The Mercenary Part 37

By this time his face and figure were too well known to the pages or the domestics of the palace to excite remark, and he easily contrived an errand to one of the officers on guard in the palace, which made it reasonable for him to be seen pa.s.sing along the corridor in question and returning. But on his return he took the left hand into the orangery instead of the right into the courtyard, and an instant sufficed for him to find the key and let himself out on to the terrace.

By what means the other conspirator would reach the rendezvous he did not know, but from the rambling building of the palace many doors led into the gardens. Few of them showed any trace of usage, but one no doubt led to the private apartments of the Archd.u.c.h.ess.

Once more the moon befriended him, but this time she seemed to Nigel to be like himself, or perhaps more justly like his mistress. For, fitfully gleaming, now wholly to be seen, now half in shadow, now again wholly lost, the moon seemed to scurry from one clot of cloud, ragged and grey and wintry, to another hiding-place still more opaque, and always scurrying. Nigel knew well it was the wind in the upper air that drove the clouds across her face, but the image pleased him as he went by purposely circuitous ways towards the orchard close, his key securely in his pocket, his cloak wrapped round him, his hat pulled down well across his brows, his sword in its place at his side.

There was nothing languorous about this night, nothing effeminate but the moon. But in chill December, as in soft breathing June, an a.s.signation with a maid is as fruitful of lovers' walks and the exercise of lovers' patience.

So he drew near to the orchard close, and paused in the shadows before he set key to lock.

Now that he was so near he felt more of love's awe. He wondered if it had been some rustic maiden--Elspeth Reinheit, for example--he would have felt it. But of Elspeth Reinheit he had never felt in such a way.

Many maidens in many places had cast questioning, subtly troubling, glances at him, and always till he had seen her, whom he had deemed Ottilie the mysterious, their glances had fallen from him like spent arrows from a buckler. She alone was above all different in kind, a creature of a lone world where he was a hardy adventurer. He was a new Pizarro penetrating a deserted temple of the Incas, and finding a solitary priestess whose lofty mien and more than human beauty forbade him to desecrate the sanctuary, while she chanted in an unknown tongue songs of infinite allurement.

He thrust the key into the lock.

CHAPTER x.x.xI.

AN a.s.sIGNATION.

The lock yielded. The door opened. But the walk was bare as far as the fitful moonlight showed. He strode forward almost as if he feared an ambush, though at this part of the garden the short bare trees and standards made but the cover of a spider's-web tracery, through which one sees what is beyond. Only towards the middle of the orchard was there a spot where several walks met, and this was nearly surrounded by evergreen bushes and laurel and holly. This alone loomed blackly in front of him. Towards this he strode. And even as he gained the entrance a tall figure of a woman, cloaked and hooded, emerged from the encompa.s.sing dusk, and coming nearer, revealed itself as that of the Archd.u.c.h.ess.

Dimly Nigel divined that she wore the deep blue velvet and sable furs which he had seen aforetime. More clearly he distinguished in the depths of the hood the dancing of those l.u.s.trous eyes, the pouting red lips of that royal mouth, the pallor of the cheeks.

He took her hand to kiss, but she bent forward with a look of enticement.

"Nay! tall captain!" she said. "We need not use the fas.h.i.+on of the courts. It was not so you kissed Ottilie, or so she told me."

But nevertheless she tendered but her cheek, in token, as he understood it, that she had but surrendered the furthest outworks. That vain imagining of his, that to be within arm's length of her was to throw the reins upon the neck of pa.s.sion and let it gallop, had vanished when he put the key in the lock.

Woman the queen, woman the giver and the withholder, leaned graciously towards him by reason of the love that had descended upon her, abasing her to him, exalting him to her, banis.h.i.+ng all thrusting rebellious swashbuckling imaginations from the presence. Tumultuous his thoughts sprang towards speech, but little could he find but an almost breathless--

"Stephanie! Of all living men to choose me for your lover?"

"Nay! tall captain!" Craftily she had ranged herself beside him and rested her hand upon his shoulder, looking up into his eyes with her face of roguish wooer. "Nay! tall captain! You had already taken my sister-half, Ottilie, by a.s.sault, and it is not seeming that an Archd.u.c.h.ess should be bussed by more than one bold fellow, so I even proffer my cheek to the same smiter for honour's sake."

The tone of raillery set him at his ease. He felt that beneath it beat the true womanly heart. And over him stole a great, a measureless content.

He took her left hand in his, and holding so much of her closely to his side, they began to walk here and there about the orchard by first one and then another of its many paths.

"It is amazing that I did not guess your riddle before, my love," he said.

"Count Tilly guessed it at Magdeburg!" she said. "But he feigned not to, thinking doubtless it would be as well my madcap freaks should not come to the Emperor through him."

"But you put on a different seeming! The voice was like, but the language of Ottilie was different, smacked of the country lady. The face of Ottilie was like that of the Archd.u.c.h.ess, but the manner and bearing were less haughty and less a.s.sured."

"But the truth was that you saw me in distant places and in changed circ.u.mstances, so that you were p.r.o.ne to think of me as two distinct women."

"And now tell me the meaning of this masquerade! It was for Wallenstein!

I am sure of that! You were in love with Wallenstein?"

"Never! You are going to be my first lover and my last!" Her tone was deep and serious. There was something of presage, of mystery, a hint of doom.

"I was taken, as a girl will be, with the glamour that glowed about his name, as he rose from step to step by great leaps of success. It was the star of Wallenstein that I followed. I dreamed of being caught up into its...o...b..t, and, moving, throned above the nations in its company, sharing and contributing to its brightness."

"And Wallenstein? Did he know?"

"Wallenstein knew that I was favouring his party and his plans. He knew that I was willing to run terrible risks, as I have done, to forward his aims. But Wallenstein is a merchant, not a prince, a politician, not a man! The glamour became more transparent as time went on, and when I met you, Nigel, it was as if a wind from the hills swept over the plain, sweeping away the mists of morning and leaving everything clear and visible. For you showed yourself a man. You were not old and full of wiles like Father Lamormain or Maximilian. You were not like a mere courtier, as so many that I have known are, ready to agree to this and that and everything. You withstood me, thwarted me, outplayed me."

"Not always, Stephanie! There was a castle called the Wartburg!"

At this reminiscence the Archd.u.c.h.ess flushed beneath her hood, which Nigel did not see. But he felt the sly pinch that accompanied her cry.

"Speak not of it! You took more away with you than you brought!" The hood was turned up towards him now, and he could look down into the depths of those translucent womanly eyes, br.i.m.m.i.n.g with the tenderness of first love, more magical than which is nothing of human tenderness.

"And I," said Nigel, "had never loved woman till I saw you in the Pastor's house at Magdeburg. It was as if a bee had stung me. I felt the sharp p.r.i.c.k, told myself it was naught. But the poison worked. At Erfurt, when I knew it was you that had wept in the cathedral, and we stood by the bridge looking at the rivers and the stars and heard you speak of love, I recognised the pain again, I knew the longing that had set in, but also, knowing that you spoke not of me, again I brushed the thought aside. But never for long...." Something seemed to come into his mind.... He paused awhile, the Archd.u.c.h.ess hanging upon his next words, savouring the essence of what had gone before....

"Who stole my despatches?"

"The same hand that restored them! Speak not of them!"

"I wondered if I had awakened what would have happened!"

"A woman's wit----"

"Would have been little proof against a man's sword-thrust in the dark,"

said Nigel sternly.

"I will not run such a risk again," she said with humility, "unless it be to save you!"

"Foolish princess!" he rejoined, and held her suddenly in his arms.

"You are bewitched! And so am I." This time there was no pretence of offering a cheek. It was a fortunate dark shadow in which they stood, and lips levied toll of lips, and were not satisfied with the rate of customs. Heart beat to heart and beat the more, but Nigel's reverence for her, for all he held her so closely, was as high as her greatness of soul.

"It is enough, tall captain, and yet not enough. But our plans! We have already spent a foolish hour and made no plans."

Her warning tumbled Nigel headlong out of his tower to an ungrateful earth. Plans to what end?

"Oh, Stephanie! My princess! To-morrow or the next day or the next I must set out for Tilly's army. A plan to see you, to hold you, what need I but this key and your sweet graciousness?"

"Once to meet you in my orchard close! Once was easy and possible. But do you think we could meet twice and not be spied upon. I know the palace of Vienna and its ways as you can never know them. Spies of Father Lamormain, hirelings of Maximilian's, hirelings of France and Spain."

"And your love is a great and precious jewel," said Nigel, "too great, too precious to be jeopardised."

"If you would wear it and me forever," ... she murmured, "we must hide it now, peeping at it now and then in secret, till the time is ripe to run the great risk of our lives and proclaim it in the ears of the court and of Europe. Whether it will be a convent or death for me, or death for you and me, for I would die rather than wed Maximilian, or life for both of us, is hidden behind the shadows as the dark encircles us now.

But we must not barter our chances for any trifling joy----"