Crockett Samuel Rutherford
Joan of the Sword Hand
CHAPTER XLIV
THE UKRAINE CROSS
Upon the green plain beside the Alla a great multitude was assembled. They had come together to witness a sight never seen in Courtland before – the dread punishment of the Ukraine Cross. It was to be done, they said, upon the body of the handsome youth with whom the Princess Margaret was secretly in love – some even whispered married to him.
The townsfolk murmured among themselves. This was certainly the beginning of the end. Who knew what would come next? If the barbarous Muscovite punishments began in Courtland, it would end in all of them being made slaves, liable at any moment to knout and plet. Ivan had bewitched the Prince. That was clear, and for a certainty the Princess Margaret wept night and day. In this fashion ran the bruit of that which was to be.
"Torn to pieces by wild horses!" It was a thing often talked about, but one which none had seen in a civilised country for a thousand years. Where was it to be done? It was shocking, terrible; but – it would be worth seeing. So all the city went out, the men with weapons under their cloaks pressing as near as the soldiers would allow them, while the women, being more pitiful, stood afar off and wept into their aprons – only putting aside the corners that they might see clearly and miss nothing.
At ten a great green square of riverside grass was held by the archers of Courtland. The people extended as far back as the shrine of the Virgin, where at the city entrance travellers are wont to give thanks for a favourable journey. At eleven the lances of Prince Ivan's Cossacks were seen topping the city wall. On the high bank of the Alla the people were craning their necks and looking over each other's shoulders.
The wild music of the Cossacks came nearer, each man with the butt of his lance set upon his thigh, and the pennon of blue and white waving above. Then a long pitying "A – a – h!" went up from the people. For now the Sparhawk was in sight, and at the first glimpse of him they swayed from the Riga Gate to the shrine of John Evangelist, like a willow copse stricken by a squall from off the Baltic, so that it shows the under-grey of its leaves.
"The poor lad! So handsome, so young!"
The first soft universal hush of pity broke presently into a myriad exclamations of anger and deprecation. "How high he holds his head! See! They have opened his shirt at the neck. Poor Princess, how she must love him! His hands are tied behind his back. He rides in that jolting cart as if he were a conqueror in a triumphal procession, instead of a victim going to his doom."
"Pity, pity that one so young should die such a death! They say she is to be carried up to the top of the Castle wall that she may see. Ah, here he comes! He is smiling! God forgive the butchers, who by strength of brute beasts would tear asunder those comely limbs that are fitted to be a woman's joy! Down with all false and cruel princes, say I! Nay, mistress, I will not be silent. And there are many here who will back me, if I be called in question. Who is the Muscovite, that he should bring his abominations into Courtland? If I had my way, Prince Conrad – "
"Hush, hush! Here they come! Side by side, as usual, the devil and his dupe. Aha! there is no sound of cheering! Let but a man shout, 'Long live the Prince!' and I will slit his wizzand. I, Henry the coppersmith, will do it! He shall sleep with pennies on his eyes this night!"
So through the lane by which the city gate communicated with the tapestried stand set apart for the greater spectators, the Princes Louis and Ivan, fool and knave, servant and master, took their way. And they had scarce passed when the people, mutinous and muttering, surged black behind the archers' guard.
"Back there – stand back! Way for their Excellencies – way!"
"Stand back yourselves," came the growling answer. "We be free men of Courtland. You will find we are no Muscovite serfs, and that or the day be done. Karl Wendelin, think shame – thou that art my sister's son – to be aiding and abetting such heathen cruelty to a Christen man, all that you may eat a great man's meat and wear a jerkin purfled with gold."
Such cries and others worse pursued the Princes' train as it went.
"Cossack – Cossack! You are no Courtlanders, you archers! Not a girl in the city will look at you after this! Butchers' slaughtermen every one? Whipped hounds that are afraid of ten score Muscovites! Down, dogs, knock your foreheads on the ground! Here comes a Muscovite!"
Thus angrily ran taunt and jeer, till the Courtland guard, mostly young fellows with relatives and sweethearts among the crowd, grew well-nigh frantic with rage and shame. The rabble, which had hung on the Prince of Muscovy so long as he scattered his largesse, had now wheeled about with characteristic fickleness.
"See yonder! What are they doing? Peter Altmaar, what are they doing? Tell us, thou long man! Of what use is your great fathom of pump-water? Can you do nothing for your meat but reach down black puddings from the rafters?"
At this all eyes turned to Peter, a lanky overgrown lad with a keen eye, a weak mouth, and the gift of words.png – \C.M Pg325 png – \C.M Pg325 png – \C.M Pg325 png – \C.M Pg325 png – \C.M Pg325
"Speak up, Peter! Aye, listen to Peter – a good lad, Peter, as ever was!"
"Strong Jan the smith, take him up on your back so that he may see the better!"
"Hush, there! Stop that woman weeping. We cannot hear for her noise. She says he is like her son, does she? Well then, there will be time enough to weep for him afterwards."
"They are bringing up four horses from the Muscovite camp. The folk are getting as far off as they can from their heels," began Peter Altmaar, looking under his hand over the people's heads. "Half a score of men are at each brute's head. How they plunge! They will never stand still a moment. Ah, they are tethering them to the great posts of stone in the middle of the green square. Between, there is a table – no, a kind of square wooden stand like a priest's platform in Lent when he tells us our sins outside the church."
"The Princes are sitting their horses, watching. Bravo, that was well done. We came near to seeing the colour of the Muscovite brains that time. One of the wild horses spread his hoofs on either side of Prince Ivan's head!"
"God send him a better aim next time! Tell on, Peter! Aye, get on, good Peter!"
"The Princes have gone up into their balcony. They are laughing and talking as if it were a raree-show!"
"What of him, good Peter? How takes he all this?"
"What of whom?" queried Peter, who, like all great talkers, was rapidly growing testy under questioning.
"There is but one 'he' to-day, man. The young lad, the Princess Margaret's sweetheart."
"They have brought him down from the cart. The Cossacks are close about him. They have put all the Courtland men far back."
"Aye, aye; they dare not trust them. Oh, for an hour of Prince Conrad! If we of the city trades had but a leader, this shame should not blot our name throughout all Christendom! What now, Peter?"
"The Muscovites are binding the lad to a wooden frame like the empty lintels of a door. He stands erect, his hands in the corners above, and his feet in the corners below. They have stripped him to the waist."
"Hold me higher up, Jan the smith! I would see this out, that you may tell your children and your children's children. Aye – ah, so it is. It is true. Sainted Virgin! I can see his body white in the sunshine. It shines slender as a peeled willow wand."
Then the woman who had wept began again. Her wailing angered the people.
"He is like my son – save him! He is the very make and image of my Kaspar. Slender as a young willow, supple as an ash, eyes like the berries of the sloe-thorn. Give me a sword! Give an old woman a sword, and I will deliver him myself, for my Kaspar's sake. God's grace – Is there never a man amongst you?"
And as her voice rose into a shriek there ran through all the multitude the strange shiver of fear with which a great crowd expects a horror. A hush fell broad and equal as dew out of a clear sky. A mighty silence lay on all the folk. Peter Altmaar's lips moved, but no sound came from them. For now Maurice was set on high, so that all could see for themselves. White against the sky of noon, making the cross of Saint Andrew within the oblong framework to which he was lashed, they could discern the slim body of the young man who was about to be torn in sunder. The executioners held him up thus a minute or two for a spectacle, and then, their arrangements completed, they lowered that living crucifix till it lay flat upon its little platform, with the limbs extended stark and tense towards the heels of the wild plunging horses of the Ukraine.
Then again the voice of Peter Altmaar was heard, now ringing false like an untuned fiddle. "They are welding the manacles upon his ankles and wrists. Listen to the strokes of the hammer."
And in the hush which followed, faintly and musically they could hear iron ring on iron, like anvil strokes in some village smithy heard in the hush of a summer's afternoon.
"Blessed Virgin! they are casting loose the horses! A Cossack with a cruel whip stands by each to lash him to fury! They are slipping the platform from under him. God in heaven! What is this?"
Hitherto the eyes of the great multitude, which on three sides surrounded the place of execution, had been turned inward. But now with one accord they were gazing, not on the terrible preparations which were coming so near their bloody consummation, but over the green tree-studded Alla meads towards a group of horsemen who were approaching at a swift hand-gallop.
Whereupon immediately Peter, the lank giant, was in greater request than ever.
"What do they look at, good Peter – tell us quickly? Will the horses not pull? Will the irons not hold? Have the ropes broken? Is it a miracle? Is it a rescue? Thunder-weather, man! Do not stand and gape. Speak – tell us what you see, or we will prod you behind with our daggers!"
"Half a dozen riding fast towards the Princes' stand, and holding up their hands – nay, there are a dozen. The Princes are standing up to look. The men have stopped casting loose the wild horses. The man on the frame is lying very still, but the chains from his ankles and arms are not yet fastened to the traces."
"Go on, Peter! How slow you are, Peter! Stupid Peter!"
"There is a woman among those who ride – no, two of them! They are getting near the skirts of the crowd. Men are shouting and throwing up their hands in the air. I cannot tell what for. The soldiers have their hats on the tops of their pikes. They, too, are shouting!"
As Peter paused the confused noise of a multitude crying out, every man for himself, was borne across the crowd on the wind. As when a great stone is cast into a little hill-set tarn, and the wavelet runs round, swamping the margin's pebbles and swaying the reeds, so there ran a shiver, and then a mighty tidal wave of excitement through all that ring which surrounded the crucified man, the deadly platform, and the tethered horses.
Men shouted sympathetically without knowing why, and the noise they made was half a suppressed groan, so eager were they to take part in that which should be done next. They thrust their womenkind behind them, shouldering their way into the thick of the press that they might see the more clearly. Instinctively every weaponed man fingered that which he chanced to carry. Yet none in all that mighty assembly had the least conception of what was really about to happen.
By this time there was no more need of Peter Altmaar. The ring was rapidly closing now all about, save upon the meadow side, where a lane was kept open. Through this living alley came a knight and a lady – the latter in riding habit and broad velvet cap, the knight with his visor up, but armed from head to foot, a dozen squires and men-at-arms following in a compact little cloud; and as they came they were greeted with the enthusiastic acclaim of all that mighty concourse.
About them eddied the people, overflowing and sweeping away the Cossacks, carrying the Courtland archers with them in a mad frenzy of fraternisation. In the stand above Prince Louis could be seen shrilling commands, yet dumb show was all he could achieve, so universal the clamour beneath him. But the Princess Margaret heard the shouting and her heart leaped.
"Prince Conrad – our own Prince Conrad, he has come back, our true Prince? We knew he was no priest! Courtland for ever! Down with Louis of the craven heart! Down with the Muscovite! The young man shall not die! The Princess shall have her sweetheart!"
And as soon as the cavalcade had come within the square the living wave broke black over all. The riders could not dismount, so thick the press. The halters of the wild horses were cut, and right speedily they made a way for themselves, the people falling back and closing again so soon as they had passed out across the plain with necks arched to their knees and a wild flourish of unanimous hoofs.
Then the cries began again. Swords and bare fists were shaken at the grand stand, where, white as death, Prince Louis still kept his place.
"Prince Conrad and the Lady Joan!"
"Kill the Muscovite, the torturer!"
"Death to Prince Louis, the traitor and coward!"
"We will save the lad alive!"
About the centre platform whereon the living cross was extended the crush grew first oppressive and then dangerous.
"Back there – you are killing him! Back, I say!"
Then strong men took staves and halberts out of the hands of dazed soldiermen, and by force of brawny arms and sharp pricking steel pressed the people back breast high. The smiths who had riveted the wristlets and ankle-rings were already busy with their files. The lashings were cast loose from the frames. A hundred palms chafed the white swollen limbs. A burgher back in the crowd slipped his cloak. It was passed overhead on a thousand eager hands and thrown across the young man's body.
At last all was done, and dazed and blinded, but unshaken in his soul, Maurice von Lynar stood totteringly upon his feet.
"Lift him up! Lift him up! Let us see him! If he be dead, we will slay Prince Louis and crucify the Muscovite in his place!"
"Bah!" another would cry, "Louis is no longer ruler! Conrad is the true Prince!"
"Down with the Russ, the Cossack! Where are they? Pursue them! Kill them!"
So ran the fierce shouts, and as the rescuers raised the Sparhawk high on their plaited hands that all men might see, on the far skirts of the crowd Ivan of Muscovy, with a bitter smile on his face, gathered together his scattered horsemen. One by one they had struggled out of the press while all men's eyes were fixed upon the vivid centrepiece of that mighty whirlpool.
"Set Prince Louis in your midst and ride for your lives!" he cried. "To the frontier, where bides the army of the Czar!"
With a flash of pennons and a tossing of horses' heads they obeyed, but Prince Ivan himself paused upon the top of a little swelling rise and looked back towards the Alla bank.
The delivered prisoner was being held high upon men's arms. The burgher's cloak was wrapped about him like a royal robe.
Prince Ivan gnashed his teeth in impotent anger.
"It is your day. Make the most of it," he muttered. "In three weeks I will come back! And then, by Michael the Archangel, I will crucify one of you at every street corner and cross-road through all the land of Courtland! And that which I would have done to my lady's lover shall not be named beside that which I shall yet do to those who rescued him!"
And he turned and rode after his men, in the midst of whom was Prince Louis, his head twisted in fear and apprehension over his shoulder, and his slack hands scarce able to hold the reins.
After this manner was the Sparhawk brought out from the jaws of death, and thus came Joan of the Sword Hand the second time to Courtland.
But the end was not yet.
CHAPTER XLV
THE TRUTH-SPEAKING OF BORIS AND JORIAN
This is the report verbal of Captains Boris and Jorian, which they gave in face of their sovereigns in the garden pleasaunce of the palace of Plassenburg. Hugo and Helene sat at opposite ends of a seat of twisted branches. Hugo crossed his legs and whistled low with his thumbs in the slashing of his doublet, a habit of which Helene had long striven in vain to cure him. The Princess was busy broidering the coronated double eagle of a new banner, but occasionally she raised her eyes to where on the green slope beneath, under the wing of a sage woman of experience, the youthful hope of Plassenburg led his mimic armies to battle against the lilies by the orchard wall, or laid lance in rest to storm the too easy fortress of his nurse's lap.
"Boris," whispered Jorian, "remember! Do not lie, Boris. 'Tis too dangerous. You remember the last time?"
"Aye," growled Boris. "I have good cause to remember! What a liar our Hugo must have been in his time, so readily to suspect two honest soldiers!"
"Speak out your minds, good lads!" said Hugo, leaning a little further back.
"Aye, tell us all," assented Helene, pausing to shake her head at the antics of the young Prince Karl; "tell us how you delivered the Sparhawk, as you call him, the officer of the Duchess Joan!"
So Boris saluted and began.
"The tale is a long one, Prince and Princess," he said. "Of our many and difficult endeavours to keep the peace and prevent quarrelling I will say nothing – "
"Better so!" interjected Hugo, with a gleam in his eye. Jorian coughed and growled to himself, "That long fool will make a mess of it!"
"I will pass on to our entry into Courtland. It was like the home-coming of a long-lost true prince. There was no fighting – alack, not so much as a stroke after all that pother of shouting!"
"Boris!" said the Princess warningly.
"Give him rope!" muttered Prince Hugo. "He will tangle himself rarely or all be done!"
"I mean by the blessing of Heaven there was no bloodshed," Boris corrected himself. "There was, as I say, no fighting. There was none to fight with. Prince Louis had not a friend in his own capital city, saving the Muscovite. And at that moment Prince Ivan the Wasp was glad enough to win clear off to the frontier with his Cossacks at his tail. It was a God's pity we could not ride them down. But though Jorian and I did all that men could – "
"Ahem!" said Jorian, as if a fly had flown into his mouth and tickled his throat.
"I mean, your Highnesses, we did whatever men could to keep the populace within bounds. But they broke through and leaped upon us, throwing their arms about our horses' necks, crying out, 'Our saviours!' 'Our deliverers!' God wot, we might as well have tried to charge through the billows of the Baltic when it blows a norther right from the Gulf of Bothnia! But it almost broke my heart to see them ride off with never so much as a spear thrust through one single Muscovite belly-band!"
Here Jorian had a fit of coughing which caused the Princess to look severely upon him. Boris, recalled to himself, proceeded more carefully.
"It was all we could do to open up a way to where the young man Maurice lay stretched on the Cross of Death. They had loosed the wild horses before we arrived, and these had galloped off after their companions. A pity! Oh, a great pity!
"Then came the young man's mother near, she who was our hostess at Isle Rugen – "
"Why did you not abide at Kernsberg as you were instructed?" put in Hugo at this point.
"Never mind – go on – tell the tale!" cried Helene, who was listening breathlessly.
"We thought it our duty to accompany the Duchess Joan," said Boris, deftly enough; "where the king is, there is the court!"
And at this point the two captains saluted very dutifully and respectfully, like machines moved by one spring.
"Well said for once, thou overly long one," growled Jorian under his breath.
"Go on!" commanded Helene.
"The young man's mother came near and threw a cloak across his naked body. Then Jorian and I unbound him and chafed his limbs, first removing the gag from his mouth; but so tightly had the cords been bound about him that for long he could not stand upright. Then, from the royal pavilion, where she had been brought for cruel sport to see the death, the Princess Margaret came running – "
"Oh, wickedness!" cried Helene, "to make her look on at her lover's death!"
"She came furiously, though a dainty princess, thrusting strong men aside. 'Way there!' she cried, 'on your lives make way! I will go to him. I am the Princess Margaret. Give me a dagger and I will prick me a way.'"
"And, by Saint Stephen the holy martyr – if she did not snatch a bodkin from the belt of a tailor in the High Street and with it open up her way as featly as though she were handling a Cossack lance."
"And what happened when she got to him – when she found her husband?" cried Helene, her eyes sparkling. And she put out a hand to touch her own, just to be sure that he was there.
"Truth, a very wondrous thing happened!" said Jorian, whose fingers also had been twitching, "a mightily wondrous thing. Thus it was – "
"Hold your tongue, sausage-bag!" growled Boris, very low; "who tells this tale, you or I?"
"Get on, then," answered in like fashion Captain Jorian, "you are as long-winded and wheezy as a smith's bellows!"
"Yes, a strange thing it was. I was standing by Maurice von Lynar, undoing the cord from his neck. His mother was chafing an arm. The Lady Joan was bending to speak softly to him, for she had dismounted from her horse, when, all in the snapping of a twig, the Princess Margaret came bursting through the ring which Jorian and the Kernsbergers were keeping with their lance-butts. She thrust us all aside. By my faith, me she sent spinning like the young Prince's top there!"
"God save his Excellency!" quoth Jorian, not to be left out entirely.
"Silence!" cried Helene, with an imperious stamp of her little foot; "and do you, Boris, tell the tale without comparisons. What happened then?"
"Only the boy's mother kept her ground! She went on chafing his arm without so much as raising her eyes."
"Did the Princess serve Joan of the Sword Hand as she served you?" interposed Hugo.
"Marry, worse!" cried Boris, growing excited for the first time. "She thrust her aside like a kitchen wench, and our lady took it as meekly as – as – "
"Go on! Did I not tell you to spare us your comparatives?" cried Helene the Princess, letting her broidery slip to the ground in her consuming interest.
"Well," said Boris, quickly sobered, "it was in truth a mighty quaint thing to see. The Princess Margaret took the young man in her arms and caught him to her. The Lady Theresa kept hold of his wrist. They looked at each other a moment without speech, eye countering eye like knights at a – "
"Go on!" the Princess thundered, if indeed a silvern voice can be said to thunder.
"'Give him up to me! He is mine!' cried the Princess.
"'He is mine!' answered very haughtily the lady of the Isle Rugen – 'Who are you?' 'And you?' cried both at once, flinging their heads back, but never for a moment letting go with their hands. The youth, being dazed, said nothing, nor so much as moved.
"'I am his mother!' said the Lady Theresa, speaking first.
"'I am his wife!' said the Princess.
"Then the woman who had borne the young man gave him into his wife's arms without a word, and the Princess gathered him to her bosom and crooned over him, that being her right. But his mother stepped back among the crowd and drew the hood of her cloak over her head that no man might look upon her face."
"Bravo!" cried Helene, clapping her hands, "it was her right!"
"Little one," said her husband, pointing to the boy on the terrace beneath, who was lashing a toy horse of wood with all his baby might, "I wonder if you will think so when another woman takes him from you!"
The Princess Helene caught her breath sharply.
"That would be different!" she said, "yes, very different!"
"Ah!" said Hugo the Prince, her husband.
