FRITZ THE MASTERLESS
Now when Agnes awoke from her sleep, when she heard Jerome at his
prayer, when she heard him call to God to remove his temptress,--sent
to vex him by Beelzebub, catcher of souls,--then a surge of sorrow,
deeper than she had ever known before, had swept over her heart. She
had cried once and softly; she had risen from her furze-bed, and
reckless of everything had stolen away into the forest. Only one thing
she knew,--the great saint hated her! He believed Satan had thrust her
upon him. She was too sinful to bear company with this holy man, and
must flee away, far away! All her heinous crimes rose up to stare her
in the face, the thirty Aves her confessor had enjoined upon her,
and which she had forgotten to say, the five spice-cakes which she
had filched from My Lady Abbess’s cupboard, and which she had never
confessed at all,--these and more foul deeds weighed down her soul. The
all-wise saint had beheld its vileness, and called to God to deliver
her to her just possessor, Satan.
When she knew aught else the great black woods were everywhere. There
was only a flickering will-o’-the-wisp light here--there amongst the
numberless trees. She dared not pray. Once she screamed, but the cry
was dried up in her throat. In her blind anguish she wandered aimlessly
through thorn and thicket, brier and brake. How many times she all but
tripped into some ravine, or dashed on jagged rocks the angels in mercy
hid, for Saint Azrael surely guided her wild feet then, though she
thought the demons after her. At last spent with fatigue she sank upon
a moss bank. An older person would have tossed and moaned till dawn;
happier she--once more her eyes grew heavy. Fear and anguish vanished.
She could sleep.
When Agnes this time woke it was with a start and with groaning.
Trees, everywhere trees. The dawn was still young. The light was red.
She was lonely, thirsty, hungry. There came a rambling rustle from the
dead leaves near at hand. Hope leaped up that it was Harun, but only
a tawny fox spread his proud brush and vanished, scampering at first
sight of her. In these deepest glades of the beeches not a bird was
carolling morning.
“Jerome! Holy Saint Jerome! I am wicked, but have pity. I am afraid of
the great woods! Oh, in mercy lead me back!”
Her shrill cry went out in mocking echoes from an unseen dell. Not
a thrush called in answer. She sank into frightened silence. After
long waiting she gathered courage to summon Witch Martha, but that
good woman never came. At last Agnes, made calm by desperation, took
counsel.
“I cannot stay here. I have nothing to eat. And I dare not die of
hunger, for if I die, where is the priest to anoint me with the oil,
and absolve my fearful sins? So I can never go to heaven. The woods
cannot reach forever. No matter which way I go, sooner or later, I must
come to some house of Christian folk who will pity me. Only I must walk
a straight line and never turn back.”
At least walking was easier than still agony; and she thrust boldly
in among the trees. Before long she could quench her thirst in a tiny
brook which sang along through hazel thickets. Then presently her heart
gave a big throb. She was upon a path, weed-grown, leaf-strewn, yet a
path, blazed through the forest. Surely it led to men, but whether a
turn to right or left would reach a refuge soonest, Maid Agnes did not
know. Therefore she made bold, despite her wickedness, to say a little
prayer to Our Lady, asking her to guide the choice, shut her own eyes,
and on one foot whirled around six times; then when she looked again,
followed the way which lay straight before her. She might have walked
the tenth of a league before a clearing burst into view,--walls, fruit
trees, a garden, and an orchard, but everywhere silence and desolation.
Here was the blackened foundation of a house and of two large barns,
charred and rotting timbers, grass growing in the chinks of the
mortar. The dwelling had been burned these two years. Yet Agnes was
vastly comforted. The cherry trees of the orchard were heavy with round
red fruit. A beam had fallen so that she could reach to a lower bough
and pluck her fill. From the wild garden a linnet rose, interrupted in
her feast of strawberries. Agnes had these too. The roses were climbing
up the blackened wall, and the huge bees hung over them. Gorgeous
butterflies spread their sails, and were wafted to and fro. But for the
absolute solitude and the compelling fear, Agnes would have found this
ruin the outer door to paradise. The sun had risen clear and warm, and
the wood was giving forth the fragrant smell of green things growing.
She ate cherries and strawberries until hunger was banished; then at
last came time to consider “what next?” For no human help seemed here.
She was sitting upon the beam, her head on two small hands, when a
man’s shout startled her like a thunderclap.
“Heigh-ho! Have we here a Queen of the Pixies?”
Agnes looked up, and behold a man stood by, but not a steel-capped
_lanzknecht_ of Ulrich as first fears told her. The stranger was a
short, wiry man, very black, with a huge mustache, a beard cut to a
most singular little peak. He was all dressed in untanned doeskin;
a hunting-bag slung on his shoulder; in his belt gleamed twenty
steel-tipped bolts; in his hand was a crossbow. He did not look at all
fierce, and Agnes put on dignity.
“I am the daughter of Graf Ludwig of the Harz, and am lost in the
forest. Place me in safety, and my father will reward you.”
“Graf Ludwig! By Saint Lorenz!” The little man made the greenwood ring
with laughter. “I have distinguished company on my domain. And how came
you to get lost?”
But alas! the story which Maid Agnes told her new friend was too
wandering to seem to have overmuch truth in it,--Saint Jerome, the
Abbess, and Baron Ulrich, all jumbled hopelessly together. The fellow
was only certain that a very rare bird had fluttered by a miracle into
his net, and he was bound not to lose such gay feathers. So he merely
took her by the hand, saying:--
“Come with me; you will soon be safe and happy.”
“Where are we going?”
“To my cave; it is snug enough for a princess.”
“A cave,--not a house? Who are you?”
“My best name is Fritz the Masterless. First I was a peasant and
followed a stupid plough, then I was a swineherd, then a man-at-arms,
then a _lanzknecht_ and watched the roads, but all my band was cut to
pieces, saving I, so I am now a poacher and a forest rover, and last
of all, when the saints will, I shall be a gallows-bird, with a hemp
collar and a dance on nothing, but _zum! zum!_--till then it is a merry
life under the greenwood, a-following the deer.”
Agnes hung back.
“You are an evil man,” she said soberly; “I will not go with you.”
“And be left to wander under the trees, with never a house within these
three leagues. Hoch! No, little lady; there is nothing gained by that.
Come you do, will you, nill you.”
The clasp on her hand tightened. Agnes knew resistance was vain. She
followed silently, but her lips twitched. Oh! if she had been only
sinless enough to dwell with holy Jerome.
* * * * *
In the deeps of the woodland Fritz the Masterless had his hold,--half
cave, half hut, under the towering Rothenstein,--a cliff of gnarled
red rock. Here Gerda, his strong-armed, swarthy wife, came to him,
with Wolf his eldest, a sinewy lad of fourteen who could run like a
rabbit, and also the pair of younger girls, coarse, tow-headed wights,
who resembled Maid Agnes as two mongrels do a Castilian spaniel. They
surveyed the father’s booty with rude, gaping eyes, and Gerda sought
greedily to see if the stranger wore no precious ring or jewelled
crucifix; but Priest Clement had done that work too well, and she was
disappointed. However, there was no doubting the value of Fritz’s
catch. Such white skin and hands! Such silken hair and dainty face! She
might be the Kaiser’s own daughter; and her dress, if sadly torn, was
of very silk from the great Cham’s own country!
Agnes bore all more steadfastly than one might dream. There was a
_ritter’s_ red blood in her veins if she had been reared in the Bamberg
convent. She protested stoutly that she was Graf Ludwig’s child, until
Dame Gerda began to believe there was some fire behind so much smoke.
So leaving Agnes to Wolf and the girls, she drew Fritz beyond earshot.
“She does not lie. She is the Graf’s own child. And Ulrich of the
Wartburg is back of her plight, I am bound.”
“Humph!” commented Fritz; “it is a parlous thing to have dealings with
the Graf, or with Ulrich either. Ulrich will hang me for taking his
deer; the Graf for watching the roads. I am none too anxious for a
voyage to purgatory that I desire to send a message to Ludwig, ‘I have
found your daughter.’ He will come with five hundred men in lieu of
ransom, and my best reward will be a long drop to the slip-noose.”
Gerda considered wisely.
“Such white skin and hands! There is a fortune in her.”
“Out with it then.”
“Wolf shall go to Eisenach to Mordecai the Jew. He smuggles many a
wench south to Italy, though the saints know what becomes of them then!
He will give us round groschens for her.”
Fritz frowned. His conscience troubled him, though only a little.
“If only Mordecai were not an unbeliever! It is wrong to deliver
Christians into the clutch of infidels. I have heard he sells his women
as far as to the Muslims.”
But Gerda had only a hoarse laugh.
“Pray for her soul if you will! One must live; and I will not see so
much good silver glide out of my fingers vainly!”
Therefore her spouse reluctantly consented, and presently Wolf had his
orders, and went away slyly northwards toward Eisenach.
Agnes was left in company with the girls. They gave her venison, and
let her share the broth, which they all dipped with wooden spoons
out of a great earthen pot. Her new acquaintances were decently
respectful, although coarse enough in speech and life, to make their
poor guest plagued indeed; but she needed little hinting that they
were no friends, and that any attempt at flight would be hindered. The
greenwood was still about Agnes; but it was only a hateful prison now,
not an enchanted realm of cousins to the angels, as it was around the
Dragon’s Dale. Late in the afternoon Fritz came in with a long face.
“Men and hounds are out in the forest. They are beating up all the
coverts. Ulrich has ordered a boar hunt. We must lie close.”
[Illustration: “‘BACK TO WITCH MARTHA; BACK! FLY FAST, AS YOU LOVE
ME.’”]
So Agnes perforce, crouched with the rest, in a cavern up the
rock-slope, until the clear hunting-horns died away in the distance,
and Gerda began to thank the saints. As the gloaming fell, Wolf
returned, and whispered to his mother that the Hebrew would set forth
at dawn, and would be glad to haggle. Agnes did not hear the words, but
she saw the glint in Dame Gerda’s eye, and a cold shiver ran down her
spine. The vagueness of her dread redoubled all the terrors, and hating
all the rangers’ loathsome company, Agnes wandered out a little way
across the narrow meadow before the cave-hut. Wolf watched narrowly,
but she did not try to flee away. Seated upon a stump she was watching
the play of rosy light upon the scarred face of the Rothenstein,--when
a whir of wings sounded, and whisk! something alighted upon her
shoulder, then a voice, but not human:--
“Ho, he! Never fear!
I’m Satan! I’m here!”
“Zebek,” cried Agnes, “oh, joy!”
The raven was welcome as a brother. Then the bird cocked his wicked
head, and winked his sage eye, with which winking came a thought. To
pluck the white lace from her wrist, to twine it round the raven’s
foot,--this was the deed of an instant.
“Back to Witch Martha; back! Fly fast, as you love me.”
And Zebek,--wise beyond many a mortal, obeyed instantly, rising with
one croak.
“Ho!” shouted Wolf, looking up; “a raven! Ill luck! Father, your
crossbow!”
Fritz levelled in a trice; “whir” went the bolt, but it was growing
dark. One feather fluttered to the grass; another croak from mid-air.
Zebek was gone, winging straight west. Dame Gerda looked as black as
the bird, when she came from the hut.
“A raven, ill luck,” spoke she, and scolded Fritz and Wolf; “to slay a
raven worse luck; but a vain bolt at a raven the worst luck of all. The
bird will bear the grudge, and hatch us foulest weather.”
[Illustration]
[Illustration]