Joan of the Sword Hand Part 29

But Werner only laughed and put him off.

"When we have sure word of what your brother does at Kernsberg, then we will talk of this matter. Till then it cannot be hid from you that no hostage half so valuable can we keep in hold. For if your brother loves my Lord Cardinal, then he will desire to ransom him. On the other hand, if he fear him, then we will keep your Highness alive to threaten him, as the Pope did with Djem, the Sultan's brother!"

So after many days it was permitted to the Prince to walk abroad within the narrow bounds of the Isle Rugen, the Wordless Man guarding him at fifty paces distance, impa.s.sive and inevitable as an ambulant rock of the seaboard.

As he went Prince Conrad's eyes glanced this way and that, looking for a means of escape. Yet they saw none, for Werner von Orseln with his ten men of Kernsberg and the two Captains of Pla.s.senburg were not soldiers to make mistakes. There was but one boat on the island, and that was locked in a strong house by the inner sh.o.r.e, and over against it a sentry paced night and day. It chanced, however, upon a warm and gracious afternoon, when the breezes played wanderingly among the garden trees before losing themselves in the solemn aisles of the pines as in a pillared temple, that Conrad, stepping painfully westwards along the beach, arrived at the place of his rescue, and, descending the steep bank of s.h.i.+ngle to look for any traces of the disaster, came suddenly upon the d.u.c.h.ess Joan gazing thoughtfully out to sea.

She turned quickly, hearing the sound of footsteps, and at sight of the Prince-Bishop glanced east and west along the sh.o.r.e as if meditating retreat.

But the proximity of Max Ulrich and the encompa.s.sing banks of water-worn pebbles convinced her of the awkwardness, if not the impossibility, of escape.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Joan looked steadily across the steel-grey sea."

[_Page 179_]]

Conrad the prisoner greeted Joan with the sweet gravity which had been characteristic of him as Conrad the prince, and his eyes shone upon her with the same affectionate kindliness that had dwelt in them in the pavilion of the rose garden. But after one glance Joan looked steadily away across the steel-grey sea. Her feet turned instinctively to walk back towards the house, and the Prince turned with her.

"If we are two fellow-prisoners," said Conrad, "we ought to see more of each other. Is it not so?"

"That we may concert plans of escape?" said Joan. "You desire to continue your pilgrimage--I to return to my people, who, alas, think themselves better off without me!"

"I do, indeed, greatly desire to see Rome," replied the Prince. "The Holy Father Sixtus has sent me the red biretta, and has commanded me to come to Rome within a year to exchange it for the Cardinal's hat, and also to visit the tombs of the Apostles."

But Joan was not listening. She went on to speak of the matters which occupied her own mind.

"If you were a priest, why did you ride in the great tournament of the Blacks and the Whites at Courtland not a year ago?"

The Prince-Cardinal smiled indulgently.

"I was not then fledged full priest; hardly am I one now, though they have made me a Prince of Holy Church. Yet the tournaying was in a manner, perhaps, what her bridal dress is to a nun ere she takes the veil. But, my Lady Joan, what know you of the strife of Blacks and Whites at Courtland?"

"Your sister, the Princess Margaret, spoke of it, and also the Count von Loen, an officer of mine," answered Joan disingenuously.

"I am indeed a soldier by training and desire," continued the young man.

"In Italy I have played at stratagem and countermarch with the Orsini and Colonna. But in this matter the younger son of the house of Courtland has no choice. We are the bulwark of the Church alike against heretic Muscovite to the north and furious Hussite to the south. We of Courtland must stand for the Holy See along all the Baltic edges; and for this reason the Pope has always chosen from amongst us his representative upon the Diet of the Empire, till the office has become almost hereditary."

"Then you are not really a priest?" said Joan, woman-like fixing upon that part of the young man's reply, which somehow had the greatest interest for her.

"In a sense, yes--in truth, no. They say that the Pope, in order to forward the Church's polity, makes and unmakes cardinals every day, some even for money payments; but these are doubtless Hussite lies. Yet though by prescript right and the command of the head of the Church I am both priest and bishop, in my heart I am but Prince Conrad of Courtland and a simple knight, even as I was before."

They paced along together with their eyes on the ground, the Wordless Man keeping a uniform distance behind them. Then the Prince laughed a strange grating laugh, like one who mocks at himself.

"By this time I ought to have been well on my way to the tombs of the Apostles; yet in my heart I cannot be sorry, for--G.o.d forgive me!--I had liefer be walking this northern sh.o.r.e, a young man along with a fair maiden."

"A priest walking with his brother's wife!" said Joan, turning quickly upon him and flas.h.i.+ng a look into the eyes that regarded her with some wonder at her imperiousness.

"That is true, in a sense," he answered; "yet I am a priest with no consent of my desire--you a wife without love. We are, at least, alike in this--that we are wife and priest chiefly in name."

"Save that you are on your way to take on you the duties of your office, while I am more concerned in evading mine."

The Cardinal meditated deeply.

"The world is ill arranged," he said slowly; "my brother Louis would have made a far better Churchman than I. And strange it is to think that but a year ago the knights and chief councillors of Courtland came to me to propose that, because of his bodily weakness, my brother should be deposed and that I should take over the government and direction of affairs."

He went on without noticing the colour rising in Joan's cheek, smiling a little to himself and talking with more animation.

"Then, had I a.s.sented, my brother might have been walking here with tonsured head by your side, while I would doubtless have been knocking at the gates of Kernsberg, seeking at the spear's point for a runaway bride."

"Nay!" cried Joan, with sudden vehemence; "that would you not----"

And as suddenly she stopped, stricken dumb by the sound of her own words.

The Prince turned his head full upon her. He saw a face all suffused with hot blushes, haughtiest pride struggling with angry tears in eyes that fairly blazed upon him, and a slender figure drawn up into an att.i.tude of defiance--at sight of all which something took him instantly by the throat.

"You mean--you mean----" he stammered, and for a moment was silent. "For G.o.d's sake, tell me what you mean!"

"I mean nothing at all!" said Joan, stamping her foot in anger.

And turning upon her heel she left him standing fixed in wonder and doubt upon the margin of the sea.

Then the wife of Louis, Prince of Courtland, walked eastward to the house upon the Isle Rugen with her face set as sternly as for battle, but her nether lip quivering--while Conrad, Cardinal and Prince of Holy Church, paced slowly to the west with a bitter and downcast look upon his ordinarily so sunny countenance.

For Fate had been exceeding cruel to these two.

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE RED LION FLIES AT KERNSBERG

And meanwhile right haughtily flew the red lion upon the citadel of Kernsberg. Never had the Lady d.u.c.h.ess, Joan of the Sword Hand, approven herself so brave and determined. In her forester's dress of green velvet, with the links of chain body-armour glinting beneath its frogs and taches, she went everywhere on foot. At all times of the day she was to be seen at the half-moons wherein the cannon were fixed, or on horseback scouring the defenced posts along the city wall. She seemed to know neither fear nor fatigue, and the noise of cheering followed her about the little hill city like her shadow.

Three only there were who knew the truth--Peter Balta, Alt Pikker, and George the Hussite. And when the guards were set, the lamps lit, and the bars drawn, a stupid faithful Hohensteiner set on watch at the turnpike foot with command to let none pa.s.s upon his life--then at last the lithe young Sparhawk would undo his belt with huge refreshful gusting of air into his lungs, amid the scarcely subdued laughter of the captains of the host.

"Lord Peter of the Keys!" Von Lynar would cry, "what it is to unb.u.t.ton and untruss! 'Tis very well to admire it in our pretty Joan, but 'fore the Lord, I would give a thousand crowns if she were not so slender. It cuts a man in two to get within such a girdle. Only Prince Wasp could make a s.h.i.+ft to fit it. Give me a goblet of ale, fellows."

"Nay, lad--mead! Mead of ten years alone must thou have, and little enough of that! Ale will make thee fat as mast-fed pigs."

"Or stay," amended George the Hussite; "mead is not comely drink for a maid--I will get thee a little canary and water, scented with millefleurs and rosemary."

"Check your fooling and help to unlace me, all of you," quoth the Sparhawk. "Now there is but a silken cord betwixt me and Paradise. But it prisons me like iron bars. Ah, there"--he blew a great breath, filling and emptying his lungs with huge content--"I wonder why we men breathe with our stomachs and women with their chests?"

"Know you not that much?" cried Alt Pikker. "'Tis because a man's life is in his stomach; and as for women, most part have neither heart, stomach, nor bowels of mercy--and so breathe with whatever it liketh them!"

"No ribaldry in a lady's presence, or in a trice thou shalt have none of these, either!" quoth the false Joan; "help me off with this thrice-accursed chain-mail. I am pocked from head to heel like a Swiss mercenary late come from Venice. Every ring in this foul devil's jerkin is imprinted an inch deep on my hide, and itches worse than a hundred beggars at a church door. Ah! better, better. Yet not well! I had thought our Joan of the Sword Hand a strapping wench, but now a hop-pole is an abbot to her when one comes to wear her _carapace_ and _justaucorps_!"

"How went matters to-day on your side?" he went on, speaking to Balta, all the while chafing the calves of his legs and rubbing his pinched feet, having first enwrapped himself in a great loose mantle of red and gold which erstwhile had belonged to Henry the Lion.