THE CHAMPION.
And now the noble Cleves began in good earnest to prepare his castle for
the threatened siege. He gathered in all the available cattle round the
property, and the pigs round many miles; and a dreadful slaughter of
horned and snouted animals took place,--the whole castle resounding with
the lowing of the oxen and the squeaks of the gruntlings, destined to
provide food for the garrison. These, when slain, (her gentle spirit, of
course, would not allow of her witnessing that disagreeable operation,)
the lovely Helen, with the assistance of her maidens, carefully salted
and pickled. Corn was brought in in great quantities, the Prince paying
for the same when he had money, giving bills when he could get credit,
or occasionally, marry, sending out a few stout men-at-arms to forage,
who brought in wheat without money or credit either. The charming
Princess, amidst the intervals of her labors, went about encouraging the
garrison, who vowed to a man they would die for a single sweet smile
of hers; and in order to make their inevitable sufferings as easy as
possible to the gallant fellows, she and the apothecaries got ready a
plenty of efficacious simples, and scraped a vast quantity of lint
to bind their warriors' wounds withal. All the fortifications were
strengthened; the fosses carefully filled with spikes and water; large
stones placed over the gates, convenient to tumble on the heads of the
assaulting parties; and caldrons prepared, with furnaces to melt up
pitch, brimstone, boiling oil, &c., wherewith hospitably to receive
them. Having the keenest eye in the whole garrison, young Otto was
placed on the topmost tower, to watch for the expected coming of the
beleaguering host.
They were seen only too soon. Long ranks of shining spears were seen
glittering in the distance, and the army of the Rowski soon made its
appearance in battle's magnificently stern array. The tents of the
renowned chief and his numerous warriors were pitched out of arrow-shot
of the castle, but in fearful proximity; and when his army had taken
up its position, an officer with a flag of truce and a trumpet was seen
advancing to the castle gate. It was the same herald who had previously
borne his master's defiance to the Prince of Cleves. He came once
more to the castle gate, and there proclaimed that the noble Count of
Eulenschreckenstein was in arms without, ready to do battle with the
Prince of Cleves, or his champion; that he would remain in arms for
three days, ready for combat. If no man met him at the end of that
period, he would deliver an assault, and would give quarter to no single
soul in the garrison. So saying, the herald nailed his lord's gauntlet
on the castle gate. As before, the Prince flung him over another glove
from the wall; though how he was to defend himself from such a warrior,
or get a champion, or resist the pitiless assault that must follow, the
troubled old nobleman knew not in the least.
The Princess Helen passed the night in the chapel, vowing tons of
wax-candles to all the patron saints of the House of Cleves, if they
would raise her up a defender.
But how did the noble girl's heart sink--how were her notions of the
purity of man shaken within her gentle bosom, by the dread intelligence
which reached her the next morning, after the defiance of the Rowski! At
roll-call it was discovered that he on whom she principally relied--he
whom her fond heart had singled out as her champion, had proved
faithless! Otto, the degenerate Otto, had fled! His comrade, Wolfgang,
had gone with him. A rope was found dangling from the casement of their
chamber, and they must have swum the moat and passed over to the
enemy in the darkness of the previous night. “A pretty lad was this
fair-spoken archer of thine!” said the Prince her father to her; “and a
pretty kettle of fish hast thou cooked for the fondest of fathers.” She
retired weeping to her apartment. Never before had that young heart felt
so wretched.
That morning, at nine o'clock, as they were going to breakfast, the
Rowski's trumpets sounded. Clad in complete armor, and mounted on his
enormous piebald charger, he came out of his pavilion, and rode slowly
up and down in front of the castle. He was ready there to meet a
champion.
Three times each day did the odious trumpet sound the same notes of
defiance. Thrice daily did the steel-clad Rowski come forth challenging
the combat. The first day passed, and there was no answer to his
summons. The second day came and went, but no champion had risen to
defend. The taunt of his shrill clarion remained without answer; and the
sun went down upon the wretchedest father and daughter in all the land
of Christendom.
The trumpets sounded an hour after sunrise, an hour after noon, and an
hour before sunset. The third day came, but with it brought no hope. The
first and second summons met no response. At five o'clock the old Prince
called his daughter and blessed her. “I go to meet this Rowski,” said
he. “It may be we shall meet no more, my Helen--my child--the innocent
cause of all this grief. If I shall fall to-night the Rowski's victim,
'twill be that life is nothing without honor.” And so saying, he put
into her hands a dagger, and bade her sheathe it in her own breast so
soon as the terrible champion had carried the castle by storm.
This Helen most faithfully promised to do; and her aged father retired
to his armory, and donned his ancient war-worn corselet. It had borne
the shock of a thousand lances ere this, but it was now so tight as
almost to choke the knightly wearer.
The last trumpet sounded--tantara! tantara!--its shrill call rang over
the wide plains, and the wide plains gave back no answer. Again!--but
when its notes died away, there was only a mournful, an awful silence.
“Farewell, my child,” said the Prince, bulkily lifting himself into his
battle-saddle. “Remember the dagger. Hark! the trumpet sounds for the
third time. Open, warders! Sound, trumpeters! and good St. Bendigo guard
the right.”
But Puffendorff, the trumpeter, had not leisure to lift the trumpet to
his lips: when, hark! from without there came another note of another
clarion!--a distant note at first, then swelling fuller. Presently, in
brilliant variations, the full rich notes of the “Huntsman's Chorus”
came clearly over the breeze; and a thousand voices of the crowd gazing
over the gate exclaimed, “A champion! a champion!”
And, indeed, a champion HAD come. Issuing from the forest came a knight
and squire: the knight gracefully cantering an elegant cream-colored
Arabian of prodigious power--the squire mounted on an unpretending gray
cob; which, nevertheless, was an animal of considerable strength and
sinew. It was the squire who blew the trumpet, through the bars of his
helmet; the knight's visor was completely down. A small prince's
coronet of gold, from which rose three pink ostrich-feathers, marked
the warrior's rank: his blank shield bore no cognizance. As gracefully
poising his lance he rode into the green space where the Rowski's tents
were pitched, the hearts of all present beat with anxiety, and the poor
Prince of Cleves, especially, had considerable doubts about his new
champion. “So slim a figure as that can never compete with Donnerblitz,”
said he, moodily, to his daughter; “but whoever he be, the fellow puts a
good face on it, and rides like a man. See, he has touched the Rowski's
shield with the point of his lance! By St. Bendigo, a perilous venture!”
The unknown knight had indeed defied the Rowski to the death, as the
Prince of Cleves remarked from the battlement where he and his daughter
stood to witness the combat; and so, having defied his enemy, the
Incognito galloped round under the castle wall, bowing elegantly to the
lovely Princess there, and then took his ground and waited for the foe.
His armor blazed in the sunshine as he sat there, motionless, on his
cream-colored steed. He looked like one of those fairy knights one has
read of--one of those celestial champions who decided so many victories
before the invention of gun powder.
The Rowski's horse was speedily brought to the door of his pavilion; and
that redoubted warrior, blazing in a suit of magnificent brass armor,
clattered into his saddle. Long waves of blood-red feathers bristled
over his helmet, which was farther ornamented by two huge horns of
the aurochs. His lance was painted white and red, and he whirled the
prodigious beam in the air and caught it with savage glee. He laughed
when he saw the slim form of his antagonist; and his soul rejoiced to
meet the coming battle. He dug his spurs into the enormous horse
he rode: the enormous horse snorted, and squealed, too, with fierce
pleasure. He jerked and curveted him with a brutal playfulness, and
after a few minutes' turning and wheeling, during which everybody had
leisure to admire the perfection of his equitation, he cantered round to
a point exactly opposite his enemy, and pulled up his impatient charger.
The old Prince on the battlement was so eager for the combat, that he
seemed quite to forget the danger which menaced himself, should his slim
champion be discomfited by the tremendous Knight of Donnerblitz. “Go
it!” said he, flinging his truncheon into the ditch; and at the word,
the two warriors rushed with whirling rapidity at each other.
And now ensued a combat so terrible, that a weak female hand, like that
of her who pens this tale of chivalry, can never hope to do justice to
the terrific theme. You have seen two engines on the Great Western
line rush past each other with a pealing scream? So rapidly did the two
warriors gallop towards one another; the feathers of either streamed
yards behind their backs as they converged. Their shock as they met was
as that of two cannon-balls; the mighty horses trembled and reeled with
the concussion; the lance aimed at the Rowski's helmet bore off the
coronet, the horns, the helmet itself, and hurled them to an incredible
distance: a piece of the Rowski's left ear was carried off on the point
of the nameless warrior's weapon. How had he fared? His adversary's
weapon had glanced harmless along the blank surface of his polished
buckler; and the victory so far was with him.
The expression of the Rowski's face, as, bareheaded, he glared on his
enemy with fierce bloodshot eyeballs, was one worthy of a demon. The
imprecatory expressions which he made use of can never be copied by a
feminine pen.
His opponent magnanimously declined to take advantage of the opportunity
thus offered him of finishing the combat by splitting his opponent's
skull with his curtal-axe, and, riding back to his starting-place, bent
his lance's point to the ground, in token that he would wait until the
Count of Eulenschreckenstein was helmeted afresh.
“Blessed Bendigo!” cried the Prince, “thou art a gallant lance: but why
didst not rap the Schelm's brain out?”
“Bring me a fresh helmet!” yelled the Rowski. Another casque was brought
to him by his trembling squire.
As soon as he had braced it, he drew his great flashing sword from his
side, and rushed at his enemy, roaring hoarsely his cry of battle. The
unknown knight's sword was unsheathed in a moment, and at the next the
two blades were clanking together the dreadful music of the combat!
The Donnerblitz wielded his with his usual savageness and activity.
It whirled round his adversary's head with frightful rapidity. Now it
carried away a feather of his plume; now it shore off a leaf of his
coronet. The flail of the thrasher does not fall more swiftly upon the
corn. For many minutes it was the Unknown's only task to defend himself
from the tremendous activity of the enemy.
But even the Rowski's strength would slacken after exertion. The blows
began to fall less thick anon, and the point of the unknown knight
began to make dreadful play. It found and penetrated every joint of
the Donnerblitz's armor. Now it nicked him in the shoulder where the
vambrace was buckled to the corselet; now it bored a shrewd hole under
the light brissart, and blood followed; now, with fatal dexterity, it
darted through the visor, and came back to the recover deeply
tinged with blood. A scream of rage followed the last thrust; and no
wonder:--it had penetrated the Rowski's left eye.
His blood was trickling through a dozen orifices; he was almost choking
in his helmet with loss of breath, and loss of blood, and rage.
Gasping with fury, he drew back his horse, flung his great sword at his
opponent's head, and once more plunged at him, wielding his curtal-axe.
Then you should have seen the unknown knight employing the same dreadful
weapon! Hitherto he had been on his defence; now he began the attack;
and the gleaming axe whirred in his hand like a reed, but descended like
a thunderbolt! “Yield! yield! Sir Rowski,” shouted he, in a calm, clear
voice.
A blow dealt madly at his head was the reply. 'Twas the last blow that
the Count of Eulenschreckenstein ever struck in battle! The curse was on
his lips as the crushing steel descended into his brain, and split it
in two. He rolled like a log from his horse: his enemy's knee was in
a moment on his chest, and the dagger of mercy at his throat, as the
knight once more called upon him to yield.
But there was no answer from within the helmet. When it was withdrawn,
the teeth were crunched together; the mouth that should have spoken,
grinned a ghastly silence: one eye still glared with hate and fury, but
it was glazed with the film of death!
The red orb of the sun was just then dipping into the Rhine. The unknown
knight, vaulting once more into his saddle, made a graceful obeisance to
the Prince of Cleves and his daughter, without a word, and galloped back
into the forest, whence he had issued an hour before sunset.