Joan of the Sword Hand

"And what o' the childer – the house-bairns – what o' them? With all this mixing about, what comes o' them – answer me that, good dame!"

"What, Gossip Bette – have you never heard? The childer of the great, they suck not their own mothers' milk – they are not dandled in their own mothers' arms. They learn not their Duty from their mothers' lips. When they are fractious, a stranger beats them till they be good – "

"Ah," cried the court of matrons all in unison, "I would like to catch one of the fremit lay a hand on my Karl – my Kirsten – that I would! I would comb their hair for them, tear the pinner off their backs – that I would!" "And I!" "And I!"

"Nay, good gossips all," out of the chorus the voice of the dame learned in the ways of the great asserted itself; "that, again, proves you all no better than burgherish town-folk – not truly of the noble of the land. For a right great lady, when she meets a foster-nurse with a baby at the breast, will go near and say – I have heard 'em – 'La! the pretty thing – a poppet! Well-a-well, 'tis pretty, for sure! And whose baby may this be?'

"'Thine own, lady, thine own!'"

At this long and loud echoed the derision of the good wives of Courtland. Their gossip laughed and reasserted. But no, they would not hear a word more. She had overstepped the limit of their belief.

"What, not to know her child – her own flesh and blood? Out on her!" cried every mother who had felt about her neck the clasp of tiny hands, or upon her breast the easing pressure of little blind lips. "Good dame, no; you shall not hoodwink us. Were she deaf and dumb and doting, a mother would yet know her child. 'Tis not in nature else! Well, thanks be to Mary Mother – she who knew both wife-pain and mother-joy, we, at least, are not of the great. We may hush our own bairns to sleep, dance with them when they frolic, and correct them when they be naughty-minded. Nevertheless, a good luck go with our noble lady this day! May she have many fair children and a husband to love her even as if she were a common woman and no princess!"

So in little jerks of blessing and with much head-shaking the good wives of Courtland continued their congress, long after the last Cossack lance with its fluttering pennon had been lost to view down the winding street.

For, indeed, well might the gossips thank the Virgin and their patron saints that they were not as the poor Princess Margaret, and that their worst troubles concerned only whether Hans or Fritz tarried a little over-long in the town wine-cellars, or wagered the fraction of a penny too much on a neighbour's cock-fight, and so returned home somewhat crusty because the wrong bird had won the main.

But in the Prince's palace other things were going forward. Hitherto we have had to do with the Summer Palace by the river, a building of no strength, and built more as a pleasure house for the princely family than as a place of permanent habitation. But the Castle of Courtland was a structure of another sort.

Set on a low rock in the centre of the town, its walls rose continuous with its foundations, equally massive and impregnable, to the height of over seventy feet. For the first twenty-five neither window nor grating broke the grim uniformity of those mighty walls of mortared rock. Above that line only a few small openings half-closed with iron bars evidenced the fact that a great prince had his dwelling within. The main entrance to the Castle was through a gateway closed by a grim iron-toothed portcullis. Then a short tunnel led to another and yet stronger defence – a deep natural fosse which surrounded the rock on all sides, and over which a drawbridge conducted into the courtyard of the fortress.

The Sparhawk knew very well that he was going to his death as he rode through the streets of the city of Courtland, but none would have discovered from his bearing that there was aught upon his mind of graver concern than the fit of a doublet or, perhaps, the favour of a pretty maid-of-honour. But with the Princess Margaret it was different. In these last crowded hours she had quite lost her old gay defiance. Her whole heart was fixed on Maurice, and the tears would not be bitten back when she thought of the fate to which he was going with so manly a courage and so fine an air.

They dismounted in the gloomy courtyard, and Maurice, slipping quickly from his saddle, caught Margaret in his arms before the Muscovite could interfere. She clung to him closely, knowing that it might be for the last time.

"Maurice, Maurice," she murmured, "can you forgive me? I have brought you to this!"

"Hush, sweetheart," he answered in her ear; "be my own dear princess. Do not let them see. Be my brave girl. They cannot divide our love!"

"Come, I beg of you," came the dulcet voice of Prince Ivan behind them; "I would not for all Courtland break in upon the billing and cooing of such turtle-doves, were it not that their affection blinds them to the fact that the men-at-arms and scullions are witnesses to these pretty demonstrations. Tarry a little, sweet valentines – time and place wait for all things."

The Princess commanded herself quickly. In another moment she was once more Margaret of Courtland.

"Even the Prince of Muscovy might spare a lady his insults at such a time!" she said.

The Prince bared his head and bowed low.

"Nay," he said very courteously; "you mistake, Princess Margaret. I insult you not. I may regret your taste – but that is a different matter. Yet even that may in time amend. My quarrel is with this gentleman, and it is one of some standing, I believe."

"My sword is at your service, sir!" said Maurice von Lynar firmly.

"Again you mistake," returned the Prince more suavely than ever; "you have no sword. A prisoner, and (if I may say so without offence) a spy taken red-hand, cannot fight duels. The Prince of Courtland must settle this matter. When his Justiciar is satisfied, I shall most willingly take up my quarrel with – whatever is left of the most noble Count Maurice von Lynar."

To this Maurice did not reply, but with Margaret still beside him he followed Prince Louis up the narrow ancient stairway called from its shape the couch, into the gloomy audience chamber of the Castle of Courtland.

They reached the hall, and then at last, as though restored to power by his surroundings, Prince Louis found his tongue.

"A guard!" he cried; "hither Berghoff, Kampenfeldt! Conduct the Princess to her privy chamber and do not permit her to leave it without my permission. I would speak with this fellow alone."

Ivan hastily crossed over to Prince Louis and whispered in his ear.

In the meantime, ere the soldiers of the guard could approach, Margaret cried out in a loud clear voice, "I take you all to witness that I, Margaret of Courtland, am the wife of this man, Maurice von Lynar, Count von Löen. He is my wedded husband, and I love him with all my heart! According to God's holy ordinance he is mine!"

"You have forgotten the rest, fair Princess," suggested Prince Ivan subtly – "till death you do part!"

CHAPTER XXXIX

PRINCE WASP STINGS

Margaret did not answer her tormentor's taunt. Her arms went about Maurice's neck, and her lips, salt with the overflowing of tears, sought his in a last kiss. The officer of the Prince's guard touched her on the shoulder. She shook him haughtily off, and then, having completed her farewells, she loosened her hands and went slowly backward towards the further end of the hall with her eyes still upon the man she loved.

"Stay, Berghoff," said Prince Louis suddenly; "let the Princess remain where she is. Cross your swords in front of her. I desire that she shall hear what I have to say to this young gentleman."

"And also," added Prince Ivan, "I desire the noble Princess to remember that this has been granted by the Prince upon my intercession. In the future, it may gain me more of her favour than I have had the good fortune to enjoy in the past!"

Maurice stood alone, his tall slender figure supple and erect. One hand rested easily upon his swordless thigh, while the other still held the plumed hat he snatched up as in frantic haste he had followed Margaret from the Summer Palace.

There ensued a long silence in which the Sparhawk eyed his captors haughtily, while Prince Louis watched him from under the grey penthouse of his eyebrows.

Then three several times the Prince essayed to speak, and as often utterance was choked within him. His feelings could only find vent in muttered imprecations, half smothered by a consuming rage. Then Prince Ivan crossed over and laid his hand restrainingly on his arm. The touch seemed to calm his friend, and, after swallowing several times as there had been a knot in his throat, at last he spoke.

For the second time in his life Maurice von Lynar stood alone among his enemies; but this time in peril far deadlier than among the roisterous pleasantries of Castle Kernsberg. Yet he was as little daunted now as then. Once on a time a duchess had saved him. Now a princess loved him. And even if she could not save him, still that was better.

"So," cried Prince Louis, in the curiously uneven voice of a coward lashing himself into a fury, "you have played out your treachery upon a reigning Prince of Courtland. You cheated me at Castle Kernsberg. Now you have made me a laughing-stock throughout the Empire. You have shamed a maiden of my house, my sister, the daughter of my father. What have you to say ere I order you to be flung out from the battlements of the western tower?"

"Ere it comes to that I shall have something to say, Prince Louis," interrupted Prince Wasp, smiling. "We must not waste such dainty powers of masquerade on anything so vulgar as the hangman's rope."

"Gentlemen and princes," Maurice von Lynar answered, "that which I have done I have done for the sake of my mistress, the Lady Joan, and I am not afraid. Prince Louis, it was her will and intent never to come to Courtland as your wife. She would not have been taken alive. It was therefore the duty of her servants to preserve her life, and I offered myself in her stead. My life was hers already, for she had preserved it. She had given. It was hers to take. With the chief captains of Kernsberg I plotted that she should be seized and carried to a place of refuge wherein no foe could even find her. There she abides with chosen men to guard her. I took her place and was delivered up that Kernsberg might be cleared of its enemies. Gladly I came that I might pay a little of my debt to my sovran lady and liege mistress, Joan Duchess of Kernsberg and Hohenstein."

"Nobly perorated!" cried Prince Ivan, clapping his hands. "Right sonorously ended. Faith, a paladin, a deliverer of oppressed damsels, a very carnival masquerader! He will play you the dragon, this fellow, or he will act Saint George with a sword of lath! He will amble you the hobby-horse, or be the Holy Virgin in a miracle play. Well, he shall play in one more good scene ere I have done with him. But, listen, Sir Mummer, in all this there is no word of the Princess Margaret. How comes it that you so loudly proclaim having given yourself a noble sacrifice for one fair lady, when at the same time you are secretly married to another? Are you a deliverer of ladies by wholesale? Speak to this point. Let us have another noble period – its subject my affianced bride. Already we have heard of your high devotion to Prince Louis's wife. Well – next!"

But it was the Princess who spoke from where she stood behind the crossed swords of her guards.

"That I will answer. I am a woman, and weak in your hands, princes both. You have set the grasp of rude men-at-arms upon the wrist of a Princess of Courtland. But you can never compel her soul. Brother Louis, my father committed me to you as a little child – have I not been a loving and a faithful sister to you? And till this Muscovite came between, were you not good to me? Wherefore have you changed? Why has he made you cruel to your little Margaret?"

Prince Louis turned towards his sister, moving his hands uncertainly and even deprecatingly.

Ivan moved quickly to his side and whispered something which instantly rekindled the light of anger in the weakling's eyes.

"You are no sister of mine," he said; "you have disgraced your family and yourself. Whether it be true or no that you are married to this man matters little!"

"It is true; I do not lie!" said Margaret recovering herself.

"So much the worse, then, and he shall suffer for it. At least I can hide, if I cannot prevent, your shame!"

"I will never give him up; nothing on earth shall part our love!"

Prince Ivan smiled delicately, turning to where she stood at the end of the hall.