Joan of the Sword Hand Part 25

"Yes, but greybeard Louis of Courtland is not the man to do the melting!" retorted Boris.

"But I know who could!" said Jorian, nodding his head with an air of immense sagacity.

Boris went on cutting brawn upon a wooden platter with a swift and careful hand. The old servitor moved noiselessly about behind them, with feet that made no more noise than those of a cat walking on velvet.

"Who?" said Boris, shortly.

The door of the kitchen opened slightly and the tall woman stood a moment with the latch in her hand, ready to enter.

"Our Sparhawk could melt the Baltic ice!" said Jorian, and winked at Boris with his left eye in a sly manner.

Whereupon Boris dropped his knife and, seizing Jorian by the shoulders, he thrust him down upon a broad stool.

Then he dragged the platter of brawn before him and dumped the mustard pot beside it upon the deal table with a resounding clap.

"There!" he cried, "fill your silly mouth with that, Fatsides! 'Tis all you are good for. I have stood a deal of fine larded ignorance from you in my time, but nothing like this. You will be saying next that my Lady d.u.c.h.ess is taking a fancy to you!"

"She might do worse!" said Jorian philosophically, as he stirred the mustard with his knife and looked about for the ale tankard.

CHAPTER XXIII

THE FACE THAT LOOKED INTO JOAN'S

The chamber to which the d.u.c.h.ess Joan was conducted by her hostess had evidently been carefully prepared for her reception. It was a large low room, with a vaulted roof of carven wood. The work was of great merit and evidently old. The devices upon it were mostly coats-of-arms, which originally had been gilded and painted in heraldic colours, though neglect through long generations had tarnished the gold leaf and caused the colours to peel off in places. Here and there, however, were s.h.i.+elds of more recent design, but in every case the motto and scutcheon of these had been defaced. At both ends of the room were windows, through whose stained gla.s.s Joan peered without result into blank darkness. Then she opened a little square of panes just large enough to put her head through and saw a walk of lofty poplars silhouetted against the sky, dark towers of leaves all a-rustle and a-s.h.i.+ver from the zenith to the ground, as a moaning and sobbing wind drew inward and whispered to them of the coming storm.

Then Joan shut the window and looked about her. A table with a little _prie-Dieu_ stood in the corner, screened by a curtain which ran on a brazen rod. A Roman Breviary lay open on a velvet-covered table before the crucifix. Joan lifted it up and her eyes fell on the words: "_By a woman he overcame. By a woman he was overcome. A woman was once his weapon. A woman is now become the instrument of his defeat. He findeth that the weak vessel cannot be broken._"

"Nor shall it!" said Joan, looking at the cross before her; "by the strength of Mary the Mother, the weak vessel shall not be broken!"

She turned her about and examined with interest the rest of the room which for many days was to be her own. The bed was low and wide, with sheets of fine linen folded back, and over all a richly embroidered coverlet. At the further end of the chamber was a fireplace, with a projecting hood of enamelled brick, looking fresh and new amid so much that was centuries old. Oaken panels covered the walls, opening mostly into deep cupboards. The girl tried one or two of these. They proved to be unlocked and were filled with ancient parchments, giving forth a faintly aromatic smell, but without a particle of dust upon their leaves. The cleanliness of everything within the chamber had been scrupulously attended to.

For a full hour Joan walked the chamber with her hands clasped behind her back, thinking how she was to return to her well-beloved Kernsberg.

Her pride was slowly abating, and with it her anger against those faithful servants who had risked her favour to convey her beyond the reach of danger. But none the less she was resolved to go back. This conflict must not take place without her. If Kernsberg were captured, and Maurice von Lynar found personating his mistress, he would surely be put to death. If he fell into Muscovite hands that death would be by torture.

At all hazards she would return. And to this problem she turned her thoughts, knitting her brows and working her fingers nervously through each other.

She had it. There was a way. She would wait till the morrow and in the meantime--sleep.

As she stooped to blow out the last candle, a motto on the stem caught her eye. It ran round the ma.s.sive silver base of the candelabra in the thick Gothic characters of a hundred years before. Joan took the candle out of its socket and read the inscription word by word--

"DA PACEM, DOMINE, IN DIEBUS NOSTRIS."

It was her own scroll, the motto of the reigning dukes of Hohenstein--a strange one, doubtless, to be that of a fighting race, but, nevertheless, her father's and her own.

Joan held the candle in her hand a long time, looking at it, heedless of the wax that dripped on the floor.

What did her father's motto, the device of her house, upon this Baltic island, far from the highlands of Kernsberg? Had these wastes once belonged to men of her race? And this woman, who so regally played the mistress of this strange heritage, who was she? And what was the secret of the residence of one in this wilderness who, by her manner, might in her time have queened it in royal courts?

And as Joan of Hohenstein blew out the candle she mused in her heart concerning these things.

The d.u.c.h.ess Joan slept soundly, her dark boyish head pillowed on the full rounded curves of an arm thrown behind her. On the little velvet-covered table beside the bed lay her belt and its dependent sword, a faithful companion in its sheath of plain black leather. Under the pillow, and within instant reach of her right hand, was her father's dagger. With it, they said, Henry the Lion had more than once removed an enemy who stood in his way, or more honourably given the _coup de grace_ to a would-be a.s.sa.s.sin.

Without, the mood of the night had changed. The sky, which had hitherto been of favourable aspect, save for the green light in the north as they rowed across the waters of the Haff, was now overflowed by thin wisps of cloud tacking up against the wind. Towards the sea a steely blue smother had settled down along the horizon, while the thunder growled nearer like a roll of drums beaten continuously. The wind, however, was not regular, but came in little puffs and bursts, now warm, now cold, from every point of the compa.s.s.

But still Joan slept on, being tired with her journey.

In their chamber in the wing which looks towards the north the three captains lay wrapped in their several mantles, Jorian and Boris answering each other nasally, in alternate trumpet blasts, like Alp calling to Alp. Werner von Orseln alone could not sleep, and after he had sworn and kicked his noisy companions in the ribs till he was weary of the task, he rose and went to the window to cast open the lattice.

The air within felt thick and hot. He fumbled long at the catch, and in the unwholesome silence of the strange house the chief captain seemed to hear m.u.f.fled feet going to and fro on the floor above him. But of this he thought little. For strange places were familiar to him, and any sense of danger made but an added spice in his cup of life.

At last he worried the catch loose, the lattice pane fell sagging inwards on its double hinge of skin. As Werner set his face to the opening quick flashes of summer lightning flamed alternately white and lilac across the horizon, and he felt the keen spit of hailstones in his face, driving level like so many musket b.a.l.l.s when the infantry fires by platoons.

Above, in the vaulted chamber, Joan turned over on her bed, murmuring uneasily in her sleep. A white face, which for a quarter of an hour had been bent down to her dark head as it lay on the pillow, was suddenly retracted into the blackness at the girl's slight movement.

Again, apparently rea.s.sured, the shadowy visage approached as the young d.u.c.h.ess lay without further motion. Without the storm broke in a burst of appalling fury. The pale blue forks of the lightning flamed just outside the cas.e.m.e.nt in flash on continuous flash. The thunder shook the house like an earthquake.

Suddenly, and for no apparent reason, Joan's eyes opened, and she found herself looking with bewilderment into a face that bent down upon her, a white face which somehow seemed to hang suspended in the dark above her. The features were lit up by the pulsing lightning which shone in the wild eyes and glittered on a knife-blade about the handle of which were clenched the tense white fingers of a hand equally detached.

A quick icy thrill chilled the girl's marrow, darting like a spear through her body. But Joan of Hohenstein was the true seed of Henry the Lion. In a moment her right hand had grasped the sword beside her pillow. Her left, shooting upward, closed on the arm which held the threatening steel. At the same time she flung herself forward, and with the roaring turmoils of the storm dinning in her ears she grappled something that withstood her in the inters.p.a.ce of darkness that had followed the flashes. Joan's spring had been that of the couchant young wild cat. Almost without rising from her bed she had projected herself upon her enemy. Her left hand grasped the wrist so tightly that the blade fell to the ground, whereupon Joan of the Sword Hand s.h.i.+fted her grasp upwards fiercely till she felt her fingers sink deep in the soft curves of a woman's throat.

Then a shriek, long and terrible, inhuman and threatening, rang through the house. A light began to burn yellow and steady through the cracks of the chamber door, not pulsing and blue like the lightning without.

Presently, as Joan overbore her a.s.sailant upon the floor, the door opened, and glancing upwards she saw the Wordless Man stand on the threshold, a candle in one hand and a naked sword in the other.

The terrible cry which had rung in her ears had been his. At sight of him Joan unclasped her fingers from the throat of the woman and rose slowly to her feet. The old man rushed forward and knelt beside the prostrate body of his mistress.

At the same moment there came the sound of quick footsteps running up the stairway. The door flew open and Werner von Orseln burst in, also sword in hand.

"What is the meaning of this?" he shouted. "Who has dared to harm my lady?"

Joan did not answer, but remained standing tall and straight by the hooded mantel of the fireplace. As was her custom, before lying down she had clad herself in a loose gown of white silk which on all her journeys she carried in a roll at her saddle-bow.

She pointed to the mother of Maurice von Lynar, who lay on the floor, still unconscious, with the dumb man kneeling over her, chafing her hands and murmuring unintelligible tendernesses, like a mother crooning over a sick child.

But the face of the chief captain grew stern and terrible as he saw on the floor a knife of curious design. He stooped and lifted it. It was a Danish _tolle knife_, the edge a little curved outward and keen as a razor.

CHAPTER XXIV

THE SECRET OF THERESA VON LYNAR