My Lady Rotha Part 58

He shrugged his shoulders with a grand kind of patience. 'Just so,' he said. 'And now, go back to your mistress. If I live I will answer her letter. If not--it matters not.'

I was terribly afraid of him, but my love for Marie had taught me some things; and though he waved me to the door, I stood my ground a moment.

'To you, my lord, no,' I said. 'Nothing. But to her, if you fall without answering her letter----'

'What?'he said.

'You can best judge from the letter, my lord.'

'You think that she would suffer?' he answered harshly, his face growing red again. 'Well, what say you, man? Does she not deserve to suffer? Do you know what this delay may cost me? What it may mean for my child? Mein Gott,' he continued, raising his voice and striking his hand heavily on the table, 'you try me too far! Your mistress was angry. Have I no right to be angry? Have I no right to punish? Go! I have no more to say.'

And I had to go, then and there, enraged with myself, and fearful that I had said too much in my lady's behalf. I had invited this last rebuff, and I did not see how I should dare to tell her of it, or that I had exposed her to it. I had made things worse instead of better, and perhaps, after all, the message he had framed might not have hurt her much, or fallen far short of her expectations.

I should have troubled myself longer about this, but for the increasing bustle and stir of preparation that had spread by this time from the camp to the city; and filling the way with a throng of people whom the news affected in the most different ways, soon diverted my attention. While some, ready to welcome any change, shouted with joy, others wept and wrung their hands, crying out that the city was betrayed, and that the King was abandoning it. Others again antic.i.p.ated an easy victory, looked on the frowning heights of the Alta Veste as already conquered, and divided Wallenstein's spoils.

Everywhere I saw men laughing, wailing, or shaking hands; some eating of their private h.o.a.rds, others buying and selling horses, others again whooping like lunatics.

In the city the shops, long shut, were being opened, orderlies were riding to and fro, crowds were hurrying to the churches to pray for the King's success; a general stir of relief and expectancy was abroad. The suns.h.i.+ne still fell hot on the streets, but under it life moved and throbbed. The apathy of suffering was gone, and with it the savage gloom that had darkened innumerable brows. From window and dormer, from low door-ways, from carven eaves and gables, gaunt faces looked down on the stir, and pale lips prayed, and dull eyes glowed with hope.

While I was still a long way off I saw my lady at the oriel watching for me. I saw her face light up when she caught sight of me; and if, after that, I could have found any excuse for loitering in the street, or putting off my report, I should have been thankful. But there was no escape. In a moment the animation of the street was behind me, the silence of the house 'fell round me, and I stood before her. She was alone. I think that Marie had been with her; if so, she had sent her away.

'Well?' she said, looking keenly at me, and doubtless drawing her conclusions from my face. 'The Count was away?'

'No, my lady.'

'Then--you saw him?' with surprise.

'Yes.'

'And gave him the letter?'

'Yes, my lady.'

'Well'--this with impatience, and her foot began to tap the floor--'did he give you no answer?'

'No, my lady.'

She looked astonished, offended, then troubled. 'Neither in writing nor by word of mouth?' she said faintly.

'Only--that the King was about to give battle,' I stammered; 'and that if he survived, he would answer your excellency.'

She started, and looked at me searchingly, her colour fading gradually. 'That was all!' she said at last, a quaver in her voice.

'Tell me all, Martin. Count Leuchtenstein was offended, was he not?'

'I think that he was hurt, your excellency,' I confessed. 'He thought that the news about his child--should have been sent to him sooner.

That was all.'

'All!' she e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed; and for a moment she said no more, but with that word, which thrilled me, she began to pace the floor. 'All!' she repeated presently. 'But I--yes, I am justly punished. I cannot confess to him; I will confess to you. Your girl would have had me tell him this, or let her tell him this. She pressed me; she went on her knees to me that evening. But I hardened my heart, and now I am punished. I am justly punished.'

I was astonished. Not that she took it lightly, for there was that in her tone as well as in her face that forbade the thought; but that she took it with so little pa.s.sion, without tears or anger, and having been schooled so seldom in her life bore this schooling so patiently.

She stood for a time after she had spoken, looking from the window with a wistful air, and her head drooping; and I fancied that she had forgotten my presence. But by-and-by she began to ask questions about the camp, and the preparations, and what men thought of the issue, and whether Wallenstein would come down from his heights or the King be driven to the desperate task of a.s.saulting them. I told her all that I had heard. Then she said quietly that she would go to church; and she sent me to call Fraulein Max to go with her.

I found the Dutch girl sitting in a corner with her back to the windows, through which Marie and the women were gazing at the bustle and uproar and growing excitement of the street. She was reading in a great dusty book, and did not look up when I entered. Seeing her so engrossed, I had the curiosity to ask her, before I gave her my lady's message, what the book was.

'"The Siege of Leyden,"' she said, lifting her pale face for an instant, and then returning to her reading. 'By Bor.'

I could not refrain from smiling. It seemed to me so whimsical that she could find interest in the printed page, in this second-hand account of a siege, and none in the actual thing, though she had only to go to the window to see it pa.s.sing before her eyes. Doubtless she read in Bor how men and women thronged the streets of Leyden to hear each new rumour; how at every crisis the bells summoned the unarmed to church; how through long days and nights the citizens waited for relief--and she found these things of interest. But here were the same portents pa.s.sing before her eyes, and she read Bor!

'You are busy, I am afraid,' I said.

'I am using my time,' she answered primly.

'I am sorry,' I rejoined; 'for my lady wants you to go to church with her.'

She shut up her book with peevish violence, and looked at me with her weak eyes. 'Why does not your Papist go with her?' she said spitefully. 'And then you could do without me. As you do without me when you have secrets to tell! But I suppose you have brought things to such a pa.s.s now that there is nothing for it but church. And so I am called in!'

'I have given my lady's message,' I said patiently.

'Oh, I know that you are a faithful messenger!' she replied mockingly.

'Who writes love letters grows thin; who carries them, fat. You are growing a big man, Master Martin.'

CHAPTER x.x.xV.

ST. BARTHOLOMEW'S DAY.

That was a night that saw few in Nuremberg sleep soundly. Under the moon the great city lay waiting; watching and fasting through the short summer night. Hour by hour the solemn voices of sentinels, tramping the walls and towers, told the tale of time; to men, who, hearing it, muttered a prayer, and, turning on the other side, slept again; to women, who lay, trembling and sleepless, their every breath a prayer. For who would see the next night? Who that went out would come in? How many, parting at dawn, would meet again? The howling of the dogs that, wild as wolves, roved round the camp and scratched in the shallow graveyards, made dreary answer. Many there were, even then I remember, who thought the King foolhardy, and preached patience; and would have had him still sit quiet and play the game of starvation against his enemy, even to the bitter end. But these were of the harder sort--men who, with brain, might have been Wallensteins. And few of them knew the real state of things. I say nothing of the city.

Who died there in those months, in holes and corners and dark places, the magistrates may have known, no others. But in the camp, for many days before the King marched out, a hundred men died of plague and want every day; so that in the sum, twenty thousand men entered his lines who never left them. Moderate men set the loss of the city at ten thousand more. Add to these items that the plague was increasing, that all stores of food were nearly exhausted, that if the issue were longer delayed the cavalry would have no horses on which to advance or retreat, and it will be clear, I think, that the King, whose judgment had never yet deceived him, was right in this also. Or, if he erred, it was on the side of mercy.

At dawn all the northern walls and battlements were covered with white-faced women, come together to see the army leave the camp, in which it had lain so many weeks. I went up with my lady to the Burg, whence we could command, not only the city with its necklace of walls and towers, but the camp encircling it like another and greater city, encompa.s.sed in its turn with gates and ramparts and bastions. And, beyond this, we had an incomparable view of the country; of our own stream, the Pegnitz, gliding away through the level plain, to fall presently into the Rednitz; of the Rednitz, a low line of willows, running athwart the western meadows; and beyond this, a league and a half away, of the frowning heights of the Alta Veste, where Wallenstein hung, vulture-like, waiting to pounce on the city.

As the sun rose behind us, the shadow of the Burg on which we stood fell almost to the foot of the distant heights, and covered, as with a pall, the departing army, which was beginning to pa.s.s out of the camp by the northern and western gates. At the same time the level beams shone on the dark brow of the Alta Veste, and caught there the flash of lurking steel. I think that the hearts of many among us sank at the omen.

If so, it was not for long, for the sun rose swiftly in the summer sky and, as it overtopped our little eminence, showed us an innumerable host pressing out of the camp in long lines, like ants from a hill.

While we gazed, they began to swarm on the plain between the city and the Rednitz. The colours of a thousand waving pennons, the sheen of a forest of lances, the duller gleam of cannon crawling slowly along the roads, caught the sun and the eye; but between them moved other and darker ma.s.ses--the regiments of East and West Gothland, the Smaland horse, Stalhanske's Finns, the Yellow and Blue regiments, the sombre, steady veterans of the Swedish force, marching with a neatness and wheeling with a precision, noticeable even at that distance.

Doubtless it was a grand and splendid sight, this marching out of a hundred thousand men--for the army fell little short of that prodigious number--under the first captain of the age, to fight before the walls of the richest city in the world. And I have often taken blame to myself and regretted that I did not regard it with closer attention, and imprint it more carefully on my memory. But at the time I was anxious. Somewhere in that great host rode the Waldgrave and Count Leuchtenstein; and I looked for them, though I had no hope of finding them. Then little things continually diverted the mind. A single waggon, which broke down at the gate below us, and could not for a time be removed, swelled into a matter that obstructed my view of the whole army; an officer, whose horse ran away in an orchard at our feet, became, for a moment, more important than a hundred banners.

When I had done with these trifles, the sun had climbed halfway up the sky, and the foremost troops were already crossing the Rednitz by Furth, with a sound of trumpets and the flas.h.i.+ng of corselets.

A cannon shot, and then another, and then long rolling thunder from the heights, over which a pillar of smoke began to gather. My lady sighed. Below us, in the streets, on the walls, on the towers, women and men fell on their knees and prayed aloud. Across the plain hors.e.m.e.n galloped this way or that, hurrying the laggards through the dust. The great battle was beginning.

And then on a sudden the firing ceased; the pillar of smoke on the heights melted away; the rear-guard and the cloud of dust in which it moved, rolled farther and farther towards the Rednitz and Furth--and still the guns remained silent. It was noon by this time; soon it was afternoon. But the suspense was so great that no one went away to eat; and still the silence prevailed.

Towards two o'clock I persuaded the Countess to go to her lodgings to eat; but within the hour she was back again. An officer on the Burg, who had a perspective gla.s.s, reported that Wallenstein was moving; that cannon and troops could be seen pa.s.sing through the trees on the Alta Veste, as if he were descending to meet the King; and for a time our excitement rose to the highest pitch. But before sunset, news came that he was quiet; that the King was forming a new camp beyond the Rednitz, and almost under the enemy's guns; and that the battle would take place on the morrow.

The morrow! It seemed to some of us, it was always the morrow. Yet I think that we slept better that night. Earliest dawn saw us again on the Burg, staring and straining our eyes westwards. But minutes pa.s.sed, hours pa.s.sed, the sun rose and declined, and still no sound of battle reached us. Women, with pinched faces, clutched babies to their b.r.e.a.s.t.s; men, pale and stern, gazed into the distance. Those who had murmured that the King was too hasty, murmured now that he dallied; for every day the grip of famine grew tighter, its signs more marked.