THE SERPENT'S STRIFE
Dazed and death-stricken by the horror of the choice which lay before me,
I hastened down the street, hardly waiting for Dessauer, who toiled
vainly after me. I knew not what to do nor where to turn. I could neither
think nor speak. But it chanced that my steps brought me to the house of
the Weiss Thor. Almost without any will of mine own I found myself
raising the knocker of the house of Master Gerard von Sturm. Sir
Respectable instantly appeared. I asked of him if the Lady Ysolinde would
see me--giving my name plainly. For since Duke Otho knew me, there was no
need of concealment any more.
The Lady Ysolinde would receive me.
I followed my conductor, but not this time to the room in which I had
seen her on the occasion of my last visit.
It was in her father's chamber that I met the Princess. The room was as I
had first seen it. Only there was no ascetic old man with keen, deep-set
eyes and receding forehead to rear his head back from the table as though
he would presently strike across it like a serpent from its coil.
For the moment the room was empty, but, ere I had time to look around,
the curtains moved and the Lady Ysolinde appeared. Without entering, she
set a hand on the door-post, and stood poised against the heavy curtain,
waiting for me to speak.
Her face was pale, her thin nostrils dilated. Anger and scorn sat white
and deadly on every feature.
"So," she said, intensely, as I did not speak, "you have come back
already, most noble Hereditary Justicer of the Mark! Even as I told
you--so it is. You come to ask mercy from the woman you despised, from
the woman whose love you refused. You would beg her to spare her enemy.
Ere you go I shall see you on your knees; ah, that will be sweet. I have
been on my knees--can I believe it? Nay, I shall not forget it. I,
Ysolinde of Plassenburg, have pled in vain to you--to you!"
And the accent of chill hatred and malice turned me to stone.
"My lady," said I, "well do you know that I would never ask aught for my
own life, though the Red Axe itself were at my neck. But it is for the
maid I love, for the little child I carried home out of the arms of the
man condemned. I ask for her life, who never wronged you or any in all
this world. You have heard that task which the Duke hath laid on me,
because it is my misfortune to be my father's son--I must take away my
love's sweet life, or, if I do not--" I could proceed no further for the
horror which rose in my heart.
"I know it," she said, calmly; "my father hath told me all."
"Then," cried I, "if the power lie with you, as you hope for mercy to
your own soul, be merciful! Save the maiden Helene from the death of
shame, and me from becoming her murderer!"
"Ah," she answered, with delicatest meditative inflection, "this is
indeed sweet. The mighty is fallen indeed. The proud one is suppliant
now. The knee is bent that would not bend. Hearken, you and your puling
babe, to the Princess Ysolinde! Were your lives in that glass, to save or
to destroy--her life and your suffering--to make or to break, I would
fling them to destruction, even as I cast this cup into the darkness!"
And as she spoke the wreathed beaker of Venice glass sped out of the
window and crashed on the pavement without.
"Thus would I end your lives," she said, "for the shame that you two put
upon me in the day of my weakness."
"Lady," I cried, eagerly, "you do yourself a wrong! Your heart is better
than your word. Do this deed of mercy, I beseech you, if so be you can.
And my life is yours forever!"
"Your life is mine, you say," cried she; "aye, and that means what?
The wind that cries about the house. Your life is _mine_--it is
a lie. Your life and love both are that chit's for whom you have
despised--rejected--ME!"
And I grant that at that moment she looked noble enough in her anger as
she stood discharging her words at me with hissing directness, like bolts
shot twanging from the steel cross-bow.
"And, lest you should think that I have not the power to save you, I will
tell you this--when you shall see the neck bared for the blade of the Red
Axe, the fine tresses you love, that your eyes look upon with desire, all
ruthlessly cut away by the shears of your assistants--ah, I know you will
remember then that I, Ysolinde, whom you refused and slighted, had the
power in her hand to deliver you both with a word, according to the
immaculate laws of the Wolfmark. Aye, and more--power to raise you both
to a pinnacle of bliss such as you can hardly conceive. In that hour,
when you see me look down upon your anguish, you will know that I can
speak the word. You will watch my lips till the axe falls, and under your
hand the young life ebbs red. But the lips of Ysolinde will be silent!"
"Such knowledge is an easy boast, Lady Ysolinde!" I answered, thinking
to taunt her, that she might reveal whether indeed she had the power
she claimed.
"There," she said, pointing to the great collection of black-bound books
and papers about the walls; "see, the secret is there--the secret for the
lack of which you shall strike your beloved to the death to save her from
the unnamable shame. I know it; my father has revealed it to me. I have
seen the parchment in these hands. But--you shall never hear it, she
never profit by it, and my vengeance shall be sweet--so sweet!"
And she laughed, with a strange crackling laugh that it was a pain to
hear.
"God forgive you, Lady Ysolinde," said I, "if this be so. For if there
be a God, you must burn in Great Hell for this deed you are about to
do. Having had no mercy on the innocent, how shall you ask God to have
mercy on you?"
"I will not ask Him!" she cried. "Instead of puling for mercy I will have
had my revenge. And after that, come earth, heaven, or hell--I shall not
care. All will then be the same to Ysolinde!"
I thought I would try her yet once more.
"The Little Playmate," I said, "the maid whom I have ever loved, though I
am not worthy to touch her, is no chance child, no daughter of the Red
Axe of Thorn. Leopold von Dessauer hath found and sent to Karl the Prince
the full proofs that Helene is the daughter of the last and rightful
Prince, and therefore in her own right Princess of Plassenburg."
"You lie, fool!" she cried--"you lie! You think to frighten me. And even
if it were true--thrice, four times fool to tell me! For shall not I, the
Princess of Plassenburg, the wife of the reigning Prince, stand for my
own name and dignity. I would not help you now though a thousand fair
heads, well-beloved, the desire of men, the envy of women, were to be
rolled in the dust."
"Then farewell, Princess," I cried; "you are wronging to the death of
deaths two that never did you wrong, who loved each other with the love
of man and woman before ever you crossed their paths, and who since then
have only sought your good. You wrong God also, and you lose your soul,
divorcing it from the mercy of the Saviour of men. For be very sure that
with that measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again."
She did not answer, but stood with her hand still against the door-post,
her head raised, and her lips curling scornfully, looking after me as I
retired with a smiling and malicious pleasure.
So, without further speech, I went out from the presence of the Lady
Ysolinde. And thus she had the first part of her revenge.