ON THE ROAD TO ERFURT.
Let your journeying be never so brief, it need not be tedious. The road
was as flat from Magdeburg to Strassfurt, and that was twenty miles, as
is the great plain that stretches from the Zuider Zee to Warsaw and on
and on. There were undulations. It was not as flat as a backgammon
board, nor had it a hill that would have made an old horse out of
breath.
It was a sunshiny morning towards the end of May, and the sun rises
early over the German lands in May, and shines hotly towards noon on the
great plain. There was little or no shelter, but horses and men, even
the pastor, though he came from the pine forests of Thüringen, thought
little of the heat and the dust. To the men it was a holiday jaunt after
the military turmoils of the past two months. To the pastor it was a
return to his flock with a wallet full, not of indulgences like that of
Johann Tetzel, the Dominican, of Luther's day, but of doings and
sufferings. How he would be able to point his sermons with what he had
seen and heard! How he would inflame the whole forest with it! The
fires, the murders, the even blacker horrors of the sack of Magdeburg,
should be caught up into the trumpet of his prophecy and belched forth
in his own sonorous, if not altogether silvery voice, till every valley
of Thüringen and every hamlet in the hills rang with the fame and the
shame of the Edict. He conceived himself as a brand plucked from a
literal burning. As he rode, innumerable texts rose to his remembrance;
and pathways of thought, full of intricacies, opened out therefrom, till
his head almost ached by reason of the fixity with which he gazed upon
the hinder seat of the coach, while in his imagination he saw a mass of
upturned faces on the hillside upturned to _him_. The beauty of the
morning and the monotony or interest of the road were not for him.
Nor did they affect the Saxon maid-servant, who from her high perch
behind the coach could see every now and then the steel caps of the
troopers in front glancing in the sun, and, when she felt sure the Herr
Pastor was not thinking about her, she twisted her stout body about and
twisted her short neck till she could win a good satisfying look at the
foremost couple of horsemen behind him. As for her companion, the
high-born lady's tiring woman, the Saxon girl could make nothing of her.
She belonged to the east, she said. The Saxon girl had once been to
Dresden. Further east was a mystery of all manner of strange peoples.
The woman spoke German, but she did not look German, and she did not
chatter, an unhealthy sign to the mind of the Saxon girl. She had not a
look for the troopers nor for the country-side. She was thinking of the
little hoard of florins and kreuzers she had left in the hands of a
respectable goldsmith before she set out on this ridiculous journey with
the highly-born lady, who, subject to the god of greed, owned her body
and soul. The writings relative to the hoard were in a little bag, which
she wore in a secure place beneath her outward and visible garments.
Every now and again she pinched the spot to make sure they were there: a
fact the Saxon girl noticed, but forbore to question for the reason.
For the lady and the farmer's daughter the road had different messages.
Both in their ways felt the loveliness of the morning and the welling up
of Spring in the blood. To the lowlier-born a little farmstead with its
yellowish clayed walls and great black beams, its thatch of many
seasons' straw, spoke of men and women and babes and kine. Then she
remembered, and called softly out of the window "Pastor Rad," and the
pastor urged his horse beside her and said a few words, but soon dropped
behind again. She could make nothing of him. He did not even ask after
her wound.
And "dark Ottilie" of Thüringen? The beauty of the morning set her
pulses thrilling, and chanted in her ears a song of freedom. She knew
well that she was not free, that she was playing the rebel against all
orthodoxy of courts and the rule of princes for their women-folk. She
had but these few weeks essayed the game of freedom, which had already
led her into strange accidents, but danger and Spring and pride made a
heady mixture. She loved this flat open road because it was new to her,
and led to strange little towns. "Did that stupid old General Tilly
recognise her?" She asked herself the question, and answered that these
old generals and statesmen were all full of craft and ruse, and it was
impossible to say. Why, if he did, should he let her go? Then her
thoughts evidently fell upon the Scot: and, since he showed no sign of
coming to her of his own accord, she had the word passed to him. Nigel
wheeled his horse and waited till the coach was abreast. The coach was
high and he needed not to bend. He saluted and said--
"Madame?"
"What is the name of this place we make for?"
"Strassfurt!"
"Is it much farther?"
"A league or so, madame!"
"And then?"
"We shall dine and proceed to Aschersleben. Then, if you are not too
fatigued, we shall go on to Sangershausen." Then he looked across to
Elspeth and a look of friendliness came into his eyes. "How is your
wound to-day, Fräulein?"
"Better! Much better, captain!" Elspeth had another access of blushes.
"Of a truth," said "dark Ottilie" to herself, "there must have been some
passages between this gentleman and our pastor's niece;" and she herself
began to observe him more closely, how well he sat his horse, what a
figure he had, as gallant a soldier as she remembered to have seen.
"Captain!" She threw aside her haughtiness for a moment as she would
have dropped a cloak when she had loosed the clasp. "Whence came you?"
"From Scotland, madame!"
"The country of Marie Stuart?"
"She was the grandmother of our present king, Charles!"
"And what brought you here?"
"A younger son's lack of fortune, and a taste for sword-play!"
"But surely at the English court!"
"There were already too many Scots, too many younger sons, and a king
who had no taste for sword-play, madame!"
"They say the English ladies are rich and beautiful! Were there none who
would keep a Scottish gentleman from crossing the seas to find a
fortune, when she held one in her lap?"
"I would not have looked beyond her face, madame, and, wanting a fortune
of my own, would never have looked her in the face to ask for hers."
"You are too proud, sir! And how long have you plied the trade of a
soldier?"
"Since Wallenstein raised his army and fought with Mansfeld. Five years,
madame!"
A strange rapt gleam came into her eyes at the name of Wallenstein.
"And the fortune?" she asked.
"My Lord Verulam in his book tells us 'if a man look sharply and
attentively he shall see Fortune: for though she be blind yet she is not
invisible,'" said the Scot. "I am still looking for her."
"It is a good saying: and your Lord Verulam plainly had a shrewd notion
that Fortune walks abroad in petticoats as often as she hides herself in
the treasure-house of a king."
Nigel Charteris looked into her face, wondering exactly what she meant
by her commentary, and the dark eyes held a lurking demon of laughter
somewhere about them for an instant, but the mist came over the twin
lakes and her face resumed its lofty repose.
They were not the only wayfarers: though the little groups were getting
more and more infrequent. For the final attack on Magdeburg, which had
let loose into its streets and places thousands of soldiery on plunder
intent, careless of violence to women and to babes, had also opened its
gates for the egress of fugitives. Those who had friends or relatives in
the country made such haste as was possible in the deadly hubbub of the
sack to steal out with their bare lives on to the roads and walk fast
and far.
Many were the glances of hate at the troopers, and of wonder at Elspeth
Reinheit, who was known to many as the "pastor's niece." As for the
young pastor, the fugitives bowed or curtsied to him, and pitied him
because they supposed him a prisoner; whereas they themselves possessed
a precarious freedom, won out of the press of death that had confronted
them in so many forms on the grisly days of the sack.
The pastor, buried in his indignation, and in his thoughts of stirring
themes for congregations not yet assembled, sometimes acknowledged their
salutations, sometimes missed seeing them. One question in the intervals
of his professional wrath came into his mind every now and again, and he
was indignant at the intrusion. It was this: What had happened that
Elspeth should have had any dealings with Tilly's captain? He had seen
how her eyes had sought the captain's, the eyes of an accursed Catholic,
accursed in that his hands were imbrued, actually or vicariously, in the
bloody wine-presses of the wrath of man, still more accursed that he had
done what he had in furtherance of the policy of Rome. And Elspeth
Reinheit, though not formally betrothed to him, Pastor Rad, was looked
upon as his by others than himself or herself. How was it possible that
the soldier and she could have met, and he the pastor and lover not know
it? How could there be a look of understanding or of gentle inquiry pass
from her to him to his own exclusion? It filled him with vague
uneasiness. It hurt his pride of possession. It raised suspicion of her
integrity.
No doubt Pastor Rad would have been still more surprised had he known
that the highly-born sympathiser--he was not sure enough of her
spiritual leanings to call her adherent,--Ottilie of Thüringen, was at
this moment questioning Elspeth on that very matter.
"Dearest Elspeth, you have met yonder captain before yesterday? I am
sure of it." She nodded towards his back as he trotted forward to the
head of his men after the little conversation.
"That is true!" said Elspeth. "There is no need to keep it secret from
you, though I dare not tell Melchior Rad. He would never understand."
"As to that," said her companion, "I cannot advise you. You know the
pastor. But your eyes have a most eloquent speech of their own, and are
not easily veiled, and, when he and I carried you to your chamber, your
eyes sought the captain's, and I could have sworn your pastor marked
it."
"Oh dear!" said Elspeth. "And he is so harsh; well, not exactly harsh,
but you know what I mean."
"These good men are hard in judgment!" said the other. "Like diamonds
for rarity and hardness. As for sparkle ... well, I should not say
Pastor Rad sparkles, but never mind."
"This is Thursday!" said Elspeth. "Well, it was on Tuesday night and
nearly midnight. I had been sitting watching my uncle in too great
anxiety to leave the dear old man, and went down into the kitchen to
make him a warm posset.
"As I crept into the kitchen in my night-rail and slippers, my hair down
even, imagine, Ottilie, with a candle in my hand, a man stood there in
the outer doorway. He seized my hands in his and looked me straight in
the face, the candle-light between us.
"'No word, maiden!' he said in a low tone. 'Give me food! Give me a
couch to lie upon! I am wearied to death!'
"His face was blackened with smoke and streaked with sweat. His cloak
and doublet and gauntlets were stained with I know not what. His voice
was hoarse and weak. He was clearly wellnigh done for. I was frightened
out of my life, but not out of all pity. And he was young and had fine
eyes, Ottilie. What could I do?"
"And what did you do?"
"'If thine enemy hunger, feed him,'" said Elspeth. "I did not ask him on
which side he fought. I gave him bread and meat and drink, and took him
by the little stairs to my own chamber. It was the only safe place, and
I bade him sleep there till I wakened him in the morning.
"I spent the night watching my uncle and dozing by his bedside. In the
morning, when it was an hour past dawn, I thought of my other charge and
went to my chamber. He was gone."
"God in heaven!" said Ottilie. "And that was the captain there?"
"I could not swear to it!" said Elspeth, blushing again. "I think it
was."
"It is possible also that he came back to the house to see what had
happened to you on the second day of the sack!"
"I wonder if he did," said Elspeth. "I should like to think so!"