THE FACE THAT LOOKED INTO JOAN'S
The chamber to which the Duchess Joan was conducted by her hostess had
evidently been carefully prepared for her reception. It was a large low
room, with a vaulted roof of carven wood. The work was of great merit
and evidently old. The devices upon it were mostly coats-of-arms, which
originally had been gilded and painted in heraldic colours, though
neglect through long generations had tarnished the gold leaf and caused
the colours to peel off in places. Here and there, however, were shields
of more recent design, but in every case the motto and scutcheon of
these had been defaced. At both ends of the room were windows, through
whose stained glass Joan peered without result into blank darkness. Then
she opened a little square of panes just large enough to put her head
through and saw a walk of lofty poplars silhouetted against the sky,
dark towers of leaves all a-rustle and a-shiver from the zenith to the
ground, as a moaning and sobbing wind drew inward and whispered to them
of the coming storm.
Then Joan shut the window and looked about her. A table with a little
_prie-Dieu_ stood in the corner, screened by a curtain which ran on a
brazen rod. A Roman Breviary lay open on a velvet-covered table before
the crucifix. Joan lifted it up and her eyes fell on the words: "_By a
woman he overcame. By a woman he was overcome. A woman was once his
weapon. A woman is now become the instrument of his defeat. He findeth
that the weak vessel cannot be broken._"
"Nor shall it!" said Joan, looking at the cross before her; "by the
strength of Mary the Mother, the weak vessel shall not be broken!"
She turned her about and examined with interest the rest of the room
which for many days was to be her own. The bed was low and wide, with
sheets of fine linen folded back, and over all a richly embroidered
coverlet. At the further end of the chamber was a fireplace, with a
projecting hood of enamelled brick, looking fresh and new amid so much
that was centuries old. Oaken panels covered the walls, opening mostly
into deep cupboards. The girl tried one or two of these. They proved to
be unlocked and were filled with ancient parchments, giving forth a
faintly aromatic smell, but without a particle of dust upon their
leaves. The cleanliness of everything within the chamber had been
scrupulously attended to.
For a full hour Joan walked the chamber with her hands clasped behind
her back, thinking how she was to return to her well-beloved Kernsberg.
Her pride was slowly abating, and with it her anger against those
faithful servants who had risked her favour to convey her beyond the
reach of danger. But none the less she was resolved to go back. This
conflict must not take place without her. If Kernsberg were captured,
and Maurice von Lynar found personating his mistress, he would surely be
put to death. If he fell into Muscovite hands that death would be by
torture.
At all hazards she would return. And to this problem she turned her
thoughts, knitting her brows and working her fingers nervously through
each other.
She had it. There was a way. She would wait till the morrow and in the
meantime--sleep.
As she stooped to blow out the last candle, a motto on the stem caught
her eye. It ran round the massive silver base of the candelabra in the
thick Gothic characters of a hundred years before. Joan took the candle
out of its socket and read the inscription word by word--
"DA PACEM, DOMINE, IN DIEBUS NOSTRIS."
It was her own scroll, the motto of the reigning dukes of Hohenstein--a
strange one, doubtless, to be that of a fighting race, but,
nevertheless, her father's and her own.
Joan held the candle in her hand a long time, looking at it, heedless of
the wax that dripped on the floor.
What did her father's motto, the device of her house, upon this Baltic
island, far from the highlands of Kernsberg? Had these wastes once
belonged to men of her race? And this woman, who so regally played the
mistress of this strange heritage, who was she? And what was the secret
of the residence of one in this wilderness who, by her manner, might in
her time have queened it in royal courts?
And as Joan of Hohenstein blew out the candle she mused in her heart
concerning these things.
* * * * *
The Duchess Joan slept soundly, her dark boyish head pillowed on the
full rounded curves of an arm thrown behind her. On the little
velvet-covered table beside the bed lay her belt and its dependent
sword, a faithful companion in its sheath of plain black leather. Under
the pillow, and within instant reach of her right hand, was her father's
dagger. With it, they said, Henry the Lion had more than once removed an
enemy who stood in his way, or more honourably given the _coup de grâce_
to a would-be assassin.
Without, the mood of the night had changed. The sky, which had hitherto
been of favourable aspect, save for the green light in the north as they
rowed across the waters of the Haff, was now overflowed by thin wisps of
cloud tacking up against the wind. Towards the sea a steely blue smother
had settled down along the horizon, while the thunder growled nearer
like a roll of drums beaten continuously. The wind, however, was not
regular, but came in little puffs and bursts, now warm, now cold, from
every point of the compass.
But still Joan slept on, being tired with her journey.
In their chamber in the wing which looks towards the north the three
captains lay wrapped in their several mantles, Jorian and Boris
answering each other nasally, in alternate trumpet blasts, like Alp
calling to Alp. Werner von Orseln alone could not sleep, and after he
had sworn and kicked his noisy companions in the ribs till he was weary
of the task, he rose and went to the window to cast open the lattice.
The air within felt thick and hot. He fumbled long at the catch, and in
the unwholesome silence of the strange house the chief captain seemed to
hear muffled feet going to and fro on the floor above him. But of this
he thought little. For strange places were familiar to him, and any
sense of danger made but an added spice in his cup of life.
At last he worried the catch loose, the lattice pane fell sagging
inwards on its double hinge of skin. As Werner set his face to the
opening quick flashes of summer lightning flamed alternately white and
lilac across the horizon, and he felt the keen spit of hailstones in his
face, driving level like so many musket balls when the infantry fires by
platoons.
* * * * *
Above, in the vaulted chamber, Joan turned over on her bed, murmuring
uneasily in her sleep. A white face, which for a quarter of an hour had
been bent down to her dark head as it lay on the pillow, was suddenly
retracted into the blackness at the girl's slight movement.
Again, apparently reassured, the shadowy visage approached as the young
Duchess lay without further motion. Without the storm broke in a burst
of appalling fury. The pale blue forks of the lightning flamed just
outside the casement in flash on continuous flash. The thunder shook the
house like an earthquake.
Suddenly, and for no apparent reason, Joan's eyes opened, and she found
herself looking with bewilderment into a face that bent down upon her,
a white face which somehow seemed to hang suspended in the dark above
her. The features were lit up by the pulsing lightning which shone in
the wild eyes and glittered on a knife-blade about the handle of which
were clenched the tense white fingers of a hand equally detached.
A quick icy thrill chilled the girl's marrow, darting like a spear
through her body. But Joan of Hohenstein was the true seed of Henry the
Lion. In a moment her right hand had grasped the sword beside her
pillow. Her left, shooting upward, closed on the arm which held the
threatening steel. At the same time she flung herself forward, and with
the roaring turmoils of the storm dinning in her ears she grappled
something that withstood her in the interspace of darkness that had
followed the flashes. Joan's spring had been that of the couchant young
wild cat. Almost without rising from her bed she had projected herself
upon her enemy. Her left hand grasped the wrist so tightly that the
blade fell to the ground, whereupon Joan of the Sword Hand shifted her
grasp upwards fiercely till she felt her fingers sink deep in the soft
curves of a woman's throat.
Then a shriek, long and terrible, inhuman and threatening, rang through
the house. A light began to burn yellow and steady through the cracks of
the chamber door, not pulsing and blue like the lightning without.
Presently, as Joan overbore her assailant upon the floor, the door
opened, and glancing upwards she saw the Wordless Man stand on the
threshold, a candle in one hand and a naked sword in the other.
The terrible cry which had rung in her ears had been his. At sight of
him Joan unclasped her fingers from the throat of the woman and rose
slowly to her feet. The old man rushed forward and knelt beside the
prostrate body of his mistress.
At the same moment there came the sound of quick footsteps running up
the stairway. The door flew open and Werner von Orseln burst in, also
sword in hand.
"What is the meaning of this?" he shouted. "Who has dared to harm my
lady?"
Joan did not answer, but remained standing tall and straight by the
hooded mantel of the fireplace. As was her custom, before lying down she
had clad herself in a loose gown of white silk which on all her journeys
she carried in a roll at her saddle-bow.
She pointed to the mother of Maurice von Lynar, who lay on the floor,
still unconscious, with the dumb man kneeling over her, chafing her
hands and murmuring unintelligible tendernesses, like a mother crooning
over a sick child.
But the face of the chief captain grew stern and terrible as he saw on
the floor a knife of curious design. He stooped and lifted it. It was a
Danish _tolle knife_, the edge a little curved outward and keen as a
razor.