the owner of the truncheon awoke to these reviving tones, and uttered a faint responsive ‘Tra-ra!’
‘Hark again!’ said Farina, in reply to the commendation of the Goshawk, whose face was dimpled over with the harmony.
The voices held long on the last note, and let it die in a forest cadence.
‘‘Fore Gad! well done. Hurrah! Tra-ra, ha-ha, tra-ra! That’s a trick we’re not half alive to at home,’ said Guy. ‘I feel friendly with these German lads.’
The Goshawk’s disposition toward German lads was that moment harshly tested by a smart rap on the shoulder from an end of German oak, and a proclamation that he was prisoner of the hand that gave the greeting, in the name of the White Rose Club. Following that, his staff was wrested from him by a dozen stout young fellows, who gave him no time to get his famous distance for defence against numbers; and he and Farina were marched forthwith to the chorusing body in front of Gottlieb Groschen’s house.
Of all the inmates, Gottlieb had slept most with the day on his eyelids, for Werner hung like a nightmare over him. Margarita lay and dreamed in rose-colour, and if she thrilled on her pillowed silken couch like a tense-strung harp, and fretted drowsily in little leaps and starts, it was that a bird lay in her bosom, panting and singing through the night, and that he was not to be stilled, but would musically utter the sweetest secret thoughts of a love-bewitched maiden. Farina’s devotion she knew his tenderness she divined: his courage she had that day witnessed. The young girl no sooner felt that she could love worthily, than she loved with her whole strength. Muffed and remote came the hunting-song under her pillow, and awoke dreamy delicate curves in her fair face, as it thinned but did not banish her dream. Aunt Lisbeth also heard the song, and burst out of her bed to see that the door and window were secured against the wanton Kaiser. Despite her trials, she had taken her spell of sleep; but being possessed of some mystic maiden belief that in cases of apprehended peril from man, bed was a rock of refuge and fortified defence, she crept back there, and allowed the sun to rise without her. Gottlieb’s voice could not awaken her to the household duties she loved to perform with such a doleful visage. She heard him open his window, and parley in angry tones with the musicians below.
‘Decoys!’ muttered Aunt Lisbeth; ‘be thou alive to them, Gottlieb!’
He went downstairs and opened the street door, whereupon the scolding and railing commenced anew.
‘Thou hast given them vantage, Gottlieb, brother mine,’ she complained; ‘and the good heavens only can say what may result from such indiscreetness.’
A silence, combustible with shuffling of feet in the passage and on the stairs, dinned horrors into Aunt Lisbeth’s head.
‘It was just that sound in the left wing of Hollenbogenblitz,’ she said: ‘only then it was night and not morning. Ursula preserve me!’
‘Why, Lisbeth! Lisbeth!’ cried Gottlieb from below. ‘Come down! ‘tis full five o’ the morning. Here’s company; and what are we to do without the woman?’
‘Ah, Gottlieb! that is like men! They do not consider how different it is for us!’ which mysterious sentence being uttered to herself alone, enjoyed a meaning it would elsewhere have been denied.
Aunt Lisbeth dressed, and met Margarita descending. They exchanged the good-morning of young maiden and old.
‘Go thou first,’ said Aunt Lisbeth.
Margarita gaily tripped ahead.
‘Girl!’ cried Aunt Lisbeth, ‘what’s that thing in thy back hair?’
‘I have borrowed Lieschen’s arrow, aunt. Mine has had an accident.’
‘Lieschen’s arrow! An accident! Now I will see to that after breakfast, Margarita.’
‘Tra-ra, ta-ta, tra-ra, tra-ra,’ sang Margarita.
‘A maiden’s true and proper ornament! Look at mine, child! I have worn it fifty years. May I deserve to wear it till I am called! O Margarita! trifle not with that symbol.’
I am so happy, aunty.’
‘Nice times to be happy in, Margarita.’
So sings the Minnesinger, aunty; and
I love the Minnesingers! Dear, sweet-mannered men they are! Such lovers! And men of deeds as well as song: sword on one side and harp on the other. They fight till set of sun, and then slacken their armour to waft a ballad to their beloved by moonlight, covered with stains of battle as they are, and weary!’
‘What a girl! Minnesingers! Yes; I know stories of those Minnesingers. They came to the castle—Margarita, a bead of thy cross is broken. I will attend to it. Wear the pearl one till I mend this. May’st thou never fall in the way of Minnesingers. They are not like Werner’s troop. They do not batter at doors: they slide into the house like snakes.’
‘Lisbeth! Lisbeth!’ they heard Gottlieb calling impatiently.
‘We come, Gottlieb!’ and in a low murmur Margarita heard her say: ‘May this day pass without trouble and shame to the pious and the chaste.’
Margarita knew the voice of the stranger before she had opened the door, and on presenting herself, the hero gave her a guardian-like salute.
‘One may see,’ he said, ‘that it requires better men than those of Werner to drive away the rose from that cheek.’
Gottlieb pressed the rosy cheek to his shoulder and patted her.
‘What do you think, Grete? You have now forty of the best lads in Cologne enrolled to protect you, and keep guard over the house night and day. There! What more could a Pfalzgrafin ask, now? And voluntary service; all to be paid with a smile, which I daresay my lady won’t refuse them. Lisbeth, you know our friend. Fear him not, good Lisbeth, and give us breakfast. Well, sweet chuck, you’re to have royal honours paid you. I warrant they’ve begun good work already in locking up that idle moony vagabond, Farina—’
‘Him? What for, my father? How dared they! What has he done?’
‘O, start not, my fairy maid! A small matter of breakage, pet! He tried to enter Cunigonde Schmidt’s chamber, and knocked down her pot of lilies: for which Berthold Schmidt knocked him down, and our friend here, out of good fellowship, knocked down Berthold. However, the chief offender is marched off to prison by your trusty guard, and there let him cool himself. Berthold shall tell you the tale himself: he’ll be here to breakfast, and receive your orders, mistress commander-in-chief.’
The Goshawk had his eye on Margarita. Her teeth were tight down on her nether lip, and her whole figure had a strange look of awkwardness, she was so divided with anger.
‘As witness of the affair, I think I shall make a clearer statement, fair maiden,’ he interposed. ‘In the first place, I am the offender. We passed under the window of the Fraulein Schmidt, and ‘twas I mounted to greet the lilies. One shoot of them is in my helm, and here let me present them to a worthier holder.’
He offered the flowers with a smile, and Margarita took them, radiant with gratitude.
‘Our friend Berthold,’ he continued, ‘thought proper to aim a blow at me behind my back, and then ran for his comrades. He was caught, and by my gallant young hero, Farina; concerning whose character I regret that your respected father and I differ: for, on the faith of a soldier and true man, he’s the finest among the fine fellows I’ve yet met in Germany, trust me. So, to cut the story short, execution was done upon Berthold by my hand, for an act of treachery. He appears to be a sort of captain of one of the troops, and not affectionately disposed to Farina; for the version of the affair you have heard from your father is a little invention of Master Berthold’s own. To do him justice, he seemed equally willing to get me under the cold stone; but a word from your good father changed the current; and as I thought I could serve our friend better free than behind bars, I accepted liberty. Pshaw! I should have accepted it any way, to tell the truth, for your German dungeons are mortal shivering ratty places. So rank me no hero, fair Mistress Margarita, though the temptation to seem one in such sweet eyes was beginning to lead me astray. And now, as to our business in the streets at this hour, believe the best of us.’
‘I will! I do!’ said Margarita.
‘Lisbeth! Lisbeth!’ called Gottlieb. ‘Breakfast, little sister! our champion is starving. He asks for wurst, milk-loaves, wine, and all thy rarest conserves. Haste, then, for the honour of Cologne is at stake.’
Aunt Lisbeth jingled her keys in and out, and soon that harmony drew a number of domestics with platters of swine flesh, rolls of white wheaten bread, the perpetual worst, milk, wine, barley-bread, and household stores of dainties in profusion, all sparkling on silver, relieved by spotless white cloth. Gottlieb beheld such a sunny twinkle across the Goshawk’s face at this hospitable array, that he gave the word of onset without waiting for Berthold, and his guest immediately fell to, and did not relax in his exertions for a full half-hour by the Cathedral clock, eschewing the beer with a wry look made up of scorn and ruefulness, and drinking a well-brimmed health in Rhine wine all round. Margarita was pensive: Aunt Lisbeth on her guard. Gottlieb remembered Charles the Great’s counsel to Archbishop Turpin, and did his best to remain on earth one of its lords dominant.
‘Poor Berthold!’ said he. ‘‘Tis a good lad, and deserves his seat at my table oftener. I suppose the flower-pot business has detained him. We’ll drink to him: eh, Grete?’
‘Drink to him, dear father!—but here he is to thank you in person.’
Margarita felt a twinge of pity as Berthold entered. The livid stains of his bruise deepened about his eyes, and gave them a wicked light whenever they were fixed intently; but they looked earnest; and spoke of a combat in which he could say that he proved no coward and was used with some cruelty. She turned on the Goshawk a mute reproach; yet smiled and loved him well when she beheld him stretch a hand of welcome and proffer a brotherly glass to Berthold. The rich goldsmith’s son was occupied in studying the horoscope of his fortunes in Margarita’s eyes; but when Margarita directed his attention to Guy, he turned to him with a glance of astonishment that yielded to cordial greeting.
‘Well done, Berthold, my brave boy! All are friends who sit at table,’ said Gottlieb. ‘In any case, at my table:
says the song; and the proverb takes it up with, “A generous enemy is a friend on the wrong side”; and no one’s to blame for that, save old Dame Fortune. So now a bumper to this jovial make-up between you. Lisbeth! you must drink it.’
The little woman bowed melancholy obedience.
‘Why did you fling and run?’ whispered Guy to Berthold.
‘Because you were two against one.’
‘Two against one, man! Why, have you no such thing as fair play in this land of yours? Did you think I should have taken advantage of that?’
‘How could I tell who you were, or what you would do?’ muttered Berthold, somewhat sullenly.
‘Truly no, friend! So you ran to make yourself twenty to two? But don’t be down on the subject. I was going to say, that though I treated you in a manner upright, ‘twas perhaps a trifle severe, considering your youth: but an example’s everything; and I must let you know in confidence, that no rascal truncheon had I flung in my life before; so, you see, I gave you all the chances.’
Berthold moved his lips in reply; but thinking of the figure of defeat he was exhibiting before Margarita, caused him to estimate unfavourably what chances had stood in his favour.
The health was drunk. Aunt Lisbeth touched the smoky yellow glass with a mincing lip, and beckoned Margarita to withdraw.
‘The tapestry, child!’ she said. ‘Dangerous things are uttered after the third glass, I know, Margarita.’
‘Do you call my champion handsome, aunt?’
‘I was going to speak to you about him, Margarita. If I remember, he has rough, good looks, as far as they go. Yes: but thou, maiden, art thou thinking of him? I have thrice watched him wink; and that, as we know, is a habit of them that have sold themselves. And what is frail womankind to expect from such a brawny animal?’
I am sure he is tender, aunt. Notice how gentle he looks now and then.’
‘Thou girl! Yes, I believe she is madly in love with him. Tender, and gentle! So is the bear when you’re outside his den; but enter it, maiden, and try! Thou good Ursula, preserve me from such a fate.’
‘Fear not, dear aunt! Have not a fear of it! Besides, it is not always the men that are bad. You must not forget Dalilah, and Lot’s wife, and Pfalzgrafin Jutta, and the Baroness who asked for a piece of poor Kraut. But, let us work, let us work!’
Margarita sat down before Siegfried, and contemplated the hero. For the first time, she marked a resemblance in his features to Farina: the same long yellow hair scattered over his shoulders as that flowing from under Siegfried’s helm; the blue eyes, square brows, and regular outlines. ‘This is a marvel,’ thought Margarita. ‘And Farina! it was to watch over me that he roamed the street last night, my best one! Is he not beautiful?’ and she looked closer at Siegfried.
Aunt Lisbeth had begun upon the dragon with her usual method, and was soon wandering through skeleton halls of the old palatial castle in Bohemia. The woolly tongue of the monster suggested fresh horrors to her, and if Margarita had listened, she might have had fair excuses to forget her lover’s condition; but her voice only did service like a piece of clock-work, and her mind was in the prison with Farina. She was long debating how to win his release; and meditated so deeply, and exclaimed in so many bursts of impatience, that Aunt Lisbeth found her heart melting to the maiden. ‘Now,’ said she, ‘that is a well-known story about the Electress Dowager of Bavaria, when she came on a visit to the castle; and, my dear child, be it a warning. Terrible, too!’ and the little woman shivered pleasantly. ‘She had—I may tell you this, Margarita—yes, she had been false to her wedded husband.—You understand, maiden; or, no! you do not understand: I understand it only partly, mind. False, I say——’
‘False—not true: go on, dear aunty,’ said Margarita, catching the word.
‘I believe she knows as much as I do!’ ejaculated Aunt Lisbeth; ‘such are girls nowadays. When I was young-oh! for a maiden to know anything then—oh! it was general reprobation. No one thought of confessing it. We blushed and held down our eyes at the very idea. Well, the Electress! she was—you must guess. So she called for her caudle at eleven o’clock at night. What do you think that was? Well, there was spirit in it: not to say nutmeg, and lemon, and peach kernels. She wanted me to sit with her, but I begged my mistress to keep me from the naughty woman: and no friend of Hilda of Bayern was Bertha of Bohmen, you may be sure. Oh! the things she talked while she was drinking her caudle.
Isentrude sat with her, and said it was fearful!—beyond blasphemy! and that she looked like a Bible witch, sitting up drinking and swearing and glaring in her nightclothes and nightcap. She was on a journey into Hungary, and claimed the hospitality of the castle on her way there. Both were widows. Well, it was a quarter to twelve. The Electress dropped back on her pillow, as she always did when she had finished the candle. Isentrude covered her over, heaped up logs on the fire, wrapped her dressing-gown about her, and prepared to sleep. It was Winter, and the wind howled at the doors, and rattled the windows, and shook the arras—Lord help us! Outside was all snow, and nothing but forest; as you saw when you came to me there, Gretelchen. Twelve struck. Isentrude was dozing; but she says that after the last stroke she woke with cold. A foggy chill hung in the room. She looked at the Electress, who had not moved. The fire burned feebly, and seemed weighed upon: Herr Je!—she thought she heard a noise. No. Quite quiet! As heaven preserve her, says slip, the smell in that room grew like an open grave, clammily putrid. Holy Virgin! This time she was certain she heard a noise; but it seemed on both sides of her. There was the great door leading to the first landing and state-room; and opposite exactly there was the panel of the secret passage. The noises seemed to advance as if step by step, and grew louder in each ear as she stood horrified on the marble of the hearth. She looked at the Electress again, and her eyes were wide open; but for all Isentrude’s calling, she would not wake. Only think! Now the noise increased, and was a regular tramp-grate, tramp-screw sound-coming nearer and nearer: Saints of mercy! The apartment was choking with vapours. Isentrude made a dart, and robed herself behind a curtain of the bed just as the two doors opened. She could see through a slit in the woven work, and winked her eyes which she had shut close on hearing the scream of the door-hinges—winked her eyes to catch a sight for moment—we are such sinful, curious creatures!—What she saw then, she says she shall never forget; nor I! As she was a living woman, there she saw the two dead princes, the Prince Palatine of Bohemia and the Elector of Bavaria, standing front to front at the foot of the bed, all in white armour, with drawn swords, and attendants holding pine-torches. Neither of them spoke. Their vizors were down; but she knew them by their arms and bearing: both tall, stately presences, good knights in their day, and had fought against the Infidel! So one of them pointed to the bed, and then a torch was lowered, and the fight commenced. Isentrude saw the sparks fly, and the steel struck till it was shattered; but they fought on, not caring for wounds, and snorting with fury as they grew hotter. They fought a whole hour. The poor girl was so eaten up with looking on, that she let go the curtain and stood quite exposed among them. So, to steady herself, she rested her hand on the bed-side; and—think what she felt—a hand as cold as ice locked hers, and get from it she could not! That instant one of the princes fell. It was Bohmen. Bayern sheathed his sword, and waved his hand, and the attendants took up the slaughtered ghost, feet and shoulders, and bore him to the door of the secret passage, while Bayern strode after—’
‘Shameful!’ exclaimed Margarita. ‘I will speak to Berthold as he descends. I hear him coming. He shall do what I wish.’
‘Call it dreadful, Grete! Dreadful it was. If Berthold would like to sit and hear—Ah! she is gone. A good girl! and of a levity only on the surface.’
Aunt Lisbeth heard Margarita’s voice rapidly addressing Berthold. His reply was low and brief. ‘Refuses to listen to anything of the sort,’ Aunt Lisbeth interpreted it. Then he seemed to be pleading, and Margarita uttering short answers. ‘I trust ‘tis nothing a maiden should not hear,’ the little lady exclaimed with a sigh.
The door opened, and Lieschen stood at the entrance.
‘For Fraulein Margarita,’ she said, holding a letter halfway out.
‘Give it,’ Aunt Lisbeth commanded.
The woman hesitated—‘‘Tis for the Fraulein.’
‘Give it, I tell thee!’ and Aunt Lisbeth eagerly seized the missive, and subjected it to the ordeal of touch. It was heavy, and contained something hard. Long pensive pressures revealed its shape on the paper. It was an arrow. ‘Go!’ said she to the woman, and, once alone, began, bee-like, to buzz all over it, and finally entered. It contained Margarita’s Silver Arrow. ‘The art of that girl!’ And the writing said:
Aunt Lisbeth placed letter and arrow in a drawer; locked it; and ‘always thought so.’ She ascended the stairs to consult with Gottlieb. Roars of laughter greeted her just as she lifted the latch, and she retreated abashed.
There was no time to lose. Farina must be caught in the act of waiting for Margarita, and by Gottlieb, or herself. Gottlieb was revelling. ‘May this be a warning to thee, Gottlieb,’ murmured Lisbeth, as she hooded her little body in Margarita’s fur-cloak, and determined that she would be the one to confound Farina.
Five minutes later Margarita returned. Aunt Lisbeth was gone. The dragon still lacked a tip to his forked tongue, and a stream of fiery threads dangled from the jaws of the monster. Another letter was brought into the room by Lieschen.
‘For Aunt Lisbeth,’ said Margarita, reading the address. ‘Who can it be from?’
‘She does not stand pressing about your letters,’ said the woman; and informed Margarita of the foregoing missive.
‘You say she drew an arrow from it?’ said Margarita, with burning face. ‘Who brought this? tell me!’ and just waiting to hear it was Farina’s mother, she tore the letter open, and read:
Margarita read no more. She went to the window, and saw her guard marshalled outside. She threw a kerchief over her head, and left the house by the garden gate.
By this time the sun stood high over Cologne. The market-places were crowded with buyers and sellers, mixed with a loitering swarm of soldiery, for whose thirsty natures winestalls had been tumbled up. Barons and knights of the empire, bravely mounted and thickly followed, poured hourly into Cologne from South Germany and North. Here, staring Suabians, and round-featured warriors of the East Kingdom, swaggered up and down, patting what horses came across them, for lack of occupation for their hands. Yonder, huge Pomeranians, with bosks of beard stiffened out square from the chin, hurtled mountainous among the peaceable inhabitants. Troopers dismounted went straddling, in tight hose and loose, prepared to drink good-will to whomsoever would furnish the best quality liquor for that solemn pledge, and equally ready to pick a quarrel with them that would not. It was a scene of flaring feathers, wide-flapped bonnets, flaunting hose, blue and battered steel plates, slashed woollen haunch-bags, leather-leggings, ensigns, and imperious boots and shoulders. Margarita was too hurried in her mind to be conscious of an imprudence; but her limbs trembled, and she instinctively quickened her steps. When she stood under the sign of the Three Holy Kings, where dwelt Farina’s mother, she put up a fervent prayer of thanks, and breathed freely.
‘I had expected a message from Lisbeth,’ said Frau Farina; ‘but thou, good heart! thou wilt help us?’
‘All that may be done by me I will do,’ replied Margarita; ‘but his mother yearns to see him, and I have come to bear her company.’
The old lady clasped her hands and wept.
‘Has he found so good a friend, my poor boy! And trust me, dear maiden, he is not unworthy, for better son never lived, and good son, good all! Surely we will go to him, but not as thou art. I will dress thee. Such throngs are in the streets: I heard them clattering in early this morning. Rest, dear heart, till I return.’
Margarita had time to inspect the single sitting-room in which her lover lived. It was planted with bottles, and vases, and pipes, and cylinders, piling on floor, chair, and table. She could not suppress a slight surprise of fear, for this display showed a dealing with hidden things, and a summoning of scattered spirits. It was this that made his brow so pale, and the round of his eye darker than youth should let it be! She dismissed the feeling, and assumed her own bright face as Dame Farina reappeared, bearing on her arm a convent garb, and other apparel. Margarita suffered herself to be invested in the white and black robes of the denial of life.
‘There!’ said the Frau Farina, ‘and to seal assurance, I have engaged a guard to accompany us. He was sorely bruised in a street combat yesterday, and was billeted below, where I nursed and tended him, and he is grateful, as man should be-though I did little, doing my utmost—and with him near us we have nought to fear.’
‘Good,’ said Margarita, and they kissed and departed. The guard was awaiting them outside.
‘Come, my little lady, and with thee the holy sister! ‘Tis no step from here, and I gage to bring ye safe, as sure as my name’s Schwartz Thier!—Hey? The good sister’s dropping. Look, now! I’ll carry her.’
Margarita recovered her self-command before he could make good this offer.
‘Only let us hasten there,’ she gasped.
The Thier strode on, and gave them safe-conduct to the prison where Farina was confined, being near one of the outer forts of the city.
‘Thank and dismiss him,’ whispered Margarita.
‘Nay! he will wait-wilt thou not, friend! We shall not be long, though it is my son I visit here,’ said Frau Farina.
‘Till to-morrow morning, my little lady! The lion thanked him that plucked the thorn from his foot, and the Thier may be black, but he’s not ungrateful, nor a worse beast than the lion.’
They entered the walls and left him.
For the first five minutes Schwartz Thier found employment for his faculties by staring at the shaky, small-paned windows of the neighbourhood. He persevered in this, after all novelty had been exhausted, from an intuitive dread of weariness. There was nothing to see. An old woman once bobbed out of an attic, and doused the flints with water. Harassed by increasing dread of the foul nightmare of nothing-to-do, the Thier endeavoured to establish amorous intelligence with her. She responded with an indignant projection of the underjaw, evanishing rapidly. There was no resource left him but to curse her with extreme heartiness. The Thier stamped his right leg, and then his left, and remembered the old woman as a grievance five minutes longer. When she was clean forgotten, he yawned. Another spouse of the moment was wanted, to be wooed, objurgated, and regretted. The prison-gate was in a secluded street. Few passengers went by, and those who did edged away from the ponderous, wanton-eyed figure of lazy mischief lounging there, as neatly as they well could. The Thier hailed two or three. One took to his legs, another bowed, smirked, gave him a kindly good-day, and affected to hear no more, having urgent business in prospect. The Thier was a faithful dog, but the temptation to betray his trust and pursue them was mighty. He began to experience an equal disposition to cry and roar. He hummed a ballad—
Give me the good old cross-bow, after all, and none of these lumbering puff-and-bangs that knock you down oftener than your man!
Good beginning, bad ending! ‘Tisn’t so always. “Many a cross has the cross-bow built,” they say. I wish I had mine, now, to peg off that old woman, or somebody. I’d swear she’s peeping at me over the gable, or behind some cranny. They’re curious, the old women, curse ‘em! And the young, for that matter. Devil a young one here.
I should like to be in for the sack of this Cologne. I’d nose out that pretty girl I was cheated of yesterday. Take the gold and silver, and give me the maiden! Her neck’s silver, and her hair gold. Ah! and her cheeks roses, and her mouth-say no more! I’m half thinking Werner, the hungry animal, has cast wolf’s eyes on her. They say he spoke of her last night. Don’t let him thwart me. Thunderblast him! I owe him a grudge. He’s beginning to forget my plan o’ life.’
A flight of pigeons across the blue top of the street abstracted the Thier from these reflections. He gaped after them in despair, and fell to stretching and shaking himself, rattling his lungs with loud reports. As he threw his eyes round again, they encountered those of a monk opposite fastened on him in penetrating silence. The Thier hated monks as a wild beast shuns fire; but now even a monk was welcome.
‘Halloo!’ he sung out.
The monk crossed over to him.
‘Friend!’ said he, ‘weariness is teaching thee wantonness. Wilt thou take service for a night’s work, where the danger is little, the reward lasting?’
‘As for that,’ replied the Thier, ‘danger comes to me like greenwood to the deer, and good pay never yet was given in promises. But I’m bound for the next hour to womankind within there. They’re my masters; as they’ve been of tough fellows before me.’
‘I will seek them, and win their consent,’ said the monk, and so left him.
‘Quick dealing!’ thought the Thier, and grew brisker. ‘The Baron won’t want me to-night: and what if he does? Let him hang himself—though, if he should, ‘twill be a pity I’m not by to help him.’
He paced under the wall to its farthest course. Turning back, he perceived the monk at the gateway.
‘A sharp hand!’ thought the Thier.
‘Intrude no question on me,’ the monk began; ‘but hold thy peace and follow: the women release thee, and gladly.’
‘That’s not my plan o’ life, now! Money down, and then command me’: and Schwartz Thier stood with one foot forward, and hand stretched out.
A curl of scorn darkened the cold features of the monk.
He slid one hand into a side of his frock above the girdle, and tossed a bag of coin.
‘Take it, if ‘tis in thee to forfeit the greater blessing,’ he cried contemptuously.
The Thier peeped into the bag, and appeared satisfied.
‘I follow,’ said he; ‘lead on, good father, and I’ll be in the track of holiness for the first time since my mother was quit of me.’
The monk hurried up the street and into the marketplace, oblivious of the postures and reverences of the people, who stopped to stare at him and his gaunt attendant. As they crossed the square, Schwartz Thier spied Henker Rothhals starting from a wine-stall on horseback, and could not forbear hailing him. Before the monk had time to utter a reproach, they were deep together in a double-shot of query and reply.
‘Whirr!’ cried the Thier, breaking on some communication. ‘Got her, have they? and swung her across stream? I’m one with ye for my share, or call me sheep!’
He waved his hand to the monk, and taking hold of the horse’s rein, ran off beside his mounted confederate, heavily shod as he was.
The monk frowned after him, and swelled with a hard sigh.
‘Gone!’ he exclaimed, ‘and the accursed gold with him! Well did a voice warn me that such service was never to be bought!’
He did not pause to bewail or repent, but returned toward the prison with rapid footsteps, muttering: ‘I with the prison-pass for two; why was I beguiled by that bandit? Saw I not the very youth given into my hands there, he that was with the damsel and the aged woman?’
Late in the noon a horseman, in the livery of the Kaiser’s body-guard, rode dry and dusty into Cologne, with tidings that the Kaiser was at Hammerstein Castle, and commanding all convocated knights, barons, counts, and princes, to assemble and prepare for his coming, on a certain bare space of ground within two leagues of Cologne, thence to swell the train of his triumphal entry into the ancient city of his empire.
Guy the Goshawk, broad-set on a Flemish mare, and a pack-horse beside him, shortly afterward left the hotel of the Three Holy Kings, and trotted up to Gottlieb’s door.
‘Tent-pitching is now my trade,’ said he, as Gottlieb came down to him. ‘My lord is with the Kaiser. I must say farewell for the nonce. Is the young lady visible?’
‘Nor young, nor old, good friend,’ replied Gottlieb, with a countenance somewhat ruffled. ‘I dined alone for lack of your company. Secret missives came, I hear, to each of them, and both are gadding. Now what think you of this, after the scene of yesterday?—Lisbeth too!’
‘Preaches from the old text, Master Groschen; “Never reckon on womankind for a wise act.” But farewell! and tell Mistress Margarita that I take it ill of her not giving me her maiden hand to salute before parting. My gravest respects to Frau Lisbeth. I shall soon be sitting with you over that prime vintage of yours, or fortune’s dead against me.’
So, with a wring of the hand, Guy put the spur to his round-flanked beast, and was quickly out of Cologne on the rough roadway.
He was neither the first nor the last of the men-at-arms hastening to obey the Kaiser’s mandate. A string of horse and foot in serpentine knots stretched along the flat land, flashing colours livelier than the spring-meadows bordering their line of passage. Guy, with a nod for all, and a greeting for the best-disposed, pushed on toward the van, till the gathering block compelled him to adopt the snail’s pace of the advance party, and gave him work enough to keep his two horses from being jammed with the mass. Now and then he cast a weather-eye on the heavens, and was soon confirmed in an opinion he had repeatedly ejaculated, that ‘the first night’s camping would be a drencher.’ In the West a black bank of cloud was blotting out the sun before his time. Northeast shone bare fields of blue lightly touched with loosefloating strips and flakes of crimson vapour. The furrows were growing purple-dark, and gradually a low moaning obscurity enwrapped the whole line, and mufed the noise of hoof, oath, and waggon-wheel in one sullen murmur.
Guy felt very much like a chopped worm, as he wriggled his way onward in the dusk, impelled from the rear, and reduced to grope after the main body. Frequent and deep counsel he took with a trusty flask suspended at his belt. It was no pleasant reflection that the rain would be down before he could build up anything like shelter for horse and man. Still sadder the necessity of selecting his post on strange ground, and in darkness. He kept an anxious look-out for the moon, and was presently rejoiced to behold a broad fire that twinkled branchy beams through an east-hill orchard.
‘My lord calls her Goddess,’ said Guy, wistfully. ‘The title’s outlandish, and more the style of these foreigners but she may have it to-night, an she ‘ll just keep the storm from shrouding her bright eye a matter of two hours.’
She rose with a boding lustre. Drifts of thin pale upper-cloud leaned down ladders, pure as virgin silver, for her to climb to her highest seat on the unrebellious half-circle of heaven.
‘My mind’s made up!’ quoth Guy to the listening part of himself. ‘Out of this I’ll get.’
By the clearer ray he had discerned a narrow track running a white parallel with the general route. At the expense of dislocating a mile of the cavalcade, he struck into it. A dyke had to be taken, some heavy fallows crossed, and the way was straight before him. He began to sneer at the slow jog-trot and absence of enterprise which made the fellows he had left shine so poorly in comparison with the Goshawk, but a sight of two cavaliers in advance checked his vanity, and now to overtake them he tasked his fat Flemish mare with unwonted pricks of the heel, that made her fling out and show more mettle than speed.
The objects of this fiery chase did not at first awake to a sense of being pursued. Both rode with mantled visages, and appeared profoundly inattentive to the world outside their meditations. But the Goshawk was not to be denied, and by dint of alternately roaring at them and upbraiding his two stumping beasts, he at last roused the younger of the cavaliers, who called to his companion loudly: without effect it seemed, for he had to repeat the warning. Guy was close up with them, when the youth exclaimed:
‘Father! holy father! ‘Tis Sathanas in person!’
The other rose and pointed trembling to a dark point in the distance as he vociferated:
‘Not here! not here; but yonder!’
Guy recognized the voice of the first speaker, and cried:
‘Stay! halt a second! Have you forgotten the Goshawk?’
‘Never!’ came the reply, ‘and forget not Farina!’
Spur and fleeter steeds carried them out of hearing ere Guy could throw in another syllable. Farina gazed back on him remorsefully, but the Monk now rated his assistant with indignation.
‘Thou weak one! nothing less than fool! to betray thy name on such an adventure as this to soul save the saints!’
Farina tossed back his locks, and held his forehead to the moon. All the Monk’s ghostly wrath was foiled by the one little last sweet word of his beloved, which made music in his ears whenever annoyance sounded.
‘And herein,’ say the old writers, ‘are lovers, who love truly, truly recompensed for their toils and pains; in that love, for which they suffer, is ever present to ward away suffering not sprung of love: but the disloyal, who serve not love faithfully, are a race given over to whatso this base world can wreak upon them, without consolation or comfort of their mistress, Love; whom sacrificing not all to, they know not to delight in.’
The soul of a lover lives through every member of him in the joy of a moonlight ride. Sorrow and grief are slow distempers that crouch from the breeze, and nourish their natures far from swift-moving things. A true lover is not one of those melancholy flies that shoot and maze over muddy stagnant pools. He must be up in the great air. He must strike all the strings of life. Swiftness is his rapture. In his wide arms he embraces the whole form of beauty. Eagle-like are his instincts; dove-like his desires. Then the fair moon is the very presence of his betrothed in heaven. So for hours rode Farina in a silver-fleeting glory; while the Monk as a shadow, galloped stern and silent beside him. So, crowning them in the sky, one half was all love and light; one, blackness and fell purpose.