Joan of the Sword Hand
And Conrad the lover turned from the window with a defiant heart.
At her casement, which opened to the east, stood at the same moment the young Duchess of Hohenstein. Her lips were parted and the mystery of the new day dwelt in her eyes like the memory of a benediction. Southward lay the world, striving, warring, sinning, repenting, elevating the Host, slaying the living, and burying the dead. But between her and that world stretched a wide water not to be crossed, a fixed gulf not to be passed over. It was the new day, and there beneath her was the strip of silver sand where he and she had walked yestereven, when the moon was full and the wavelets of that sheltered sea crisped in silver at their feet.
An hour afterwards these two met and gave each other a hand silently. Then, facing the sunrise, they walked eastward along the shore, while from the dusk of the garden gate Theresa von Lynar watched them with a sad smile upon her face.
"She is learning the lesson even as I learned it," she murmured, unconsciously thinking aloud. "Well, that which the father taught it is meet that the daughter should learn. Let her eat the fruit, the bitter fruit of love – even as I have eaten it!"
She watched a little longer, standing there with the pruning-knife in her hand. She saw Conrad turn towards Joan as they descended a little dell among the eastern sand-hills. And though she could not see, she knew that two hands met, and that they stood still for a moment, ere their feet climbed the opposite slope of dew-drenched sand. A swift sob took her unexpectedly by the throat.
"And yet," she said, "were all to do over, would not Theresa von Lynar again learn that lesson from Alpha to Omega, eat the Dead Sea fruit to its bitterest kernel, in order that once more the bud might open and love's flower be hers?"
Theresa von Lynar at her garden door spoke truth. For even then among the sand-hills the bud was opening, though the year was on the wane and the winter nigh.
"Happy Isle Rugen!" said Joan, drawing a breath like a sigh. "Why were we born to princedoms, Conrad, you and I?"
"I at least was not," answered her companion. "Dumb Max's jerkin of blue fits me better than any robe royal."
They stood on the highest part of the island. Joan was leaning on the crumbling wall of an ancient fort, which, being set on a promontory from which the pinetrees drew back a little, formed at once a place of observation and a point objective for their walks. She turned at his words and looked at him. Conrad, indeed, never looked better or more princely than in that rough jerkin of blue, together with the corded forester's breeches and knitted hose which he had borrowed from Theresa's dumb servitor.
"Conrad," said Joan, suddenly standing erect and looking directly at the young man, "if I were to tell you that I had resolved never to return to Kernsberg, but to remain here on Isle Rugen, what would you answer?"
"I should ask to be your companion – or, if not, your bailiff!" said the Prince-Bishop promptly.
"That would be to forget your holy office!"
A certain gentle sadness passed over the features of the young man.
"I leave many things undone for the sake of mine office," he said; "but the canons of the Church do not forbid poverty, or yet manual labour."
"But you have told me a hundred times," urged Joan, smiling in spite of herself, "that necessity and not choice made you a Churchman. Does that necessity no longer exist?"
"Nay," answered Conrad readily as before; "but smaller necessities yield to greater?"
"And the greater?"
"Why," he answered, "what say you to the tempest that drove me hither – the thews and stout hearts of Werner von Orseln and his men, not to speak of Captains Boris and Jorian there? Are they not sufficient reasons for my remaining here?"
He paused as if he had more to say.
"Well?" said Joan, and waited for him to continue.
"There is something else," he said. "It is – it is – that I cannot bear to leave you! God knows I could not leave you if I would!"
Joan of Hohenstein started. The words had been spoken in a low tone, yet with suppressed vehemence, as though driven from the young man's lips against his will. But there was no mistaking their purport. Yet they were spoken so hopelessly, and withal so gently, that she could not be angry.
"Conrad – Conrad," she murmured reproachfully, "I thought I could have trusted you. You promised never again to forget what we must both remember!"
"In so thinking you did well," he replied; "you may trust me to the end. But the privilege of speech and testimony is not denied even to the criminal upon the scaffold."
A wave of pity passed over Joan. A month before she would have withdrawn herself in hot anger. But Isle Rugen had gentled all her ways. The peace of that ancient fortalice, the wash of its ambient waters, the very lack of incident, the sense of the mysteries of tragic life which surrounded her on all sides, the deep thoughts she had been thinking alone with herself, the companionship of this man whom she loved – all these had wrought a new spirit in Joan of the Sword Hand. Women who cannot be pitiful are but half women. They have never yet entered upon their inheritance. But now Joan was coming to her own again. For to pity of Theresa von Lynar she was adding pity for Conrad of Courtland and – Joan of Hohenstein.
"Speak," she said very gently. "Do not be afraid; tell me all that is in your heart."
Joan was not disinclined to hear any words that the young man might speak. She believed that she could listen unmoved even to his most passionate declarations of love. Like the wise physician, she would listen, understand, prescribe – and administer the remedy.
But the pines of Isle Rugen stood between this woman and the girl who had ridden away so proudly from the doors of the Kernsberg minster at the head of her four hundred lances. Besides, she had not forgotten the tournament and the slim secretary who had once stood before this man in the river parlour of the Summer Palace.
Then Conrad spoke in a low voice, very distinct and even in its modulation.
"Joan," he said, "once on a time I dreamed of being loved – dreamed that among all the world of women there might be one woman for me. Such things must come when deep sleep falleth upon a young man. Waking I put them from me, even as I put arms and warfare aside. I believed that I had conquered the lust of the eye. Now I know that I can never again be true priest, never serve the altar with a clean heart.
"Listen, my Lady Joan! I love you – there is no use in hiding it. Doubtless you yourself have already seen it. I love you so greatly that vows, promises, priesthoods, cardinalates are no more to me than the crying of the seabirds out yonder. Let a worthier than I receive and hold them. They are not for a weak and sinful man. My bishopric let another take. I would rather be your groom, your servitor, your lacquey, than reign on the Seven Hills and sit in Holy Peter's chair!"
Joan leaned against the crumbling battlement, and the words of Conrad were very sweet in her ear. They filled her with pity, while at the same time her heart was strong within her. None had dared to speak such things to her before in all her life, and she was a woman. The Princess Margaret, had she loved a man as Joan did this man, would have given back vow for vow, renunciation for renunciation, and, it might be, have bartered kiss for kiss.
But Joan of the Sword Hand was never stronger, never more serene, never surer of herself than when she listened to the words she loved best to hear, from the lips of the man whom of all others she desired to speak them. At first she had been looking out upon the sea, but now she permitted her eyes to rest with a great kindliness upon the young man. Even as he spoke Conrad divined the thing that was in her heart.
"Mark you," he said, "do me the justice to remember that I ask for nothing. I expect nothing. I hope for nothing in return. I thought once that I could love Divine things wholly. Now I know that my heart is too earthly. But instead I love the noblest and most gracious woman in all the world. And I love her, too, with a love not wholly unworthy of her."
"You do me overmuch honour," said Joan quietly. "I, too, am weak and sinful. Or how else would I, your brother's wife, listen to such words from any man – least of all from you?"
"Nay," said Conrad; "you only listen out of your great pitifulness. But I am no worthy priest. I will not take upon me the yet greater things for which I am so manifestly unfitted. I will not sully the holy garments with my earthliness. Conrad of Courtland, Bishop and Cardinal, died out there among the breakers.
"He will never go to Rome, never kneel at the tombs of the Apostles. From this day forth he is a servitor, a servant of servants in the train of the Duchess Joan. Save those with us here, our hostess and the three captains (who for your sake will hold their peace), none know that Conrad of Courtland escaped the waters that swallowed up his companions. They and you will keep the secret. This shaven crown will speedily thatch itself again, a beard grow upon these shaveling cheeks. A dash of walnut juice, and who will guess that under the tan of Conrad the serf there is concealed a prince of Holy Church?"
He paused, almost smiling. The picture of his renunciation had grown real to him even as he spoke. But Joan did not smile. She waited a space to see if he had aught further to say. But he was silent, waiting for her answer.
"Conrad," she said very gently, "that I have listened to you, and that I have not been angry, may be deadly sin for us both. Yet I cannot be angry. God forgive me! I have tried and I cannot be angry. And why should I? Even as I lay a babe in the cradle, I was wedded. If a woman must suffer, she ought at least to be permitted to choose the instrument of her torture."
"It is verity," he replied; "you are no more true wife than I am true priest."
"Yet because you have dispensed holy bread, and I knelt before the altar as a bride, we must keep faith, you and I. We are bound by our nobility. If we sin, let it be the greater and rarer sin – the sin of the spirit only. Conrad, I love you. Nay, stand still where you are and listen to me – to me, Joan, your brother's wife. For I, too, once for all will clear my soul. I loved you long ere your eyes fell on me. I came as Dessauer's secretary to the city of Courtland. I determined to see the man I was to wed. I saw the prince – my prince as I thought – storm through the lists on his white horse. I saw him bare his head and receive the crown of victory. I stood before him, ashamed yet glad, hosed and doubleted like a boy, in the Summer Pavilion. I heard his gracious words. I loved my prince, who so soon was to be wholly mine. The months slipped past, and I was ever the gladder the faster they sped. The woman stirred within the stripling girl. In half a year, in twenty weeks – in five – in one – in a day – an hour, I would put my hand, my life, myself into his keeping! Then came the glad tumult of the rejoicing folk, the hush of the crowded cathedral. I said, 'Oh, not yet – I will not lift my eyes to my prince until – ' We stopped. I lifted my eyes. And lo! the prince was not my prince!"
There was a long and solemn pause between these two on the old watchtower. Never was declaration of love so given and so taken. Conrad remained still as a statue, only his eyes growing great and full of light. Joan stood looking at him, unashamed and fearless. Yet neither moved an inch toward either. A brave woman's will, to do right greatly, stood between them.
She went on.
"Now you know all, my Conrad," she said. "Isle Rugen can never more be the isle of peace to us. You and I have shivered the cup of our happiness. We must part. We can never be merely friends. I must abide because I am a prisoner. You will keep my counsel, promising me to be silent, and together we will contrive a way of escape."
When Conrad answered her again his voice was hoarse and broken, almost like one rheumed with sleeping out on a winter's night. His words whistled in his windpipe, flying from treble to bass and back again.
"Joan, Joan!" he said, and the third time "Joan!" And for the moment he could say no more.
"True love," she said, and her voice was almost caressing, "you and I are barriered from each other. Yet we belong – you to me – I to you! I will not touch your hand, nor you mine. Not even as we have hitherto done. Let ours be the higher, perhaps deadlier sin – the sin of soul and soul. Do you go back to your office, your electorate, while I stay here to do my duty."
"And why not you to your duchy?" said Conrad, who had begun to recover himself.
"Because," she answered, "if I refuse to abide by one of my father's bargains, I have no right to hold by the other. He would have made me your brother's wife. That I have refused. He disinherited his lawful son that I might take the dukedom with me as my dowry. Can I keep that which was only given me in trust for another? Maurice von Lynar shall be Duke Maurice, and Theresa von Lynar shall have her true place as the widow of Henry the Lion!"
And she stood up tall and straight, like a princess indeed.
"And you?" he said very low. "What will you do, Joan?"
"For me, I will abide on Isle Rugen. Nunneries are not for me. There are doubtless one or two who will abide with me for the sake of old days – Werner von Orseln for one, Peter Balta for another. I shall not be lonely."
She smiled upon him with a peculiar trustful sweetness and continued —
"And once a year, in the autumn, you will come from your high office. You will lay aside the princely scarlet, and don the curt hose and blue jerkin, even as now you stand. You will gather blackberries and help me to preserve them. You will split wood and carry water. Then, when the day is well spent, you and I shall walk hither in the high afternoon and tell each other how we stand and all the things that have filled our hearts in the year's interspace. Thus will we keep tryst, you and I – not priest and wedded wife, but man and woman speaking the truth eye to eye without fear and without stain. Do you promise?"
And for all answer the Prince-Cardinal kneeled down, and taking the hem of her dress he kissed it humbly and reverently.
CHAPTER XLI
THERESA KEEPS TROTH
But they had reckoned without Theresa von Lynar.
Conrad and Joan came back from the ruined fortification, silent mostly, but thrilled with the thoughts of that which their eyes had seen, their ears heard. Each had listened to the beating of the other's heart. Both knew they were beloved. Nothing could alter that any more for ever. As they had gone out with Theresa watching them from the dusk of the garden arcades, their hands had drawn together. Eyes had sought answering eyes at each dip of the path. They had listened for the finest shades of meaning in one another's voices, and taken courage or lost hope from the droop of an eyelid or the quiver of a syllable.
Now all was changed. They knew that which they knew.
The orchard of the lonely grange on Isle Rugen was curiously out of keeping with its barren surroundings. Enclosed within the same wall as the dwelling-house, it was the special care of the Wordless Man, whose many years of pruning and digging and watering, undertaken each at its proper season, had resulted in a golden harvest of September fruit. When Joan and Conrad came to the portal which gave entrance from without, lo! it stood open. The sun had been shining in their eyes, and the place looked very slumberous in the white hazy glory of a northern day. The path which led out of the orchard was splashed with cool shade. Green leaves shrined fair globes of fruitage fast ripening in the blowing airs and steadfast sun. Up the path towards them as they stood together came Theresa von Lynar. There was a smile on her face, a large and kindly graciousness in her splendid eyes. Her hair was piled and circled about her head, and drawn back in ruddy golden masses from the broad white forehead. Autumn was Theresa's season, and in such surroundings she might well have stood for Ceres or Pomona, with apron full enough of fruit for many a horn of plenty.
Such large-limbed simple-natured women as Theresa von Lynar appear to greatest advantage in autumn. It is their time when the day of apple-blossom and spring-flourish is overpast, and when that which these foreshadowed is at length fulfilled. Then to see such an one emerge from an orchard close, and approach softly smiling out of the shadow of fruit trees, is to catch a glimpse of the elder gods. Spring, on the other hand, is for merry maidens, slips of unripe grace, buds from the schools. Summer is the season of languorous dryads at rest in the green gloom of forests, fanning sunburnt cheeks with leafy boughs, their dark eyes full of the height of living. Winter is the time of swift lithe-limbed girls with heads proudly set, who through the white weather carry them like Dian the Huntress, their dainty chins dimpling out of softening furs. To each is her time and supremacy, though a certain favoured few are the mistresses of all. They move like a part of the spring when cherry blossoms are set against a sky of changeful April blue. They rejoice when dark-eyed summer wears scarlet flowers in her hair, shaded by green leaves and fanned by soft airs. Well-bosomed Ceres herself, smiling luxuriant with ripe lips, is not fairer than they at the time of apple-gathering, nor yet dainty Winter, footing it lightly over the frozen snow.
Joan, an it liked her, could have triumphed in all these, but her nature was too simple to care about the impression she made, while Conrad was too deep in love to notice any difference in her perfections.
And now Theresa von Lynar, the woman who had given her beauty and her life like a little Saint Valentine's gift into the hand of the man she loved, content that he should take or throw away as pleased him best – Theresa von Lynar met these two, who in their new glory of renunciation thought that they had plumbed the abysses of love, when as yet they had taken no more than a single sounding in the narrow seas. She stood looking at them as they came towards her, with a sympathy that was deeper far than mere tolerance.
"Our Joan of the Sword Hand is growing into a woman," she murmured; and something she had thought buried deep heaved in her breast, shaking her as Enceladus the Giant shakes Etna when he turns in his sleep. For she saw in the girl her father's likeness more strongly than she had ever seen it in her own son.
"You have faced the sunshine!" Thus she greeted them as they came. "Sit awhile with me in the shade. I have here a bower where Maurice loved to play – before he left me. None save I hath entered it since that day."
So saying, she led the way along an alley of pleached green, at the far end of which they could see the solitary figure of Max Ulrich, in the full sun, bending his back to his gardening tasks, yet at the same time, as was his custom, keeping so near his mistress that a fluttering kerchief or a lifted hand would bring him instantly to her side.
It was a small rustic eight-sided lodge, thatched with heather, its latticed windows wide open and creeper-grown, to which Theresa led them. It had been well kept; and when Joan found herself within, a sudden access of tenderness for this lonely mother, who for love's sake had offered herself like a sacrifice upon an altar, took possession of her.
For about the walls was fastened a child's pitiful armoury. Home-made swords of lath, arrows winged with the cast feathers of the woodland, crooked bows, the broken crockery of a hundred imagined banquets – these, and many more, were carefully kept in place with immediate and loving care. Maurice would be back again presently, they seemed to say, and would take up his play just where he left it.
No cobwebs hung from the roof; the bows were duly unstrung; and though wooden platters and rough kitchen equipage were mingled with warlike accoutrements upon the floor, there was not a particle of dust to be seen anywhere. As they sat down at the mother's bidding, it was hard to persuade themselves that Maurice von Lynar was far off, enduring the hardships of war or in deadly peril for his mistress. He might have been even then in hiding in the brushwood, ready to cry bo-peep at them through the open door.
There was silence in the arbour for a space, a silence which no one of the three was anxious to break. For Joan thought of her promise, Conrad of Joan, and Theresa of her son. It was the last who spoke.
"Somehow to-day it is borne in upon me that Kernsberg has fallen, and that my son is in his enemy's hands!"
Joan started to her feet and thrust her hands a little out in front of her as if to ward off a blow.
"How can you know that?" she cried. "Who – No; it cannot be. Kernsberg was victualled for a year. It was filled with brave men. My captains are staunch. The thing is impossible."
Theresa von Lynar, with her eyes on the waving foliage which alternately revealed and eclipsed the ruddy globes of the apples on the orchard trees, slowly shook her head.
"I cannot tell you how I know," she said; "nevertheless I know. Here is something which tells me." She laid her hand upon her heart. "Those who are long alone beside the sea hear voices and see visions."
"But it is impossible," urged Joan; "or, if it be true, why am I kept here? I will go and die with my people!"
"It is my son's will," said Theresa – "the will of the son of Henry the Lion. He is like his father – therefore women do his will!"
The words were not spoken bitterly, but as a simple statement of fact.
Joan looked at this woman and understood for the first time that she was the strongest spirit of all – greater than her father, better than herself. And perhaps because of this, nobility and sacrifice stirred emulously in her own breast.
"Madam," she said, looking directly at Theresa von Lynar, "it is time that you and I understood each other. I hold myself no true Duchess of Hohenstein so long as your son lives. My father's compact and condition are of no effect. The Diet of the Empire would cancel them in a moment. I will therefore take no rest till this thing is made clear. I swear that your son shall be Duke Maurice and sit in his father's place, as is right and fitting. For me, I ask nothing but the daughter's portion – a grange such as this, as solitary and as peaceful, a garden to delve and a beach to wander upon at eve!"
As she spoke, Theresa's eyes suddenly brightened. A proud high look sat on the fulness of her lips, which gradually faded as some other thought asserted its supremacy. She rose, and going straight to Joan, for the first time she kissed her on the brow.
"Now do I know," she said, "that you are Henry the Lion's daughter. That is spoken as he would have spoken it. It is greatly thought. Yet it cannot be."
"It shall be!" cried Joan imperiously.
"Nay," returned Theresa von Lynar. "Once on a time I would have given my right hand that for half a day, for one hour, men might have said of me that I was Henry the Lion's wife, and my son his son! It would have been right sweet. Ah God, how sweet it would have been!" She paused a moment as if consulting some unseen presence. "No, I have vowed my vow. Here was I bidden to stay and here will I abide. For me there was no sorrow in any hard condition, so long as he laid it upon me. For have I not tasted with him the glory of life, and with him plucked out the heart of the mystery? That for which I paid, I received. My lips have tasted both of the Tree of Knowledge and of the Tree of Life – for these two grow very close together, the one to the other, upon the banks of the River of Death. But for my son, this thing is harder to give up. For on him lies the stain, though the joy and the sin were mine alone."
"Maurice of Hohenstein shall sit in his father's seat," said Joan firmly. "I have sworn it. If I live I will see him settled there with my captains about him. Werner von Orseln is an honest man. He will do him justice. Von Dessauer shall get him recognised, and Hugo of Plassenburg shall stand his sponsor before the Diet of the Empire."
"I would it could be so," said Theresa wistfully. "If my death could cause this thing righteously to come to pass, how gladly would I end life! But I am bound by an oath, and my son is bound because I am bound. The tribunal is not the Diet of Ratisbon, but the faithfulness of a woman's heart. Have I been loyal to my prince these many years, so that now shame itself sits on my brow as gladly as a crown of bay, that I should fail him now? Low he lies, and I may never stand beside his sepulchre. No son of mine shall sit in his high chair. But if in any sphere of sinful or imperfect spirits, be it hell or purgatory, he and I shall encounter, think you that for an empire I would meet him shamed. And when he says, 'Woman of my love, hast thou kept thy troth?' shall I be compelled to answer 'No?'"
