THE SCOUT; AND THE EFFECT OF A SNEEZE.
"Welcome, thou prince of spies, and my scoutmaster-general!" said
Tilly in Spanish; "be seated, señor."
The scout removed his broad hat, let the folds of his cloak fall, and
seated himself opposite the count with an air of fatigue.
"Have you collected much intelligence of the enemy's movements?"
asked Tilly, drawing a large and well-filled purse from his girdle--a
motion which made the eyes of the scout flash.
"I have, señor generalissimo," replied the stranger, in a voice which
I recognised, and which made me start, for it was either that of the
Hausmeister or the devil (a personage of equal merit). Then I heard
the purse clink, as it was thrown by the count like a bone to a
dog--and caught by the adroit hand of the spy.
"Then you can tell me of those Scots auxiliaries who were at
Boitzenburg--quick, señor Bandolo!"
"Bandolo!" A new light broke upon me, and, applying my eye to the
tapestry, I recognised the broad ruffian face, the cold fierce eyes
and square mouth of my old acquaintance, Otto Roskilde--the
Hausmeister of Glückstadt--whom I now discovered to be one and the
same with that terrible Bandolo, of whom the Baron Karl had given us
an account--the brother of Prudentia! His dress was somewhat
different; but his false paunch and rotundity (assumed for disguise)
were gone, and he stood revealed--a strong, wiry, and athletic
ruffian--a bravo, with his long sable locks, and long daggers in his
belt.
"The troops who were at Boitzenburg have retired down the Elbe. I
tracked them to Lauenburg, in the castle of which their commander----"
"The commandante, _d'Umbar_?"
"Si, señor conde--left two companies, and marched with the remainder
to Glückstadt, from whence he moved immediately to take possession of
Rantzau's castle of Bredenburg."
"Who commands the two companies in the castle of Lauen?"
"A certain Major Wilson."
"Wilson--Wilson!" muttered Tilly, turning over the leaves of a
memorandum book; "oh--here he is! a brave and determined
cavalier--commanded five hundred of the Scottish auxiliary musketeers
at the battle of Lütter, and captured a standard of Merodé's
regiment. He will give us trouble, but we shall pay him a visit
to-morrow. God's curse on these heretic Scots! for they meet us
every where now, by the Rhine, the Elbe and the Oder. They lead all
the troops in Northern Europe. What more hast thou heard?"
"That Major-general Slammersdorff is concentrating near Rapin a large
force, which King Christian means to march into Silesia."
"Dost thou say so?"
"For vida del demonio--I do!"
"I should like to see this force in Silesia," said Tilly, with a
quiet smile.
"Rittmaster Hume de Carrolside, with a troop of Scottish pistoliers,
has arrived to reinforce Otto Louis, the rhine-grave."
"Scots again!" said Tilly, with a terrible smile, as he scratched his
leg, which a Scottish musketeer had pierced by a bullet in the Hartz
forest; "Maladetta! it is too much!--Ere-long we shall not have room
to move between the Black Sea and the Baltic for this Protestant
scum."
A mysterious sound was heard below the bed again; it sounded like the
grunt of a pig, and Tilly raised his head to listen.
"Heaven keep Dreghorn awake!" thought I; "for if he sleeps and snores
we are lost!"
"This old house is wonderfully full of rats," said Tilly; "well, have
you heard any thing more?"
"Nothing, señor generalissimo, save that King Christian, by the
erection of redoubts and turf sconces, is leaving nothing undone to
secure every where the banks and the passage of the Elbe."
"The fool! when too late he will learn the power of the Empire."
"Your excellency is the greatest general under heaven; _vaya usted à
los infernos_!" he added in a low voice, as he counted the gold
pieces under the shade of the table. "Away to the infernal regions,
for a beggarly old skinflint!"
"Go, my priceless Bandolo," said Tilly; "recross this muddy Elbe;
become once more a Dane, a Dutchman, or a Holsteiner, for I know thou
art a very Proteus, and spread every where the rumour that I am about
to retire towards the Weser. I know that thou art faithful to the
empire, Bandolo; though I have heard it said, that he who betrayeth
one cause will betray another. The Count of Carlstein hath said to
me more than once, that he considered the principle of secret
intelligence as dishonourable. A chivalric fool! If a battle is
gained, or a city won, what matters it whether or not the victors owe
their success to force or fraud? No man is qualified to lead an army
unless he is inclined to obtain tidings of the foe by every possible
means that do not include open assassination or public dishonour."
Bandolo smiled.
"I have found thee invaluable, my good Bandolo, and would gladly
yield thee some nobler recompense than that base gold, for which thou
perillest life and soul every hour thou art beyond the Austrian
lines."
"Señor generalissino, I will freely give back all the gold you have
given me for three years past----"
"A goodly sum, Señor Bandolo!"
"Yea--I will do more; I will undertake to secure to you the passage
of the Elbe if----"
"If what----" said Tilly, whose eyes glared with impatience.
"You will procure for me a wife, and this wife must be Ernestine, the
Lady of Giezar, daughter of Count Rupert-with-the-red-plume."
This was said with the utmost confidence and deliberation; but the
daring speech made the pulses of my heart to flutter.
"Devil take thee, blockhead," said Tilly, "for elating my heart so
high, and then sinking it so low! For aught that old John de Tserclä
cares, you may have all the women in the empire; but, friend, be
assured you might as well look at the moon (what the deuce is shaking
that tapestry so?) as this count's dark-eyed daughter. I have seen
the dainty dame. Why, Bandolo, she would shrink from thy touch as
from a toad. But I am neither her guardian nor her father, (thank
Heaven!) and believe me, my poor presumptuous ragamuffin, you might
as well raise your eyes to a princess of the House of Hapsburg, as a
daughter of this proud soldier of Fortune. Maladetto! but you rate
your services high."
"Because I rate them myself."
"The vilest rogue will always bring a goodly sum if sold at his own
valuation," muttered Tilly, with one of his hideous smiles. I
believe sincerely, that nothing would have afforded his cynical heart
greater delight than to see the high-bred and accomplished Ernestine
mated to the ruffian (if such a catastrophe were possible), from the
very incongruity of such a union, and to humble the high military
pride and boasted spotlessness of character possessed by the count,
her father. "Bandolo," said he, gravely, "no more of this wild
fantasy, which may hang thee, my prince of spies. Lady Ernestine is,
I believe, to be the wife of my aide-de-camp, Count Kœningheim,
poor man!"
"Hah!" muttered Bandolo, as his hand was covertly and almost
involuntarily raised to the hilt of his murderous poniard.
"But there is no saying what we may achieve if your scheme for the
passage of the Elbe is a good one," said Tilly, with a smile in his
ferret eyes, as he rubbed his lean legs, which were cased in fustian
breeches.
"I have learned (_how_, matters not, señor conde) that
Rupert-with-the-red-plume has in his hands two Danish
prisoners--Scots----"
"Mai hayas tu! Scots again!--hah--he told me not of _that_!"
"They were saved from the sconce at Boitzenburg."
"Yet I said that all there should die; and, had this order been
obeyed, we should not now have to storm either the castle of
Lauenburg or that of Bredenburg. Ah, those Presbyterians!" added
Tilly, grinding his fangless jaws; "if I had but a few of them
enveloped in pitch and sulphur, they would light our bivouac, even as
the early Christians were made into candles to light the Roman
circus. But quick--your scheme!" continued Tilly, while the supposed
scraping of rats was again heard beneath the bed.
"Obtain these two Scots, and march them with the troops against
Lauenberg. Approach in the night, and make one betray his comrades."
"How betray? thou laughest at me again, Bandolo, knowing well that
these Scottish heretics are stubborn as their native rocks."
"Lead them within earshot of their sentinels, and then place a loaded
pistol to the head of each."
"Good--I'll see to it!" grinned Tilly, with one of his horrible
smiles, which might have frightened even the dead; "but where, in the
name of good and evil, are the two Scots you speak of?"
At that moment, as the devil would have it, a tremendous sneeze was
heard under the bed.
"Madre de Dios! there is some one concealed here!" exclaimed little
Tilly, starting up with lire glaring in his eyes, as he unsheathed
his long rapier. "Look under that bed, Bandolo, while I prick the
tapestry."
Drawing his poniard, Bandolo raised the little curtain which
surrounded the rails of the bed, on looking below which he was
instantly grasped and dragged down by the strong hands of Dandy
Dreghorn, who (rendered desperate by finding discovery inevitable,
and knowing that we had but two assailants) encircled the bull-neck
of the powerful Spanish ruffian with a tiger-like clutch, and rolled
him on the floor, shouting--
"Strike in, Maister Rollo--strike in, for gudesake! Gie that auld
wallydraigel in the breeks a jagg wi your dirk, while I pu' this ane
through the heckle-pins!"
Taken completely by surprise, Bandolo was almost smothered by the
dust under the bed, where he was so suddenly and ignominiously
rolled. He struck furiously and at random with his poniard till the
blade broke against the oak planks of the floor, down upon which
Dandy pressed his throat until he was nearly strangled, vociferating
all the time--
"I'll cheat the wuddy o' ye, that I will! Hech, ye damned tyke,
think ye I'll ever lippen to a bodach that wore breeks!" Then he
came forth panting and breathless.
Seeing that without one desperate venture all was over with us, I had
rushed from my hiding-place, thrown down the table, extinguished the
lights, closed with the frail, old Tilly, and escaping a pistol-shot,
which he fired within a yard of my nose, wrested and tore away from
his hand the long rapier with which he menaced me. Had I chosen, I
could there have run it through his heart, and saved Denmark, yea,
and Germany, from the Thirty Years' War; but he was an aged man, and
I was not an assassin.
"Awa, sir--awa! Hide or rin, flee or soom--let us awa, or we'll tyne
our lives!" cried Dreghorn, and we rushed from the dark apartment, to
find the corridor and staircase crowded by Reitres and pikemen, with
drawn swords, lighted torches, and stable lanterns; for the uproar
and the pistol-shot had alarmed Tilly's guard of honour, and brought
all the soldiers, like a swarm of hornets, to his rescue.
"Dreghorn--farewell to life," said I; "it is all over with us!"
"We've owre mony maisters noo," he groaned; "as the puddock said,
whan ilka tuith o' the harrow gied him a tid."
Before this flood of armed men we retired backward into the darkened
room, where Tilly was reclining breathlessly against a post of the
bed, from beneath which Bandolo, with a savage and lacrymose visage,
blackened and distorted by rage and strangulation, was already
crawling forth.
We were about to be cut down without farther parley, when Tilly,
remembering that I had spared his life, and Count Kœningheim, who
hurried forward in his breeches and boots, minus vest and doublet,
threw themselves between us and death, and saved us for a time.
"Withhold your hand, Bandolo--count, secure these villains!" said
Tilly; "away with them to the quarter-guard, I will deal with them in
the morning. Search this, and all the other apartments; double all
the sentinels, for I fear me much there has been treachery."
We were immediately hurried away to a lower apartment, and handcuffed
together.
On the way we passed old Spürrledter, who had been alarmed by the
uproar, and appeared in his shirt, blowing the match of his carbine.
On beholding us, he gaped with well-feigned astonishment, which we
understood quite well, and thus neither compromised the count nor the
old corporal, who, with horses for our flight, had been waiting in an
adjacent thicket for three hours, as he afterwards told me; and
further, that the moment Tilly was fairly in his own apartment, that
he--the corporal--had come in search of us, and, being totally unable
to account for our mysterious disappearance at a time so critical,
had retired to bed in the stables, supposing that we had escaped
without him.
Book the Fifth.