The Mercenary Part 39

"And would they have gone scathless? Has the forest lost all its manhood?"

"What was done or left undone cannot be remedied!" said the pastor.

"Did you know the man?" the farmer asked after a pause.

"Yes, it is the same fellow, a Scot, so they told me, who broke into the house at Magdeburg!"

"And saved all your lives, so Elspeth told me! 'Tis a pity he saved yours!"

"Friend Nicholas! You are too much beside yourself with grief. I was but an instrument of G.o.d."

"He rode with you to Erfurt, as I mind," the farmer went on. "Did he treat Elspeth as a light o' love?"

As a matter of fact, the pastor had been too much engaged in the contemplation of his coming sermons to remember, so he answered truthfully enough--

"I noticed nothing unseemly in his behaviour either to Elspeth or to Ottilie von Thuringen!"

"It may be that the captain but took her to a place of safety, thinking her in danger!" said the farmer, growing more placid as the thought sprang up that there was ground for hope. "I remember a regiment staying near here the night after your hocus-pocus at Ruhla. They came at nightfall, and with the dawn, or soon after, an officer came riding helter-skelter down the hill from the Wartburg with a single soldier after him, and in half an hour they mounted and rode away. Maybe he was the very man."

"But if he brought Elspeth thither why did he not send her to you?"

propounded Pastor Rad.

"Because the girl would have had more sense than to get in your path again!"

"As if I had no work of the Lord's to do, where the hosts of the Lord were drawn out unto battle?"

"Depend upon it," said the farmer, "Elspeth's in the Wartburg hiding!"

The pastor shook his head. He would have liked to know that she was.

After all, there was an air of solid comfort about old Reinheit's abode, sadly marred by the lack of Elspeth's trim figure in coif and ap.r.o.n trotting to and fro. The more he thought of it the more he wanted to see her. At last he said--

"It may be that the Lord will vouchsafe light I will go even unto the Wartburg and question the Landgravine, if peradventure she knows where the maiden is."

"You need not darken my door again if you find her not," said Nicholas Reinheit. "She can milk against any maid, make b.u.t.ter against any maid or wife in the forest, bake against any, brew against any. G.o.d in heaven! she must come back. And I shan't go to the church till she does."

Pastor Rad was too much surprised to say anything. For Nicholas had been a very steadfast pillar of the Church, and it boded ill for Pastor Rad if he did not succeed in restoring the lost lamb to the fold.

So he picked up his staff and trudged thoughtfully away up the steep path to the Wartburg.

But the quest did not end there. For the Landgravine told him that the Lady Ottilie von Thuringen had taken Elspeth away with her when she set out for Halberstadt, which was the next day, or the next day but one, after the Emperor's colonel had brought her.

This news acted like a spur upon Pastor Rad. He stayed long enough to send word by one of Reinheit's cowherds that he had learned something about Elspeth and had gone to find her. If he heard nothing of Elspeth, at least he was sure of getting trace of the Lady Ottilie, who had many threads of connection with the Protestant leaders in various places. And he did not have to go farther than Erfurt before he received some information which caused him to return southward and set his face towards Bohemia.

CHAPTER x.x.xIII.

THE PASTOR'S PILGRIMAGE.

The Archd.u.c.h.ess Stephanie had rightly counted on a safe journey from Halberstadt to Bohemia, however small an escort she might be accorded.

For, as the Countess Ottilie von Thuringen she claimed safe conduct whenever there was any risk of getting embroiled with small bodies of Protestant levies, and her escort was far too mindful of its own safety to risk giving any other account of her than she chose to give.

As it was a matter of knowledge to the chief conspirators in each place that she was a medium of communication between Wallenstein and the Protestant leaders, her name was sufficient to guarantee her safety through country patrolled by their troops.

So it was the track of the Countess Ottilie von Thuringen that Pastor Rad picked up at Erfurt. He learned that she had an escort of twenty Imperial troopers: that she had in her train several women servants or companions, the information not being very exact or well-defined: that she was making her way to Prague.

To Prague, then, the pastor made his way easily enough. The man that had come through the fires at Magdeburg and run innumerable risks at Breitenfeld, although not himself using the arms of the soldiery but only spiritual weapons, was in a measure a kind of prodigious heroic creature, and fared well accordingly. Much talking and preaching made him exceedingly hungry, and the farmers and burghers, who one after the other housed and fed him, were as much amazed at, and respected him as a trencherman, a thing they were well able to judge of, as they were at his exploits, of which they were, in truth, obliged to take the greater part at his own telling.

Prague was in a great turmoil. For bruit of the advance of the Saxon troops was in every mouth, though no one knew anything for certain.

Indeed Pastor Rad knew as well as any one, though he kept his own counsel. The way of things was indeed greatly to his liking. The Lutherans were getting the upper hand, just as but a short year before the Catholics had done. It was in this wise. The Catholics had learned that no sufficient aid could reach them from Vienna. They had looked for Wallenstein to organise their defence, and had he chosen to raise his own banner, it is possible that a sufficient force of Catholic gentry and their retainers could have been mustered that, together with the Imperial garrisons, might have given the Saxons a very long pause.

But to the amazement of all, Wallenstein dismantled his house, collected his furniture in waggons and his household in coaches, and set out without haste towards Vienna. In fact, he rested at Znaim. This had given the signal for something like panic, and although it was the dead of winter, Catholic family after Catholic family followed in his wake, each departure making it still more difficult for the next, and creating confusion through the desperate efforts of each not to be the hindermost.

From the innkeepers Pastor Rad learned that the Countess Ottilie had rested but a night and gone on to Znaim, which being learned, the pastor could not resist the temptation of spending a day or two in the congenial company of the Lutherans of Prague, proving how well he could bray out prophetic denunciations against the fleeing Catholics. As he took his daily stand near the south gate of the city, his exuberant yellow locks floating in the wind, he was able to a.s.sail with his scriptural invective all the fugitives, with the certainty that some of his words at least would be, if not exactly treasured, at all events remembered by dint of his unwearied reiteration.

It was only when the burghers of Prague, tenacious of their privileges and of the well-ordering of their city, even with the dismal prospect before them of an occupation by their friends the Saxons, awakened to a sense of the unseemliness of his clamour, that Pastor Rad remembered the Lady Ottilie and Elspeth Reinheit, whose father was so well-to-do.

Once again he took staff in hand and trudged on to Znaim. At Znaim the host could only say that the Lady Ottilie had set out a full month before for Vienna.

He looked blank at the prospect. But he was by nature persistent, and unwilling to give up his search, which was now somewhat uninviting.

Vienna meant Popery rampant, Jesuits in scores, rough soldiery, not rougher than usual, but with the licence of authority to subject a mere Lutheran pastor to all kinds of insults. There would be Lutherans even in Vienna, but those few and needy, and for companions on the road he would overtake the very Catholics he had so denounced.

Of money he had no great store, but he had contrived some replenis.h.i.+ng of his purse at Prague, and husbanded his money as much as possible, taking advantage of every opportunity that offered of a free meal. In this way he accomplished the journey without much interruption, a few hard blows from the servants of those who remembered his oratory at Prague, excepted.

Vienna with its populace, as it seemed to him, speaking all the tongues except German and curiously garbed, thronging with priests and nuns and soldiers, stared at him, professed not to understand his speech. He slunk into the first inn that offered a semblance of refuge and frugal fare at a modest price. Having slept as well as he was able, he set out the next morning to find the Lady Ottilie von Thuringen.

Having first approached some of his own belief and discovered that they knew nothing of her, not even her name, he accosted some of the better cla.s.s of burgesses, who showed him greater courtesy than he expected, but could give him no information. Failing with the citizens, he addressed himself with more politeness than he was in the habit of using (he had no very abundant stock in his wallet) to some of the gentlemen who aired themselves and their newest raiment in the princ.i.p.al streets.

One or two of them manifested sufficient interest to take note of the name on their tablets and asked him to describe the lady, which he did with much particularity. These having heard, dismissed him with a vague negative, but left a disturbing impression on his mind that they knew more than they pretended.

Two days went by in this manner and in losing his way and finding it in the tortuous streets of the city. On the third day, however, he saw, as he stood gazing at the palace of the Emperor, an officer of high rank, as it seemed, come out and mount his horse which had been held by a soldier at the entrance.

The pastor's eyes roved wearily over this new subject, noting with contemptuous attention the plumed hat, the gold lace galloons and other striking embellishments, when something familiar in the officer's features or att.i.tude came home to his consciousness. Then he recognised Nigel as the miscreant of Magdeburg, who had given him that never-to-be-forgotten chastis.e.m.e.nt.

Pulling his hat over his brows the pastor followed Nigel to his lodgings, and from midday till dusk he watched, following when Nigel set out, waiting when he returned. In what way he was to come at his desired end he did not know; but his old suspicion that between Nigel and Elspeth was some dark secret understanding had leapt to his mind with renewed vigour. It was a great joy to him when at dusk Nigel once more emerged, wrapped in a military cloak, bent upon some, so the pastor judged, furtive errand.

The dusk that favoured Nigel favoured him also. He followed with all the sleuth-hound in his composition, alert and noiseless. He wanted no second rencontre with that energetic Scot, but he did want to know very much whither he was bound.

He had much ado to keep pace, for Nigel walked quickly, but the pastor was a st.u.r.dy man and young. He kept well up and always in the shadow.

The road lay away from the main streets into meaner ones, then left the houses altogether. On the left lay the city walls, furnished now and again with guard-houses, and defensive angles, and projections. On the right was a high bank, surmounted by a wall, of what height or thickness he could not gauge.

At a certain point Nigel stopped, looked round a moment, and then began to climb the bank. The pastor stood in the nearest shadow at the foot and watched till Nigel was at the top. Then the darkness was too much for him. Very stealthily the pastor climbed too. He was not a forest man for nothing. At the top it was clear that Nigel had disappeared. He must therefore have climbed the wall.

The wall was high, about twice the height of a man, with a coping-stone at the top, pent-house-wise, and grown thickly with moss and lichen and wild flowers. The wall was also rough, and the little clumps of moss showing in the interstices marked uneven places of which a climber might take advantage if he had long fingers and stout toes. But how to get off the ground was a problem. For a few moments he groped, half inclined to impute to "the Popish captain," as he called him, the sin of witchcraft, in addition to those of greed, unchast.i.ty, impiety, and a string of others of which the pastor was satisfied already. Then something that flicked him in the face, to wit, the leafless bough of a tree, brought him the solution. To spring for one a little above his head, and use it for a hand-grip while he stepped from toe-place to toe-place, and finally could dig his fingers securely into a great clump of moss at the coping with his right hand and haul himself up, took but a short interval of time. The getting down was not difficult.

The darkness had swallowed up Nigel. The gra.s.s made his footfall noiseless. The pastor's eyes, accustomed to the half darkness of the forest, were well fitted to the task at present. They enabled him merely to avoid or to thread the tangle of the bushes and get more and more into the open where the sky, now starlit, now cloudy by turns, allowed him a longer vision. At last he saw that the belt of gra.s.sland dotted by bushes was succeeded by formal walks and beds for flowers. A mile or so ahead he caught fitful glimpses of lights in some tall pile of buildings, which he conjectured to be the palace. These must be the demesnes of the Emperor's dwelling-place. His Popish captain was bent upon a rendezvous, doubtless with Elspeth. But where? Cautiously he stalked along making a straight line for the palace, keeping to turf or soft flower-beds by preference, and every now and then standing in the shadow of a sapling to seek for the amorous pair, to listen for the whispers that might betoken their presence. And so going farther and farther he came to a hedge, behind which was another wall, this time of no great height, but still sufficient. Along this he crept seeking for a gate. Here was a garden close for growing fruit, he argued, and the lovers might well have left a door unfastened in their eagerness. But having made the circuit and discovered three doors all secure, he found he must prove again his skill in climbing. The wind blowing just sufficiently to make the twigs and boughs keep up a low whistling, made it impossible to judge where he should make his attempt. So he selected the corner with an eye to an easy ascent. Once upon the wall he paused, lying flat and clasping its top with both hands.