THE LUBBER FIEND'S RETURN
Al these things had overpast so quickly that when Helene and I found
ourselves alone in the Red Tower it seemed to both of us that we dreamed.
We sat in a kind of buzzing hush, on the low window-seat of the old room,
hand in hand. The shouts of the people came up to us from the square
beneath. We heard the tramp of the soldiers, who cheered us as they
passed to and fro. Being at last alone, we looked into each other's eyes,
and we could not believe in our own happiness.
"My wife!" I said, but in another fashion than I had said it on
the scaffold.
"My husband!" answered Helene, looking up at me.
But I think, for all that we realized of the truth, we might as well have
called each other King and Queen of Sheba.
We had been conducted with honor to the Red Tower. For since it was in
virtue of my hereditary office that I had obtained the great
deliverance, I dared for the present seek no other dwelling-place. For
Helene's sake, indeed, I should have felt safer elsewhere. Besides,
desperate and full of baffled hatred as I knew Duke Otho to be, I did
not believe that he would dare to molest us--for some time at least. The
rage of the people, their unbounded jubilation at the deliverance of
their Saint Helena from the jaws of death on the very scaffold, were too
recent to be trifled with by a prince sitting so insecure in his ducal
seat as Otho of the Wolfmark.
So here in the ancient Red Tower, I thought, we might at least be safe
enough till my good fellows of Plassenburg, with the Prince at their
head, should swarm hammering at the gates of Thorn.
To us, sitting thus hand in hand, there entered the Bishop Peter.
"Hail!" he said, blandly, and in his grandest manner, as we knelt for his
benediction; "hail, bride and bridegroom! God has been good to you this
day. Bishop Peter, the least of His servants, greets you very well. May
you have long life and prosperity unfailing."
I thanked him for his gracious words.
"The folk of the city are full of joy," he said. "I think they would
almost proclaim you Duke to-day."
"I desire no such perilous honor," I replied, smiling; "it were indeed an
ill-omen to have a Duke habited all in red."
"It is your marriage-dress, Hugo," said Helene; "I will not have you
speak against it."
Ever since the strain of the scaffold she had not once broke down--no,
nor wept--but only desired to sit very close beside me, touching me
sometimes, as if to make sure that I was real. Deliverance had been too
great and sudden, and those things which had come so near to us
both--Death and the Beyond--had left a salt and bitter spray on our lips.
"And what of the Lady Ysolinde?" I asked of the Bishop.
Now the Bishop Peter was a good man, but, like many of his brethren, a
lover of great, swelling words.
"The Lady Ysolinde," he said, oratorically, "by the immediate assistance
of the city guard, was placed in a litter and deported, all unconscious
as she was, to her father's house in the Weiss Thor, where she still
remains. But her most seasonable extract from the laws of the Wolfmark,
which so opportunely saved the life of your fair wife, and led to this
present happy consummation, I have here by me, even in my hand."
And with that the Bishop drew the rolled parchment from his pocket and
handed it to me, with all the original seals depending from it. Now I
have small gift for the deciphering of such ancient documents, being only
skilled in the common script of the day, and not over-well in that. So
that I had to depend upon the offices of Bishop Peter for the
interpretation.
"I think," said the Bishop, after he had finished reading it over, "that
this document had best remain in my own possession. It may be safer
under the seal and protection of the Church--even as, to speak truth,
you and your wife would also be. I am a plain man," the Bishop
continued, after a pause, "but remember that there is ever a place of
refuge at the palace--and one which even Duke Otho is not likely to
violate, remembering the experiences of his predecessor, Duke Casimir,
when he crossed his sword against the crosier of this unworthy servant
of Holy Church."
"I thank you," said I. "I would that it were possible to avail myself of
your all too generous offer. But it will be necessary to abide at least
this one night in the Red Tower."
"Ah," he said, "why this night?"
"Great things may happen this night, my Lord Bishop!" said I, and glanced
significantly in the direction of Plassenburg.
"Ah," said the Bishop again, "so then the power of Holy Church may not be
the only restraint upon Duke Otho by to-morrow at this time!"
And, calling his attendants, the suave and far-seeing prelate made his
way with gravity and reverend ceremony down the streets of Thorn towards
his palace.
So, bit by bit, the long day passed away, and I thought it would never
end. For Helene and I sat and waited for that which might happen, with
beating and anxious hearts. Ofttimes I ran to the top of the Red Tower,
and sometimes it seemed that I could see a moving cloud of dust, and
sometimes a flurry of startled cattle afar on the horizon. But till dusk
there came to our aching eyes no better evidence that the lads of
Plassenburg were coming to our rescue and to the deliverance of the
down-trodden city of Thorn.
The soldiers of the garrison were still encamped in the great square.
There was also a constant swarming and mustering of men upon the ramparts
of the Wolfsberg. Duke Otho had certainly enough men to make a creditable
resistance. True, they were Free Companions, and without other loyalty
than that which they owed to their paymaster.
And beneath this warlike show lay the city, rebellious and turbulent to
the core, the merchants longing for unhampered rights of trade and
security in the enjoyment of the fruits of their labors, the craftsmen
claiming freedom to work in their guilds without a payment of labor-bond
tithes to the Duke, and especially without the fear of being snatched
away at any moment from their benches and looms to join in his forays and
incursions.
Towards the gloaming I had come down from the roof of the tower, and was
standing, gloomy, and little like a bridegroom, at the little window
whence I had so often looked down upon the playing children of Thorn.
Suddenly a great hand was reached up from the pavement, a folded paper
was thrust in at the lattice, and I saw the face of the Lubber Fiend
looking up at me from the street below.
"Come up hither, good Jan," I cried to him. "I will run and open
the gate!"
But the Lubber Fiend only shook his head till his ears flapped like
burdocks in the wind by the wood edges.
"Jan will come none within that gate to tell where he has been," he said.
"Jan may be a fool, but he knows better than that."
"And where have you been?" I asked, eagerly.
Jan the Lubber Fiend stood on his tiptoes and whispered up to me with his
elbows on the sill.
"You are sure the Duke is not behind you?"
"There is none here--except my wife," I said, smiling. And I liked
speaking the word.
"I have seen the great Prince," said Jan, nodding backward, and smiling
mysteriously, "and he is coming, but not by himself. There are such a
peck of mad fellows out there. There will not be much to eat in Thorn
when they all come in. Better make a good dinner to-day, that is my
advice to you. And I was bid to tell you that when all was ready for
their coming a fire is to be lighted on a high place, and then the Prince
will come to the gates."
I longed much to hear more of his adventures, but neither love nor money
would induce the thrice cautious Jan to set a foot within the precincts
of the Red Tower.
"I will light a bonfire when it is dark at the White Gate," he said, as
he retracted himself into the dusk. "I know what will make a rare blaze.
And the Prince cannot come too soon."
So indeed I thought also, as I looked out and saw the swarms of Duke
Otho's men in the court-yard and about the square, and reflected on our
helplessness here in the Red Tower within the defenced precincts of the
Wolfsberg.