Joan of the Sword Hand Part 47

And then to their feet sprang Boris and Jorian, who were judges of men.

"To Prince Henry the Lion--_hoch!_" they cried. "Drink it deep to his memory!"

And with tankard and wreathed wine-cup they quaffed to the great dead.

Standing up, they drank--his daughter also--all save Theresa von Lynar.

She sat unmoved, as if the toast had been her own and in a moment more she must rise to give them thanks. For the look on her face said, "After all, what is there so strange in that? Was he not Henry the Lion--and mine?"

For there is no joy like that which you may see on a woman's face when a great deed is told of the man she loves.

The Kernsberg soldiers who had been trained to serve at table, had stopped and stood fixed, their duties in complete oblivion during the tale, but now they resumed them and the simple feast continued.

Meanwhile it had been growing wilder and wilder without, and the shrill lament of the wind was distinctly heard in the wide chimney-top. Now and then in a lull, broad splashes of rain fell solidly into the red embers with a sound like musket b.a.l.l.s "spatting" on a wall.

Then Theresa von Lynar looked up.

"Where is Max Ulrich?" she said; "why does he delay?"

"My lady," one of the men of Kernsberg answered, saluting; "he is gone across the Haff in the boat, and has not yet returned."

"I will go and look for him--nay, do not rise, my lord. I would go forth alone!"

So, s.n.a.t.c.hing a cloak from the p.r.o.ng of an antler in the hall, Theresa went out into the irregular hooting of the storm. It was not yet the deepest gloaming, but dull grey clouds like hunted cattle scoured across the sky, and the rising thunder of the waves on the s.h.i.+ngle prophesied a night of storm. Theresa stood a long time bare-headed, enjoying the thresh of the broad drops as they struck against her face and cooled her throbbing eyes. Then she pulled the hood of the cloak over her head.

The dead was conquering the quick within her.

"I have known a _man_!" she said; "what need I more with life now? The man I loved is dead. I thank G.o.d that I served him--aye, as his dog served him. And shall I grow disobedient now? No, not that my son might sit on the throne of the Kaiser!"

Theresa stood upon the inner curve of the Haff at the place where Max Ulrich was wont to pull his boat ash.o.r.e. The wind was behind her, and though the waves increased as the distance widened from the pebbly bank on which she stood, the water at her feet was only ruffled and pitted with little dimples under the shocks of the wind. Theresa looked long southward under her hand, but for the moment could see nothing.

Then she settled herself to keep watch, with the storm riding slack-rein overhead. Towards the mainland the whoop and roar with which it a.s.saulted the pine forests deafened her ears. But her face was younger than we have ever seen it, for Werner's story had moved her strongly.

Once more she was by a great man's side. She moved her hand swiftly, first out of the shelter of the cloak as if seeking furtively to nestle it in another's, and then, as the raindrops plashed cold upon it, she drew it slowly back to her again.

And though Theresa von Lynar was yet in the prime of her glorious beauty, one could see what she must have been in the days of her girlhood. And as memory caused her eyes to grow misty, and the smile of love and trust eternal came upon her lips, twenty years were shorn away; and the woman's face which had looked anxiously across the darkening Haff changed to that of the girl who from the gate of Castle Lynar had watched for the coming of Duke Henry.

She was gazing steadfastly southward, but it was not for Max the Wordless that she waited. Towards Kernsberg, where he whose sleep she had so often watched, rested all alone, she looked and kissed a hand.

"Dear," she murmured, "you have not forgotten Theresa! You know she keeps troth! Aye, and will keep it till G.o.d grows kind, and your true wife can follow--to tell you how well she hath kept her charge!"

Awhile she was silent, and then she went on in the low even voice of self-communing.

"What to me is it to become a princess? Did not he, for whose words alone I cared, call me his queen? And I was his queen. In the black blank day of my uttermost need he made me his wife. And I am his wife.

What want I more with dignities?"

Theresa von Lynar was silent awhile and then she added--

"Yet the young d.u.c.h.ess, his daughter, means well. She has her father's spirit. And my son--why should my vow bind him? Let him be Duke, if so the Fates direct and Providence allow. But for me, I will not stir finger or utter word to help him. There shall be neither anger nor sadness in my husband's eyes when I tell him how I have observed the bond!"

Again she kissed a hand towards the dead man who lay so deep under the ponderous marble at Kernsberg. Then with a gracious gesture, lingeringly and with the misty eyes of loving womanhood, she said her lonely farewells.

"To you, beloved," she murmured, and her voice was low and very rich, "to you, beloved, where far off you lie! Sleep sound, nor think the time long till Theresa comes to you!"

She turned and walked back facing the storm. Her hood had long ago been blown from her head by the furious gusts of wind. But she heeded not.

She had forgotten poor Max Ulrich and Joan, and even herself. She had forgotten her son. Her hand was out in the storm now. She did not draw it back, though the water ran from her fingertips. For it was clasped in an unseen grasp and in an ear that surely heard she was whispering her heart's troth. "G.o.d give it to me to do one deed--one only before I die--that, worthy and unashamed, I may meet my King."

When Theresa re-entered the hall of the grange the company still sat as she had left them. Only at the lower end of the board the three captains conferred together in low voices, while at the upper Joan and Prince Conrad sat gazing full at each other as if souls could be drunk in through the eyes.

With a certain reluctance which yet had no shame in it, they plucked glance from glance as she entered, as it were with difficulty detaching spirits which had been joined. At which Theresa, recalled to herself, smiled.

"In all that touches not my vow I will help you two!" she thought, as she looked at them. For true love came closer to her than anything else in the world.

"There is no sign of Max," she said aloud, to break the first silence of constraint; "perhaps he has waited at the landing-place on the mainland till the storm should abate--though that were scarce like him, either."

She sat down, with one large movement of her arm casting her wet cloak over the back of a wooden settle, which fronted a fireplace where green pine knots crackled and explosive jets of steam rushed spitefully outwards into the hall with a hissing sound.

"You have been down at the landing-place--on such a night?" said Joan, with some remains of that curious awkwardness which marks the interruption of a more interesting conversation.

"Yes," said Theresa, smiling indulgently (for she had been in like case--such a great while ago, when her brothers used to intrude). "Yes, I have been at the landing-place. But as yet the storm is nothing, though the waves will be fierce enough if Max Ulrich is coming home with a laden boat to pull in the wind's eye."

It mattered little what she said. She had helped them to pa.s.s the bar, and the conversation could now proceed over smooth waters.

Yet there is no need to report it. Joan and Conrad remained and spoke they scarce knew what, all for the pleasure of eye answering eye, and the subtle flattery of voices that altered by the millionth of a tone each time they answered each other. Theresa spoke vaguely but sufficiently, and allowed herself to dream, till to her yearning gaze honest, st.u.r.dy Werner grew misty and his bluff figure resolved itself into that one n.o.bler and more kingly which for years had fronted her at the table's end where now the chief captain sat.

Meanwhile Jorian and Boris exchanged meaning and covert glances, asking each other when this dull dinner parade would be over, so that they might loosen leathern points, undo b.u.t.tons, and stretch legs on benches with a tankard of ale at each right elbow, according to the wont of stout war-captains not quite so young as they once were.

Thus they were sitting when there came a clamour at the outer door, the noise of voices, then a soldier's challenge, and, on the back of that, Max Ulrich's weird answer--a sound almost like the howl of a wolf cut off short in his throat by the hand that strangles him.

"There he is at last!" cried all in the dining-hall of the grange.

"Thank G.o.d!" murmured Theresa. For the man wanting words had known Henry the Lion.

They waited a long moment of suspense till the door behind Werner was thrust open and the dumb man came in, drenched and dripping. He was holding one by the arm, a man as tall as himself, grey and gaunt, who fronted the company with eyes bandaged and hands tied behind his back.

Max Ulrich had a sharp knife in his hand with a thin and slightly curved blade, and as he thrust the pinioned man before him into the full light of the candles, he made signs that, if his lady wished it, he was prepared to despatch his prisoner on the spot. His lips moved rapidly and he seemed to be forming words and sentences. His mistress followed these movements with the closest attention.

"He says," she began to translate, "that he met this man on the further side. He said that he had a message for Isle Rugen, and refused to turn back on any condition. So Max blindfolded, bound, and gagged him, he being willing to be bound. And now he waits our pleasure."

"Let him be unloosed," said Joan, gazing eagerly at the prisoner, and Theresa made the sign.

Stolidly Ulrich unbound the broad bandage from the man's eyes, and a grey badger's brush of upright stubble rose slowly erect above a high narrow brow, like laid corn that dries in the sun.

"Alt Pikker!" said Joan of the Sword Hand, starting to her feet.

"Alt Pikker!" cried in varied tones of wonderment Werner von Orseln and the two captains of Pla.s.senburg, Jorian and Boris.

And Alt Pikker it surely was.

CHAPTER XLIII