THE WORDLESS MAN TAKES A PRISONER
It was the hour of the evening meal at Isle Rugen. The September day
piped on to its melancholy close, and the wild geese overhead called
down unseen from the upper air a warning that the storm followed hard
upon their backs. At the table-head sat Theresa von Lynar, her largely
moulded and beautiful face showing no sign of emotion. Only great quiet
dwelt upon it, with knowledge and the sympathy of the proven for the
untried. On either side of her were Joan and Prince Conrad--not sad,
neither avoiding nor seeking the contingence of eye and eye, but yet, in
spite of all, so strange a thing is love once declared, consciously
happy within their heart of hearts.
Then, after a space dutifully left unoccupied, came Captains Boris and
Jorian; while at the table-foot, opposite to their hostess, towered
Werner von Orseln, whose grey beard had wagged at the more riotous board
of Henry the Lion of Hohenstein.
Werner was telling an interminable story of the old wars, with many a
"Thus said I" and "So did he," ending thus: "There lay I on my back,
with thirty pagan Wends ready to slit my hals as soon as they could get
their knives between my gorget and headpiece. Gott! but I said every
prayer that I knew--they were not many in those days--all in two
minutes' space, as I lay looking at the sky through my visor bars and
waiting for the first prick of the Wendish knife-points.
"But even as I looked up, lo! some one bestrode me, and the voice I
loved best in all the world--no, not a woman's, God send him rest"
("Amen!" interjected the Lady Joan)--"cried, 'To me, Hohenstein! To me,
Kernsberg!' And though my head was ringing with the shock of falling,
and my body weak from many wounds, I strove to answer that call, as I
saw my master's sword flicker this way and that over my head. I rose
half from the ground, my hilt still in my hand--I had no more left after
the fight I had fought. But Henry the Lion gave me a stamp down with his
foot. 'Lie still, man,' he said; 'do not interfere in a little business
of this kind!' And with his one point he kept a score at bay, crying all
the time, 'To me, Hohenstein! To me, Kernsbergers all!'
"And when the enemy fled, did he wait till the bearers came? Well I wot,
hardly! Instead, he caught me over his shoulder like an empty sack when
one goes a-foraging--me, Werner von Orseln, that am built like a donjon
tower. And with his sword still red in his right hand he bore me in,
only turning aside a little to threaten a Wendish archer who would have
sent an arrow through me on the way. By the knights who sit round Karl's
table, he was a man!"
And then to their feet sprang Boris and Jorian, who were judges of men.
"To Prince Henry the Lion--_hoch!_" they cried. "Drink it deep to his
memory!"
And with tankard and wreathed wine-cup they quaffed to the great dead.
Standing up, they drank--his daughter also--all save Theresa von Lynar.
She sat unmoved, as if the toast had been her own and in a moment more
she must rise to give them thanks. For the look on her face said, "After
all, what is there so strange in that? Was he not Henry the Lion--and
mine?"
For there is no joy like that which you may see on a woman's face when a
great deed is told of the man she loves.
The Kernsberg soldiers who had been trained to serve at table, had
stopped and stood fixed, their duties in complete oblivion during the
tale, but now they resumed them and the simple feast continued.
Meanwhile it had been growing wilder and wilder without, and the shrill
lament of the wind was distinctly heard in the wide chimney-top. Now and
then in a lull, broad splashes of rain fell solidly into the red embers
with a sound like musket balls "spatting" on a wall.
Then Theresa von Lynar looked up.
"Where is Max Ulrich?" she said; "why does he delay?"
"My lady," one of the men of Kernsberg answered, saluting; "he is gone
across the Haff in the boat, and has not yet returned."
"I will go and look for him--nay, do not rise, my lord. I would go forth
alone!"
So, snatching a cloak from the prong of an antler in the hall, Theresa
went out into the irregular hooting of the storm. It was not yet the
deepest gloaming, but dull grey clouds like hunted cattle scoured across
the sky, and the rising thunder of the waves on the shingle prophesied a
night of storm. Theresa stood a long time bare-headed, enjoying the
thresh of the broad drops as they struck against her face and cooled her
throbbing eyes. Then she pulled the hood of the cloak over her head.
The dead was conquering the quick within her.
"I have known a _man_!" she said; "what need I more with life now? The
man I loved is dead. I thank God that I served him--aye, as his dog
served him. And shall I grow disobedient now? No, not that my son might
sit on the throne of the Kaiser!"
Theresa stood upon the inner curve of the Haff at the place where Max
Ulrich was wont to pull his boat ashore. The wind was behind her, and
though the waves increased as the distance widened from the pebbly bank
on which she stood, the water at her feet was only ruffled and pitted
with little dimples under the shocks of the wind. Theresa looked long
southward under her hand, but for the moment could see nothing.
Then she settled herself to keep watch, with the storm riding slack-rein
overhead. Towards the mainland the whoop and roar with which it
assaulted the pine forests deafened her ears. But her face was younger
than we have ever seen it, for Werner's story had moved her strongly.
Once more she was by a great man's side. She moved her hand swiftly,
first out of the shelter of the cloak as if seeking furtively to nestle
it in another's, and then, as the raindrops plashed cold upon it, she
drew it slowly back to her again.
And though Theresa von Lynar was yet in the prime of her glorious
beauty, one could see what she must have been in the days of her
girlhood. And as memory caused her eyes to grow misty, and the smile of
love and trust eternal came upon her lips, twenty years were shorn away;
and the woman's face which had looked anxiously across the darkening
Haff changed to that of the girl who from the gate of Castle Lynar had
watched for the coming of Duke Henry.
She was gazing steadfastly southward, but it was not for Max the
Wordless that she waited. Towards Kernsberg, where he whose sleep she
had so often watched, rested all alone, she looked and kissed a hand.
"Dear," she murmured, "you have not forgotten Theresa! You know she
keeps troth! Aye, and will keep it till God grows kind, and your true
wife can follow--to tell you how well she hath kept her charge!"
Awhile she was silent, and then she went on in the low even voice of
self-communing.
"What to me is it to become a princess? Did not he, for whose words
alone I cared, call me his queen? And I was his queen. In the black
blank day of my uttermost need he made me his wife. And I am his wife.
What want I more with dignities?"
Theresa von Lynar was silent awhile and then she added--
"Yet the young Duchess, his daughter, means well. She has her father's
spirit. And my son--why should my vow bind him? Let him be Duke, if so
the Fates direct and Providence allow. But for me, I will not stir
finger or utter word to help him. There shall be neither anger nor
sadness in my husband's eyes when I tell him how I have observed the
bond!"
Again she kissed a hand towards the dead man who lay so deep under the
ponderous marble at Kernsberg. Then with a gracious gesture, lingeringly
and with the misty eyes of loving womanhood, she said her lonely
farewells.
"To you, beloved," she murmured, and her voice was low and very rich,
"to you, beloved, where far off you lie! Sleep sound, nor think the time
long till Theresa comes to you!"
She turned and walked back facing the storm. Her hood had long ago been
blown from her head by the furious gusts of wind. But she heeded not.
She had forgotten poor Max Ulrich and Joan, and even herself. She had
forgotten her son. Her hand was out in the storm now. She did not draw
it back, though the water ran from her fingertips. For it was clasped in
an unseen grasp and in an ear that surely heard she was whispering her
heart's troth. "God give it to me to do one deed--one only before I
die--that, worthy and unashamed, I may meet my King."
When Theresa re-entered the hall of the grange the company still sat as
she had left them. Only at the lower end of the board the three captains
conferred together in low voices, while at the upper Joan and Prince
Conrad sat gazing full at each other as if souls could be drunk in
through the eyes.
With a certain reluctance which yet had no shame in it, they plucked
glance from glance as she entered, as it were with difficulty detaching
spirits which had been joined. At which Theresa, recalled to herself,
smiled.
"In all that touches not my vow I will help you two!" she thought, as
she looked at them. For true love came closer to her than anything else
in the world.
"There is no sign of Max," she said aloud, to break the first silence of
constraint; "perhaps he has waited at the landing-place on the mainland
till the storm should abate--though that were scarce like him, either."
She sat down, with one large movement of her arm casting her wet cloak
over the back of a wooden settle, which fronted a fireplace where green
pine knots crackled and explosive jets of steam rushed spitefully
outwards into the hall with a hissing sound.
"You have been down at the landing-place--on such a night?" said Joan,
with some remains of that curious awkwardness which marks the
interruption of a more interesting conversation.
"Yes," said Theresa, smiling indulgently (for she had been in like
case--such a great while ago, when her brothers used to intrude). "Yes,
I have been at the landing-place. But as yet the storm is nothing,
though the waves will be fierce enough if Max Ulrich is coming home with
a laden boat to pull in the wind's eye."
It mattered little what she said. She had helped them to pass the bar,
and the conversation could now proceed over smooth waters.
Yet there is no need to report it. Joan and Conrad remained and spoke
they scarce knew what, all for the pleasure of eye answering eye, and
the subtle flattery of voices that altered by the millionth of a tone
each time they answered each other. Theresa spoke vaguely but
sufficiently, and allowed herself to dream, till to her yearning gaze
honest, sturdy Werner grew misty and his bluff figure resolved itself
into that one nobler and more kingly which for years had fronted her at
the table's end where now the chief captain sat.
Meanwhile Jorian and Boris exchanged meaning and covert glances, asking
each other when this dull dinner parade would be over, so that they
might loosen leathern points, undo buttons, and stretch legs on benches
with a tankard of ale at each right elbow, according to the wont of
stout war-captains not quite so young as they once were.
Thus they were sitting when there came a clamour at the outer door, the
noise of voices, then a soldier's challenge, and, on the back of that,
Max Ulrich's weird answer--a sound almost like the howl of a wolf cut
off short in his throat by the hand that strangles him.
"There he is at last!" cried all in the dining-hall of the grange.
"Thank God!" murmured Theresa. For the man wanting words had known Henry
the Lion.
They waited a long moment of suspense till the door behind Werner was
thrust open and the dumb man came in, drenched and dripping. He was
holding one by the arm, a man as tall as himself, grey and gaunt, who
fronted the company with eyes bandaged and hands tied behind his back.
Max Ulrich had a sharp knife in his hand with a thin and slightly curved
blade, and as he thrust the pinioned man before him into the full light
of the candles, he made signs that, if his lady wished it, he was
prepared to despatch his prisoner on the spot. His lips moved rapidly
and he seemed to be forming words and sentences. His mistress followed
these movements with the closest attention.
"He says," she began to translate, "that he met this man on the further
side. He said that he had a message for Isle Rugen, and refused to turn
back on any condition. So Max blindfolded, bound, and gagged him, he
being willing to be bound. And now he waits our pleasure."
"Let him be unloosed," said Joan, gazing eagerly at the prisoner, and
Theresa made the sign.
Stolidly Ulrich unbound the broad bandage from the man's eyes, and a
grey badger's brush of upright stubble rose slowly erect above a high
narrow brow, like laid corn that dries in the sun.
"Alt Pikker!" said Joan of the Sword Hand, starting to her feet.
"Alt Pikker!" cried in varied tones of wonderment Werner von Orseln and
the two captains of Plassenburg, Jorian and Boris.
And Alt Pikker it surely was.