Joan of the Sword Hand

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!"