Kitabı oku: «My Lady Rotha: A Romance», sayfa 10

CHAPTER XIII.
OUR QUARTERS

At this time I had never seen a camp, nor viewed any large number of armed men together, and my curiosity, as we dropped gently down the hill, while the sun set and the shadows of evening fell upon the busy scene, was mingled with some uneasiness. The babble of voices, of traders crying their wares, of men quarrelling at play, of women screaming and scolding, rose up continually, as from a fair; and the nearer we approached the more like a fair, the less like my anticipations, seemed the place we were entering. I looked to see something gay and splendid, the glitter of weapons and the gleam of flags, some reflection of the rich surroundings the general allowed himself. I saw nothing of the kind; no show of ordered lines, no battalia drilling, no picquets, outposts, or sentinels. On the contrary, all before us seemed squalid, noisy, turbulent; so that as I descended into the midst of it, and left the quiet uplands and the evening behind us, I felt my gorge rise, and shivered as with cold.

A furlong short of the camp a troop of officers on horseback came to meet us, and saluting their general-some with hiccoughs-fell in tumultuously behind us; and their feathered hats and haphazard armour took the eye finely. But the next to meet us were of a different kind-beggars; troops of whom, men, women, and children, assailed us with loud cries, and, wailing and imploring aid, ran beside our horses, until Tzerclas' men rode out at them and beat them off. To these succeeded a second horde, this time of gaudy, slatternly women, who hung about the entrance to the camp, with hucksters, peddlers, thieves, and the like, without number; so that our way seemed to lie through the lowest haunts of a great city. Not one in four of all I saw had the air of a soldier or counted himself one.

And this was the case inside the camp as well as outside. Everywhere booths and stalls stood among the huts, and sutlers plied their trade. Everywhere men wrangled, and women screamed, and naked children scuttered up and down. While we passed, the general's presence procured momentary respect and silence. The moment we were gone, the stream of ribaldry poured across our path, and the tide of riot set in. I saw plenty of bearded ruffians, dark men with scowling faces, chaffering, gaming or sleeping; but little that was soldierly, little that was orderly, nothing to proclaim that this was the lager of a military force, until we had left the camp itself behind us and entered the village.

Here in a few scattered houses were the quarters of the principal officers; and here a degree of quiet and decency and some show met the eye. A watch was set in the street, which was ankle-deep in filth. A few pennons fluttered from the eaves, or before the doors. In front of the largest house a dozen cannon, the wheels locked together with chains, were drawn up, and behind the buildings were groups of tethered horses. Two trumpeters, who seemed to be waiting for us, blew a blast as we appeared, and a dozen officers on foot, some with pikes and some with partisans, came up to greet the general. But even here ugly looks and insolent faces were plentiful. The splendour was faded, the rich garments were set on awry. Hard by the cannon, in the shadow of the house, a corpse hung and dangled from the branch of an oak. The man had kicked off his shoes before he died, or some one had taken them, and the naked feet, shining in the dusk, brushed the shoulders of the passers-by.

Some might have taken it for an evil omen; I found it a good one, yet wished more than ever that we had not met General Tzerclas. But my lady, riding beside him and listening to his low-voiced talk, seemed not a whit disappointed by what she saw, by the lack of discipline, or the sordid crowd. Either she had known better than I what to expect in a camp, or she had eyes only for such brightness as existed. Possibly Von Werder's warning had so coloured my vision that I saw everything in sombre tints.

We found quarters prepared for us, not in the general's house, the large one by the cannon, but in a house of four rooms, a little farther down the street. It was convenient, it had been cleaned for us, and we found a meal awaiting us; and so far I was bound to confess that we had no ground for complaint. The general accompanied my lady to the door, and there left her with many bows, requesting permission to wait on her next day, and begging her in the mean time to send to him for anything that was lacking to her comfort.

When he was gone, and my lady had surveyed the place, she let her satisfaction be seen. The main room had been made habitable enough. She stood in her redingote, tapping the table with her whip.

'Well, Martin, this is better than the forest,' she said.

'Yes, your excellency,' I answered reluctantly.

'I think we have done very well,' she continued; and she smiled to herself.

'We are safe from the rain, at any rate,' I said bluntly. My tongue itched to tell her Von Werder's warning, but Fraulein Anna and Marie Wort were in the room, and I did not think it safe to speak.

I could not stay and not tell, however, and I jumped at the first excuse for retiring. There was a kind of wooden platform in front of the houses, and running their whole length; a walk, raised out of the mud of the street and sheltered overhead by the low, wide eaves. A woman and some children had climbed on to it, and begging with their palms through the windows almost deafened us. I ran out and drove them off, and set a man in front to keep the place free. But the wretched creatures' entreaties haunted me, and when I returned I was in a worse temper than before.

The Waldgrave met me at the door, and to my surprise laid his hand on my shoulder. 'This way, Martin,' he said in a low voice. 'I want a word with you.'

I went with him across the road, and leaned against the fallen trunk of a tree, which was just visible in the darkness. Through the unglazed windows of the house we could see the lighted rooms, the Countess and her attendants moving about, Fraulein Anna sitting with her feet tucked up in a corner, the servants bringing in the meal. All in a frame of blackness, with the hoarse sounds of the camp in our ears, and the pitiful wailing of the beggars dying away in the distance. It was a dark night, and still.

The Waldgrave laughed. 'Dilly, dilly, dilly! Come and be killed,' he muttered. 'Two thousand soldiers? Two thousand cut-throats, Martin. Pappenheim's black riders were gentlemen beside these fellows!'

'Things may look more cheerful by daylight,' I said.

'Or worse!' he answered.

I told him frankly that I thought the sooner we were out of the camp the better.

'If we can get out! Of course, it is better for the mouse when it is out of the trap!' he answered with a sneer. 'But there is the rub.'

'He would not dare to detain us,' I said. I did not believe my words, however.

'He will dare one of two things,' the Waldgrave answered firmly, 'you may be sure of that: either he will march your lady back to Heritzburg, and take possession in her name, with this tail at his heels-in which case, Heaven help her and the town. Or he will keep her here.'

I tried to think that he was prejudiced in the matter, and that his jealousy of General Tzerclas led him to see evil where none was meant. But his fears agreed so exactly with my own, that I found it difficult to treat his suggestions lightly. What the camp was, I had seen; how helpless we were in the midst of it, I knew; what advantage might be taken of us, I could imagine.

Presently I found an argument. 'You forget one thing, my lord,' I said. 'General Tzerclas is on his way to the south. In a week we shall be with the main army at Nuremberg, and able to appeal to the King of Sweden or the Landgrave or a hundred friends, ready and willing to help us.'

The Waldgrave laid his hand on my arm. 'He does not intend to go south,' he said.

I could not believe that; and I was about to state my objections when the noisy march of a body of men approaching along the road disturbed us. The Waldgrave raised his hand and listened.

'Another time!' he muttered-already we began to fear and be secret-'Go now!'

In a trice he disappeared in the darkness, while I went more slowly into the house, where I found my lady inquiring anxiously after him. I thought that the young lord would follow me in, and I said I had seen him. But he did not come, and presently wild strains of music, rising on the air outside, took us all by surprise and effectually diverted my lady's thoughts.

The players proved to be the general's band, sent to serenade us. As the weird, strange sweetness of the air, with its southern turns and melancholy cadences, stole into the room and held the women entranced-while moths fluttered round the lights and the servants pressed to the door to listen, and now and then a harsh scream or a distant oath betrayed the surrounding savagery-I felt my eyes drawn to my lady's face. She sat listening with a rapt expression. Her eyes were downcast, her lashes drooped and veiled them; but some pleasant thought, some playful remembrance curved her full lips and dimpled her chin. What was the thought, I wondered? was it gratification, pleasure, complacency, or only amusement? I longed to know.

On one point I was resolved. My lady should not sleep that night until she had heard the warning I had received from Von Werder. To that end I did all I could to catch her alone, but in the result I had to content myself with an occasion when only Fraulein Anna was with her. Time pressed, and perhaps the Dutch girl's presence confused me, or the delicacy of the position occurred to me in mediis rebus, as I think the Fraulein called it. At any rate, I blurted out the story a little too roughly, and found myself called sharply to order.

'Stay!' my lady said, and I saw too late that her colour was high. 'Not so fast, man! I think, Martin, that since we left Heritzburg you have lost some of your manners! See to it, you recover them. Who told you this tale?'

'Herr von Werder,' I answered with humility; and I was going on with my story. But she raised her hand.

'Herr von Werder!' she said haughtily. 'Who is he?'

'The gentleman who supped with us last night,' I reminded her.

She stamped the floor impatiently. 'Fool!' she cried, 'I know that! But who is he? Who is he? He should be some great man to prate of my affairs so lightly.'

I stuttered and stammered, and felt my cheek redden with shame. I did not know. And the man was not here, and I could not reproduce for her the air of authority, the tone and look which had imposed on me: which had given weight to words I might otherwise have slighted, and importance to a warning that I now remembered was a stranger's. I stood, looking foolish.

My lady saw her advantage. 'Well,' she said harshly, 'who is he? Out with it, man! Do not keep us waiting.'

I muttered that I knew no more of him than his name.

'Perhaps not that,' she retorted scornfully.

I admitted that it might be so.

My lady's eyes sparkled and her cheeks flamed. 'Before Heaven, you are a fool!' she cried. 'How dare you come to me with such a story? How dare you traduce a man without proof or warranty! And my cousin! Why, it passes belief. On the word of a nameless wanderer admitted to our table on sufferance you accuse an honourable gentleman, our kinsman and our host, of-Heaven knows of what, I don't! I tell you, you shame me!' she continued vehemently. 'You abuse my kindness. You abuse the shelter given to us. You must be mad, stark mad, to think such things. Or-'

She stopped on a sudden and looked down frowning. When she looked up again her face was changed. 'Tell me,' she said in a constrained voice, 'did any one-did the Waldgrave Rupert suggest this to you?'

'God forbid!' I said.

The answer seemed to embarrass her. 'Where is he?' she asked, looking at me suspiciously.

I told her that I did not know.

'Why did he not come to supper?' she persisted.

Again I said I did not know.

'You are a fool!' she replied sharply. But I saw that her anger had died down, and I was not surprised when she continued in a changed tone, 'Tell me; what has General Tzerclas done to you that you dislike him so? What is your grudge against him, Martin?'

'I have no grudge against him, your excellency,' I answered.

'You dislike him?'

I looked down and kept silence.

'I see you do,' my lady continued. 'Why? Tell me why, Martin.'

But I felt so certain that every word I said against him would in her present mood only set him higher in her favour that I was resolved not to answer. At last, being pressed, I told her that I distrusted him as a soldier of fortune-a class the country folk everywhere hold in abhorrence; and that nothing I had seen in his camp had tended to lessen the feeling.

'A soldier of fortune!' she replied, with a slight tinge of wonder and scorn. 'What of that? My uncle was one. Lord Craven, the Englishman, the truest knight-errant that ever followed banished queen-if all I hear be true-he is one; and his comrade, the Lord Horace Vere. And Count Leslie, the Scotchman, who commands in Stralsund for the Swede, I never heard aught but good of him. And Count Thurn of Bohemia-him I know. He is a brave man and honourable. A soldier of fortune!' she continued thoughtfully, tapping the table with her fingers. 'And why not? Why not?'

My choler rose at her words. 'He has the sweepings of Germany in his train,' I muttered. 'Look at his camp, my lady.'

She shrugged her shoulders. 'A camp is not a nunnery,' she said. 'And at any rate, he is on the right side.'

'His own!' I exclaimed.

I could have bitten my tongue the next moment, but it was too late. My lady looked at me sternly. 'You grow too quick-witted,' she said. 'I have talked too much to you, I see. I am no longer in Heritzburg, but I will be respected, Martin. Go! go at once, and to-morrow be more careful.'

Result-that I had offended her and done no good. I wondered what the Waldgrave would say, and I went to bed with a heart full of fancies and forebodings, that, battening on themselves, grew stronger and more formidable the longer I lay awake. The night was well advanced and the immediate neighbourhood of our quarters was quiet. The sentry's footsteps echoed monotonously as he tramped up and down the wooden platform before them. I could almost hear the breathing of the sleepers in the other rooms, the creak of the floor as one rose or another turned. There was nothing to keep me from sleep.

But my thoughts would not be confined to the four walls or the neighbourhood; my ears lent themselves to every sound that came from the encircling camp, the coarse song chanted by drunken revellers, the oath of anger, the shrill taunt, the cry of surprise. And once, a little before midnight, I heard something more than these: a sudden roar of voices that swelled up and up, louder and fiercer, and then died in a moment into silence-to be followed an instant later by fierce screams of pain-shriek upon shriek of such mortal agony and writhing that I sat up on my pallet, trembling all over and bathed in perspiration; and even the sleepers turned and moaned in their dreams. The cries grew fainter. Then, thank Heaven! silence.

But the incident left me in no better mood for sleep, and with every nerve on the stretch I was turning on the other side for the twentieth time when I fancied I heard whispering outside; a faint muttering as of some one talking to the sentinel. The sentry's step still kept time, however, and I was beginning to think that my imagination had played me a trick, when the creak of a door in the house, followed by a rustling sound, confirmed my suspicions. I rose to my feet. The next instant a low scream and the harsh voice of the watchman told me that something had happened.

I passed out of the house, without alarming any one, and was not surprised to find Jacob pinning a captive against the wall with one hand, while he threatened him with his pike. There was just light enough to see this, and no more, the wide eaves casting a black shadow on the prisoner's face.

'What is it, Jacob?' I said, going to his assistance. 'Whom have you got?'

'I do not know,' he answered sturdily, 'but I'll keep him. He was trying to get in or out. Steady now,' he added gruffly to his captive, 'or I will spoil your beauty for you!'

'In or out?' I said.

'Ay, I think he was coming out.'

There was a fire burning in the road a score of paces away. I ran to it and fetched a brand, and blowing the smouldering wood into a blaze, threw the light on the fellow's face. Jacob dropped his hand with a cry of surprise, and I recoiled. His prisoner was a woman-Marie Wort.

She hung down her head, trembling violently. Jacob had thrust back the hood from her face, and her loosened hair covered her shoulders.

'What does it mean?' I cried, struggling with my bewilderment. 'Why are you here, girl?'

Instead of answering she cowered nearer the wall, and I saw that she was trying to hide something behind her under cover of her cloak.

'What have you got there?' I said quickly, laying my hand on her wrist.

She flashed a look at me, her small teeth showing, a mutinous glare on her little pale face. 'Not my chain!' she snapped.

I dropped her arm and recoiled as if she had struck me; though the words did not so much hurt as surprise me. And I was quick to recover myself. 'What is it, then?' I said, returning to the attack. 'I must know, Marie, and what you are doing here at this time of night.'

As she did not answer I put her cloak aside, and discovered, to my great astonishment, that she was holding a platter full of food. It shook in her hand. She began to cry.

'Heavens, girl!' I exclaimed in my wonder, 'have you not had enough to eat?'

She lifted her head and looked at me through her tears, her eyes sparkling with indignation. 'I have!' she said almost fiercely. 'But what of these?'-and she flung her disengaged hand abroad, with a gesture I did not at once comprehend. 'Can you sleep in their beds, and lie in their houses, and eat from their meal-tubs, and think of them starving, and not get up and help them? Can you hear them whining for food like dogs, and starve them as you would not starve a dog? I cannot. I cannot!' she repeated wildly. 'But you, you others, you of the north, you have no hearts! You lie soft and care nothing!'

'But what-who are starving?' I said in amazement. Her words outran my wits. 'And where is the man in whose bed I am lying?'

'Under the sky! In the ditch!' she answered passionately. 'Are you blind?' she continued, speaking more quietly and drawing nearer. 'Do you think your general built this village? If not, where are the people who lived in it a month ago? Whining for a crust at the camp gate. Living on offal, or starving. Fighting with the dogs for bones. I heard a man outside this house cry that it was all his, and that he was starving. You drove him off. I heard his wife and babes wailing outside a while ago, and I came out. I could not bear it.'

I looked at Jacob. He nodded gravely. 'There was a woman here, with a child,' he said.

'Heaven forgive us!' I cried. Then-'Go in, girl,' I continued. 'I will see the food put where they will get it; but do you go to bed.'

She obeyed meekly, leaving me wondering at the strange mixture of courage and fearfulness which makes up some women, and those the best; who fly from a rat, yet face every extremity of pain without flinching. A Romanist? And what of that? It seemed to me a small thing, as I watched her gliding in. If she knew little and that awry, she loved much.

I looked at Jacob and he at me. 'Is it true, do you think?' I said.

'I doubt it is,' he answered stolidly, dropping the smouldering brand on the ground and treading, it out with his heel. 'I have seen soldiers and sutlers and women since I came into camp; and beggars. But peasants not one. I doubt we have eaten them out, Master Martin. But soldiers must live.'

The little heap of red embers glowed dully in the road and gave no light. The darkness shut us in on every side, even as the camp shut us in. I looked out into it and shuddered. It seemed to my eyes peopled with horrors: with gaping mouths that cursed us as they set in death, with lean hands that threatened us, and tortured faces of maids and children; with the despair of the poor. Ghosts of starving men and women glared at us out of spectral eyes. And the night seemed full of omens.