JOAN DRAWS FIRST BLOOD
The word of command came full and strong from
the open doorway of the hall.
Hans Trenck came instantly to the salute with the ball in his hand. He
had no difficulty in lifting it now. In fact, he did not seem able to
let it down. Every man in the hall except the two captains of
Plassenburg had risen to his feet and stood as if carved in marble.
For there in the doorway, her slim figure erect and exceedingly
commanding, and her beautiful eyes shining with indignation, stood the
Duchess Joan of Hohenstein.
"Joan of the Sword Hand!" said Jorian, enraptured. "Gott, what a wench!"
In stern silence she advanced into the hall, every man standing fixed at
attention.
"Good discipline!" said Boris.
"Shut your mouth!" responded Jorian.
"Keep your hand so, Hans Trenck," said their mistress; "give me your
sword, Werner! You shall see whether I am called Joan of the Sword Hand
for naught. You would torture prisoners, would you, after what I have
said? Hold up, I say, Hans Trenck!"
And so, no man saying her nay, the girl took the shining blade and, with
a preliminary swish through the air and a balancing shake to feel the
elastic return, she looked at the poor knave fixed before her in the
centre of the hall with his wrist strained to hold the prisoner's ball
aloft at the stretch of his arm. What wonder if it wavered like a
branch in an uncertain wind?
"Steady there!" said Joan.
And she drew back her arm for the stroke.
The young Dane, who, since her entrance, had looked at nothing save the
radiant beauty of the figure before him, now cried out, "For Heaven's
sake, lady, do not soil the skirts of your dress with his villain blood.
He but obeyed his orders. Let me be set free, and I will fight him or
any man in the castle. And if I am beaten, let them torture me till I am
carrion fit only to be thrown into the castle ditch."
The Duchess paused and leaned on the sword, holding it point to the
floor.
"By whose orders was this thing done?" she demanded.
The lad was silent. He disdained to tell tales even on his enemies. Was
he not a gentleman and a Dane?
"By mine, my lady!" said Werner von Orseln, a deep flush upon his manly
brow.
The girl looked severely at him. She seemed to waver. "Good, then!" she
said, "the Dane shall fight Werner for his life. Loose him and chafe his
wrists. Ho! there--bring a dozen swords from the armoury!"
The flush was now rising to the boy's cheek.
"I thank you, Duchess," he said. "I ask no more than this."
"Faith, the Sparhawk is not tamed yet," said Boris; "we shall see better
sport ere all be done!"
"Hold thy peace," growled Jorian, "and look."
* * * * *
"Out into the light!" cried the young Duchess Joan, pointing the way
with Werner's sword, which she still held in her hand. And going first
she went forth from the hall of the soldiery, down the broad stairs, and
soon through a low-arched door with a sculptured coat-of-arms over it,
out into the quadrangle of the courtyard.
"And now we will see this prisoner of ours, this cock of the Danish
marches, make good his words. That, surely, is better sport than to
drop caltrops upon the toes of manacled men."
Werner followed unwillingly and with deep flush of shame upon his brow.
"My lady," he said, going up to his mistress, "I do not need to prove my
courage after I have served Kernsberg and Hohenstein for thirty-eight
years--or well-nigh twice the years you have lived--fought for you and
your father and shed my blood in a score of pitched battles, to say
nothing of forays. Of course I will fight, but surely this young
cockerel might be satisfied to have his comb cut by younger hands."
"Was yours the order concerning the dropping of the ball?" asked the
Duchess Joan.
The grey-headed soldier nodded grimly.
"I gave the order," he said briefly.
"Then by St. Ursula and her boneyard, you must stand to it!" cried this
fiery young woman. "Else will I drub you with the flat of your own
sword!"
Werner bowed with a slightly ironic smile on his grizzled face.
"As your ladyship wills," he said; "I do not give you half obedience. If
you say that I am to get down on my knees and play cat's cradle with the
Kernsberg bairns, I will do it!"
Joan of the Sword here looked calmly at him with a certain austerity in
her glance.
"Why, of course you would!" she said simply.
Meanwhile the lad had been freed from his bonds and stood with a sword
in his hand suppling himself for the work before him with quick little
guards and feints and attacks. There was a proud look in his eyes, and
as his glance left the Duchess and roved round the circle of his foes,
it flashed full, bold, and defiant.
Werner turned to a palish lean Bohemian who stood a little apart.
"Peter Balta," he said, "will you be my second? Agreed! And who will
care for my honourable opponent?"
"Do not trouble yourself--that will arrange itself!" said Joan to her
chief captain.
With that she flashed lightfoot into one of the low doors which led into
the flanking turrets of the quadrangle, and in a tierce of seconds she
was out again, in a forester's dress of green doublet and broad pleated
kirtle that came to her knee.
"I myself," she said, challenging them with her eyes, "will be this
young man's second, in this place where he has so many enemies and no
friends."
As the forester in green and the prisoner stood up together, the guards
murmured in astonishment at the likeness between them.
"Had this Dane and our Joan been brother and sister, they could not have
favoured each other more," they said.
A deep blush rose to the youth's swarthy face.
"I am not worthy," he said, and kept his eyes upon the lithe figure of
the girl in its array of well-fitting velvet. "I cannot thank you!" he
said again.
"Tut," she answered, "worthy--unworthy--thank--unthank--what avail these
upon the mountains of Kernsberg and in the Castle of Joan of the Sword
Hand? A good heart, a merry fight, a quick death! These are more to the
purpose than many thanks and compliments. Peter Balta, are you seconding
Werner? Come hither. Let us try the swords, you and I. Will not these
two serve? Guard! Well smitten! There, enough. What, you are touched on
the sword arm? Faith, man, for the moment I forgot that it was not you
and I who were to drum. This tickling of steel goes to my head like wine
and I am bound to forget. I am sorry--but, after all, a day or two in a
sling will put your arm to rights again, Peter. These are good swords.
Now then, Maurice von Lynar--Werner. At the salute! Ready! Fall to!"
The burly figure of the Captain Werner von Orseln and the slim arrowy
swiftness of Maurice the Dane were opposed in the clear shadow of the
quadrangle, where neither had any advantage of light, and the swords of
their seconds kept them at proper distance according to the fighting
rules of the time.
"I give the Sparhawk five minutes," said Boris to Jorian, after the
first parry. It was little more than formal and gave no token of what
was to follow. Yet for full twenty minutes Werner von Orseln, the oldest
sworder of all the north, from the marshes of Wilna to the hills of
Silesia, could do nothing but stand on the defensive, so fierce and
incessant were the attacks of the young Dane.
But Werner did not give back. He stood his ground, warily, steadfastly,
with a half smile on his face, a wall of quick steel in front of him,
and the point of his adversary's blade ever missing him an inch at this
side, and coming an inch short upon that other. The Dane kept as
steadily to the attack, and made his points as much by his remarkable
nimbleness upon his feet as by the lightning rapidity of his sword-play.
"The Kernsberger is playing with him!" said Boris, under his breath.
Jorian nodded. He had no breath to waste.
"But he is not going to kill him. He has not the Death in his eye!"
Boris spoke with judgment, for so it proved. Werner lifted an eyebrow
for the fraction of a second towards his mistress. And then at the end
of the next rally his sword just touched his young adversary on the
shoulder and the blood answered the thrust, staining the white
underdoublet of the Dane.
Then Werner threw down his sword and held out his hand.
"A well-fought rally," he said; "let us be friends. We need lads of such
metal to ride the forays from the hills of Kernsberg. I am sorry I
baited you, Sparhawk!"
"A good fight clears all scores!" replied the youth, smiling in his
turn.
"Bring a bandage for his shoulder, Peter Balta!" cried Joan. "Mine was
the cleaner stroke which went so near your great muscle, but Werner's is
somewhat the deeper. You can keep each other company at the dice-box
these next days. And, as I warrant neither of you has a Lübeck guilder
to bless yourself with, you can e'en play for love till you wear out the
pips with throwing."
"Then I am not to go back to the dungeon?" said the lad, one reason of
whose wounding had been that he also lifted his eyes for a moment to
those of his second.
"To prison--no," said Joan; "you are one of us now. We have blooded you.
Do you take service with me?"
"I have no choice--your father left me none!" the lad replied, quickly
altering his phrase. "Castle Lynar is no more. My grandfather, my
father, and my uncles are all dead, and there is small service in going
back to Denmark, where there are more than enough of hungry gentlemen
with no wealth but their swords and no living but their gentility. If
you will let me serve in the ranks, Duchess Joan, I shall be well
content!"
"I also," said Joan heartily. "We are all free in Kernsberg, even if we
are not all equal. We will try you in the ranks first. Go to the men's
quarters. George the Hussite, I deliver him to you. See that he does not
get into any more quarrels till his arm is better, and curb my rascals'
tongues as far as you can. Remember who meddles with the principal must
reckon with the second."