WOMAN'S WILFULNESS
Joan rode on, silent, a furlong before her men.
Behind her sulked Maurice von Lynar. Had any been there to note, their
faces were now strangely alike in feature, and yet more curiously unlike
in expression. Joan gazed forward into the distance like a soul dead and
about to be reborn, planning a new life. Maurice von Lynar looked more
like a naughty schoolboy whom some tyrant Fate, rod-wielding, has
compelled to obey against his will.
Yet, in spite of expression, it was Maurice von Lynar who was planning
the future. Joan's heart was yet too sore. Her tree of life had, as it
were, been cut off close to the ground. She could not go back to the old
so soon after her blissful year of dreams. There was to be no new life
for her. She could not take up the old. But Maurice--his thoughts were
all for the Princess Margaret, of the ripple of her golden hair, of her
pretty wilful words and ways, of that dimple on her chin, and, above
all, of her threat to seek him out if--but it was not possible that she
could mean that. And yet she looked as though she might make good her
words. Was it possible? He posed himself with this question, and for
half an hour rode on oblivious of all else.
"Eh?" he said at last, half conscious that some one had been speaking to
him from an infinite distance. "Eh? Did you speak, Captain von Orseln?"
Von Orseln grunted out a little laugh, almost silently, indeed, and
expressed more by a heave of his shoulders than by any alteration of his
features.
"Speak, indeed? As if I had not been speaking these five minutes. Well
nigh had I stuck my poignard in your ribs to teach you to mind your
superior officer. What think you of this business?"
"Think?" the Sparhawk's disappointment burst out. "Think? Why, 'tis past
all thinking. Courtland is shut to us for twenty years."
"Well," laughed Von Orseln, "who cares for that? Castle Kernsberg is
good enough for me, so we can hold it."
"Hold it?" cried Maurice, with a kind of joy in his face; "do you think
they will come after us?"
Von Orseln nodded approval of his spirit.
"Yes, little man, yes," he said; "if you have been fretting to come to
blows with the Courtlanders you are in good case to be satisfied. I
would we had only these lumpish Baltic jacks to fear."
Even as they talked Castle Kernsberg floated up like a cloud before them
above the blue and misty plain, long before they could distinguish the
walls and hundred gables of the town beneath.
But no word spoke Joan till that purple shadow had taken shape as
stately stone and lime, and she could discern her own red lion flying
abreast of the banner of Louis of Courtland upon the topmost pinnacle of
the round tower.
Then on a little mound without the town she halted and faced about. Von
Orseln halted the troop with a backward wave of the hand.
"Men of Hohenstein," said the Duchess, in a clear, far-reaching alto,
"you have followed me, asking no word of why or wherefore. I have told
you nothing, yet is an explanation due to you."
There came the sound as of a hoarse unanimous muttering among the
soldiers. Joan looked at Von Orseln as a sign for him to interpret it.
"They say that they are Joan of the Sword Hand's men, and that they will
disembowl any man who wants to know what it may please you to keep
secret."
"Aye, or question by so much as one lifted eyebrow aught that it may
please your Highness to do," added Captain Peter Balta, from the right
of the first troop.
"I said that our Duchess could never live in such a dog's hole as their
Courtland," quoth George the Hussite, who, before he took service with
Henry the Lion, had been a heretic preacher. "In Bohemia, now, where the
pines grow----"
"Hold your prate, all of you," growled Von Orseln, "or you will find
where hemp grows, and why! My lady," he added, altering his voice as he
turned to her, "be assured, no dog in Kernsberg will bark an
interrogative at you. Shall our young Duchess Joan be wived and bedded
like some little burgheress that sells laces and tape all day long on
the Axel-strasse? Shall the daughter of Henry the Lion be at the
commandment of any Bor-Russian boor, an it like her not? Shall she get a
burr in her throat with breathing the raw fogs of the Baltic? Not a
word, most gracious lady! Explain nothing. Extenuate nothing. It is the
will of Joan of the Sword Hand--that is enough; and, by the word of
Werner von Orseln, it shall be enough!"
"It is the will of Joan of the Sword Hand! It is enough!" repeated the
four hundred lances, like a class that learns a lesson by rote.
A lump rose in Joan's throat as she tried to shape into words the
thoughts that surged within. She felt strangely weak. Her pride was not
the same as of old, for the heart of a woman had grown up within her--a
heart of flesh. Surely that could not be a tear in her eye? No; the wind
blew shrewdly out of the west, to which they were riding. Von Orseln
noted the struggle and took up his parable once more.
"The pact is carried out. The lands united--the will of Henry the Lion
done! What more? Shall the free Princess be the huswife of a yellow
Baltic dwarf? When we go into the town and they ask us, we will say but
this, 'Our Lady misliked the fashion of his beard!' That will be reason
good and broad and deep, sufficient alike for grey-haired carl and
prattling bairn!"
"I thank you, noble gentlemen," said Joan. "Now, as you say, let us ride
into Kernsberg."
"And pull down that flag!" cried Maurice, pointing to the black
Courtland Eagle which flew so steadily beside the coronated lion of
Kernsberg and Hohenstein.
"And pray, sir, why?" quoth Joan of the Sword Hand. "Am I not also
Princess of Courtland?"
* * * * *
From woman's wilfulness all things somehow have their beginning. Yet of
herself she is content with few things (so that she have what she
wants), somewhat Spartan in fare if let alone, and no dinner-eating
animal. Wine, tobacco, caviare, Strasburg goose-liver--Epicurus's
choicest gifts to men of this world--are contemned by womankind. Left to
their own devices, they prefer a drench of sweet mead or hydromel laced
with water, or even of late the China brew that filters in black bricks
through the country of the Muscovite. Nevertheless, to woman's wantings
may be traced all restraints and judgments, from the sword flaming every
way about Eden-gate to the last merchant declared bankrupt and "dyvour"
upon the exchange flags of Hamburg town. Eve did not eat the apple when
she got it. She hasted to give it away. She only wanted it because it
had been forbidden.
So also Joan of Hohenstein desired to go down with Dessauer that she
might look upon the man betrothed to her from birth. She went. She
looked, and, as the tale tells, within her there grew a heart of flesh.
Then, when the stroke fell, that heart uprose in quick, intemperate
revolt. And what might have issued in the dull compliance of a princess
whose life was settled for her, became the imperious revolt of a woman
against an intolerable and loathsome impossibility.
So in her castle of Kernsberg Joan waited. But not idly. All day long
and every day Maurice von Lynar rode on her service. The hillmen
gathered to his word, and in the courtyard the stormy voices of George
the Hussite and Peter Balta were never hushed. The shepherds from the
hills went to and fro, marching and countermarching, wheeling and
charging, porting musket and thrusting pike, till all Kernsberg was
little better than a barracks, and the maidens sat wet-eyed at their
knitting by the fire and thought, "Well for Her to please herself whom
she shall marry--but how about us, with never a lad in the town to
whistle us out in the gloaming, or to thumb a pebble against the
window-lattice from the deep edges of the ripening corn?"
But there were two, at least, within the realm of the Duchess Joan who
knew no drawbacks to their joy, who rubbed palm on palm and nudged each
other for pure gladness. These (it is sad to say) were the military
_attachés_ of the neighbouring peaceful State of Plassenburg. Yet they
had been specially cautioned by their Prince Hugo, in the presence of
his wife Helene, the hereditary Princess, that they were most carefully
to avoid all international complications. They were on no account to
take sides in any quarrel. Above all they must do nothing prejudicial to
the peace, neutrality, and universal amity of the State and Princedom of
Plassenburg. Such were these instructions.
They promised faithfully.
But, their names being Captains Boris and Jorian, they now rubbed their
hands and nudged each other. They ought to have been in their chamber in
the Castle of Kernsberg, busily concocting despatches to their master
and mistress, giving an account of these momentous events.
Instead, how is it that we find them lying on that spur of the
Jägernbergen which overlooks the passes of Alla, watching the gathering
of the great storm which in the course of days must break over the
domains of the Duchess Joan--who had refused and slighted her wedded
husband, Louis, Prince of Courtland?
Being both powerfully resourceful men, long lean Boris and rotund Jorian
had found a way out of the apparent difficulty. There had come with
them from Plassenburg a commission written upon an entire square of
sheepskin by a secretary and sealed with the seal of Leopold von
Dessauer, High Councillor of the United Princedom and Duchy, bearing
that "In the name of Hugo and Helene our well-loved lieges Captains
Boris and Jorian are empowered to act and treat," and so forth. This
momentous deed was tied about the middle with a red string, and
presented withal so courtly and respectable an appearance to the
uncritical eyes of the ex-men-at-arms themselves, that they felt almost
anything excusable which they might do in its name.
Before leaving Kernsberg, therefore, Boris placed this great red-waisted
parchment roll in his bed, leaning it angle-wise against his pillow.
Jorian tossed a spare dagger with the arms of Plassenburg beside it.
"There--let the civil power and the military for once lie down
together!" he said. "We delegate our authority to these two during our
absence!"
To the silent Plassenburgers who had accompanied them, and who now kept
their door with unswerving attention, Boris explained himself briefly.
"Remember," he said, "when you are asked, that the envoys of Plassenburg
are ill--ill of a dangerous and most contagious disease. Also, they are
asleep. They must on no account be waked. The windows must be kept
darkened. It is a great pity. You are desolated. You understand. The
first time I have more money than I can spend you shall have ten marks!"
The men-at-arms understood, which was no wonder, for Boris generally
contrived to make himself very clear. But they thought within them that
their chances of financial benefit from their captain's conditional
generosity were worth about one sole stiver.
So these two, being now free fighting-men, as it were, soldiers of
fortune, lay waiting on the slopes of the Jägernbergen, talking over the
situation.
"A man surely has a right to his own wife!" said Jorian, taking for the
sake of argument the conventional side.
"_Narren-possen_, Jorian!" cried Boris, raising his voice to the
indignation point. "Clotted nonsense! Who is going to keep a man's wife
for him if he cannot do it himself? And he a prince, and within his own
city and fortress, too. She boxed his ears, they say, and rode away,
telling him that if he wanted her he might come and take her! A pretty
spirit, i' faith! Too good for such a dried stockfish of the Baltic,
with not so much soul as a speckled flounder on his own mud-flats!
Faith! if I were a marrying man, I would run off with the lass myself.
She ought at least to be a soldier's wife."
"The trouble is that so far she feels no necessity to be any one's
wife," said Jorian, shifting his ground.
"That also is nonsense," said Boris, who, spite his defence of Joan,
held the usual masculine views. "Every woman wishes to marry, if she can
only have first choice."
"There they come!" whispered Jorian, whose eyes had never wandered from
the long wavering lines of willow and alder which marked the courses of
the sluggish streams flowing east toward the Alla.
Boris rose to his feet and looked long beneath his hand. Very far away
there was a sort of white tremulousness in the atmosphere which after a
while began to give off little luminous glints and sparkles, as the sea
does when a shaft of moonlight touches it through a dark canopy of
cloud.
Then there arose from the level green plain first one tall column of
dense black smoke and then another, till as far as they could see to the
left the plain was full of them.
"God's truth!" cried Jorian, "they are burning the farms and herds'
houses. I thought they had been Christians in Courtland. But these are
more like Duke Casimir's devil's tricks."
Boris did not immediately answer. His eyes were busy seeing, his brain
setting in order.
"I tell you what," he said at last, in a tone of intense interest,
"these are no fires lighted by Courtlanders. The heavy Baltic knights
could never ride so fast nor spread so wide. The Muscovite is out! These
are Cossack fires. Bravo, Jorian! we shall yet have our Hugo here with
his axe! He will never suffer the Bear so near his borders."
"Let us go down," said Jorian, "or we shall miss some of the fun. In two
good hours they will be at the fords of the Alla!"
So they looked to their arms and went down.
"What do you here? Go back!" shouted Werner von Orseln, who with his men
lay waiting behind the floodbanks of the Alla. "This is not your
quarrel! Go back, Plassenburgers!"
"We have for the time being demitted our office," Boris exclaimed. "The
envoys of Plassenburg are at home in bed, sick of a most sanguinary
fever. We offer you our swords as free fighting-men and good Teuts. The
Muscovites are over yonder. Lord, to think that I have lived to
forty-eight and never yet killed even one bearded Russ!"
"You may mend that record shortly, to all appearance, if you have luck!"
said Von Orseln grimly. "And this gentleman here," he added, looking at
Jorian, "is he also in bed, sick?"
"My sword is at your service," said the round one, "though I should
prefer a musketoon, if it is all the same to you. It will be something
to do till these firebrands come within arm's length of us."
"I have here two which are very much at your service, if you know how to
use them!" said Werner.
The men-at-arms laughed.
"We know their tricks better than those of our sweethearts!" they said,
"and those we know well!"
"Here they be, then," said Von Orseln. "I sent a couple of men spurring
to warn my Lady Joan, and I bade them leave their muskets and bandoliers
till they came back, that they might ride the lighter to and from
Kernsberg."
Boris and Jorian took the spare pieces with a glow of gratitude, which
was, however, very considerably modified when they discovered the state
in which their former owners had kept them.
"Dirty Wendish pigs," they said (which was their favourite malediction,
though they themselves were Wend of the Wends). "Were they but an hour
in our camp they should ride the wooden horse with these very muskets
tied to their soles to keep them firmly down. Faugh!"
And Jorian withdrew his finger from the muzzle, black as soot with the
grease of uncleansed powder.
Looking up, they saw that the priest with the little army of Kernsberg
was praying fervently (after the Hussite manner, without book) for the
safety of the State and person of their lady Duchess, and that the men
were listening bareheaded beneath the green slope of the water-dyke.
"Go on cleaning," said Boris; "this is some heretic function, and might
sap our morality. We are volunteers, at any rate, as well as the best of
good Catholics. We do not need unlicensed prayers. If you have quite
done with that rag stick, lend it to me, Jorian!"