Late in the noon a horseman, in the livery of the Kaiser's body-guard,
rode dry and dusty into Cologne, with tidings that the Kaiser was at
Hammerstein Castle, and commanding all convocated knights, barons,
counts, and princes, to assemble and prepare for his coming, on a certain
bare space of ground within two leagues of Cologne, thence to swell the
train of his triumphal entry into the ancient city of his empire.
Guy the Goshawk, broad-set on a Flemish mare, and a pack-horse beside
him, shortly afterward left the hotel of the Three Holy Kings, and
trotted up to Gottlieb's door.
'Tent-pitching is now my trade,' said he, as Gottlieb came down to him.
'My lord is with the Kaiser. I must say farewell for the nonce. Is the
young lady visible?'
'Nor young, nor old, good friend,' replied Gottlieb, with a countenance
somewhat ruffled. 'I dined alone for lack of your company. Secret
missives came, I hear, to each of them, and both are gadding. Now what
think you of this, after the scene of yesterday?--Lisbeth too!'
'Preaches from the old text, Master Groschen; "Never reckon on womankind
for a wise act." But farewell! and tell Mistress Margarita that I take
it ill of her not giving me her maiden hand to salute before parting.
My gravest respects to Frau Lisbeth. I shall soon be sitting with you
over that prime vintage of yours, or fortune's dead against me.'
So, with a wring of the hand, Guy put the spur to his round-flanked
beast, and was quickly out of Cologne on the rough roadway.
He was neither the first nor the last of the men-at-arms hastening to
obey the Kaiser's mandate. A string of horse and foot in serpentine
knots stretched along the flat land, flashing colours livelier than the
spring-meadows bordering their line of passage. Guy, with a nod for all,
and a greeting for the best-disposed, pushed on toward the van, till the
gathering block compelled him to adopt the snail's pace of the advance
party, and gave him work enough to keep his two horses from being jammed
with the mass. Now and then he cast a weather-eye on the heavens, and
was soon confirmed in an opinion he had repeatedly ejaculated, that 'the
first night's camping would be a drencher.' In the West a black bank of
cloud was blotting out the sun before his time. Northeast shone bare
fields of blue lightly touched with loosefloating strips and flakes of
crimson vapour. The furrows were growing purple-dark, and gradually a
low moaning obscurity enwrapped the whole line, and mufed the noise of
hoof, oath, and waggon-wheel in one sullen murmur.
Guy felt very much like a chopped worm, as he wriggled his way onward in
the dusk, impelled from the rear, and reduced to grope after the main
body. Frequent and deep counsel he took with a trusty flask suspended at
his belt. It was no pleasant reflection that the rain would be down
before he could build up anything like shelter for horse and man. Still
sadder the necessity of selecting his post on strange ground, and in
darkness. He kept an anxious look-out for the moon, and was presently
rejoiced to behold a broad fire that twinkled branchy beams through an
east-hill orchard.
'My lord calls her Goddess,' said Guy, wistfully. 'The title's
outlandish, and more the style of these foreigners but she may have it
to-night, an she 'll just keep the storm from shrouding her bright eye
a matter of two hours.'
She rose with a boding lustre. Drifts of thin pale upper-cloud leaned
down ladders, pure as virgin silver, for her to climb to her highest seat
on the unrebellious half-circle of heaven.
'My mind's made up!' quoth Guy to the listening part of himself. 'Out of
this I'll get.'
By the clearer ray he had discerned a narrow track running a white
parallel with the general route. At the expense of dislocating a mile of
the cavalcade, he struck into it. A dyke had to be taken, some heavy
fallows crossed, and the way was straight before him. He began to sneer
at the slow jog-trot and absence of enterprise which made the fellows he
had left shine so poorly in comparison with the Goshawk, but a sight of
two cavaliers in advance checked his vanity, and now to overtake them he
tasked his fat Flemish mare with unwonted pricks of the heel, that made
her fling out and show more mettle than speed.
The objects of this fiery chase did not at first awake to a sense of
being pursued. Both rode with mantled visages, and appeared profoundly
inattentive to the world outside their meditations. But the Goshawk was
not to be denied, and by dint of alternately roaring at them and
upbraiding his two stumping beasts, he at last roused the younger of the
cavaliers, who called to his companion loudly: without effect it seemed,
for he had to repeat the warning. Guy was close up with them, when the
youth exclaimed:
'Father! holy father! 'Tis Sathanas in person!'
The other rose and pointed trembling to a dark point in the distance as
he vociferated:
'Not here! not here; but yonder!'
Guy recognized the voice of the first speaker, and cried:
'Stay! halt a second! Have you forgotten the Goshawk?'
'Never!' came the reply, 'and forget not Farina!'
Spur and fleeter steeds carried them out of hearing ere Guy could throw
in another syllable. Farina gazed back on him remorsefully, but the Monk
now rated his assistant with indignation.
'Thou weak one! nothing less than fool! to betray thy name on such an
adventure as this to soul save the saints!'
Farina tossed back his locks, and held his forehead to the moon. All the
Monk's ghostly wrath was foiled by the one little last sweet word of his
beloved, which made music in his ears whenever annoyance sounded.
'And herein,' say the old writers, 'are lovers, who love truly, truly
recompensed for their toils and pains; in that love, for which they
suffer, is ever present to ward away suffering not sprung of love: but
the disloyal, who serve not love faithfully, are a race given over to
whatso this base world can wreak upon them, without consolation or
comfort of their mistress, Love; whom sacrificing not all to, they know
not to delight in.'
The soul of a lover lives through every member of him in the joy of a
moonlight ride. Sorrow and grief are slow distempers that crouch from
the breeze, and nourish their natures far from swift-moving things. A
true lover is not one of those melancholy flies that shoot and maze over
muddy stagnant pools. He must be up in the great air. He must strike
all the strings of life. Swiftness is his rapture. In his wide arms he
embraces the whole form of beauty. Eagle-like are his instincts; dove-
like his desires. Then the fair moon is the very presence of his
betrothed in heaven. So for hours rode Farina in a silver-fleeting
glory; while the Monk as a shadow, galloped stern and silent beside him.
So, crowning them in the sky, one half was all love and light; one,
blackness and fell purpose.