THE RED LION FLIES AT KERNSBERG
And meanwhile right haughtily flew the red lion upon the citadel of
Kernsberg. Never had the Lady Duchess, Joan of the Sword Hand, approven
herself so brave and determined. In her forester's dress of green
velvet, with the links of chain body-armour glinting beneath its frogs
and taches, she went everywhere on foot. At all times of the day she was
to be seen at the half-moons wherein the cannon were fixed, or on
horseback scouring the defenced posts along the city wall. She seemed to
know neither fear nor fatigue, and the noise of cheering followed her
about the little hill city like her shadow.
Three only there were who knew the truth--Peter Balta, Alt Pikker, and
George the Hussite. And when the guards were set, the lamps lit, and the
bars drawn, a stupid faithful Hohensteiner set on watch at the turnpike
foot with command to let none pass upon his life--then at last the lithe
young Sparhawk would undo his belt with huge refreshful gusting of air
into his lungs, amid the scarcely subdued laughter of the captains of
the host.
"Lord Peter of the Keys!" Von Lynar would cry, "what it is to unbutton
and untruss! 'Tis very well to admire it in our pretty Joan, but 'fore
the Lord, I would give a thousand crowns if she were not so slender. It
cuts a man in two to get within such a girdle. Only Prince Wasp could
make a shift to fit it. Give me a goblet of ale, fellows."
"Nay, lad--mead! Mead of ten years alone must thou have, and little
enough of that! Ale will make thee fat as mast-fed pigs."
"Or stay," amended George the Hussite; "mead is not comely drink for a
maid--I will get thee a little canary and water, scented with
millefleurs and rosemary."
"Check your fooling and help to unlace me, all of you," quoth the
Sparhawk. "Now there is but a silken cord betwixt me and Paradise. But
it prisons me like iron bars. Ah, there"--he blew a great breath,
filling and emptying his lungs with huge content--"I wonder why we men
breathe with our stomachs and women with their chests?"
"Know you not that much?" cried Alt Pikker. "'Tis because a man's life
is in his stomach; and as for women, most part have neither heart,
stomach, nor bowels of mercy--and so breathe with whatever it liketh
them!"
"No ribaldry in a lady's presence, or in a trice thou shalt have none of
these, either!" quoth the false Joan; "help me off with this
thrice-accursed chain-mail. I am pocked from head to heel like a Swiss
mercenary late come from Venice. Every ring in this foul devil's jerkin
is imprinted an inch deep on my hide, and itches worse than a hundred
beggars at a church door. Ah! better, better. Yet not well! I had
thought our Joan of the Sword Hand a strapping wench, but now a hop-pole
is an abbot to her when one comes to wear her _carapace_ and
_justaucorps_!"
"How went matters to-day on your side?" he went on, speaking to Balta,
all the while chafing the calves of his legs and rubbing his pinched
feet, having first enwrapped himself in a great loose mantle of red and
gold which erstwhile had belonged to Henry the Lion.
"On the whole, not ill," said Peter Balta. "The Muscovites, indeed,
drove in our outposts, but could not come nearer than a bowshot from the
northern gate, we galled them so with our culverins and bombardels."
"Duke George's famous Fat Peg herself could not have done better than
our little leathern vixens," said Alt Pikker, rubbing his grey badger's
brush contentedly. "Gott, if we had only provender and water we might
keep them out of the city for ever! But in a week they will certainly
have cut off our river and sent it down the new channel, and the wells
are not enough for half the citizens, to say nothing of the cattle and
horses. This is a great fuss to make about a graceless young jackanapes
of a Jutlander like you, Master Maurice von Lynar, Count von
Löen--wedded wife of his Highness Prince Louis of Courtland. Ha! ha!
ha!"
"I would have you know, sirrah," cried the Sparhawk, "that if you do not
treat me as your liege lady ought to be treated, I will order you to the
deepest dungeon beneath the castle moat! Come and kiss my hand this
instant, both of you!"
"Promise not to box our ears, and we will," said Alt Pikker and George
the Hussite together.
"Well, I will let you off this time," said Maurice royally, stretching
his limbs luxuriously and putting one hosened foot on the mantel-shelf
as high as his head. "Heigh-ho! I wonder how long it will last, and when
we must surrender."
"Prince Louis must send his Muscovites back beyond the Alla first, and
then we will speak with him concerning giving him up his wife!" quoth
Peter Balta.
"I wonder what the craven loon will do with her when he gets her," said
Alt Pikker. "You must not surrender in your girdle-brace and ring-mail,
my liege lady, or you will have to sleep with them on. It would not be
seemly to have to call up half a dozen lusty men-at-arms to help untruss
her ladyship the Princess of Courtland!"
"Perhaps your goodman will kiss you upon the threshold of the palace as
a token of reconciliation!" cackled Hussite George.
"If he does, I will rip him up!" growled Maurice, aghast at the
suggestion. "But there is no doubt that at the best I shall be between
the thills when they get me once safe in Courtland. To ride the wooden
horse all day were a pleasure to it!"
But presently his face lighted up and he murmured some words to
himself--
"Yet, after all, there is always the Princess Margaret there. I can
confide in her when the worst comes. She will help me in my need--and,
what is better still, she may even kiss me!"
And, spite of gloomy anticipations, his ears tingled with happy
expectancy, when he thought of opportunities of intimate speech with the
lady of his heart.
* * * * *
Nevertheless, in the face of brave words and braver deeds, provisions
waxed scarce and dear in Castle Kernsberg, and in the town below women
grew gaunt and hollow-cheeked. Then the children acquired eyes that
seemed to stand out of hollow purple sockets. Last of all, the stout
burghers grew thin. And all three began to dream of the days when the
good farm-folk of the blackened country down below them, where now stood
the leafy lodges of the Muscovites and the white tents of the
Courtlanders, used to come into Kernsberg to market, the great
solemn-eyed oxen drawing carts full of country sausages, and brown meal
fresh ground from the mill to bake the wholesome bread--or better still
when the stout market women brought in the lappered milk and the butter
and curds. So the starving folk dreamed and dreamed and woke, and cried
out curses on them that had waked them, saying, "Plague take the hands
that pulled me back to this gutter-dog's life! For I was just a-sitting
down to dinner with a haunch of venison for company, and such a lordly
trout, buttered, with green sauce all over him, a loaf of white bread,
crisp and crusty, at my elbow, and--Holy Saint Matthew!--such a noble
flagon of Rhenish, holding ten pints at the least."
About this time the Sparhawk began to take counsel with himself, and the
issue of his meditations the historian must now relate.
It was in the outer chamber of the Duchess Joan, which looks to the
north, that the three captains usually sat--burly Peter Balta,
stiff-haired, dry-faced, keen-eyed--Alt Pikker, lean and leathery, the
life humour within him all gone to fighting juice, his limbs mere bone
and muscle, a certain acrid and caustic wit keeping the corners of his
lips on the wicker, and, a little back from these two, George the
Hussite, a smaller man, very solemn even when he was making others
laugh, but nevertheless with a proud high look, a stiff upper lip, and a
moustache so huge that he could tie the ends behind his head on a windy
day.
These three had been speaking together at the wide, low window from
which one can see the tight little red-roofed town of Kernsberg and the
green Kernswater lying like a bright many-looped ribbon at the foot of
the hills.
To them entered the Sparhawk, a settled frown of gloom upon his brow,
and the hunger which he shared equally with the others already
sharpening the falcon hook of his nose and whitening his thin nostrils.
At sight of him the three heads drew apart, and Alt Pikker began to
speak of the stars that were rising in the eastern dusk.
"The dog-star is white," he said didactically. "In my schooldays I used
to read in the Latin tongue that it was red!"
But by their interest in such a matter the Sparhawk knew that they had
been speaking of far other things than stars before he burst open the
door. For little George the Hussite pulled his pandour moustaches and
muttered, "A plague on the dog-star and the foul Latin tongue. They are
only fit for the gabble of fat-fed monks. Moreover, you do not see it
now, at any rate. For me, I would I were back under the Bohemian
pinetrees, where the very wine smacks of resin, and where there is a
sheep (your own or another's, it matters not greatly) tied at every true
Hussite's door."
[Illustration: "These three had been speaking together." [_Page 186_]]
"What is this?" cried the Sparhawk. "Do not deceive me. You were none of
you talking of stars when I came up the stairs. For I heard Peter
Balta's voice say, 'By Heaven! it must come to it, and soon!' And you
Hussite George, answered him, 'Six days will settle it.' What do you
keep from me? Out with it? Speak up, like three good little men!"
It was Alt Pikker who first found words to answer.
"We spoke indeed of the stars, and said it was six days till the moon
should be gone, and that the time would then be ripe for a sally by
the--by the--Plassenburg Gate!"
"Pshaw!" cried the Sparhawk. "Lie to your father confessor, not to me. I
am not a purblind fool. I have ears, long enough, it is true, but at
least they answer to hear withal. You spoke of the wells, I tell you; I
saw your heads move apart as I entered; and then, forsooth, that dotard
Alt Pikker (who ran away in his youth from a monk's cloister-school with
the nun that taught them stocking-mending) must needs furbish up some
scraps of Latin and begin to prate about dog-stars red and dog-stars
white. Faugh! Open your mouths like men, set truthful hearts behind
them, and let me hear the worst!"
Nevertheless the three captains of Kernsberg were silent awhile, for
heaviness was upon their souls. Then Peter Balta blurted out, "God help
us! There is but ten days more provender in the city, the river is
turned, and the wells are almost dried up!"
After this the Sparhawk sat awhile on the low window seat, watching the
twinkling fires of the Muscovites and listening to the hum of the town
beneath the Castle--all now sullen and subdued, no merry hucksters
chaffering about the church porches, no loitering lads and lasses
linking arms and bartering kisses in the dusky corners of the linen
market, no clattering of hammers in the armourers' bazaar--a muffled
buzzing only, as of men talking low to themselves of bitter memories and
yet dismaller expectations.
"I have it!" said the Sparhawk at last, his eyes on the misty plain of
night, with its twinkling pin-points of fire which were the watch-fires
of the enemy.
The three men stirred a little to indicate attention, but did not speak.
"Listen," he said, "and do not interrupt. You must deliver me up. I am
the cause of war--I, the Duchess Joan. Hear you? I have a husband who
makes war upon me because I contemn his bed and board. He has summoned
the Muscovite to help him to woo me. Well, if I am to be given up, it is
for us to stipulate that the armies be withdrawn, first beyond the Alla,
and then as far as Courtland. I will go with them; they will not find me
out--at least, not till they are back in their own land."
"What matter?" cried Balta. "They would return as soon as they
discovered the cheat."
"Let us sink or swim together," said Hussite George. "We want no talk of
surrender!"
But grey dry Alt Pikker said nothing, weighing all with a judicial mind.
"No, they would not come back," said the Sparhawk; "or, at worst, we
would have time--that is, you would have time--to revictual Kernsberg,
to fill the tanks and reservoirs, to summon in the hillmen. They would
soon learn that there had been no Joan within the city but the one they
had carried back with them to Courtland. Plassenburg, slow to move,
would have time to bring up its men to protect its borders from the
Muscovite. All good chances are possible if only I am out of the way.
Surrender me--but by private treaty, and not till you have seen them
safe across the fords of the Alla!"
"Nay, God's truth;" cried the three, "that we will not do! They would
kill you by slow torture as soon as they found out that they had been
tricked."
"Well," said the Sparhawk slowly, "but by that time they _would_ have
been tricked."
Then Alt Pikker spoke in his turn.
"Men," he said, "this Dane is a man--a better than any of us. There is
wisdom in what he says. Ye have heard in church how priests preach
concerning One who died for the people. Here is one ready to die--if no
better may be--for the people!"
"And for our Duchess Joan!" said the Sparhawk, taking his hat from his
head at the name of his mistress.
"Our Lady Joan! Aye, that is it!" said the old man. "We would all gladly
die in battle for our lady. We have done more--we have risked our own
honour and her favour in order to convey her away from these dangers.
Let the boy be given up; and that he go not alone without fit
attendance, I will go with him as his chamberlain."
The other two men, Peter Balta and George the Hussite, did not answer
for a space, but sat pondering Alt Pikker's counsel. It was George the
Hussite who took up the parable.
"I do not see why you, Alt Pikker, and you, Maurice the Dane, should
hold such a pother about what you are ready to do for our Lady Joan. So
are we all every whit as ready and willing as you can be; and I think,
if any are to be given up, we ought to draw lots for who it shall be.
You fancy yourselves overmuch, both of you!"
The Sparhawk laughed.
"Great tun-barrelled dolt," he said, clapping Peter on the back, "how
sweet and convincing it would be to see you, or that canting ale-faced
knave George there, dressed up in the girdle-brace and steel corset of
Joan of the Sword Hand! And how would you do as to your beard? Are you
smooth as an egg on both cheeks as I am? It would be rare to have a
Duchess Joan with an inch of blue-black stubble on her chin by the time
she neared the gates of Courtland! Nay, lads, whoever stays--I must go.
In this matter of brides I have qualities (how I got them I know not)
that the best of you cannot lay claim to. Do you draw lots with Alt
Pikker there, an you will, as to who shall accompany me, but leave this
present Joan of the Sword Hand to settle her own little differences with
him who is her husband by the blessing of Holy Church."
And he threw up his heels upon the table and plaited his knees one above
the other.
Then it was Alt Pikker's time.
"Peter Balta, and you, George the Heretic, listen," he cried, vehemently
emphasising the points on the palm of his hand. "You, Peter, have a wife
that loves you--so, at least, we understand--and your Marion, how would
she fare in this hard world without you? Have you laid by a
stocking-foot full of gold? Does it hang inside your chimney? I trow
not. Well, you at least must bide and earn your pay, for Marion's sake.
I have neither kith nor kin, neither sweetheart nor wife, covenanted or
uncovenanted. And for you, George, you are a heretic, and if they burn
you alive or let out the red sap at your neck, you will go straight to
hell-fire. Think of it, George! I, on the other hand, am a true man, and
after a paltry year or two in purgatory (just for the experience) will
enter straightway into the bosom of patriarchs and apostles, along with
our Holy Father the Pope, and our elder brothers the Cardinals Borgia
and Delia Rovere!"
"You talk a deal of nothings with your mouth," said George the Hussite.
"It is true that I hold not, as you do, that every dishclout in a church
is the holy veil, and every old snag of wood with a nail in't a
veritable piece of the true cross. But I would have you know that I can
do as much for my lady as any one of you--nay, and more, too, Alt
Pikker. For a good Hussite is afraid neither of purgatory nor yet of
hell-fire, because, if he should chance to die, he will go, without
troubling either, straight to the abode of the martyrs and confessors
who have been judged worthy to withstand and to conquer."
"And as to what you said concerning Marion," nodded Peter Balta
truculently, "she is a soldier's wife and would cut her pretty throat
rather than stand in the way of a man's advancement!"
"Specially knowing that so pretty a wench as she is could get a better
husband to-morrow an it liked her!" commented Alt Pikker drily.
"Well," cried the Sparhawk, "still your quarrel, gentlemen. At all
events, the thing is settled. The only question is _when_? How many
days' water is there in the wells?"
Said Peter Balta, "I will go and see."