The Mercenary
_WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR._
Crown 8vo, 6s.
FORTUNE'S CASTAWAY.
Crown 8vo, 6s.
HIS INDOLENCE OF ARRAS.
Popular Edition, 6d.
Crown 8vo, 6s.
THE HEARTH OF HUTTON.
Crown 8vo, 6s.
THE RED NEIGHBOUR.
Popular Edition, 1s.
Crown 8vo, 6s.
THE BACKGROUND.
Crown 8vo, 6s.
A DEMOISELLE OF FRANCE.
Crown 8vo, 6s.
THE SECOND CITY.
WILLIAM BLACKWOOD & SONS,
EDINBURGH AND LONDON.
The Mercenary
A Tale of
The Thirty Years' War
BY
W. J. ECCOTT
AUTHOR OF 'HIS INDOLENCE OF ARRAS,'
'THE RED NEIGHBOUR,' ETC.
William Blackwood and Sons
Edinburgh and London
1913
_ALL RIGHTS RESERVED_
CONTENTS.
CHAP. PAGE
I. IN SEARCH OF BOOTY 1
II. NIGEL COLLECTS HIS DUES 10
III. TILLY, COUNT OF TZERCLAËS 17
IV. ON THE ROAD TO ERFURT 24
V. TWO OF THE CATHOLIC FAITH 32
VI. AT THE CASTLE OF HRADSCHIN 42
VII. THE ROAD TO EGER 53
VIII. INTERLACING DESTINIES 61
IX. AN ITALIAN AND A SPANIARD 73
X. FATHER LAMORMAIN 81
XI. THE LOST DESPATCHES FOUND 92
XII. NIGEL MEETS FATHER LAMORMAIN 99
XIII. A FATHER, A CONFESSOR, AND A DAUGHTER 107
XIV. IN THE CIRCLE OF THE EMPEROR 114
XV. THE ARCHDUCHESS AND WALLENSTEIN 125
XVI. NIGEL'S NEW REGIMENT 133
XVII. FAREWELL TO THE ARCHDUCHESS 140
XVIII. NIGEL'S INSTRUCTIONS, WRITTEN AND UNWRITTEN 149
XIX. THE GUESTS OF THE ABBOT OF FULDA 156
XX. CASTING OUT A DEVIL 165
XXI. INTO THE FOREST'S HEART 176
XXII. THE DRAGON'S GORGE 184
XXIII. A CLASH OF HEARTS 190
XXIV. MISTRESS AND ENEMY 198
XXV. BREITENFELD 206
XXVI. AT HALBERSTADT 214
XXVII. THE RESTLESSNESS OF STEPHANIE 223
XXVIII. PREPARES THE GROUND 232
XXIX. ORBIT AND FOCUS 239
XXX. LOVE AND A LOCKSMITH 249
XXXI. AN ASSIGNATION 256
XXXII. PASTOR RAD AGAIN 263
XXXIII. THE PASTOR'S PILGRIMAGE 270
XXXIV. LUTHERAN AND JESUIT 278
XXXV. AN EMBASSY FOR STEPHANIE 286
XXXVI. A RECONNAISSANCE 293
XXXVII. THE DEFENCE OF THE LECH 301
XXXVIII. A SURPRISE AT RATISBON 307
XXXIX. THE CLOUDS AND SERGEANT BLICK 314
XL. RIDE, RIDE TOGETHER 320
XLI. A LATE ARRIVAL AT NICHOLAS KRAFT'S 329
XLII. IN THE ABBEY CHURCH 336
THE MERCENARY:
A TALE OF THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER I.
IN SEARCH OF BOOTY.
It was the evening of the second day of the sack of Magdeburg. Nigel
Charteris, soldier of fortune by profession and in rank captain of
musketeers, sought a certain house in the Kloster Strasse, if haply it
were still standing.
It troubled the captain little that Magdeburg should be sacked. He was
of the Catholic faith. And Magdeburg had proved herself malignantly
Protestant. She had flouted the Edict of Restitution. The Emperor
Ferdinand II., Habsburger by race, Catholic to the marrow, had
proclaimed that the possessions, wrenched from the grasp of the
Catholics a hundred years before by the Lutherans and Calvinists, should
be restored to Catholic hands, that the mass bell should tinkle in every
chancel, and all be as if that pestilent monk, that Junker Georg of the
Wartburg, had never been. Rome had bided her time, as Rome can always
bide her time, and seize her opportunity. The Emperor found himself
with a right good flail and a stout husbandman, Count Tilly, to wield
it. The husbandman with his flail had arrived before the
threshing-floors of Magdeburg in bleak March. It had taken him to jocund
May to force an entrance, and then the threshing and the winnowing
began.
It was a question if the house in the Kloster Strasse still stood, for
even before the turbulent entry of the Emperor's troops fires had broken
out, and still burned furiously. It was a city of shards and carcases.
Here and there streets still stood, as a patch of corn stands, left for
to-morrow's cutting, amid the prone swathes. Nigel wondered if he would
be able to recognise the street that he had left as the dawn broke that
morning.
"This is the street, Captain. The spire's had a shake!" said Sergeant
Blick.
Nigel nodded, and strode over the stones, and the sheet-lead, and the
broken images of stone and of human flesh that lay in his path. But for
the loss of its church-tower the street was still passably whole.
Clambering over the barrier of ruins, a half company of musketeers
followed in loose order, expectant of more plunder. All day they had
spent in camp, and were now let out for their share in the ruthless
harvesting. There was method too in their captain's gleaning.
He halted his men, and addressed Sergeant Blick in the tone of a man
used to command and accustomed to be obeyed.
"Now, Sergeant, you and two men come with me. The rest may help
themselves in this street. It is now seven o'clock. At nine they will
fall in, and march back to camp. No throat-cutting! No drunkenness! And
no mishandling of women!"
Sergeant Blick wheeled about, marched three paces to the front, and
repeated the orders in a fine sonorous voice. By way of making them more
intelligible, he called his men "drunken pigs" and "little calves" and
"blunderheads," and added a few very personal admonitions to the more
wilfully or weakly inclined of the flock. Then he wheeled about again,
his two picked men followed, and Nigel, in front of the three, marched
up the street till he came to a tall house which stood with projecting
upper storeys and an almost magisterial aspect amid its smaller fellows.
The massive door yielded to a push, admitting them to a stone-paved
hall, on either side of which there were some very meagrely furnished
rooms, and behind it kitchens, larders, and servants' quarters equally
bare. Nothing of potable or eatable was to be seen. Nor was there a
single kitchen wench.
Having made this reconnaissance, Nigel mounted the wide open staircase
with Sergeant Blick at his heels, and the two musketeers, two steps
behind, to preserve the distance prescribed by the sergeant's rank.
They halted at the first landing. From behind the first door came the
stifled cry of a woman, and a dull sound of a fall. Sergeant Blick
essayed to open it in vain.
Nigel Charteris rapped upon it with the hilt of his sword.
"Open in the name of the Emperor!" he demanded.
A key turned in the lock.
"I warn you!" said a haughty voice, the voice of a woman of rank, rich
and full. "You enter at your own peril!"
For answer Nigel thrust his foot and his steel cap into the opening as
the door gave way a span, and a dagger descended with the breathless
fury of a woman's onset, only to glance off the casque, while the
assailed swung round and seized the wrist of the thruster. The dagger
fell to the floor. Blick stooped and picked it up and thrust it into his
belt, where it had company of the same sort. It was worth a guilder, he
reflected; and stood waiting just inside the door, his men without.
The soldier of fortune was a tall man, and she who faced him, flushed
and disappointed, was a tall woman. The soldier of fortune was a
handsome fellow of a dark russet upon olive complexion, with a crisp
curl to his moustaches and his hair, though little of that emerged from
the steel cap inlaid with gold that had so well protected him. Her eyes
ran over him and said to her "Lineage." His eyes in turn told him that
the woman was sprung of a ruling race, incapable of fear, unused to any
domination: told him also that she had dark hair in abundance, dark
mist-laden eyes, a clear paleness of complexion which was neither white
nor yellow nor pink nor olive; told him that her carriage was that of a
queen, and that she was as virginal as the dawn.
If the eagle in her held his eyes in its imperious clutch, hers
encountered a spirit just as much an eagle's. High lineage and high
poverty had been his portion, and no Charteris had ever feared to look a
haughty beauty in the eyes.
It was the matter of an instant. Nigel looked round.
In the embrasure of the principal window, seated in a great chair, was
the figure of an old man, whose dress denoted a Lutheran pastor. His
head was fallen helplessly sidelong on the pillows that had but a few
moments ago supported it. He was dead. At his feet, half on the dais of
the window, lay a golden-haired girl. The great white kerchief that
covered her shoulders and bosom showed a red spot over the heart, and a
little dagger was still enclosed by the listless fingers that lay quiet
in her lap. She too looked like one that is dead.
"Your handiwork, brave captain!" said the dark lady bitterly. "Pastor
Reinheit died of shock as you halted without. Elspeth stabbed herself to
save her honour as soon as she heard your footsteps on the stair. It was
well done!"
"Count Tilly does not make war upon girls!" said Nigel angrily, striding
across and kneeling beside the girl. "Bring water, linen, and salve!"
Gently he laid her flat upon the floor with a cushion beneath her head.
Quickly he unfastened the neckerchief and staunched the blood till he
could see the wound, of what width it was, and how the blood welled up
into its mouth. Then he looked at the dagger.
"Blick! Look you here! A flesh wound! A thumbnail's depth? What say
you?"
Sergeant Blick gently pinched the wound.
"Aye, is it! More fright than hurt! A barber's stitch of a silk thread.
A bandage and salve! 'Tis all she needs."
Nigel looked up. The lady of the misty eyes looked down.
"She lives!" said he. "You have but to wash the wound, put in three
stitches, lay salve upon it and a bandage of linen. She will not bleed
to death this time."
The woman knelt down and did as she was bidden with deft long fingers
and without a word.
Before the bandage was made secure the girl Elspeth opened her eyes and
her gaze fell first upon Nigel. A red flush came to her cheek, perhaps
because of her neck lying so uncovered before a man, perhaps by reason
of other thoughts. And as the colour natural to her face, a healthy rosy
hue, came back, Nigel on his part gave a little start of surprise and
turned away. He wondered that he had not known her again. Yesterday she
had worn a healthy ruddiness in her cheeks and a white dress upon her
jolly plump form. To-day with the absolute pallor of her swoon and her
sombre grey clothes his eyes had been cheated, or was it that his eyes
had lost something of their natural sharpness in the duello with those
others of the race of eagles?
The service rendered to her golden-haired friend, the snowy neck once
more shrouded in its covering kerchief, the dark lady resumed her
haughty aloofness. A flash had broken through the mists of her eyes, as
a passing gleam of the moon breaks for an instant through fast scudding
clouds, when she saw the recognition pass. Perhaps she wondered. Elspeth
was of the burgher-class, well-to-do it might be, and she who looked was
noble by every outward token, and might well disregard such affairs as
brought a poor gentleman of the sword, and an outlander to boot, into
contact with a burgher-maiden at the sack of Magdeburg.
Nigel Charteris was indifferent. He concerned himself as little with the
thoughts of either girl. His present business was the gathering of
booty. No man became soldier or officer in Tilly's army for his pay. Pay
was a mighty uncertain thing. So was the sack of a town. So many were
the avenues to perdition, or to salvation, according to one's views of
the future state, and of one's own destination in it. A shot from a
window, a tile from a roof, a stab in a dark corner, any of the three
might "his quietus make." It was only common justice in the soldier's
rough code that, when Dame Fortune came his way and opened a town's
gates to him, he should fill his pockets, and any odd sack he could bear
with him on his march. How should he pay Peter for the ultimate repose
of his soul if not by relieving Paul of those riches that were an actual
impediment to Paul's salvation?
Nigel took a brief survey of the room, and his eyes rested upon the
motionless figure of the dead pastor, unreal-looking in posture and in
face. He frowned and crossed himself.
The proud lady followed his glance.
"A brave piece of work your Edict of Restitution! Is it not time to get
on with your trade?" she taunted.
"In good time!" he said curtly. "Call in two men!" was his order to
Sergeant Blick.
The two men came in, muskets at the ready.
"This lady will show you where to lay the old man!" he said.
As before she obeyed, stepping across the room to a door which opened
into a small bedchamber. The two men-at-arms at a sign from the sergeant
lifted the body and laid it on the bed. Elspeth of the golden-hair made
an effort to rise, bent on following, but her strength had not yet
returned. She lay back again on her cushion and wept silently.
"Peace! Lie still, dear heart!" said the dark lady, kneeling beside her
and holding her hand, raising about her the bulwark of her own
compassion, as who should say to Nigel Charteris that he was without the
pale.
When the door of the dead man's chamber closed and the musketeers stood
once more to command he bade them make ready their weapons. Without a
look at the women he strode across the chamber to another door at the
opposite side of the room to that which he had entered and flung it
open.
In the doorway stood three very determined-looking men armed with pikes,
and behind them a motley assembly of burghers, some armed, some not.
A curiously interested expression came upon the face of her who knelt.
To her mind Tilly's captain was in the toils.
But Tilly's captain had quick ears. He had divined something of what lay
behind the door. When he stepped backward three paces and drew his
sword, there stood covering the door with their muskets his two men.
The three men looked at one another. It was certain death for two out of
the three. Which two? Would the others, their comrades, face it out and
cut down the hated Catholics? There was a certain disadvantage in
knowing their fellows. They were not sure of them. They were quite sure
about the musketeers and Tilly's captain. Nigel Charteris had led a
round dozen of storming parties.
"Come you!" said he with the short stern note of command.
The man indicated came sullenly forward, laid his weapon in a corner and
stood upright against the wall. One by one the rest did the same as he
did.
One of them was a young pastor whose thick, coarse, straw-coloured hair,
heavy brow and lower jaw, companioned by two cold blue eyes, proclaimed
physical energy and dour obstinacy to be his, whatever theology he
carried in his wallet.
"My Bible is my weapon," he said, looking his captor in the face. "Woe
unto you who wound maidens and spoil the houses of the true faith! Woe
to the Edict of Restitution, edict of robbery and murder in the name of
which you come! Woe to the Emperor, rightly named of Rome, for from Rome
he has his orders, and from Rome his monstrous superstitions!"
His intention was to kneel beside Elspeth, but Nigel pointed to the
wall.
It was a medley of weapons; an old halbert or two, some ancient bows,
swords of divers patterns, daggers not a few, pikes and hunting knives,
two heavy smith's hammers, and half a dozen pistols and firelocks of
ponderous make and uncertain utility. These made up the tale of them.
It was a medley of men who surrendered them. Some of their belts and
other accoutrements proclaimed them the organised defenders of the city,
other than the Swedish soldiery that Gustavus had thrown into the place
together with his devoted officer Falkenburg. The rest were merchants,
artificers, apprentices, of whom some had doubtless assisted in the
defence of the city, and others probably had continued to ply their
callings with what peace they could.
Why they had mustered in this house round their old pastor, and with
what hope remained, Nigel could only guess. In fact he cared nothing to
know. It was but a nest of hornets to destroy.
Sergeant Blick whistled from the window. Two more men appeared to guard
the door. Then he went off to gather the rest of his half company.