My Lady Rotha: A Romance

'My lady will need me.'

'Not at all,' he answered, in the same quiet tone. 'You may make your mind easy about that. The Countess is safe and well. She is in the castle, and the gates are shut.'

'But she has not-' Then I stopped. I was going to say too much.

'She has not half a dozen men with her, you would say,' he replied. 'Well, no. But one is a man, it seems. The young lord has turned a couple of cannon on the town, and all our valiant scoundrels are shaking in their shoes.'

'A couple of cannon! But there are no cannon in the castle!'

'You are mistaken,' Peter answered drily. He had a very dry way with him at times. 'I have seen the muzzles of them, myself, and you can see them, if you please, from the attic window. One is trained on the market-place, and one to fire down the High Street. To-morrow morning our Burgomaster and the Minister are to go up and make their peace. And I can tell you some of our brisk boys feel the rope already round their necks.'

'Is this true?' I said, hardly able to believe the tale.

'As true as you please,' he answered. 'If you will take my advice you will lie quietly here until to-morrow morning, and then go up to the castle. No one will molest you. The townsfolk will be only too glad to find you alive, and that they have so much the less to pay for. I should not wonder if you saved half a dozen necks,' Peter added regretfully. 'For I hear the Countess is finely mad about you.'

At this mention of my lady's regard my eyes filled so that I had much ado to hide my feelings. Affecting to find the light too strong I turned my back on Peter, and then for the first time became aware that I had a companion in misfortune. On a heap of straw behind me lay another man, so bandaged about the head that I could see nothing of his features.

'Hallo!' I exclaimed, raising myself that I might have a better view of him. 'Who is this?'

'Your man Steve,' Peter said briefly. 'But for him and another, Master Martin, I do not think that you would be here.'

'You do well to remind me,' I answered, feeling shame that I had not yet thanked him, or asked how I came to be in safety. 'How was it?'

'Well,' he said, 'it began with the girl. The doings on Wednesday night were not much to my mind, as you may suppose, and I shut up early and kept myself close. About seven, when the racket had not yet risen to its height, there came a knocking at my door. For a while I took no notice of it, but presently, as it continued, I went to listen, and heard such a sobbing on the step as the heart of man could not resist. So I opened and found the Papist girl there with a child. I do not know,' Peter continued, pushing forward his greasy old cap and rubbing his head, 'that I should have opened it if I had been sure who it was. But as the door was open, the girl had to come in.'

'I do not think you will repent it!' I said.

'I don't know that I shall,' he answered thoughtfully. 'However, she had not been long inside and the bolts shot on us, when there began a most tremendous skirmish in the lane, which lasted off and on for half an hour. Then followed a sudden silence. I had given the girl some food, and told her she might sleep with the children upstairs, and we were sitting before the fire while she cried a bit-she was all over of a shake, you understand-when on a sudden she stood up, and listened.

'"What is it?" I said.

'She did not answer for a while, but still stood listening, looking now at me and now towards the forge in a queer eager kind of way. I told her to sit down, but she did not seem to hear, and presently she cried, "There is some one there!"

'"Well," said I, "they will stop there then. I don't open that door again to-night."

'She looked at me pitifully, but sat down for all the world as if I had struck her. Not for long, however. In a minute she was up again, and began to go to and fro between the kitchen and the forge door like nothing else but a cat looking for her kittens. "Sit down, wench," I said. But this time she took no heed, and at last the sight of her going up and down like a dumb creature in pain was too much for me, and I got up and undid the door. She was out in a minute, seeming not a bit afraid for herself, and sure enough, there were you and Steve lying one on the top of the other on the step, and so still that I thought you gone. Heaven only knows how she heard you.'

'Peter,' I said abruptly, 'have you any water handy?'

'To be sure,' he replied, starting up. 'Are you thirsty?'

I nodded, and he went to get it, blaming himself for his thoughtlessness. He need not have reproached himself, however. I was not thirsty; but I could not bear that he should sit and look at me at that moment. The story he had told had touched me-and I was still weak; and I could not answer for it, I should not burst into tears like a woman. The thought of this girl's persistence, who in everything else was so weak, of her boldness who in her own defence was a hare, of her strange instinct on our behalf who seemed made only to be herself protected-the thought of these things touched me to the heart and filled me with an odd mixture of pity and gratitude! I had gone to save her, and she had saved me! I had gone to shield her from harm, and heaven had led me to her door, not in strength but in weakness. She had fled from me who came to help her; that when I needed help, she might be at hand to give it!

'Where is she?' I muttered, when he came back and I had drunk.

'Who? Marie?' he asked.

'Yes, if that is her name,' I said, drinking again.

'She is lying down upstairs,' he answered. 'She is worn out, poor child. Not that in one sense, Master Martin,' he continued, dropping his voice and nodding with a mysterious air, 'she is poor. Though you might think it.'

'How do you mean?' I said, raising my head and meeting his eyes. He nodded.

'It is between ourselves,' he said; 'but I am afraid there is a good deal in what our rascals here say. I am afraid, to be plain, Master Martin, that the father was like all his kind: plundered many an honest citizen, and roasted many a poor farmer before his own fire. It is the way of soldiers in that army; and God help the country they march in, be it friend's or foe's!'

'Well?' I said impatiently; 'but what of that now?' The mention of these things fretted me. I wanted to hear nothing about the father. 'The man is dead,' I said.

'Ay, he is,' Peter answered slowly and impressively. 'But the daughter? She has got a necklace round her neck now, worth-worth I dare say two hundred men at arms.'

'What, ducats?'

'Ay, ducats! Gold ducats. It is worth all that.'

'How do you know?' I said, staring at him. 'I have never seen such a thing on her. And I have seen the girl two or three times.'

'Well, I will tell you,' he answered, glancing first at the window and then at Steve to be sure that we were not overheard. 'I'll tell you. When we had carried you into the house the other night she took off her kerchief, to tear a piece from it to bind up your head. That uncovered the necklace. She was quick to cover it up, when she remembered herself, but not quick enough.'

'Is it of gold?' I asked.

He nodded. 'Fifteen or sixteen links I should say, and each as big as a small walnut. Carved and shaped like a walnut too.'

'It may be silver-gilt.'

He laughed. 'I am a smith, though only a locksmith,' he said. 'Trust me for knowing gold. I doubt it came from Magdeburg; I doubt it did. Magdeburg, or Halle, which my Lord Tilly ravaged about that time. And if so there is blood upon it. It will bring the girl no luck, depend upon it.'

'If we talk about it, I'll be sworn it will not!' I answered savagely. 'There are plenty here who would twist her neck for so much as a link of it.'

'You are right, Master Martin,' he answered meekly. 'Perhaps I should not have mentioned it; but I know that you are safe. And after all the girl has done nothing.'

That was true, but it did not content me. I wished he had not seen what he had, or that he had not told me the tale. A minute before I had been able to think of the girl with pure satisfaction; to picture with a pleasant warmth about my heart her gentleness, her courage, her dark mild beauty that belonged as much to childhood as womanhood, the thought for others that made her flight a perpetual saving. But this spoiled all. The mere possession of this necklace, much more the use of it, seemed to sully her in my eyes, to taint her freshness, to steal the perfume from her youth.

For I am peasant born, of those on whom the free-companions have battened from the beginning; and spoil won in such a way seemed to me to be accursed. Whether I would or no, horrid tales of the storming of Magdeburg came into my mind: tales of streets awash with blood, of churches blocked with slain, of women lying dead with living babes in their arms. And I shuddered. I felt the necklace a blot on all. I shrank from one, who, with the face of a saint, wore under her kerchief gold dyed in such a fashion!

That was while I lay alone, tossing from side to side, and troubling myself unreasonably about the matter; since the girl was nothing to me, and a Papist. But when she came presently to me with a bowl of broth in her hands and a timid smile on her lips-a smile which gave the lie to the sadness of her eyes and the red rims that surrounded them-I forgot all, necklace and creed. I took the bowl silently, as she gave it. I gave it back with only one 'Thank you,' which sounded hoarse and rustic in my ears; but I suppose my eyes were more eloquent, for she blushed and trembled. And in the evening she did not come. Instead one of the children brought my supper, and sitting down on the straw beside me, twittered of Marie and 'Go' and other things.

'Who is Go?' I said.

'Go is Marie's brother,' the child answered, open-eyed at my ignorance. 'You not know Go?'

'It is a strange name,' I said, striving to excuse myself.

'He is a strange man,' the little one retorted, pointing to Steve. 'He does not speak. Now you speak. Marie says-'

'What does Marie say?' I asked.

'Marie says you saved his life.'

'Well, you can tell her it was the other way,' I exclaimed roughly.