MAID AGNES
Good cheer at the gate, more cheer in the bailey, in the great hall
of the Wartburg the blithest cheer of all. On the brass fire-dogs in
the cavernous chimney tall flames leaped from the snapping logs; in
their wall-sockets the red torches shook at every gust from the open
loopholes. The polished oak of the ceiling, the green and crimson
scrolls of the frescos, the sheen of the long black benches, the
glister of the gold and silver drinking-horns, the brightness of
the pictured tapestries,--all these joined in a scene of barbaric
splendour. Upon the dais, under the arched recess, Ulrich, “Free-baron
by the Grace of God,” and master of an hundred men, sprawled half his
length in his arm-chair, banged his great scabbard on the floor, and
swore that he was in just the mood to fight My Lord the Emperor.
Michael the Breaker, the black-haired giant who sat on the lower stool
at his suzerain’s side, capped the oath by wishing the King of France
and the Holy Father at Rome were foes too, just for furnishing merry
sword-play. While amongst the men-at-arms and brutish women who were
fast getting wilder over mead and beer, Priest Clement--the jolliest
sinner who ever pattered a mass--lolled on his bench, called for
another pot of the smacking Erfurt beer, and dared man or demon to deny
that his was the happiest life in all the world.
“_Veritas! veritas!_ true was the saying my wise mother taught me!”
“And that wisdom, Father?” snickered Ruprecht, who was then tying a new
knot in his dagger-strap to keep reckoning of the man he had killed
that day.
“For a happy time once, then a fowl you must slay!
For a merry long year, don’t your wedding delay!
For a lifelong carouse, then a priest you must stay!”
So Clement; but Ruprecht growled sullenly,--
“We are less fortunate than your reverence; it is Friday, but can we
have no dispensation for a side of ham?”
“_O malefice!_ Unfaithful shepherd have I been to my sheep that such
impiety should spring up in their hearts even as a wish! Have you no
fear of God’s Judgment?”
But here the beer came, and Clement’s nose went into it. Ulrich was
pulling his great carcass up into the chair and squinting round the
room.
“The maid? where?” he demanded.
“The prisoner?” asked Michael, his vizier.
“The same;” and Ulrich’s eyes went over into a dark corner behind the
fireplace, then his orders sounded sharp as a cracking lash.
“_He!_ Franz-of-the-Ram’s-Pate, bring her this way.”
A great man-at-arms, whose strength lay in muscle not in wits,
bestirred himself and dragged from the shelter a girl whose slender
form seemed sinking from his hands as from the touch of flame. In the
wavering torchlight few might look upon her face; yet that she was
merest child one quick glance told, and all could have seen the evil
grin of My Lord Baron as he surveyed her.
“So _this_ is the prisoner?”
The girl, too scared or too brave for sobs, remained absolutely still.
Ulrich continued his inquest.
“Had she no jewels nor rings?”
“The most reverend Father Clement, possessed himself of them,” ventured
Franz, to be cut short by a hurried ‘_Maledicte!_’ from the priest, and
a warning from Ulrich that the holy man’s share, when the spoil was
divided, should be abated accordingly.
“Well, girl,” continued the Baron, “and who may your gallant father be,
that you travelled from Bamberg with so handsomely furnished a company?
Some fat burgomaster of Hamburg or of Lubeck, I dare swear by Saint
Godehard’s self!”
The girl held up her head now, and her voice was very shrill.
“I am come from the convent at Bamberg, where the Lady Abbess reared
me, and I go to Graf Ludwig of the Harz, who is my father.”
Had the prisoner suddenly become a knight in mail, Ulrich could scarce
have liked this answer less. He stormed out a fearful oath “not to
lie,” which only drove her back to silence, and every feaster stopped
his drinking. The Baron looked uneasily on Michael.
“Does the wench lie?” he demanded.
“I could see from the first that she was nobly born, by her small hands
and feet, and she is too scared to lie. She is Ludwig’s own brat, as I
am a sinner.”
“Holy Trinity!” swore Ulrich, staring hard; “this is what comes of
setting on companies one knows nothing about. You see she is but a
puling child, though tall for her age, and of no use to us. Ludwig of
the Harz! He will pull down the Wartburg stone by stone, but never pay
a ransom. I know him. Safer to rouse a she-bear just missing a whelp!”
“Ludwig may never know to blame us,” suggested Michael; “those other
fools are too dead for babbling. There are more bands who ‘live by the
stirrup’ betwixt Goslar and Bamberg to share the suspicions.”
“But you dogs will wag your tongues in the Eisenach taverns,” frowned
his lord. “Stories will fly; the Graf swoop down.”
“Then the wench is best--” but here Michael drew a big finger across
his thick throat and laughed.
“Back with her, Franz!” thundered Ulrich, losing temper. “She is too
white now even to whimper. I will question her more in the morning,
when my crown does not buzz. Fill me the tallest horn, and you, Priest
Clement, roar out a tune to hearten us!”
The girl vanished in her corner. The news that they held so unwelcome a
prisoner had dampened the jollity of all save the holy priest, but he
held his mug high, opened his huge mouth, and made the rafters ring.
“Horse, lance and away,
Man nor fiend shan’t us stay,
Though to the Black Pit we’re a-flying!
From a mug and a maid
To a merry mad raid,
That’s the best way for living or dying!
“Let a clumsy monk howl
To the saints from his cowl,
As he shrinks on the straw at Death’s creeping.
To the tune of the brand
Let us die as we stand,
And we’ll leave to base varlets the weeping!
“So be blithe through the night,
And by day ride and fight,
That’s the lanzknechts’ brave life, I’m a-saying!
_‘Yo, ho, he! Yo, ho, he!
Neath the greenwood spur we!’
So all the deep war horns are braying._”
The last lines were blared as a chorus out of forty throats, the
rafters shook, the torches quivered. Silence then, an unwonted step,
varlets with long faces rushing, Baron Ulrich twisting in his chair,
Priest Clement turning red, the door tapestry parting, and strange eyes
looking in upon that wanton crew. The raiders were face to face with
Jerome of the Dragon’s Dale.
* * * * *
Well for Jerome that he had mastered the Demon of Spiritual Pride!
Ulrich of the Wartburg, ruler of one hundred of the wildest spirits
in Thuringia, had cowered behind his silver-lace doublet and tried to
look fierce, but vainly. Michael the Breaker remembered a prayer his
mother had taught him. Priest Clement’s wriggling tongue was still as
a fire-dog. When Jerome stood before the dais and bade Ulrich deliver
up the prisoner then and there, My Lord Baron turned all ashen under
his bronzed skin and asked what would be the consequences if he did
not, only to understand that obstinacy now would advance him farther
yet into Heaven’s ill graces. It had all ended before an onlooker could
have counted an hundred.
[Illustration: “‘GIVE HIM THE MAID, FRANZ, AND ALL THE FIENDS GO WITH
HER!’”
_See page 33._]
“Give him the maid, Franz, and all the fiends go with her!”
So ordered Ulrich, and Franz complied whilst his great knees beat
together and his ill-deeds stared large at him. Some cried “Blessing!”
“Absolution!” others. One of the wicked women knelt and kissed the
skirt of the sheepskin as Jerome swept out with never a word to them
all. That the feast flickered out in silence and trembling sobriety,
there is small need to tell.
But Jerome led the little maid through the wide courts, where other
revellers cast timorous eyes on them, under the spiked portcullis
(where the warder was crossing himself on his corselet) out into the
black span of the night, with only the stars and the moon and the wind
to bear them company.
As for the maid herself, it had all been one whirling dream since noon,
when the Baron’s men had stopped her escort under the greenwood. Happy
was she, in that she was too young to know all that had passed, but not
too young to fear lest she were dead, and had passed to some world not
heaven. Yet the dream was not wholly evil now. Though her companion
did not speak, she knew that he was a friend. When the castle was high
above, and the great woods thronged all around, she grew bold enough
for a question.
“Who are you?”
The hermit did not reply. In his heart he was repeating an awful
warning, “Fear the Tempter now, Jerome; you lead by your hand--a woman!”
“Who are you?” repeated the little maid; “for I think you are surely
God, since God looks like a tall and noble man with a long white beard,
and all the wicked like Baron Ulrich haste to obey him.”
“Do not blaspheme,” commanded Jerome, swift as an arrow, almost
casting off her hand; “I am the most sinful creature under heaven.”
“Then you are the Devil. I have heard the Abbess call him ‘The Old
Man,’ too, yet I think Baron Ulrich would never fear the Devil.”
“Hush, daughter!” ordered the hermit, groaning gently at the manifold
tribulations he saw awaiting; “my name is Jerome of the Dragon’s Dale.
Your poor mind wanders after all the griefs of the day. Now how were
you christened?”
“Agnes; and my father is Graf Ludwig of the Harz.”
“Agnes--that is a good name for a maid. I knew an Agnes once--”
“Your own child?”
“She was--” but the words seemed to come almost as a sob; and with
instinctive delicacy the girl feared to press her guide with questions.
In silence they went down into the very deeps of the forest. Agnes
scarcely saw the glimmerings of moonlight under the matted trees. She
heard the noise of hidden beasts, the whirl of hidden waters. Then her
guide felt the hand drag heavy in his own, and he bent over her.
“What is it? Why do you draw back?”
“Pixies are here. I am afraid.”
“There are no pixies here; yet if there were, they are not for dread.
A Christian maid need only fear the wrath of sinful men. So say ‘Our
Father’ and be brave. Yet you grow weary?”
“Yes.”
The strong frame bowed. The hermit lifted his prisoner in his mighty
arms. How light the form! Something that sent a thrill all through him
touched on his cheek,--the soft hair of a maid. His stride grew longer.
Presently on his shoulder, close to his ear, was a sound. He halted at
the break in the trees, where spread the moonlight. No room for doubt;
utterly worn, even whilst he bore her, Agnes was in the child’s safe
refuge,--sleep.
As Jerome moved, he also deemed himself a dreamer. He, Jerome of the
Dragon’s Dale, was taking to his hut a woman! What matter if that
temptress was a child, robed in white innocency and helplessness? She
was not less the daughter of Eve by whom our fathers fell. Bear her to
Witch Martha? But that unholy woman’s den was two good leagues away,
and then what right had he to put this Agnes’s soul in eternal jeopardy
by casting her into company with that familiar of Satan? Jerome felt
the warm breath and the soft hair, and saw in the black shadows the
form that trusted him.
“She imagined you were God!”
Then he said in his heart that this was one of Christ’s little ones,
and that he must be strong in temptation. By the time he had reached
the Dragon’s Dale the burden in his arms had grown heavy. Unhesitant he
threaded the familiar path, and mounted the slope. Before the hut still
glowed a few red embers. He took the maid inside, and laid her on the
furze bed. She folded her hands, sighed prettily, but did not waken.
Jerome stole from the hut, then fell on his knees to pray.
“O Lord God, why hast Thou appointed that I cannot beat back memory!
It all awakes! Ah! save me from new temptation. I cannot bear after so
long that I should fail, and pawn once more my soul and the soul of
Sigismund, my son!”
[Illustration]