WHAT JOAN LEFT BEHIND
After the departure of his bride, the Prince of Courtland stood on the
steps of the minster, dazed and foundered by the shame which had so
suddenly befallen him. Beneath him the people seethed tumultuously,
their holiday ribands and maypole dresses making as gay a swirl of
colour as when one looks at the sun through the facets of a cut Venetian
glass. Prince Louis's weak and fretful face worked with emotion. His
bird-like hands clawed uncertainly at his sword-hilt, wandering off over
the golden pouches that tasselled his baldric till they rested on the
sheath of the poignard he wore.
"Bid the gates be shut, Prince!" The whisper came over his shoulder from
a young man who had been standing all the time twisting his moustache.
"Bid your horsemen bit and bridle. The plain is fair before you. It is a
long way to Kernsberg. I have a hundred Muscovites at your service, all
well mounted--ten thousand behind them over the frontier if these are
not enough! Let no wench in the world put this shame upon a reigning
Prince of Courtland on his wedding-day!"
Thus Ivan of Muscovy, attired in silk, banded of black and gold,
counselled the disdained Prince Louis, who stood pushing upward with two
fingers the point of his thin greyish beard and gnawing the straggling
ends between his teeth.
"I say, 'To horse and ride, man!' Will you dare tell this folk of yours
that you are disdained, slighted at the very church door by your wedded
wife, cast off and trodden in the mire like a bursten glove? Can you
afford to proclaim yourself the scorn of Germany? How it will run, that
news! To Plassenburg first, where the Executioner's Son will smile
triumphantly to his witch woman, and straightway send off a messenger to
tickle the well-larded ribs of his friend the Margraf George with the
rare jest."
The Prince Louis appeared to be moved by the Wasp's words. He turned
about to the nearest knight-in-waiting.
"Let us to horse--every man of us!" he said. "Bid that the steeds be
brought instantly."
The banded Wasp had further counsels to give.
"Give out that you go to meet the Princess at a rendezvous. For a
pleasantry between yourselves, you have resolved to spend the honeymoon
at a distant hunting-lodge. Quick! Not half a dozen of all the company
caught the true import of her words. You will tame her yet. She will
founder her horses in a single day's ride, while you have relays along
the road at every castle, at every farm-house, and your borders are
fifty good miles away."
Beneath, in the square, the court jesters leaped and laughed, turning
somersaults and making a flying skirt, like that of a morrice dancer,
out of the long, flapping points of their parti-coloured blouses. The
streets in front of the cathedral were alive with musicians, mostly in
little bands of three, a harper with his harp of fourteen strings, his
companion playing industriously upon a Flute-English, and with these two
their 'prentice or servitor, who accompanied them with shrill iterance
of whistle, while both his hands busied themselves with the merry tuck
of tabour.
In this incessant merrymaking the people soon forgot their astonishment
at the sudden disappearance of the bride. There was, indeed, no
understanding these great folk. But it was a fine day for a feast--the
pretext a good one. And so the lasses and lads joked as they danced in
the lower vaults of the town house, from which the barrels had been
cleared for the occasion.
"If thou and I were thus wedded, Grete, would you ride one way and I the
other? Nay, God wot, lass! I am but a tanner's 'prentice, but I'd abide
beside thee, as close as bark by hide that lies three years in the same
tan-pit--aye, an' that I would, lass!"
Then Gretchen bridled. "I would not marry thee, nor yet lie near or far,
Hans; thou art but a boy, feckless and skill-less save to pole about thy
stinking skins--faugh!"
"Nay, try me, Grete! Is not this kiss as sweet as any civet-scented fop
could give?"
At the command of the Prince the trumpets rang out again the call of
"Boot-and-saddle!" from the steps of the cathedral. At the sound the
grooms, who were here and there in the press, hasted to find and
caparison the horses of their lords. Meanwhile, on the wide steps the
Prince Louis fretted, dinting his nails restlessly into his palms and
shaking with anger and disappointment till his deep sleeves vibrated
like scarlet flames in a veering wind.
Suddenly there passed a wave over the people who crowded the spacious
Dom Platz of Courtland. The turmoil stilled itself unconsciously. The
many-headed parti-coloured throng of women's tall coifs, gay fluttering
ribands, men's velvet caps, gallants' white feathers that shifted like
the permutations of a kaleidoscope, all at once fixed itself into a sea
of white faces, from which presently arose a forest of arms flourishing
kerchiefs and tossing caps. To this succeeded a deep mouth-roar of
burgherish welcome such as the reigning Prince had never heard raised in
his own honour.
"Conrad--Prince Conrad! God bless our Prince-Cardinal!"
The legitimate ruler of Courtland, standing where Joan had left him,
with his slim-waisted Muscovite mentor behind him, half-turned to look.
And there on the highest place stood his brother in the scarlet of his
new dignity as it had come from the Pope himself, his red biretta held
in his hand, and his fair and noble head erect as he looked over the
folk to where on the slope above the city gates he could still see the
sun glint and sparkle on the cuirasses and lanceheads of the four
hundred riders of Kernsberg.
But even as the Prince of Courtland looked back at his brother, the
whisper of the tempter smote his ear.
"Had Prince Conrad been in your place, and you behind the altar rails,
think you that the Duchess Joan would have fled so cavalierly?"
By this time the young Cardinal had descended till he stood on the other
side of the Prince from Ivan of Muscovy.
"You take horse to follow your bride?" he queried, smiling. "Is it a
fashion of Kernsberg brides thus to steal away?" For he could see the
grooms bringing horses into the square, and the guards beating the
people back with the butts of their spears to make room for the mounting
of the Prince's cavalcade.
"Hark--he flouts you!" came the whisper over the bridegroom's shoulder;
"I warrant he knew of this before."
"You have done your priest's work, brother," said Louis coldly, "e'en
permit me to go about that of a prince and a husband in my own way."
The Cardinal bowed low, but with great self-command held his peace,
whereat Louis of Courtland broke out in a sudden overboiling fury.
"This is your doing!" he cried; "I know it well. From her first coming
my bride had set herself to scorn me. My sister knew it. You knew it.
You smile as at a jest. The Pope's favour has turned your head. You
would have all--the love of my wife, the rule of my folk, as well as the
acclaim of these city swine. Listen--'The good Prince Conrad! God save
the noble Prince!' It is worth while living for favour such as this."
"Brother of mine," said the young man gently, "as you know well, I
never set eyes upon the noble Lady Joan before. Never spoke word to her,
held no communication by word or pen."
"Von Dessauer--his secretary!" whispered Ivan, dropping the suggestion
carefully over his shoulder like poison distilled into a cup.
"You were constantly with the old fox Dessauer, the envoy of
Plassenburg--who came from Kernsberg, bringing with him that slim
secretary. By my faith, now, when I think of it, Prince Ivan told me
last night he was as like this madcap girl as pea to pea--some fly-blown
base-born brother, doubtless!"
Conrad shook his head. His brother had doubtless gone momentarily
distract with his troubles.
"Nay, deny it not! And smile not either--lest I spoil the symmetry of
that face for your monkish mummery and processions. Aye, if I have to
lie under ten years' interdict for it from your friend the most Holy
Pope of Rome!"
"Do not forget there is another Church in my country, which will lay no
interdict upon you, Prince Louis," laughed Ivan of Muscovy. "But to
horse--to horse--we lose time!"
"Brother," said the Cardinal, laying his hand on Louis's arm, "on my
word as a knight--as a Prince of the Church--I knew nothing of the
matter. I cannot even guess what has led you thus to accuse me!"
The Princess Margaret came at that moment out of the cathedral and ran
impetuously to her favourite brother.
He put out his hand. She took it, and instead of kissing his bishop's
ring, as in strict etiquette she ought to have done, she cried out,
"Conrad, do you know what that glorious wench has done? Dared her
husband's authority at the church door, leaped into the saddle, whistled
up her men, cried to all these Courtland gallants, 'Catch me who can!'
And lo! at this moment she is riding straight for Kernsberg, and now our
Louis must catch her. A glorious wedding! I would I were by her side.
Brother Louis, you need not frown, I am nowise affrighted at your
glooms! This is a bride worth fighting for. No puling cloister-maid this
that dares not raise her eyes higher than her bridegroom's knee! Were I
a man, by my faith, I would never eat or drink, neither pray nor sain
me, till I had tamed the darling and brought her to my wrist like a
falcon to a lure!"
"So, then, madam, you knew of this?" said her elder brother, glowering
upon her from beneath his heavy brows.
"Nay!" trilled the gay Princess, "I only wish I had. Then I, too, would
have been riding with them--such a jest as never was, it would have
been. Goodbye, my poor forsaken brother! Joy be with you on this your
bridal journey. Take Prince Ivan with you, and Conrad and I will keep
the kingdom against your return, with your prize gentled on your wrist."
So smiling and kissing her hand the Princess Margaret waved her brother
and Prince Ivan off. The Prince of Courtland neither looked at her nor
answered. But the Muscovite turned often in his saddle as if to carry
with him the picture she made of saucy countenance and dainty figure as
she stood looking up into the face of the Cardinal Prince Conrad.
"What in Heaven's name is the meaning of all this--I do not understand
in the least?" he was saying.
"Haste you and unrobe, Brother Con," she said; "this grandeur of yours
daunts me. Then, in the summer parlour, I will tell you all!"
[Illustration: "They stood ... looking down at the rushing river."
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