CHAPTER XXV
MINE HOST RUNS HIS LAST RACE
Hearty were the greetings when the soldiers found us all safe and sound.They shook us again and again by the hand. They clapped us on the back.They examined professionally the dead who lay strewn about.
"A good stroke! Well smitten!" they cried, as they turned them over, likespectators who applaud at a game they can all understand. Specially didthey compliment me on my axe-work. Never had anything like it been seenin Plassenburg. The head of the yearling calf was duly exhibited, whenthe neatness of the blow and the exactness of the aim at the weakestjointing were prodigiously admired.
The good fellows, mellow with the Burgomeister's sinall-ale, were growingfriendly beyond all telling, when, in the light of the offertory taper,now growing beguttered and burning low, there appeared the Lady Ysolinde.
You never saw so quick a change in any men. The heartiest revellerforthwith became silent and slunk behind his neighbor. Knees shookbeneath stalwart frames, and there seemed a very general tendency to getdown upon marrow-bones.
The Lady Ysolinde stood before them, strangely different from theslim, willowy maiden I had seen her. She looked almost imperial inher demeanor.
"You shall be rewarded for your ready obedience," she said; "the Princewill not forget your service. Take away that offal!"
She pointed to the dead rascals on the floor.
And the men, muttering something that sounded to me like "Yes, yourHighness !" hastened to obey.
"Did you say 'Yes, your Highness' ?" I asked one of them, who seemed, byhis air of command, to be the superior among the archers.
"Aye," answered he, dryly, "it is a term usually applied to the LadyYsolinde, Princess of Plassenburg."
I was never more smitten dazed and dumb in my life. Ysolinde, thedaughter of Master Gerard, the maid who had read my fate in the ink-pool,whom I had "made suffer," according to her own telling--she the Princessof Plassenburg '.
Ah, I had it now. Here at last was the explanation of the threadbare andinexplicable jest of Jorian and Boris, "The Prince hath a Princess, andshe is oft upon her travels !"
But, after all, what a Wendish barking about so small an egg. I haveheard an emperor proclaimed with less cackle.
Ysolinde, Princess of Plassenburg--yes, that made a difference. And Ihad taken her hand--I, the son of the Red Axe--I, the HereditaryJusticer of the Wolfmark. Well, after all, she had sought me, not Iher. And then, the little Helene--what would she make of it? I longedgreatly to find an opportunity to tell her. It might teach her in whatmanner to cut her cloth.
The archers of the Prince camped with us the rest of the night in theplace of the outcast crew. They behaved well (though their forbearancewas perhaps as much owing to the near presence of the Princess as to anyinherent virtue in the good men of the bow) to the women and children whoremained huddled in the corners.
Then came the dawn, swift-foot from the east. A fair dawn it was, thesun rising, not through barred clouds, with the lightest at thehorizon (which is the foul-weather dawn), but through streamers andbannerets that fluttered upward and fired to ever fleecier crimson andgold as he rose.
We rode among a subdued people, and ere we went the Princess called forthe Burgomeister and bade him send to Plassenburg the landlord, so soonas he should be found, and also the heads of the half-dozen houses oneither side of the inn.
Then, indeed, there was a turmoil and a wailing to speak about. Womenfolk crowded out of the huts and kissed the white feet of the palfreythat bore the Lady Ysolinde.
"Have mercy!" they wailed; "show kindness, great Princess! Here are ourmen, unwounded and unhurt, that have lain by our sides all the night.They are innocent of all intent of evil--of every dark deed. Ah, lady,send them not to your prisons. We shall never see them more, and theyare all we have or our children. 'Tis they bring in the bread to thisdrear spot!"
"Produce me your husbands, then!" said the Lady Ysolinde.
Whereat the women ran and brought a number of frowsy and bleared men, allunwounded, save one that had a broken head.
Then Ysolinde called to the Burgomeister. "Come hither, chief of athievish municipality, tell me if these be indeed these women'shusbands."
The Burgomeister, a pallid, pouch-mouthed man, tremulous, andbrick-dusty, like everything else in the village of Erdberg, came forwardand peeringly examined the men.
"Every man to his woman!" he ordered, brusquely, and the women went andstood each by her own property--the men shamefaced and hand-dog, thewomen anxious and pale. Some of the last threw a, protecting arm abouttheir husbands, which they for the most part appeared to resent. Inevery case the woman looked the more capable and intelligent, the menbeing apparently mere boors.
"They are all their true husbands, at least so far as one can know!"answered the Burgomeister, cautiously.
"Then," said the lady, "bid them catch the innkeeper and send him toPlassenburg, and these others can abide where they are. But if they findhim not, they must all come instead of him."
The men started at her words, their faces brightening wonderfully, andthey were out of the door before one could count ten. We mounted ourhorses, and under the very humble guidance of the Burgomeister, who ledthe Princess's palfrey, we were soon again upon the high table-land. Herewe enjoyed to the full the breezes which swept with morning freshnessacross the scrubby undergrowths of oak and broom, and above all the sightof misty wisps of cloud scudding and whisking about the distantpeaks-behind which lay the city of Plassenburg.
We had not properly won clear of the ravines when we heard a greatshouting and turmoil behind us--so that I hastened to look to my weapons.For I saw the archers instinctively draw their quarrels and bolt-pouchesoff their backs, to be in readiness upon their left hips.
But it was only the rabble of men and women who had been threatened, thedwellers in those twelve houses next the inn, who came dragging ourbrick-faced knave of a host, with that hard-polished countenance of hisslack and clammy--slate-gray in color too, all the red tan clean goneout of it.
"Mercy--mercy, great lady!" he cried; "I pray you, do execution on mehere and now. Carry me not to the extreme tortures. Death clears all.And I own that for my crimes I well deserve to die. But save me fromthe strappado, from the torment of the rack. I am an old man and couldnot endure."
The Lady Ysolinde looked at him, and her emerald eyes held a steelyglitter in their depths.
"I am neither judge nor"--I think she was going to say "executioner," butshe remembered in time and for my sake was silent, which I thought wasboth gracious and charming of her. She resumed in a softer tone: "Whatsentence, then, would you desire, thus confessing your guilt?"
"That I might end myself over the cliff there!" said the innkeeper,pointing to the wall of rock along the edge of which we were riding.
"See, then, that he is well ended!" said the Princess, briefly, toJorian.
"Good!" said Jorian, saluting.
And very coolly betook himself to the edge of the cliff, where he primedhis piece anew, and blew up his match.
"Loose the man and stand back!" cried the Princess.
A moment the innkeeper stood nerving himself. A moment he hung on thethin edge of his resolve. The slack gray face worked convulsively, thewhite lips moved, the hands were gripped close to his sides as thoughto run a race. His whole body seemed suddenly to shrink and fall inupon itself.
"The torture! The terrible torture!" he shrieked aloud, and ran swiftlyfrom the clutches of the men who had held him. Between the path and theverge of the cliff from which he was suffered to cast himself therestretched some thirty or forty yards of fine green turf. The old man ranas though at a village fair for some wager of slippery pig's tail, butall the time the face of him was like Death and Hell following after.
At the cliff's edge he leaped high into the air, and went headlong down,to our watching eyes as slowly as if he had sunk through water. None ofus who were on the path saw more of him. But Jorian craned over,regarding th
e man's end calmly and even critically. And when he hadsatisfied himself that that which was done was properly done, as coollyas before he stowed away his match in his cover-fire, mounted his horse,and rode towards us.
He nodded to the Princess. "Good, my Lady!" quoth he, for all comment.
"I saved a charge that time!" said he to his companion.
"Good!" quoth Boris, in his turn.
We had now a safe and noble escort, and the way to Plassenburg was easy.The face of the country gradually changed. No more was it the gray,wistful plain of the Wolfmark, upon which our Red Tower looked down. Nomore did we ride through the marly, dusty, parched lands, in which werethe ravines with their uncanny cavern villages, of which this Erdberg wasthe chief. But green, well-watered valleys and mountains wooded to thetop lay all about us--a pleasant land, a fertile province, and, as thePrincess had said, a land in which the strong hand of Karl the Prince hadlong made "the broom-bush keep the cow."
I had all along been possessed with great desire to meet the Prince of sonoble and well-cared-for a land, and perhaps also to see what manner ofman could be the husband of so extraordinary a Princess.