THE FLIGHT OF THE LITTLE PLAYMATE
We carried Dessauer back to the boat with the utmost tenderness, the
Prince walking by his side, and oft-times taking his hand. I followed
behind them, more than a little sad to think that my troubles should have
caused so good and true a man so dangerous a wound. For though in a young
man the scalp-wound would have healed in a week, in a man of the High
Councillor's age and delicacy of constitution it might have the most
serious effects.
But Dessauer himself made light of it.
"I needed a leech to bleed me," he said. "I was coward enough to put off
the kindly surgery, and here our young friend has provided me one
without cost. His last operation, too, and so no fee to pay. I am a
fortunate man."
We came to the gate of the Palace of Plassenburg.
My Lady Princess met us, pale and obviously anxious, with lips compressed
and a strange cold glitter in her emerald eyes.
"So strange a thing has happened!" she began.
"No stranger than hath happened to us," cried the Prince.
"Why, what hath happened to you?" she demanded, quickly.
"Your fine Von Reuss has proved himself a traitor. He fought a duel with
Hugo here all tricked in chain-armor, and when found out he whistled his
rascals from the covert to slay us. But we bested him, and he is over the
hill, with Jorian and Boris hot after his heel."
"And he hath not gone alone!" said the Princess, and her eyes were
brilliant with excitement.
"Not gone alone?" said the Prince. "What do you know about this
black work?"
"Because Helene, my maid of honor, hath fled to join him," she
said, looking anxiously at us, like one who perils much upon a
throw of the dice.
I laughed aloud. So certain was I of the utter impossibility of the
thing, that I laughed a laugh of scorn. And I saw the sound of my voice
jar the Lady Ysolinde like a blow on the face.
"You do not believe!" she said, standing straight before me.
"I do not believe--I know!" answered I, curtly enough.
"Nevertheless the thing is true," she said, with a curious, pleading
expression, as if she had been charged with wrong-doing and were clearing
herself, though none had accused her by word or look.
"It is most true," the Princess went on. "She fled from the palace an
hour before sundown. She was seen mounting a horse belonging to Von
Reuss at the Wolfmark gate, with two of his men in attendance upon her.
She is known to have received a note by the hand of an unknown messenger
an hour before."
I did not wait for the permission of the Princess, but tore up the
women's staircase to Helene's room, where I found nothing out of
place--not so much as a fold of lace. After a hurried look round I was
about to leave the room when a crumpled scrap of paper, half hidden by a
curtain, caught my eye.
I stooped and picked it up. It was written in an unknown and probably
disguised hand--a hand cumbersome and unclerkly:
"Come to me. Meet me at the Red Tower. I need you."
There was no more; the signature was torn away, and if the letter were
genuine it was more than enough. But no thought of its truth nor of the
falseness of Helene so much as crossed my mind.
To tell the truth, it struck me from the first that the Lady Ysolinde
might have placed the letter there herself. So I said nothing about it
when I descended.
The Prince met me half-way up the stairs.
"Well?" he questioned, bending his thick brows upon me.
"She is gone, certainly," said I; "where or how I do not yet know. But
with your permission I will pursue and find out."
"Or, I presume, without my permission?" said the Prince.
I nodded, for it was vain to pretend otherwise--foolish, too, with
such a master.
"Go, then, and God be with you!" he said. "It is a fine thing to
believe in love."
And in ten minutes I was riding towards the Wolfsberg.
As I went past the great four-square gibbet which had made an end of
Ritterdom in Plassenburg, I noted that there was a gathering of the
hooded folk--the carrion crows. And lo! there before me, already
comfortably a-swing, were our late foes, the two bravoes, and in the
middle the dead Cannstadt tucked up beside them, for all his five hundred
years of ancestry--stamped traitor and coward by the Miller's Son, who
minded none of these things, but understood a true man when he met him.
I pounded along my way, and for the first ten miles did well, but there
my horse stumbled and broke a leg in a wretched mole-run widened by the
winter rains. In mercy I had to kill the poor beast, and there I was left
without other means of conveyance than my own feet.
It was a long night as I pushed onward through the mire. For presently
it had come on to rain--a thick, dank rain, which wetted through all
covering, yet fell soft as caressing on the skin.
I took shelter at last in a farm-house with honest folk, who right
willingly sat up all night about the fire, snoring on chairs and hard
settles that I might have their single sleeping-chamber, where, under
strings of onions and odorous dried herbs, I rested well enough. For I
was dead tired with the excitement and anxiety of the day--and at such
times one often sleeps best.
On the morrow I got another horse, but the brute, heavy-footed from the
plough, was so slow that, save for the look of the thing, I might just as
well have been afoot.
Nevertheless I pushed towards the town of Thorn, hearing and seeing
naught of my dear Playmate, though, as you may well imagine, I asked at
every wayside place.
It was at the entering in of the strange country of the brick-dust that I
met Jorian and Boris. They were riding excellent horses, unblown, and in
good condition--the which, when I asked how they came by such noble
steeds, they said that a man gave them to them.
"Jorian," said I, sharply, "where have you been?"
"To the city of Thorn," said he, more briskly than was his wont, so that
I knew he had tidings to communicate.
"Saw you the Lady Helene?" I asked, eagerly, of them.
He shook his head, yet pleasantly.
"Nay," said he, "I saw her not. The Red Tower is not a healthy place for
men of Plassenburg, nor yet the White Gate and the house of Master Gerard
von Sturm. But Mistress Helene is in safety, so much Boris and I are
assured of."
"Not with Von Reuss?" cried I, fear thrilling sudden in my voice that he
had stolen her and now held her in captivity.
Boris held up his hand as a signal that I must not hurry his companion,
who was clearly doing his best.
"She is with Gottfried Gottfried, the old man, your father, and is
safe."
"Did she go to them of her own free will, or did my father send for her?"
I went on, for much depended upon that question.
"Nay," answered Jorian, "that I know not. But certainly she is with him,
and safe. The Count, too, is with his uncle, and they say also
safe--under lock and key."
"Good!" quoth Boris.
"Let us all three go back to Plassenburg forthwith!" cried I.
"Good!" chorussed both of them together, unanimously slapping their
thighs. "Choose one of our horses. He was a good man who gave us them. We
wish we had known. We should have asked him for another when we were
about it."
Nevertheless, I rode back to Plassenburg on the farmer's beast, sadly
enough, yet somewhat contented. For Helene was with my father, and far
safer, as I judged, than in the palace chambers of Plassenburg, and
within striking distance of the Lady Ysolinde. And in that I judged not
wrong, though the future seemed for a while to belie my confidence.