PRINCE JEHU MILLER'S SON
Yet now, when she was in her own country, and as good as any queen
thereof, I found the Lady Ysolinde in no wise different from, what she
had been in the city of Thorn and in her father's house. She called me
often to ride beside her, Helene being on my other side, while the Lubber
Fiend, who had saved all our lives, gambolled about and came to her to be
petted like a lapdog of some monstrous sort. He licked his lips and
twisted his eyes upward at her in ludicrous ecstasy till only the whites
were visible whenever the Princess laid her hand on his head. So that it
was as much as the archers of the guard could do to hide their laughter
in their beards. But hide it they did, having a wholesome awe of the
emerald eyes of their mistress, or perhaps of the steely light which
sometimes came into them.
It was growing twilight upon the third day (for there were no adventures
worth dwelling upon after that among the cavern dwellings of Erdberg)
when for the first time we saw the towers of Plassenburg crowning a hill,
with its clear brown river winding slow beneath. We were yet a good many
miles from it when down the dusty road towards us came a horseman, and
fifty yards or so behind him another.
"The Prince--none rides like our Karl!" said Jorian, familiarly, under
his breath, but proudly withal.
"He comes alone!" said I, wonderingly. For indeed Duke Casimir of the
Wolfsberg never went ten lances' length from his castle without a small
army at his tail.
"Even so!" replied Jorian; "it is ever his custom. The officer who
follows behind him has his work cut out--and basted. Not for nothing is
our Karl called Prince Jehu Miller's Son, for indeed he rides most
furiously."
Before there was time for more words between us a tall, grim-faced,
pleasant-eyed man of fifty rode up at a furious gallop. The first thing I
noticed about him was that his hair was exactly the same color as his
horse--an iron-gray, rusty a little, as if it had been rubbed with iron
that has been years in the wet.
He took off his hat courteously to the Princess.
"I bid you welcome, my noble lady," said he, smiling; "the cages are
ready for the new importations."
The Lady Ysolinde reached a hand for her husband to kiss, which he did
with singular gentleness. But, so far as I could see, she neither looked
at him even once nor yet so much as spoke a word to him. Presently he
questioned her directly: "And who may this fair young damsel be, who has
done me the honor to journey to my country?"
"She is Helene, called Helene Gottfried of Thorn, and has come with me to
be one of my maids of honor," answered the Lady Ysolinde, looking
straight before her into the gathering mist, which began to collect in
white ponds and streaks here and there athwart the valley.
The Prince gave the Little Playmate a kindly ironic look out of his
gray eyes, which, as I interpreted it, had for meaning, "Then, if that
be so, God help thee, little one--'tis well thou knowest not what is
before thee!"
"And this young man?" said the Prince, nodding across to me.
But I answered for myself.
"I am the son of the Hereditary Justicer of the Wolfmark," said I. "I
had no stomach for such work. Therefore, as I was shortly to be made my
father's assistant, I have brought letters of introduction to your
Highness, in the hopes that you will permit me the exercise of arms in
your army in another and more honorable fashion."
"I have promised him a regiment," said the Princess, speaking quickly.
"What--of leaden soldiers?" answered the Prince, looking at her
mighty soberly.
"Your Highness is pleased to be brutal," answered the Lady Ysolinde,
coldly. "It is your ordinary idea of humor!"
A kind of quaint humility sat on the face of the Prince.
"I but thought that your Highness could have nothing else in her
mind--seeing that our rough Plassenburg regiments will only accept men of
some years and experience to lead them. But the little soldiers of metal
are not so queasy of stomach."
"May it please your Highness," said I, earnestly, "I will be content to
begin with carrying a pike, so that I be permitted in any fashion to
fight against your enemies."
Jorian and Boris came up and saluted at this point, like twin mechanisms.
Then they stood silent and waiting.
The Prince nodded in token that they had permission to speak.
"With the sword the lad fights well," said Boris. "Is it not so, Jorian?"
"Good!" said Jorian.
"But with the broadaxe he slashes about him like an angel from
heaven--not so, Boris?" said Jorian.
"Good!" said Boris.
"Can you ride?" said the Prince, turning abruptly from them.
"Aye, sire!" said I. For indeed I could, and had no shame to say it.
"That horse of his is blown; give him your fresh one!" said he to the
officer who had accompanied him. "And do you show these good folk to
their quarters."
Hardly was I mounted before the Prince set spurs to his beast, and,
with no more than a casual wave of his hand to the Princess and her
train, he was off.
"Ride!" he cried to me. And was presently almost out of sight, stretching
his horse's gray belly to the earth, like a coursing dog after a hare.
Well was it for me that I had learned to ride in a hard school--that is,
upon the unbroken colts which were brought in for the mounting of the
Duke Casimir's soldiery. For the horse that I had been given took the
bit between his teeth and pursued so fiercely after his stable companion
that I could scarce restrain him from passing the Prince. But our way
lay homeward, so that, though I was in no way able to guide nor yet
control my charger, nevertheless presently the Prince and I were
clattering through the town of Plassenburg like two fiends riding
headlong to the pit.
Within the town the lamps were being lit in the booths, the folks busy
marketing, and the watchmen already perambulating the city and crying the
hours at the street corners.
But as the Prince and I drove furiously through, like pursuer and
pursued, the busy streets cleared themselves in a twinkling; and we rode
through lanes of faces yellow in the lamplight, or in the darker places
like blurs of scrabbled whiteness. So I leaned forward and let the beast
take his chance of uneven causeway and open sewer. I expected nothing
less than a broken neck, and for at least half a mile, as we flew upward
to the castle, I think that the certainty of naught worse than a broken
arm would positively have pleasured me. At least, I would very willingly
have compounded my chances for that.
Presently, without ever drawing rein, we flew beneath the dark outer port
of the castle, clattered through a court paved with slippery blocks of
stone, thundered over a noble drawbridge, plunged into a long and gloomy
archway, and finally came out in a bright inner palace court with lamps
lit all about it.
I was at the Prince's bridle ere he could dismount.
"You can ride, Captain Hugo Gottfried!" he said. "I think I will make you
my orderly officer."
And so he went within, without a word more of praise or welcome.
There came past just at that moment an ancient councillor clad in a long
robe of black velvet, with broad facings and rosettes of scarlet. He was
carrying a roll of papers in his hand.
"What said the Prince to yon, young sir, if I may ask without offence?"
said he, looking at me with a curiously sly, upward glance out of the
corner of his eye, as if he suspected me of a fixed intention to tell him
a lie in any case.
"If it be any satisfaction to you to know," answered I, rather piqued at
his tone, "the Prince informed me that I could ride, and that he intended
to make me his orderly officer. And he called me not 'young sir,' but
Captain Hugo Gottfried."
"How long has he known you?" said the Chief Councillor of State. For so
by his habit I knew him to be.
"Half an hour, or thereby," answered I.
"God help this kingdom!" cried the old man, tripping off, flirting his
hand hopelessly in the air--"if he had known you only ten minutes you
would have been either Prime-Minister or Commander-in-Chief of the army."
It was in this strange fashion that I entered the army of the Prince of
Plassenburg, a service which I shall ever look back upon with gratitude,
and count as having brought me all the honors and most of the pleasures
of my life.
Half an hour or so afterwards the blowing of trumpets and the thunder of
the new leathern cannon announced that the Princess and her train were
entering the palace. The Prince came down to greet them on the threshold
in a new and magnificent dress.
"The Prince's officer-in-waiting to attend upon his Highness!" cried a
herald in fine raiment of blue and yellow.
I looked about for the man who was to be my superior in my new
office--that is, if Prince Karl should prove to have spoken in earnest.
"The Prince's orderly to attend upon him!" again proclaimed the herald,
more impatiently.'
I saw every eye turn upon me, and I began to feel a gentle heat come over
me. Presently I was blushing furiously. For I was still in my
riding-clothes, and even they had not been changed after the adventure of
the Brick-dust Town. So that they were in no wise fitting to attend upon
a mighty dignitary.
The Prince of Plassenburg looked round.
"Ha!" he said; "this is not well--I had forgotten. My orderly ought to
have been duly arrayed by this time."
"Pardon, my Prince," said I, "but all the apparel I have is upon my
sumpter horse, which comes in the train of the Princess."
My master looked right and left in his quickly imperious and yet
humorous manner.
"Here, Count von Reuss," he said to a tall, handsome, heavily jowled
young man, "I pray you strip off thy fine coat for an hour, and lend it
to my new officer-in-waiting. The ladies will admire thee more than
ever in thy fine flowered waistcoat, with silk sleeves and frilled
purfles of lace!"
The young man, Von Reuss, looked as if he desired much to tell the Prince
to go and be hanged. But there was something in the bearing of Karl of
Plassenburg, usurper as they called him, the like of which for command I
have never seen in the countenance and manner of any lawfully begotten
prince in the world.
So, beckoning me into an antechamber, and swearing evilly under his
breath all the time, the young man stripped off his fine coat, and
offered it to me with one hand, without so much as looking at me. He gave
it indeed churlishly, as one might give a dole to a loathsome beggar to
be rid of his importunity.
"I thank you, sir," said I, "but more for your obedience to the Prince
than for the fashion of your courtesy to me."
Yet for all that he answered me never a syllable, but turned his head and
played with his mustache till his man-servant brought him another coat.