Crockett Samuel Rutherford
Joan of the Sword Hand

CHAPTER XXVI
THE GIRL BENEATH THE LAMP

When Conrad, Cardinal-designate of the Holy Roman Church and Archbishop of Courtland, opened his eyes, it seemed to him that he had passed through warring waters into the serenity of the Life Beyond. His hand, on which still glittered his episcopal ring, lay on a counterpane of faded rose silk, soft as down. Did he dream that another hand had been holding it, that gentlest fingers had rested caressingly on his brow?

A girl, sweet and stately, sat by his bedside. By the door, to which alone he could raise his eyes, stood a tall gaunt man, clad in grey from head to foot, his hands clasped in front of him, and his chin sunk upon his breast.

The Prince-Bishop's eyes rested languidly on the girl's face, on which fell the light of a shaded silver lamp. There was a book in her lap, written upon sheets of thin parchment, bound in gold-embossed leather. But she did not read it. Instead she breathed softly and regularly. She was asleep, with her hand on the coverlet of rosy silk.

Strange fancies passed through the humming brain of the rescued man – as it had been, hunting each other across a stage – visions of perilous endeavour, of fights with wild beasts in shut-in places from which there was no escape, of brutal fisticuffs with savage men. All these again merged into the sense of falling from immense heights only to find that the air upheld him and that, instead of breaking himself to pieces at the bottom, he alighted soft as thistledown on couches of flowers. Strange rich heady scents seemed to rise about him like something palpable. His brain wavered behind his brow like a summer landscape when the sun is hot after a shower. Perfumes, strange and haunting, dwelt in his nostrils. The scent, at once sour and sweet, of bee-hives at night, the richness of honey in the comb, the delicacy of wet banks of violets, full-odoured musk, and the luxury of sun-warmed afternoon beanfields dreamily sweet – these made his very soul swoon within him. Then followed odours of rose gardens, of cool walks drenched in shadow and random scents blown in at open windows. Yes, he knew now; surely he was again in his own chamber in the summer pavilion of the palace in Courtland. He could hear the cool wash of the Alla under its walls, and with the assurance there came somehow a memory of a slim lad with clear-cut features who brought him a message from – was it his sister Margaret, or Louis his brother? He could not remember which.

Of what had he been dreaming? In the endeavour to recall something he harked back on the terrors of the night in which, of all on board the ship, his soul alone had remained serene. He remembered the fury of the storm, the helpless impotence and blank cowardice of the sailor folk, the desertion of the officers in the only seaworthy boat.

Slowly the drifting mists steadied themselves athwart his brain. The actual recomposed itself out of the shreds of dreams. Conrad found himself in a long low room such as he had seen many times in the houses of well-to-do ritters along the Baltic shores. The beams of the roof-tree above were carven and ancient. Arras went everywhere about the halls. Silver candlesticks, with princely crests graven upon them, stood by his bedhead. After each survey his eyes settled on the sleeping girl. She was very young and very beautiful. It was – yet it could not be – the Duchess Joan, whom he himself had married to his brother Louis in the cathedral church of his own archiepiscopal city.

Conrad of Courtland had not been trained a priest, yet, as was common at that age, birth and circumstance had made him early a Prince of the Roman Church. He had been thrust into the hierarchy solely because of his name, for he had succeeded his uncle Adrian in his ecclesiastical posts and emoluments as a legal heir succeeds to an undisputed property. In due time he received his red hat from a pontiff who distributed these among his favourites (or those whom he thought might aggrandise his temporal power) as freely as a groomsman distributes favours at a wedding.

Nevertheless, Conrad of Courtland had all the warm life and imperious impulses of a young man within his breast. Yet he was no Borgia or Della Rovere, cloaking scarlet sins with scarlet vestments. For with the high dignities of his position and the solemn work which lay to his hand in his northern province there had come the resolve to be not less, but more faithful than those martyrs and confessors of whom he read daily in his Breviary. And while, in Rome herself, vice-proud princes, consorting in the foulest alliance with pagan popes, blasphemed the sanctuary and openly scoffed at religion, this finest and most chivalrous of young northern knights had laid down the weapons of his warfare to take up the crucifix, and now had set out joyfully for Rome to receive his cardinal's hat on his knees as the last and greatest gift of the Vicar of Christ.

He had begun his pilgrimage by express command of the Holy Father, who desired to make the youthful Archbishop his Papal assessor among the Electors of the Empire. But scarcely was he clear of the Courtland shores when there had come the storm, the shipwreck, the wild struggle among the white and foaming breakers – and then, wondrously emergent, like heaven after purgatory, the quiet of this sheltered room and this sleeping girl, with her white hand lying lax and delicate on the rosy silk.

The book slipped suddenly from her fingers, falling on the polished wood of the floor with a startling sound. The eyes of the gaunt man by the door were lifted from the ground, glittered beadily for a moment, and again dropped as before.

The girl did not start, but rather passed immediately into full consciousness with a little shudder and a quick gesture of the hand, as if she pushed something or some one from her. Then, from the pillow on which his head lay, Joan of Hohenstein saw the eyes of the Prince Conrad gazing at her, dark and solemn, from within the purplish rings of recent peril.

"You are my brother's wife!" he said softly, but yet in the same rich and thrilling voice she had listened to with so many heart-stirrings in the summer palace, and had last heard ring through the cathedral church of Courtland on that day when her life had ended.

A chill came over the girl's face at his words.

"I am indeed the Duchess Joan of Hohenstein," she answered. "My father willed that I should wed Prince Louis of Courtland. Well, I married him and rode away. In so much I am your brother's wife."

It was a strange awaking for a man who had passed from death to life, but at least her very impetuosity convinced him that the girl was flesh and blood.

He smiled wanly. The light of the lamp seemed to waver again before his eyes. He saw his companion as it had been transformed and glorified. He heard the rolling of drums in his ears, and merry pipes played sweetly far away. Then came the hush of many waters flowing softly, and last, thrumming on the parched earth, and drunk down gladly by tired flowers, the sound of abundance of rain. The world grew full of sleep and rest and refreshment. There was no longer need to care about anything.

His eyes closed. He seemed about to sink back into unconsciousness, when Joan rose, and with a few drops from Dessauer's phial, which she kept by her in case of need, she called him back from the misty verges of the Things which are Without.

As he struggled painfully upward he seemed to hear Joan's last words repeated and re-repeated to the music of a chime of fairy bells, "In so much – in so much – I am your brother's wife – your brother's wife!" He came to himself with a start.

"Will you tell me how I came here, and to whom I am indebted for my life?" he said, as Joan stood up beside him, her shapely head dim and retired in the misty dusk above the lamp, only her chin and the shapely curves of her throat being illumined by the warm lamplight.

"You were picked up for dead on the beach in the midst of the storm," she answered, "and were brought hither by two captains in the service of the Prince of Plassenburg!"

"And where is this place, and when can I leave it to proceed upon my journey?"

The girl's head was turned away from him a trifle more haughtily than before, and she answered coldly, "You are in a certain fortified grange somewhere on the Baltic shore. As to when you can proceed on your journey, that depends neither on you nor on me. I am a prisoner here. And so I fear must you also consider yourself!"

"A prisoner! Then has my brother – ?" cried the Prince-Bishop, starting up on his elbow and instantly dropping back again upon the pillow with a groan of mingled pain and weakness. Joan looked at him a moment and then, compressing her lips with quick resolution, went to the bedside and with one hand under his head rearranged the pillow and laid him back in an easier posture.

"You must lie still," she said in a commanding tone, and yet softly; "you are too weak to move. Also you must obey me. I have some skill in leechcraft."

"I am content to be your prisoner," said the Prince-Bishop smiling – "that is, till I am well enough to proceed on my journey to Rome, whither the Holy Father Pope Sixtus hath summoned me by a special messenger."

"I fear me much," answered Joan, "that, spite of the Holy Father, we may be fellow-prisoners of long standing. Those of my own folk who hold me here against my will are hardly likely to let the brother of Prince Louis of Courtland escape with news of my hiding-place and present hermitage!"

The young man seemed as if he would again have started up, but with a gesture smilingly imperious Joan forbade him.

"To-morrow," she said, "perhaps if you are patient I will tell you more. Here comes our hostess. It is time that I should leave you."

Theresa von Lynar came softly to the side of the bed and stood beside Joan. The young Cardinal thought that he had never seen a more queenly pair – Joan resplendent in her girlish strength and beauty, Theresa still in the ripest glory of womanhood. There was a gentler light than before in the elder woman's eyes, and she cast an almost deprecating glance upon Joan. For at the first sound of her approach the girl had stiffened visibly, and now, with only a formal word as to the sick man's condition, and a cold bow to Conrad, she moved away.

Theresa watched her a little sadly as she passed behind the deep curtain. Then she sighed, and turning again to the bedside she looked long at the young man without speaking.

CHAPTER XXVII
WIFE AND PRIEST

"I have a right to call myself the widow of the Duke Henry of Kernsberg and Hohenstein," said Theresa von Lynar, in reply to Conrad's question as to whom he might thank for rescue and shelter.

"And therefore the mother of the Duchess Joan?" he continued.

Theresa shook her head.

"No," she said sadly; "I am not her mother, but – and even that only in a sense – her stepmother. A promise to a dead man has kept me from claiming any privileges save that of living unknown on this desolate isle of sand and mist. My son is an officer in the service of the Duchess Joan."

The face of the Prince-Bishop lighted up instantaneously.

"Most surely, then, I know him. Did he not come to Courtland with my Lord Dessauer, the Ambassador of Plassenburg?"

The lady of Isle Rugen nodded indifferently.

"Yes," she said; "I believe he went to Courtland with the embassy from Plassenburg."

"Indeed, I was much drawn to him," said the Prince eagerly; "I remember him most vividly. He was of an olive complexion, his features without colour, but graven even as the Greeks cut those of a young god on a gem."

"Yes," said Theresa von Lynar serenely, "he has his father's face and carriage, which are those also of the Duchess Joan."

"And why," said the young man, "if I may ask without offence, is your son not the heir to the Dukedom?"

There was a downcast sadness in the woman's voice and eye as she replied, "Because when I wedded Duke Henry it was agreed between us that aught which might be thereafter should never stand between his daughter and her heritage; and, in spite of deadly wrong done to those of my house, I have kept my word."

The Prince-Cardinal thought long with knitted brow.

"The Duchess is my brother Louis's wife," he said slowly.

"In name!" retorted Theresa, quickly and breathlessly, like one called on unexpectedly to defend an absent friend.

"She is his wife – I married them. I am a priest," he made answer.

A gleam, sharp and quick as lightning jetted from a thunder cloud, sprang into the woman's eye.

"In this matter I, Theresa von Lynar, am wiser than all the priests in the world. Joan of Hohenstein is no more his wife than I am!"

"Holy Church, the mother of us all, made them one!" said the Cardinal sententiously. For such words come easily to dignitaries even when they are young.

She bent towards him and looked long into his eyes.

"No," she said; "you do not know. How indeed is it possible? You are too young to have learned the deep things – too certain of your own righteousness. But you will learn some day. I, Theresa von Lynar, know – aye, though I bear the name of my father and not that of my husband!" And at this imperious word the Prince was silent and thought with gravity upon these things.

Theresa sat motionless and silent by his bed till the day rose cool and untroubled out of the east, softly aglow with the sheen of clouded silk, pearl-grey and delicate. Prince Conrad, being greatly wearied and bruised inwardly with the buffeting of the waves and the stones of the shore, slumbered restlessly, with many tossings and turnings. But as oft as he moved, the hands of the woman who had been a wife were upon him, ordering his bruised limbs with swift knowledgeable tenderness, so that he did not wake, but gradually fell back again into dreamless and refreshing sleep. This was easy to her, because the secret of pain was not hid from Theresa, the widow of the Duke of Hohenstein – though Henry the Lion's daughter, as yet, knew it not.

In the morning Joan came to bid the patient good-morrow, while Werner von Orseln stood in the doorway with his steel cap doffed in his hand, and Boris and Jorian bent the knee for a priestly blessing. But Theresa did not again appear till night and darkness had wrapped the earth. So being all alone he listened to the heavy plunge of the breakers on the beach among which his life had been so nearly sped. The sound grew slower and slower after the storm, until at last only the wavelets of the sheltered sea lapsed on the shingle in a sort of breathing whisper.

"Peace! Peace! Great peace!" they seemed to say hour after hour as they fell on his ear.

And so day passed and came again. Long nights, too, at first with hourly tendance and then presently without. But Joan sat no more with the young man after that first watch, though his soul longed for her, that he might again tell the girl that she was his brother's wife, and urge her to do her duty by him who was her wedded husband. So in her absence Conrad contented himself and salved his conscience by thinking austere thoughts of his mission and high place in the hierarchy of the only Catholic and Apostolic Church. So that presently he would rise up and seek Werner von Orseln in order to persuade him to let him go, that he might proceed to Rome at the command of the Holy Father, whose servant he was.

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, impassive 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 Plassenburg 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 shore, 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 shingle to look for any traces of the disaster, came suddenly upon the Duchess 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 shore as if meditating retreat.

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

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 Löen, 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 – God forgive me! – I had liefer be walking this northern shore, a young man along with a fair maiden."

"A priest walking with his brother's wife!" said Joan, turning quickly upon him and flashing 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 assented, 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 attitude 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 God'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.