Joan of the Sword Hand
Page 16
CHAPTER XV
WHAT JOAN LEFT BEHIND
After the departure of his bride, the Prince of Courtland stood on thesteps of the minster, dazed and foundered by the shame which had sosuddenly befallen him. Beneath him the people seethed tumultuously,their holiday ribands and maypole dresses making as gay a swirl ofcolour as when one looks at the sun through the facets of a cut Venetianglass. Prince Louis's weak and fretful face worked with emotion. Hisbird-like hands clawed uncertainly at his sword-hilt, wandering off overthe golden pouches that tasselled his baldric till they rested on thesheath of the poignard he wore.
"Bid the gates be shut, Prince!" The whisper came over his shoulder froma young man who had been standing all the time twisting his moustache."Bid your horsemen bit and bridle. The plain is fair before you. It is along way to Kernsberg. I have a hundred Muscovites at your service, allwell mounted--ten thousand behind them over the frontier if these arenot enough! Let no wench in the world put this shame upon a reigningPrince of Courtland on his wedding-day!"
Thus Ivan of Muscovy, attired in silk, banded of black and gold,counselled the disdained Prince Louis, who stood pushing upward with twofingers the point of his thin greyish beard and gnawing the stragglingends between his teeth.
"I say, 'To horse and ride, man!' Will you dare tell this folk of yoursthat you are disdained, slighted at the very church door by your weddedwife, cast off and trodden in the mire like a bursten glove? Can youafford to proclaim yourself the scorn of Germany? How it will run, thatnews! To Plassenburg first, where the Executioner's Son will smiletriumphantly to his witch woman, and straightway send off a messenger totickle the well-larded ribs of his friend the Margraf George with therare jest."
The Prince Louis appeared to be moved by the Wasp's words. He turnedabout to the nearest knight-in-waiting.
"Let us to horse--every man of us!" he said. "Bid that the steeds bebrought instantly."
The banded Wasp had further counsels to give.
"Give out that you go to meet the Princess at a rendezvous. For apleasantry between yourselves, you have resolved to spend the honeymoonat a distant hunting-lodge. Quick! Not half a dozen of all the companycaught the true import of her words. You will tame her yet. She willfounder her horses in a single day's ride, while you have relays alongthe road at every castle, at every farm-house, and your borders arefifty good miles away."
Beneath, in the square, the court jesters leaped and laughed, turningsomersaults and making a flying skirt, like that of a morrice dancer,out of the long, flapping points of their parti-coloured blouses. Thestreets in front of the cathedral were alive with musicians, mostly inlittle bands of three, a harper with his harp of fourteen strings, hiscompanion playing industriously upon a Flute-English, and with these twotheir 'prentice or servitor, who accompanied them with shrill iteranceof whistle, while both his hands busied themselves with the merry tuckof tabour.
In this incessant merrymaking the people soon forgot their astonishmentat the sudden disappearance of the bride. There was, indeed, nounderstanding these great folk. But it was a fine day for a feast--thepretext a good one. And so the lasses and lads joked as they danced inthe lower vaults of the town house, from which the barrels had beencleared for the occasion.
"If thou and I were thus wedded, Grete, would you ride one way and I theother? Nay, God wot, lass! I am but a tanner's 'prentice, but I'd abidebeside thee, as close as bark by hide that lies three years in the sametan-pit--aye, an' that I would, lass!"
Then Gretchen bridled. "I would not marry thee, nor yet lie near or far,Hans; thou art but a boy, feckless and skill-less save to pole about thystinking skins--faugh!"
"Nay, try me, Grete! Is not this kiss as sweet as any civet-scented fopcould give?"
At the command of the Prince the trumpets rang out again the call of"Boot-and-saddle!" from the steps of the cathedral. At the sound thegrooms, who were here and there in the press, hasted to find andcaparison the horses of their lords. Meanwhile, on the wide steps thePrince Louis fretted, dinting his nails restlessly into his palms andshaking with anger and disappointment till his deep sleeves vibratedlike scarlet flames in a veering wind.
Suddenly there passed a wave over the people who crowded the spaciousDom Platz of Courtland. The turmoil stilled itself unconsciously. Themany-headed parti-coloured throng of women's tall coifs, gay flutteringribands, men's velvet caps, gallants' white feathers that shifted likethe permutations of a kaleidoscope, all at once fixed itself into a seaof white faces, from which presently arose a forest of arms flourishingkerchiefs and tossing caps. To this succeeded a deep mouth-roar ofburgherish welcome such as the reigning Prince had never heard raised inhis own honour.
"Conrad--Prince Conrad! God bless our Prince-Cardinal!"
The legitimate ruler of Courtland, standing where Joan had left him,with his slim-waisted Muscovite mentor behind him, half-turned to look.And there on the highest place stood his brother in the scarlet of hisnew dignity as it had come from the Pope himself, his red biretta heldin his hand, and his fair and noble head erect as he looked over thefolk to where on the slope above the city gates he could still see thesun glint and sparkle on the cuirasses and lanceheads of the fourhundred riders of Kernsberg.
But even as the Prince of Courtland looked back at his brother, thewhisper of the tempter smote his ear.
"Had Prince Conrad been in your place, and you behind the altar rails,think you that the Duchess Joan would have fled so cavalierly?"
By this time the young Cardinal had descended till he stood on the otherside of the Prince from Ivan of Muscovy.
"You take horse to follow your bride?" he queried, smiling. "Is it afashion of Kernsberg brides thus to steal away?" For he could see thegrooms bringing horses into the square, and the guards beating thepeople back with the butts of their spears to make room for the mountingof the Prince's cavalcade.
"Hark--he flouts you!" came the whisper over the bridegroom's shoulder;"I warrant he knew of this before."
"You have done your priest's work, brother," said Louis coldly, "e'enpermit me to go about that of a prince and a husband in my own way."
The Cardinal bowed low, but with great self-command held his peace,whereat Louis of Courtland broke out in a sudden overboiling fury.
"This is your doing!" he cried; "I know it well. From her first comingmy bride had set herself to scorn me. My sister knew it. You knew it.You smile as at a jest. The Pope's favour has turned your head. Youwould have all--the love of my wife, the rule of my folk, as well as theacclaim of these city swine. Listen--'The good Prince Conrad! God savethe noble Prince!' It is worth while living for favour such as this."
"Brother of mine," said the young man gently, "as you know well, Inever set eyes upon the noble Lady Joan before. Never spoke word to her,held no communication by word or pen."
"Von Dessauer--his secretary!" whispered Ivan, dropping the suggestioncarefully over his shoulder like poison distilled into a cup.
"You were constantly with the old fox Dessauer, the envoy ofPlassenburg--who came from Kernsberg, bringing with him that slimsecretary. By my faith, now, when I think of it, Prince Ivan told melast night he was as like this madcap girl as pea to pea--some fly-blownbase-born brother, doubtless!"
Conrad shook his head. His brother had doubtless gone momentarilydistract with his troubles.
"Nay, deny it not! And smile not either--lest I spoil the symmetry ofthat face for your monkish mummery and processions. Aye, if I have tolie under ten years' interdict for it from your friend the most HolyPope of Rome!"
"Do not forget there is another Church in my country, which will lay nointerdict upon you, Prince Louis," laughed Ivan of Muscovy. "But tohorse--to horse--we lose time!"
"Brother," said the Cardinal, laying his hand on Louis's arm, "on myword as a knight--as a Prince of the Church--I knew nothing of thematter. I cannot even guess what has led you thus to accuse me!"
The Princess Margaret came at that moment out of the cathedral and ranimpetuousl
y to her favourite brother.
He put out his hand. She took it, and instead of kissing his bishop'sring, as in strict etiquette she ought to have done, she cried out,"Conrad, do you know what that glorious wench has done? Dared herhusband's authority at the church door, leaped into the saddle, whistledup her men, cried to all these Courtland gallants, 'Catch me who can!'And lo! at this moment she is riding straight for Kernsberg, and now ourLouis must catch her. A glorious wedding! I would I were by her side.Brother Louis, you need not frown, I am nowise affrighted at yourglooms! This is a bride worth fighting for. No puling cloister-maid thisthat dares not raise her eyes higher than her bridegroom's knee! Were Ia man, by my faith, I would never eat or drink, neither pray nor sainme, till I had tamed the darling and brought her to my wrist like afalcon to a lure!"
"So, then, madam, you knew of this?" said her elder brother, gloweringupon her from beneath his heavy brows.
"Nay!" trilled the gay Princess, "I only wish I had. Then I, too, wouldhave been riding with them--such a jest as never was, it would havebeen. Goodbye, my poor forsaken brother! Joy be with you on this yourbridal journey. Take Prince Ivan with you, and Conrad and I will keepthe kingdom against your return, with your prize gentled on your wrist."
So smiling and kissing her hand the Princess Margaret waved her brotherand Prince Ivan off. The Prince of Courtland neither looked at her noranswered. But the Muscovite turned often in his saddle as if to carrywith him the picture she made of saucy countenance and dainty figure asshe stood looking up into the face of the Cardinal Prince Conrad.
"What in Heaven's name is the meaning of all this--I do not understandin the least?" he was saying.
"Haste you and unrobe, Brother Con," she said; "this grandeur of yoursdaunts me. Then, in the summer parlour, I will tell you all!"
"They stood ... looking down at the rushing river."[_Page 105_]]