THE GIRL BENEATH THE LAMP
When Conrad, Cardinal-designate of the Holy Roman Church and Archbishop
of Courtland, opened his eyes, it seemed to him that he had passed
through warring waters into the serenity of the Life Beyond. His hand,
on which still glittered his episcopal ring, lay on a counterpane of
faded rose silk, soft as down. Did he dream that another hand had been
holding it, that gentlest fingers had rested caressingly on his brow?
A girl, sweet and stately, sat by his bedside. By the door, to which
alone he could raise his eyes, stood a tall gaunt man, clad in grey from
head to foot, his hands clasped in front of him, and his chin sunk upon
his breast.
The Prince-Bishop's eyes rested languidly on the girl's face, on which
fell the light of a shaded silver lamp. There was a book in her lap,
written upon sheets of thin parchment, bound in gold-embossed leather.
But she did not read it. Instead she breathed softly and regularly. She
was asleep, with her hand on the coverlet of rosy silk.
Strange fancies passed through the humming brain of the rescued man--as
it had been, hunting each other across a stage--visions of perilous
endeavour, of fights with wild beasts in shut-in places from which there
was no escape, of brutal fisticuffs with savage men. All these again
merged into the sense of falling from immense heights only to find that
the air upheld him and that, instead of breaking himself to pieces at
the bottom, he alighted soft as thistledown on couches of flowers.
Strange rich heady scents seemed to rise about him like something
palpable. His brain wavered behind his brow like a summer landscape when
the sun is hot after a shower. Perfumes, strange and haunting, dwelt in
his nostrils. The scent, at once sour and sweet, of bee-hives at night,
the richness of honey in the comb, the delicacy of wet banks of violets,
full-odoured musk, and the luxury of sun-warmed afternoon beanfields
dreamily sweet--these made his very soul swoon within him. Then followed
odours of rose gardens, of cool walks drenched in shadow and random
scents blown in at open windows. Yes, he knew now; surely he was again
in his own chamber in the summer pavilion of the palace in Courtland. He
could hear the cool wash of the Alla under its walls, and with the
assurance there came somehow a memory of a slim lad with clear-cut
features who brought him a message from--was it his sister Margaret, or
Louis his brother? He could not remember which.
Of what had he been dreaming? In the endeavour to recall something he
harked back on the terrors of the night in which, of all on board the
ship, his soul alone had remained serene. He remembered the fury of the
storm, the helpless impotence and blank cowardice of the sailor folk,
the desertion of the officers in the only seaworthy boat.
Slowly the drifting mists steadied themselves athwart his brain. The
actual recomposed itself out of the shreds of dreams. Conrad found
himself in a long low room such as he had seen many times in the houses
of well-to-do ritters along the Baltic shores. The beams of the
roof-tree above were carven and ancient. Arras went everywhere about the
halls. Silver candlesticks, with princely crests graven upon them, stood
by his bedhead. After each survey his eyes settled on the sleeping girl.
She was very young and very beautiful. It was--yet it could not be--the
Duchess Joan, whom he himself had married to his brother Louis in the
cathedral church of his own archiepiscopal city.
Conrad of Courtland had not been trained a priest, yet, as was common at
that age, birth and circumstance had made him early a Prince of the
Roman Church. He had been thrust into the hierarchy solely because of
his name, for he had succeeded his uncle Adrian in his ecclesiastical
posts and emoluments as a legal heir succeeds to an undisputed property.
In due time he received his red hat from a pontiff who distributed these
among his favourites (or those whom he thought might aggrandise his
temporal power) as freely as a groomsman distributes favours at a
wedding.
Nevertheless, Conrad of Courtland had all the warm life and imperious
impulses of a young man within his breast. Yet he was no Borgia or Della
Rovere, cloaking scarlet sins with scarlet vestments. For with the high
dignities of his position and the solemn work which lay to his hand in
his northern province there had come the resolve to be not less, but
more faithful than those martyrs and confessors of whom he read daily in
his Breviary. And while, in Rome herself, vice-proud princes, consorting
in the foulest alliance with pagan popes, blasphemed the sanctuary and
openly scoffed at religion, this finest and most chivalrous of young
northern knights had laid down the weapons of his warfare to take up the
crucifix, and now had set out joyfully for Rome to receive his
cardinal's hat on his knees as the last and greatest gift of the Vicar
of Christ.
He had begun his pilgrimage by express command of the Holy Father, who
desired to make the youthful Archbishop his Papal assessor among the
Electors of the Empire. But scarcely was he clear of the Courtland
shores when there had come the storm, the shipwreck, the wild struggle
among the white and foaming breakers--and then, wondrously emergent,
like heaven after purgatory, the quiet of this sheltered room and this
sleeping girl, with her white hand lying lax and delicate on the rosy
silk.
The book slipped suddenly from her fingers, falling on the polished wood
of the floor with a startling sound. The eyes of the gaunt man by the
door were lifted from the ground, glittered beadily for a moment, and
again dropped as before.
The girl did not start, but rather passed immediately into full
consciousness with a little shudder and a quick gesture of the hand, as
if she pushed something or some one from her. Then, from the pillow on
which his head lay, Joan of Hohenstein saw the eyes of the Prince Conrad
gazing at her, dark and solemn, from within the purplish rings of recent
peril.
"You are my brother's wife!" he said softly, but yet in the same rich
and thrilling voice she had listened to with so many heart-stirrings in
the summer palace, and had last heard ring through the cathedral church
of Courtland on that day when her life had ended.
A chill came over the girl's face at his words.
"I am indeed the Duchess Joan of Hohenstein," she answered. "My father
willed that I should wed Prince Louis of Courtland. Well, I married him
and rode away. In so much I am your brother's wife."
It was a strange awaking for a man who had passed from death to life,
but at least her very impetuosity convinced him that the girl was flesh
and blood.
He smiled wanly. The light of the lamp seemed to waver again before his
eyes. He saw his companion as it had been transformed and glorified. He
heard the rolling of drums in his ears, and merry pipes played sweetly
far away. Then came the hush of many waters flowing softly, and last,
thrumming on the parched earth, and drunk down gladly by tired flowers,
the sound of abundance of rain. The world grew full of sleep and rest
and refreshment. There was no longer need to care about anything.
His eyes closed. He seemed about to sink back into unconsciousness, when
Joan rose, and with a few drops from Dessauer's phial, which she kept by
her in case of need, she called him back from the misty verges of the
Things which are Without.
As he struggled painfully upward he seemed to hear Joan's last words
repeated and re-repeated to the music of a chime of fairy bells, "_In so
much--in so much--I am your brother's wife--your brother's wife!_" He
came to himself with a start.
"Will you tell me how I came here, and to whom I am indebted for my
life?" he said, as Joan stood up beside him, her shapely head dim and
retired in the misty dusk above the lamp, only her chin and the shapely
curves of her throat being illumined by the warm lamplight.
"You were picked up for dead on the beach in the midst of the storm,"
she answered, "and were brought hither by two captains in the service of
the Prince of Plassenburg!"
"And where is this place, and when can I leave it to proceed upon my
journey?"
The girl's head was turned away from him a trifle more haughtily than
before, and she answered coldly, "You are in a certain fortified grange
somewhere on the Baltic shore. As to when you can proceed on your
journey, that depends neither on you nor on me. I am a prisoner here.
And so I fear must you also consider yourself!"
"A prisoner! Then has my brother----?" cried the Prince-Bishop, starting
up on his elbow and instantly dropping back again upon the pillow with a
groan of mingled pain and weakness. Joan looked at him a moment and
then, compressing her lips with quick resolution, went to the bedside
and with one hand under his head rearranged the pillow and laid him back
in an easier posture.
"You must lie still," she said in a commanding tone, and yet softly;
"you are too weak to move. Also you must obey me. I have some skill in
leechcraft."
"I am content to be your prisoner," said the Prince-Bishop
smiling--"that is, till I am well enough to proceed on my journey to
Rome, whither the Holy Father Pope Sixtus hath summoned me by a special
messenger."
"I fear me much," answered Joan, "that, spite of the Holy Father, we may
be fellow-prisoners of long standing. Those of my own folk who hold me
here against my will are hardly likely to let the brother of Prince
Louis of Courtland escape with news of my hiding-place and present
hermitage!"
The young man seemed as if he would again have started up, but with a
gesture smilingly imperious Joan forbade him.
"To-morrow," she said, "perhaps if you are patient I will tell you more.
Here comes our hostess. It is time that I should leave you."
Theresa von Lynar came softly to the side of the bed and stood beside
Joan. The young Cardinal thought that he had never seen a more queenly
pair--Joan resplendent in her girlish strength and beauty, Theresa still
in the ripest glory of womanhood. There was a gentler light than before
in the elder woman's eyes, and she cast an almost deprecating glance
upon Joan. For at the first sound of her approach the girl had stiffened
visibly, and now, with only a formal word as to the sick man's
condition, and a cold bow to Conrad, she moved away.
Theresa watched her a little sadly as she passed behind the deep
curtain. Then she sighed, and turning again to the bedside she looked
long at the young man without speaking.