WIFE AND PRIEST
"I have a right to call myself the widow of the Duke Henry of Kernsberg
and Hohenstein," said Theresa von Lynar, in reply to Conrad's question
as to whom he might thank for rescue and shelter.
"And therefore the mother of the Duchess Joan?" he continued.
Theresa shook her head.
"No," she said sadly; "I am not her mother, but--and even that only in a
sense--her stepmother. A promise to a dead man has kept me from claiming
any privileges save that of living unknown on this desolate isle of sand
and mist. My son is an officer in the service of the Duchess Joan."
The face of the Prince-Bishop lighted up instantaneously.
"Most surely, then, I know him. Did he not come to Courtland with my
Lord Dessauer, the Ambassador of Plassenburg?"
The lady of Isle Rugen nodded indifferently.
"Yes," she said; "I believe he went to Courtland with the embassy from
Plassenburg."
"Indeed, I was much drawn to him," said the Prince eagerly; "I remember
him most vividly. He was of an olive complexion, his features without
colour, but graven even as the Greeks cut those of a young god on a
gem."
"Yes," said Theresa von Lynar serenely, "he has his father's face and
carriage, which are those also of the Duchess Joan."
"And why," said the young man, "if I may ask without offence, is your
son not the heir to the Dukedom?"
There was a downcast sadness in the woman's voice and eye as she
replied, "Because when I wedded Duke Henry it was agreed between us that
aught which might be thereafter should never stand between his daughter
and her heritage; and, in spite of deadly wrong done to those of my
house, I have kept my word."
The Prince-Cardinal thought long with knitted brow.
"The Duchess is my brother Louis's wife," he said slowly.
"In name!" retorted Theresa, quickly and breathlessly, like one called
on unexpectedly to defend an absent friend.
"She is his wife--I married them. I am a priest," he made answer.
A gleam, sharp and quick as lightning jetted from a thunder cloud,
sprang into the woman's eye.
"In this matter I, Theresa von Lynar, am wiser than all the priests in
the world. Joan of Hohenstein is no more his wife than I am!"
"Holy Church, the mother of us all, made them one!" said the Cardinal
sententiously. For such words come easily to dignitaries even when they
are young.
She bent towards him and looked long into his eyes.
"No," she said; "you do not know. How indeed is it possible? You are too
young to have learned the deep things--too certain of your own
righteousness. But you will learn some day. I, Theresa von Lynar,
know--aye, though I bear the name of my father and not that of my
husband!" And at this imperious word the Prince was silent and thought
with gravity upon these things.
Theresa sat motionless and silent by his bed till the day rose cool and
untroubled out of the east, softly aglow with the sheen of clouded silk,
pearl-grey and delicate. Prince Conrad, being greatly wearied and
bruised inwardly with the buffeting of the waves and the stones of the
shore, slumbered restlessly, with many tossings and turnings. But as oft
as he moved, the hands of the woman who had been a wife were upon him,
ordering his bruised limbs with swift knowledgeable tenderness, so that
he did not wake, but gradually fell back again into dreamless and
refreshing sleep. This was easy to her, because the secret of pain was
not hid from Theresa, the widow of the Duke of Hohenstein--though Henry
the Lion's daughter, as yet, knew it not.
In the morning Joan came to bid the patient good-morrow, while Werner
von Orseln stood in the doorway with his steel cap doffed in his hand,
and Boris and Jorian bent the knee for a priestly blessing. But Theresa
did not again appear till night and darkness had wrapped the earth. So
being all alone he listened to the heavy plunge of the breakers on the
beach among which his life had been so nearly sped. The sound grew
slower and slower after the storm, until at last only the wavelets of
the sheltered sea lapsed on the shingle in a sort of breathing whisper.
"Peace! Peace! Great peace!" they seemed to say hour after hour as they
fell on his ear.
And so day passed and came again. Long nights, too, at first with hourly
tendance and then presently without. But Joan sat no more with the young
man after that first watch, though his soul longed for her, that he
might again tell the girl that she was his brother's wife, and urge her
to do her duty by him who was her wedded husband. So in her absence
Conrad contented himself and salved his conscience by thinking austere
thoughts of his mission and high place in the hierarchy of the only
Catholic and Apostolic Church. So that presently he would rise up and
seek Werner von Orseln in order to persuade him to let him go, that he
might proceed to Rome at the command of the Holy Father, whose servant
he was.
But Werner only laughed and put him off.
"When we have sure word of what your brother does at Kernsberg, then we
will talk of this matter. Till then it cannot be hid from you that no
hostage half so valuable can we keep in hold. For if your brother loves
my Lord Cardinal, then he will desire to ransom him. On the other hand,
if he fear him, then we will keep your Highness alive to threaten him,
as the Pope did with Djem, the Sultan's brother!"
So after many days it was permitted to the Prince to walk abroad within
the narrow bounds of the Isle Rugen, the Wordless Man guarding him at
fifty paces distance, impassive and inevitable as an ambulant rock of
the seaboard.
As he went Prince Conrad's eyes glanced this way and that, looking for a
means of escape. Yet they saw none, for Werner von Orseln with his ten
men of Kernsberg and the two Captains of Plassenburg were not soldiers
to make mistakes. There was but one boat on the island, and that was
locked in a strong house by the inner shore, and over against it a
sentry paced night and day. It chanced, however, upon a warm and
gracious afternoon, when the breezes played wanderingly among the garden
trees before losing themselves in the solemn aisles of the pines as in a
pillared temple, that Conrad, stepping painfully westwards along the
beach, arrived at the place of his rescue, and, descending the steep
bank of shingle to look for any traces of the disaster, came suddenly
upon the Duchess Joan gazing thoughtfully out to sea.
She turned quickly, hearing the sound of footsteps, and at sight of the
Prince-Bishop glanced east and west along the shore as if meditating
retreat.
But the proximity of Max Ulrich and the encompassing banks of water-worn
pebbles convinced her of the awkwardness, if not the impossibility, of
escape.
[Illustration: "Joan looked steadily across the steel-grey sea."
[_Page 179_]]
Conrad the prisoner greeted Joan with the sweet gravity which had been
characteristic of him as Conrad the prince, and his eyes shone upon her
with the same affectionate kindliness that had dwelt in them in the
pavilion of the rose garden. But after one glance Joan looked steadily
away across the steel-grey sea. Her feet turned instinctively to walk
back towards the house, and the Prince turned with her.
"If we are two fellow-prisoners," said Conrad, "we ought to see more of
each other. Is it not so?"
"That we may concert plans of escape?" said Joan. "You desire to
continue your pilgrimage--I to return to my people, who, alas, think
themselves better off without me!"
"I do, indeed, greatly desire to see Rome," replied the Prince. "The
Holy Father Sixtus has sent me the red biretta, and has commanded me to
come to Rome within a year to exchange it for the Cardinal's hat, and
also to visit the tombs of the Apostles."
But Joan was not listening. She went on to speak of the matters which
occupied her own mind.
"If you were a priest, why did you ride in the great tournament of the
Blacks and the Whites at Courtland not a year ago?"
The Prince-Cardinal smiled indulgently.
"I was not then fledged full priest; hardly am I one now, though they
have made me a Prince of Holy Church. Yet the tournaying was in a
manner, perhaps, what her bridal dress is to a nun ere she takes the
veil. But, my Lady Joan, what know you of the strife of Blacks and
Whites at Courtland?"
"Your sister, the Princess Margaret, spoke of it, and also the Count von
Löen, an officer of mine," answered Joan disingenuously.
"I am indeed a soldier by training and desire," continued the young man.
"In Italy I have played at stratagem and countermarch with the Orsini
and Colonna. But in this matter the younger son of the house of
Courtland has no choice. We are the bulwark of the Church alike against
heretic Muscovite to the north and furious Hussite to the south. We of
Courtland must stand for the Holy See along all the Baltic edges; and
for this reason the Pope has always chosen from amongst us his
representative upon the Diet of the Empire, till the office has become
almost hereditary."
"Then you are not really a priest?" said Joan, woman-like fixing upon
that part of the young man's reply, which somehow had the greatest
interest for her.
"In a sense, yes--in truth, no. They say that the Pope, in order to
forward the Church's polity, makes and unmakes cardinals every day, some
even for money payments; but these are doubtless Hussite lies. Yet
though by prescript right and the command of the head of the Church I am
both priest and bishop, in my heart I am but Prince Conrad of Courtland
and a simple knight, even as I was before."
They paced along together with their eyes on the ground, the Wordless
Man keeping a uniform distance behind them. Then the Prince laughed a
strange grating laugh, like one who mocks at himself.
"By this time I ought to have been well on my way to the tombs of the
Apostles; yet in my heart I cannot be sorry, for--God forgive me!--I had
liefer be walking this northern shore, a young man along with a fair
maiden."
"A priest walking with his brother's wife!" said Joan, turning quickly
upon him and flashing a look into the eyes that regarded her with some
wonder at her imperiousness.
"That is true, in a sense," he answered; "yet I am a priest with no
consent of my desire--you a wife without love. We are, at least, alike
in this--that we are wife and priest chiefly in name."
"Save that you are on your way to take on you the duties of your office,
while I am more concerned in evading mine."
The Cardinal meditated deeply.
"The world is ill arranged," he said slowly; "my brother Louis would
have made a far better Churchman than I. And strange it is to think that
but a year ago the knights and chief councillors of Courtland came to
me to propose that, because of his bodily weakness, my brother should be
deposed and that I should take over the government and direction of
affairs."
He went on without noticing the colour rising in Joan's cheek, smiling a
little to himself and talking with more animation.
"Then, had I assented, my brother might have been walking here with
tonsured head by your side, while I would doubtless have been knocking
at the gates of Kernsberg, seeking at the spear's point for a runaway
bride."
"Nay!" cried Joan, with sudden vehemence; "that would you not----"
And as suddenly she stopped, stricken dumb by the sound of her own
words.
The Prince turned his head full upon her. He saw a face all suffused
with hot blushes, haughtiest pride struggling with angry tears in eyes
that fairly blazed upon him, and a slender figure drawn up into an
attitude of defiance--at sight of all which something took him instantly
by the throat.
"You mean--you mean----" he stammered, and for a moment was silent. "For
God's sake, tell me what you mean!"
"I mean nothing at all!" said Joan, stamping her foot in anger.
And turning upon her heel she left him standing fixed in wonder and
doubt upon the margin of the sea.
Then the wife of Louis, Prince of Courtland, walked eastward to the
house upon the Isle Rugen with her face set as sternly as for battle,
but her nether lip quivering--while Conrad, Cardinal and Prince of Holy
Church, paced slowly to the west with a bitter and downcast look upon
his ordinarily so sunny countenance.
For Fate had been exceeding cruel to these two.