The Mercenary Part 31

"Nor am I by nature very patient, your Highness!"

"Then it must be that you love Ottilie! That if I can claim your service, even your life, she, this meddler with the Lutherans, can claim and hold your love?" The Archd.u.c.h.ess spoke in low tones. Again Nigel could almost persuade himself that it was Ottilie who spoke, wishful to hear his avowal of pa.s.sion. And yet it was not Ottilie.

"Why should you begrudge her so small a gift, or rather so poor an offering, for I know not if she has accepted it?" he urged.

"Because a princess can never be sure that she commands love. Service she knows she can command, even to the death. Men will spend themselves for any bubble they call honour or duty. I grudge Ottilie your love. I grudge any woman that is loved, her lover's love." The Archd.u.c.h.ess spoke with heat.

Nigel rejoiced that the Archd.u.c.h.ess made it clear to him that in seeking the heart of Ottilie he was not spurning hers; that she was only giving tongue to the loneliness of rank. For in truth in the immediate presence of the Archd.u.c.h.ess, radiant, full of charm, he felt the memory of Ottilie pale; and, loyal as he tried to be to his colours, whether in love or war, he would have been more than man not to have felt an answering emotion had anything she said given shape to the idea that she too loved him.

So much they were able to say amid the ceremonious tumult of the arrivals.

Supper was set and the good things of Halberstadt were lavished upon the officers who had accompanied the retreat. It was not long before the Archd.u.c.h.ess and her attendant ladies left the hall for their own chambers. And it was not till the morrow that Nigel again saw the Archd.u.c.h.ess.

The circ.u.mstances of a common peril loosened the observances of ceremony and made it possible for them to meet, after Nigel had set in motion the springs of military duty which were immediately necessary. As before at Vienna the Archd.u.c.h.ess received him in the gardens of the palace, but this time in broad daylight.

"And Bramante's figure?" she asked suddenly.

"A vain imagining, your Highness! Though at the time I own I was amazed at his jugglery."

"So you deemed it mere fooling?"

"What could I else? 'Tis true the course of my life has brought me into your Highness's gracious presence. But what of Wallenstein? The Emperor will have none of him. Gustavus has pa.s.sed him by. He is as an old sword thrown in a chimney corner to stir ashes with."

The Habsburg pride and haughtiness made itself heard in her voice and seen on her lineaments.

"You do not know Albrecht von Waldstein. He is too great to rust. Can you not see that now, even now, when your armies have crumbled before Gustavus, while Tilly, the pride of Ferdinand, and Pappenheim, the pillar of Maximilian, have been broken in two like straws, that the supreme moment has come, the moment when the Emperor must and shall recall him, beg him as a suppliant to raise the fallen standards and gather yet again one of his mysterious and invincible armies, which shall drive Saxon and Brandenburger whimpering to their kennels, and Gustavus and his pastors scattering to their s.h.i.+ps!"

The tones that began in pride and scorn had changed into tones of prophetic exaltation. And for the first time Nigel comprehended that the fortunes of Wallenstein were dearer to her heart than a lover's pa.s.sion.

She was not merely what he had imagined the t.i.tular queen of Wallenstein's party in the court, but her mind and heart were engaged, enthralled by the idea of the future greatness of Wallenstein himself.

But Nigel's straightforwardness would not let him budge from his self-appointed path.

"Wallenstein is not loyal to the Emperor!"

"Loyalty!" she exclaimed in a fine note of scorn. "Loyalty in German lands! In Europe! To what? To one's faith? That does not hinder father slaying son or brother brother. To one's pacts? It is as it suits one's interests! Feudalism is dead. The Emperor's va.s.sals rise against him.

And Albrecht von Waldstein is no va.s.sal of the Emperor. He is a Bohemian n.o.ble. True, our house of Habsburg conquered Bohemia, and our brother is in name their king. But Bohemia is as free as it chooses, when it chooses."

"But Wallenstein served the Emperor, ama.s.sed untold riches in his service. Does he owe no allegiance?"

"Not a jot! He is of the race of Achilles! He fights where his eagle mind dictates, not where some trembling Agamemnon bids. But why call him disloyal?"

"Your Highness! I yield to none in admiration of Wallenstein's genius, but at every turn of my road I have met evidences of his emissaries being in touch with your father's enemies. This could have been borne, if he had boldly gone into the quarrel on the side of Gustavus, but to stay skulking at Prague while he sent out his poisonous messages...."

"Sir! I like not your adjectives!" she said, quickening her pace in her anger.

"And then waiting the event," Nigel proceeded, "to send this to Gustavus, _if he should be victorious_."

Nigel thrust his hand into his tunic and brought out a packet.

"Read what is writ!" she said carelessly.

"These for Gustavus in the event of his gaining a complete victory over Count Tilly."

"In the event," Nigel commented.

"Spare the commentary, Colonel Charteris! What lies within?"

"In substance it is an offer from Wallenstein, begging for a command from Gustavus of a pitiful twelve thousand men, and promising in return to drive the Emperor and every Habsburg out of Austria."

The eyes of the Archd.u.c.h.ess flashed. Her colour rose. Her bosom heaved and fell.

She stretched forth her hand for the letter.

Nigel did not hesitate. He gave it. Was it not his to give, his only spoil of the battlefield?

"You have made no copy? Told no one?"

"No, your Highness!"

She held out her hand again in token of dismissal. Nigel kissed it, gave one swift glance at her imperial face and went away to the ramparts.

CHAPTER XXVII.

THE RESTLESSNESS OF STEPHANIE.

The next few days pa.s.sed at Halberstadt in transforming the ma.s.s of fugitives into the semblance of an army. Cavalry and infantry were re-mustered under their regimental standards, where a nucleus existed in the shape of an old regiment. Where there was none, a new one was formed. All found an entry on some roster. The defences of the city were improved in all possible ways and provisions were got in. The little general busied himself in sending messages to all the imperial garrisons within reach to concentrate at a spot named, by the river Weser, and it was from this source that he expected to collect another army rather than from any fresh enlistments. Tilly with a bite and a sup would gladly have pa.s.sed on. He fretted under the inaction which his numerous wounds made absolutely necessary: the more so that as yet he had no certain knowledge of the trend of the plans of his great adversary.

Sometimes he talked as though he had done with war. These were the days when his wounds did not look like healing. Nigel knew the old war-dog well enough to ask, "Who shall succeed?" That stiffened the Count von Tzerclaes quickly enough. He was one of those men who do not breed successors.

But by the first days of October it was announced and confirmed that Gustavus had turned to march westward, and that the Elector of Saxony was to march upon Prague. Tilly's plans soon took a definite shape. He, too, would march westward, but along the plains of Lower Saxony into Brunswick, then towards the Rhine, gathering garrisons as he went, till he could turn and meet Gustavus with a force sufficient to annihilate him.

Nigel's rough-riders became the nucleus of a regiment, which was given to Hildebrand von Hohendorf, and he himself was again chosen by Tilly for a confidential journey to the Emperor. This time nothing was committed to writing save the commendations General Tilly thought fit to make of Nigel's conduct in the battle and during the retreat. Tilly's plans for the future conduct of the campaign, and such requests as he had to make, were carefully committed to Nigel's memory. A small escort was given him, for the task of getting from Halberstadt to Vienna without falling into the arms of Gustavus's rearguard, or some of the widely-spread Saxon contingents moving, as doubtless many of them would be doing, eastward, was one requiring great vigilance, skill, and, above all, speed, and numbers would have availed less than nothing. His plan was to make his way as straightly as possible to the nearest point of the Bavarian border, and once across that, the roads to Vienna were for the present likely to be free from Swede and Saxon alike.

The only doc.u.ment he carried, in addition to Count Tilly's letter to the Emperor, was the extraordinary letter from Wallenstein taken from the dead Count von Teschen. This the Archd.u.c.h.ess Stephanie had returned to him privately, with these few words inscribed upon the inside of the paper that enveloped them--

"_The ardour of a great loyalty createth a cloud of smoke, seen through which other men's actions may be distorted out of the natural semblance of beauty. So doth the ardour of a great love._"

Pondering over this, Nigel set out.

As to the Archd.u.c.h.ess Stephanie, no sooner was Nigel set out than she began to feel a great restlessness, which manifested itself in very desultory marches, to the wearying of her ladies, up and down in the palace, with occasional forays out into the city and along the ramparts, in the course of which she pursued the officers of high rank with puzzling questions as to the possible course of the war.

"But it is impossible, your Highness, to give a guess!" said a grave and stout general officer. "When we know what force we have to dispose of----"

"Yes! Yes!" said the impatient princess. "But still, what do you think?"