Joan of the Sword Hand Part 46

"I would it could be so," said Theresa wistfully. "If my death could cause this thing righteously to come to pa.s.s, how gladly would I end life! But I am bound by an oath, and my son is bound because I am bound.

The tribunal is not the Diet of Ratisbon, but the faithfulness of a woman's heart. Have I been loyal to my prince these many years, so that now shame itself sits on my brow as gladly as a crown of bay, that I should fail him now? Low he lies, and I may never stand beside his sepulchre. No son of mine shall sit in his high chair. But if in any sphere of sinful or imperfect spirits, be it h.e.l.l or purgatory, he and I shall encounter, think you that for an empire I would meet him shamed.

And when he says, 'Woman of my love, hast thou kept thy troth?' shall I be compelled to answer 'No?'"

"But," urged Joan, "this thing is your son's birthright. My father, for purposes of state, bound my happiness to a man I loathe. I have cast that band to the winds. The fathers cannot bind the children, no more can you disinherit your son."

Theresa von Lynar smiled a sad wise smile, infinitely patient, infinitely remote.

"Ah," she said, "you think so? You are young. You have never loved. You are his daughter, not his wife. One day you shall know, if G.o.d is good to you!"

At this Joan smiled in her turn. She knew what she knew.

"You may think you know," returned Theresa, her calm eyes on the girl's face, "but what _I_ mean by loving is another matter. The band you broke you did not make. I keep the vow I made. With clear eye, undulled brain, willing hand I made it--because he willed it. Let my son Maurice break it, if he can, if he will--as you have broken yours. Only let him never more call Theresa von Lynar mother!"

Joan rose to depart. Her intent had not been shaken, though she was impressed by the n.o.ble heart of the woman who had been her father's wife. But she also had vowed a vow, and that vow she would keep. The Sparhawk should yet be the Eagle of Kernsberg, and she, Joan, a home-keeping housewife nested in quietness, a barn-door fowl about the orchards of Isle Rugen.

"Madam," she said, "your word is your word. But so is that of Joan of Kernsberg. It may be that out of the unseen there may leap a chance which shall bring all to pa.s.s, the things which we both desire--without breaking of vows or loosing of the bands of obligation. For me, being no more than a daughter, I will keep Duke Henry's will only in that which is just!"

"And I," said Theresa von Lynar, "will keep it, just or unjust!"

Yet Joan smiled as she went out. For she had been countered and checkmated in sacrifice. She had met a nature greater than her own, and that with the truly n.o.ble is the pleasure of pleasures. In such things only the small are small, only the worms of the earth delight to crawl upon the earth. The great and the wise look up and wors.h.i.+p the sun above them. And if by chance their special sun prove after all to be but a star, they say, "Ah, if we had only been near enough it would have been a sun!"

All the while Conrad sat very still, listening with full heart to that which it did not concern him to interrupt. But within his heart he said, "Woman, when she is true woman, is greater, worthier, fuller than any man--aye, were it the Holy Father himself. Perhaps because they draw near Christ the Son through Mary the Mother!"

But Theresa von Lynar sat silent, and watched the girl as she went down the long path, the leafy branches spattering alternate light and shadow upon her slender figure. Then she turned sharply upon Conrad.

"And now, my Lord Cardinal," she said, "what have you been saying to my husband's daughter?"

"I have been telling her that I love her!" answered Conrad simply. He felt that what he had listened to gave this woman a right to be answered.

"And what, I pray you, have princes of Holy Church to do with love? They seek after heavenly things, do they not? Like the angels, they neither marry nor are given in marriage."

"I know," said Conrad humbly, and without taking the least offence. "I know it well. But I have put off the armour I had not proven. The burden is too great for me. I am a soldier--I was trained a soldier--yet because I was born after my brother Louis, I must perforce become both priest and cardinal. Rather a thousand times would I be a man-at-arms and carry a pike!"

"Then am I to understand that as a soldier you told the d.u.c.h.ess Joan that you loved her, and that as a priest you forbade the banns? Or did you wholly forget the little circ.u.mstance that once on a time you yourself married her to your brother?"

"I did indeed forget," said Conrad, with sincere penitence; "yet you must not blame me too sorely. I was carried out of myself----"

"The d.u.c.h.ess, then, rejected your suit with contumely?"

Conrad was silent.

"How should a great lady listen to her husband's brother--and he a priest?" Theresa went on remorseless. "What said the Lady Joan when you told her that you loved her?"

"The words she spoke I cannot repeat, but when she ended I set my lips to her garment's hem as reverently as ever to holy bread."

The slow smile came again over the face of Theresa von Lynar, the smile of a warworn veteran who watches the children at their drill.

"You do not need to tell me what she answered, my lord," she said, for the first time leaving out the ecclesiastic t.i.tle. "I know!"

Conrad stared at the woman.

"She told you that she loved you from the first."

"How know you that?" he faltered. "None must hear that secret--none must guess it!"

Theresa von Lynar laughed a little mellow laugh, in which a keen ear might have detected how richly and pleasantly her laugh must once have sounded to her lover when all her pulses beat to the tune of gladness and the unbound heart.

"Do you think to deceive me, Theresa, whom Henry the Lion loved? Have I been these many weeks with you two in the house and not seen this?

Prince Conrad, I knew it that night of the storm when she bent her over the couch on which you lay. 'I love,' you say boldly, and you think great things of your love. But she loved first as she will love most, and your boasted love will never overtake hers--no, not though you love her all your life.... Well, what do you propose to do?"

Conrad stood a moment mutely wrestling with himself. He had never felt Joan's first instinctive aversion to this woman, a dislike even yet scarcely overcome--for women distrust women till they have proven themselves innocent, and often even then.

"My lady," he said, "the d.u.c.h.ess Joan has showed me the better way. Like a man, I knew not what I asked, nor dared to express all that I desired.

But I have learned how souls can be united, though bodies are separated. I will not touch her hand; I will not kiss her lips. Once a year only will I see her in the flesh. I shall carry out my duty, made at least less unworthy by her example----"

"And think you," said Theresa, "that in the night watches you will keep this charge? Will not her face come between you and the altar? Will not her image float before you as you kneel at the shrine? Will it not blot out the lines as you read your daily office?"

"I know it--I know it too well!" said Conrad, sinking his head on his breast. "I am not worthy."

"What, then, will you do? Can you serve two masters?" persisted the inquisitor. "Your Scripture says not."

A larger self seemed to flame and dilate within the young man.

"One thing I can do," he said--"like you, I can obey. She bade me go back and do my duty. I cannot bind my thought; I cannot change my heart; I cannot cast my love out. I have heard that which I have heard, and I cannot forget; but at least with the body I can obey. I will perform my vow; I will keep my charge to the letter, every jot and t.i.ttle. And if G.o.d condemn me for a hypocrite--well, let Him! He, and not I, put this love into my heart. My body may be my priesthood's--I will strive to keep it clean--but my soul is my lady's. For that let Him cast both soul and body into h.e.l.l-fire if He will!"

Theresa von Lynar did not smile any more. She held out her hand to Conrad of Courtland, priest and prince.

"Yes," she said, "you do know what love is. In so far as I can I will help you to your heart's desire."

And in her turn she rose and pa.s.sed down through the leafy avenues of the orchard, over which the westering sun was already casting rood-long shadows.

CHAPTER XLII

THE WORDLESS MAN TAKES A PRISONER

It was the hour of the evening meal at Isle Rugen. The September day piped on to its melancholy close, and the wild geese overhead called down unseen from the upper air a warning that the storm followed hard upon their backs. At the table-head sat Theresa von Lynar, her largely moulded and beautiful face showing no sign of emotion. Only great quiet dwelt upon it, with knowledge and the sympathy of the proven for the untried. On either side of her were Joan and Prince Conrad--not sad, neither avoiding nor seeking the contingence of eye and eye, but yet, in spite of all, so strange a thing is love once declared, consciously happy within their heart of hearts.

Then, after a s.p.a.ce dutifully left unoccupied, came Captains Boris and Jorian; while at the table-foot, opposite to their hostess, towered Werner von Orseln, whose grey beard had wagged at the more riotous board of Henry the Lion of Hohenstein.

Werner was telling an interminable story of the old wars, with many a "Thus said I" and "So did he," ending thus: "There lay I on my back, with thirty pagan Wends ready to slit my hals as soon as they could get their knives between my gorget and headpiece. Gott! but I said every prayer that I knew--they were not many in those days--all in two minutes' s.p.a.ce, as I lay looking at the sky through my visor bars and waiting for the first p.r.i.c.k of the Wendish knife-points.

"But even as I looked up, lo! some one bestrode me, and the voice I loved best in all the world--no, not a woman's, G.o.d send him rest"

("Amen!" interjected the Lady Joan)--"cried, 'To me, Hohenstein! To me, Kernsberg!' And though my head was ringing with the shock of falling, and my body weak from many wounds, I strove to answer that call, as I saw my master's sword flicker this way and that over my head. I rose half from the ground, my hilt still in my hand--I had no more left after the fight I had fought. But Henry the Lion gave me a stamp down with his foot. 'Lie still, man,' he said; 'do not interfere in a little business of this kind!' And with his one point he kept a score at bay, crying all the time, 'To me, Hohenstein! To me, Kernsbergers all!'

"And when the enemy fled, did he wait till the bearers came? Well I wot, hardly! Instead, he caught me over his shoulder like an empty sack when one goes a-foraging--me, Werner von Orseln, that am built like a donjon tower. And with his sword still red in his right hand he bore me in, only turning aside a little to threaten a Wendish archer who would have sent an arrow through me on the way. By the knights who sit round Karl's table, he was a man!"