubled in spirit by the consciousness that something in him strove towards the infinite that is the spirit of woman.

But whether it was this, or the consciousness that of late he had been remiss in his devotions, he stole out beneath the intense blue of a starlit sky towards the cathedral, in the precincts of which he trusted to find a priest to hear his confession.

The builders in their desire to set their holy city on a little hill, and the only hill having a steep declivity to more mundane levels, had constructed a series of under-buildings, called cavaten, till they got a continuous level on which to build the cathedral. And a penitent who has to mount a matter of fifty steps, and does so, certainly deserves well of Mother Church. So at least thought Nigel Charteris, as, somewhat breathless, he peered in and found it almost dark. A lantern standing on the floor in a corner announced the presence of some one, who proved to be the sacristan coming out of the sacristy.