THE NIGHT BEFORE THE MORN
Even as the dwarf on the ledge of the castle clocktower creaked his wires
and clicked back his hammer to strike the midnight over the city, even as
the first solemn toll of the hour reverberated over the Wolfsberg, I was
at the door of the Duke's room waiting for admission.
The Chamberlain in attendance looked within, and seeing his master
writing at a table, he was going out again without speech.
"Has Hugo Gottfried returned?" said the Duke, without looking up.
"Hugo Gottfried is here!" I replied, stepping unannounced into the room.
He looked up without smiling, a keen inquiring glance glittering from
between eyelids so close together that only the faintest line of the
pupil showed black under the lashes.
"Well?" he questioned.
"I will do the thing you have asked," answered I.
And said no more.
The Duke instantly became restless, and getting up, he began to pace
about the floor like a caged beast.
"You have seen her?" he inquired, stopping in front of me,
wide-nostrilled, like a dog that points the game.
"I _have_ seen her," I replied, as simply.
"Well?" he queried again, with a keen, eager note of anxiety in
his voice.
"I am ready to do that which you have asked."
He seemed to be on the point of saying something else. But, changing his
mind, he touched a little silver bell.
The usher appeared.
"Show the Hereditary Justicer of the Mark to the Red Tower. Give him all
that is necessary to eat and drink. Bid a man-at-arms attend him, and set
a sufficient guard at the door!"
So I went out from the presence, and the Duke and the Duke's new Justicer
bowed to each other gravely as I stood a moment on the threshold.
"Till we meet again, Red Axe of the Wolfmark!" said Duke Otho.
"Till we meet again!" said I, countering him like blade meeting blade.
In little more than ten minutes after I had entered them, I stood outside
the Duke's apartments, and with my escort I strode across to the empty
Red Tower, the home of so many memories. My head was reeling, and with
the overpress of excitement I could not sleep. So, bribing the soldier,
my companion--who had been charged by the Duke not to lose sight of
me--to accompany me, I went up to my father's garret.
There I found all things as they had been when my father died.
I set the windows wide, cast the tumbled bedclothes out upon the
dust-heap beneath, and bared the whole to the clean, large, wholesome
breezes of the night. I saw the fateful Red Axe lean as usual against the
block, and, taking it up, I found it keen as a razor. It was spotless,
and the edge gave back the long low room and our one glimmering candle
like a mirror. It must have been my father's last work in this world to
polish it.
Then I went down to my own room and cast myself down upon the bed in
which, on that night of the first home-coming of the Playmate, I had laid
my little wife.
The soldier couched across the door, rolled in his cloak and some chance
wrapping he found about the house.
God keep me from ever spending such a night again! I thought it would
never come to an end. Out in the square in front of the Wolfsberg I could
hear a knocking--dull, continuous, reverberant. At first I thought it
must be within my own head. So I asked the soldier, after a little, if he
heard it also. I had some faint idea that it might be Prince Karl of
Plassenburg with his army thundering at the gates of Thorn.
"'Tis but the scaffold going up in the Grand Place without!" said the
soldier, carelessly; "I heard that the Duke had bidden them work all
night by torch-light."
I tried to sleep, but the knocking continued, aching across my brows
till I thought I must go mad. After a while I rose and went to the
window from which I had so often looked down wistfully upon the play of
the city children.
Opposite me, in the middle of the open space, loomed a dark mass--a
platform, it seemed, raised a dozen feet above the road--the black
silhouette of a ladder set anglewise against it, and that was all. Lower,
plainer, somehow deadlier than a gibbet with its flamboyant beam, which
one never sees empty without imagining the malefactor aswing upon it; the
heading-block did not frown, it grinned--yes, grinned like the eye-holes
of a skeleton with a candle behind them, while the torches glinted
through the interstices of the framework as it was being nailed together.
All night the dull _dunt-dunting_ went on without. And I sat awake by the
window and awaited the dawning.
The city seethed unslaked beneath. When first I looked from my chamber
window the square was free to all who chose to enter it. But as the
knocking went on the news spread through the town of Thorn.
"They are making the scaffold for our Saint Helena!" So the word ran.
And within an hour the courts and alleys of Thorn belched forth thousands
of angry men. Pikes were carried like staves, the steel head hidden up
the long white burgess sleeve. Working-men of the trades, 'prentices,
and market porters drew their swords and came forth with the bare blades
in their hands, leaving the scabbards at home to take care of themselves,
as was their custom.
Wives cried from escalier windows to their men to come in by and lie
decently down, to be ready for their work in the morning. And the men so
addressed paid not the least heed, as the manner of men is. These things
and many others I saw, scarce knowing what I saw.
And so, with the hum of gathering crowds, the hours passed slowly over.
But the temper of the people in the square grew more and more difficult,
and soon the guard had to be brought down from the castle. The great
gates beneath me were open, and the Wolfsberg vomited the black
men-at-arms to keep the Duke's peace.
But this brought only the quicker strife. Yells received them as soon as
their steel partisans showed up in the square.
"Oppressors of the people, ye come to your reward!" cried many voices.
"We will give you your last breakfast--of cold, tempered steel!" cried
another, from the bowels of the crowd.
"To the Wolfsberg--ho! Break in the doors! We will have our Saint Helena
forth of their cursed prisons!"
It was no sooner said than done. Like a wave the people rushed in a black
irregular mass at the front rank of the guard. The soldiers of the Duke
were swept away like chaff; I could see one here and another there
struggling in the vortices of the angry multitude.
"On to the Wolfsberg!" cried the crowd.
But when the first of them reached the castle gates, lo! they stood open,
and there behind them stood file on file of matchlock men with their
matches burning in their hands and their pieces trained upon their rests.
"Give them the fire!" cried a voice, that of Duke Otho, as the crowd
halted a moment irresolute.
The bright red flame started out here and there from muzzle and
touchhole, and then ran along the line in an irregular volley.
A terrible cry of fear went up from the folk. For though they had heard
of the new ordnance, and even seen one or two, they had never realized
the effect of a fusillade. And when a man on either side sank down with a
hollow sound like a beast in shamble-thills, and the man in front fell
over on his face without a sound, the multitude turned, broke into
groups, fled, and disappeared in a moment like a whirl of snow which the
wind canters down the street in a veering flurry.
Then the gates shut to, and the deep lines of matchlock men were hidden
from view. After this the city thrilled and murmured worse than ever,
humming like an angry hive. But the Wolfsberg kept its counsel. Not yet
had deliverance arrived for the captives within its cells.
And the dread morning was coming fast.
At last, wearied out with crowding emotions, I went and cast me down on
my bed, and, instantly falling asleep, I slept like a log till one
touched me on the shoulder. Looking up, I saw the Duke Otho. He had come
to make sure of his vengeance--the vengeance which I knew well was not
his, but that of Ysolinde, Princess of Plassenburg.