Joan of the Sword Hand

"I have been telling her that I love her!" answered Conrad simply. He felt that what he had listened to gave this woman a right to be answered.

"And what, I pray you, have princes of Holy Church to do with love? They seek after heavenly things, do they not? Like the angels, they neither marry nor are given in marriage."

"I know," said Conrad humbly, and without taking the least offence. "I know it well. But I have put off the armour I had not proven. The burden is too great for me. I am a soldier – I was trained a soldier – yet because I was born after my brother Louis, I must perforce become both priest and cardinal. Rather a thousand times would I be a man-at-arms and carry a pike!"

"Then am I to understand that as a soldier you told the Duchess Joan that you loved her, and that as a priest you forbade the banns? Or did you wholly forget the little circumstance that once on a time you yourself married her to your brother?"

"I did indeed forget," said Conrad, with sincere penitence; "yet you must not blame me too sorely. I was carried out of myself – "

"The Duchess, then, rejected your suit with contumely?"

Conrad was silent.

"How should a great lady listen to her husband's brother – and he a priest?" Theresa went on remorseless. "What said the Lady Joan when you told her that you loved her?"

"The words she spoke I cannot repeat, but when she ended I set my lips to her garment's hem as reverently as ever to holy bread."

The slow smile came again over the face of Theresa von Lynar, the smile of a warworn veteran who watches the children at their drill.

"You do not need to tell me what she answered, my lord," she said, for the first time leaving out the ecclesiastic title. "I know!"

Conrad stared at the woman.

"She told you that she loved you from the first."

"How know you that?" he faltered. "None must hear that secret – none must guess it!"

Theresa von Lynar laughed a little mellow laugh, in which a keen ear might have detected how richly and pleasantly her laugh must once have sounded to her lover when all her pulses beat to the tune of gladness and the unbound heart.

"Do you think to deceive me, Theresa, whom Henry the Lion loved? Have I been these many weeks with you two in the house and not seen this? Prince Conrad, I knew it that night of the storm when she bent her over the couch on which you lay. 'I love,' you say boldly, and you think great things of your love. But she loved first as she will love most, and your boasted love will never overtake hers – no, not though you love her all your life… Well, what do you propose to do?"

Conrad stood a moment mutely wrestling with himself. He had never felt Joan's first instinctive aversion to this woman, a dislike even yet scarcely overcome – for women distrust women till they have proven themselves innocent, and often even then.

"My lady," he said, "the Duchess Joan has showed me the better way. Like a man, I knew not what I asked, nor dared to express all that I desired. But I have learned how souls can be united, though bodies are separated. I will not touch her hand; I will not kiss her lips. Once a year only will I see her in the flesh. I shall carry out my duty, made at least less unworthy by her example – "

"And think you," said Theresa, "that in the night watches you will keep this charge? Will not her face come between you and the altar? Will not her image float before you as you kneel at the shrine? Will it not blot out the lines as you read your daily office?"

"I know it – I know it too well!" said Conrad, sinking his head on his breast. "I am not worthy."

"What, then, will you do? Can you serve two masters?" persisted the inquisitor. "Your Scripture says not."

A larger self seemed to flame and dilate within the young man.

"One thing I can do," he said – "like you, I can obey. She bade me go back and do my duty. I cannot bind my thought; I cannot change my heart; I cannot cast my love out. I have heard that which I have heard, and I cannot forget; but at least with the body I can obey. I will perform my vow; I will keep my charge to the letter, every jot and tittle. And if God condemn me for a hypocrite – well, let Him! He, and not I, put this love into my heart. My body may be my priesthood's – I will strive to keep it clean – but my soul is my lady's. For that let Him cast both soul and body into hell-fire if He will!"

Theresa von Lynar did not smile any more. She held out her hand to Conrad of Courtland, priest and prince.

"Yes," she said, "you do know what love is. In so far as I can I will help you to your heart's desire."

And in her turn she rose and passed down through the leafy avenues of the orchard, over which the westering sun was already casting rood-long shadows.

CHAPTER XLII

THE WORDLESS MAN TAKES A PRISONER

It was the hour of the evening meal at Isle Rugen. The September day piped on to its melancholy close, and the wild geese overhead called down unseen from the upper air a warning that the storm followed hard upon their backs. At the table-head sat Theresa von Lynar, her largely moulded and beautiful face showing no sign of emotion. Only great quiet dwelt upon it, with knowledge and the sympathy of the proven for the untried. On either side of her were Joan and Prince Conrad – not sad, neither avoiding nor seeking the contingence of eye and eye, but yet, in spite of all, so strange a thing is love once declared, consciously happy within their heart of hearts.

Then, after a space dutifully left unoccupied, came Captains Boris and Jorian; while at the table-foot, opposite to their hostess, towered Werner von Orseln, whose grey beard had wagged at the more riotous board of Henry the Lion of Hohenstein.

Werner was telling an interminable story of the old wars, with many a "Thus said I" and "So did he," ending thus: "There lay I on my back, with thirty pagan Wends ready to slit my hals as soon as they could get their knives between my gorget and headpiece. Gott! but I said every prayer that I knew – they were not many in those days – all in two minutes' space, as I lay looking at the sky through my visor bars and waiting for the first prick of the Wendish knife-points.

"But even as I looked up, lo! some one bestrode me, and the voice I loved best in all the world – no, not a woman's, God send him rest" ("Amen!" interjected the Lady Joan) – "cried, 'To me, Hohenstein! To me, Kernsberg!' And though my head was ringing with the shock of falling, and my body weak from many wounds, I strove to answer that call, as I saw my master's sword flicker this way and that over my head. I rose half from the ground, my hilt still in my hand – I had no more left after the fight I had fought. But Henry the Lion gave me a stamp down with his foot. 'Lie still, man,' he said; 'do not interfere in a little business of this kind!' And with his one point he kept a score at bay, crying all the time, 'To me, Hohenstein! To me, Kernsbergers all!'

"And when the enemy fled, did he wait till the bearers came? Well I wot, hardly! Instead, he caught me over his shoulder like an empty sack when one goes a-foraging – me, Werner von Orseln, that am built like a donjon tower. And with his sword still red in his right hand he bore me in, only turning aside a little to threaten a Wendish archer who would have sent an arrow through me on the way. By the knights who sit round Karl's table, he was a man!"

And then to their feet sprang Boris and Jorian, who were judges of men.

"To Prince Henry the Lion —hoch!" they cried. "Drink it deep to his memory!"

And with tankard and wreathed wine-cup they quaffed to the great dead. Standing up, they drank – his daughter also – all save Theresa von Lynar. She sat unmoved, as if the toast had been her own and in a moment more she must rise to give them thanks. For the look on her face said, "After all, what is there so strange in that? Was he not Henry the Lion – and mine?"

For there is no joy like that which you may see on a woman's face when a great deed is told of the man she loves.

The Kernsberg soldiers who had been trained to serve at table, had stopped and stood fixed, their duties in complete oblivion during the tale, but now they resumed them and the simple feast continued. Meanwhile it had been growing wilder and wilder without, and the shrill lament of the wind was distinctly heard in the wide chimney-top. Now and then in a lull, broad splashes of rain fell solidly into the red embers with a sound like musket balls "spatting" on a wall.

Then Theresa von Lynar looked up.

"Where is Max Ulrich?" she said; "why does he delay?"

"My lady," one of the men of Kernsberg answered, saluting; "he is gone across the Haff in the boat, and has not yet returned."

"I will go and look for him – nay, do not rise, my lord. I would go forth alone!"

So, snatching a cloak from the prong of an antler in the hall, Theresa went out into the irregular hooting of the storm. It was not yet the deepest gloaming, but dull grey clouds like hunted cattle scoured across the sky, and the rising thunder of the waves on the shingle prophesied a night of storm. Theresa stood a long time bare-headed, enjoying the thresh of the broad drops as they struck against her face and cooled her throbbing eyes. Then she pulled the hood of the cloak over her head.

The dead was conquering the quick within her.

"I have known a man!" she said; "what need I more with life now? The man I loved is dead. I thank God that I served him – aye, as his dog served him. And shall I grow disobedient now? No, not that my son might sit on the throne of the Kaiser!"

Theresa stood upon the inner curve of the Haff at the place where Max Ulrich was wont to pull his boat ashore. The wind was behind her, and though the waves increased as the distance widened from the pebbly bank on which she stood, the water at her feet was only ruffled and pitted with little dimples under the shocks of the wind. Theresa looked long southward under her hand, but for the moment could see nothing.

Then she settled herself to keep watch, with the storm riding slack-rein overhead. Towards the mainland the whoop and roar with which it assaulted the pine forests deafened her ears. But her face was younger than we have ever seen it, for Werner's story had moved her strongly. Once more she was by a great man's side. She moved her hand swiftly, first out of the shelter of the cloak as if seeking furtively to nestle it in another's, and then, as the raindrops plashed cold upon it, she drew it slowly back to her again.

And though Theresa von Lynar was yet in the prime of her glorious beauty, one could see what she must have been in the days of her girlhood. And as memory caused her eyes to grow misty, and the smile of love and trust eternal came upon her lips, twenty years were shorn away; and the woman's face which had looked anxiously across the darkening Haff changed to that of the girl who from the gate of Castle Lynar had watched for the coming of Duke Henry.

She was gazing steadfastly southward, but it was not for Max the Wordless that she waited. Towards Kernsberg, where he whose sleep she had so often watched, rested all alone, she looked and kissed a hand.

"Dear," she murmured, "you have not forgotten Theresa! You know she keeps troth! Aye, and will keep it till God grows kind, and your true wife can follow – to tell you how well she hath kept her charge!"