Joan of the Sword Hand
Page 26
CHAPTER XXV
BORNE ON THE GREAT WAVE
It chanced that in the chamber from which Werner von Orseln had come soswiftly at the cry of the Wordless Man, Boris and Jorian, after sleepingthrough the disturbances above them and the first burst of the storm,were waked by the blowing open of the lattice as the wind reached itsheight. Jorian lay still on his pallet and slily kicked Boris, hopingthat he would rise and take upon him the task of shutting it.
Then to Boris, struggling upward to the surface of the ocean of sleep,came the same charitable thought with regard to Jorian. So, both kickingout at the same time, their feet encountered with clash of ironfootgear, and then with surly snarls they hent them on their feet,abusing each other in voices which could be heard above the humming ofthe storm without.
It was tall Boris who, having cursed himself empty, first made his wayto the window. The lattice hung by one leathern thong. The other hadbeen torn away, and indeed it was a wonder that the whole framework hadnot been blown bodily into the room. For the tempest pressed against itstraight from the north, and the sticky spray from the waves which brokeon the shingle drove stingingly into the eyes of the man-at-arms.
Nevertheless he thrust his head out, looked a moment through half-closedeyelids, and then cried, "Jorian, we are surely lost! The sea isbreaking in upon us. It has passed the beach of shingle out there!"
And seizing Jorian by the arm Boris made his way to the door by whichthey had entered, and, undoing the bolts, they reached the walledcourtyard, where, however, they found themselves in the open air, butsheltered from the utmost violence of the tempest. There was a momentarydifficulty here, because neither could find the key of the heavy door inthe boundary wall. But Boris, ever fertile in expedient, discovered aladder under a kind of shed, and setting it against the northern wall heclimbed to the top. While he remained under the shelter of the wall hisbody was comfortably warm; only an occasional veering flaw sent a purldownwards of what he was to meet. But the instant his head was above thecopestone, and the ice-cold northerly blast met him like a wall, hefairly gasped, for the furious onslaught of the storm seemed to blowevery particle of breath clean out of his body.
The spindrift flew smoking past, momentarily white in the constantlightning flashes, and before him, and apparently almost at the foot ofthe wall, Boris saw a wonderful sight. The sea appeared to be climbing,climbing, climbing upwards over a narrow belt of sand and shingle whichseparated the scarcely fretted Haff from the tumbling milk of the outerBaltic.
In another moment Jorian was beside him, crouching on the top of thewall to save himself from being carried away. And there, in the steamysmother of the sea, backed by the blue electric flame of the lightning,they saw the slant masts of a vessel labouring to beat against the wind.
"Poor souls, they are gone!" said Boris, trying to shield his eyes withhis palm, as the black hull disappeared bodily, and the masts seemed tolurch forward into the milky turmoil. "We shall never see her again."
For one moment all was dark as pitch, and the next a dozen flashes oflightning burst every way, as many appearing to rise upwards as could beseen to fall downwards. A black speck poised itself on the crest of awave. "It is a boat! It can never live!" cried the two men together, anddropping from the top of the wall they ran down to the shore, going asnear as they dared to the surf which arched and fell with ponderous roaron the narrow strip of shingle.
Here Jorian and Boris ran this way and that, trying to pierce theblackness of the sky with their spray-blinded eyes, but nothing more,either of the ship or of the boat which had put out from it, did theysee. The mountainous roll and ceaseless iterance of the oncomingbreakers hid the surface of the sea from their sight, while the sky,changing with each pulse of the lightning from densest black to greenshot with violet, told nothing of the men's lives which were being rivenfrom their bodies beneath it.
"Back, Boris, back!" cried Jorian suddenly, as after a succession ofsmaller waves a gigantic and majestic roller arched along the wholeseaward front, stood for a moment black and imminent above them, andthen fell like a whole mountain-range in a snowy avalanche of troubledwater which rushed savagely up the beach. The two soldiers, who wouldhave faced unblanched any line of living enemies in the world, fledterror-stricken at that clutching onrush of that sea of milk. The wetsand seemed to catch and hold their feet as they ran, so that they feltin their hearts the terrible sensation of one who flees in dreams fromsome hideous imagined terror and who finds his powers fail him as hispursuer approaches.
Upward and still upward the wave swept with a soft universal hiss whichdrowned and dominated the rataplan of the thunder-peals above and thesonorous diapason of the surf around them. It rushed in a creamingsmother about their ankles, plucked at their knees, but could rise nohigher. Yet so fierce was the back draught, that when the waterretreated, dragging the pebbles with it down the shingly shore with therattle of a million castanets, the two stout captains of Plassenburgwere thrown on their faces and lay as dead on the wet and sticky stones,each clutching a double handful of broken shells and oozy sand whichstreamed through his numbed fingers.
Boris was the first to rise, and finding Jorian still on his face hecaught the collar of his doublet and pulled him with little ceremony upthe sloping bank out of tide-reach, throwing him down on the shinglysummit with as little tenderness or compunction as if he had been a bagof wet salt.
By this time the morning was advancing and the storm growing somewhatless continuous. Instead of the wind bearing a dead weight upon theface, it came now in furious gusts. Instead of one grand roar,multitudinous in voice yet uniform in tone, it hooted and piped overheadas if a whole brood of evil spirits were riding headlong down thetempest-track. Instead of coming on in one solid bank of blackness, theclouds were broken into a wrack of wild and fantastic fragments, theinterspaces of which showed alternately paly green and pearly grey. Thethunder retreated growling behind the horizon. The violet lightning grewless continuous, and only occasionally rose and fell in vague distantflickerings towards the north, as if some one were lifting a lanternalmost to the sea-line and dropping it again before reaching it.
Looking back from the summit of the mound, Boris saw something darklying high up on the beach amid a wrack of seaweed and broken timberwhich marked where the great wave had stopped. Something odd about theshape took his eye.
A moment later he was leaping down again towards the shore, taking hislongest strides, and sending the pebbles spraying out in front and onall sides of him. He stooped and found the body of a man, tall, wellformed, and of manly figure. He was bareheaded and stripped to hisbreeches and underwear.
Boris stooped and laid his hand upon his heart. Yes, so much wascertain. He was not dead. Whereupon the ex-man-at-arms lifted him aswell as he could and dragged him by the elbows out of reach of thewaves. Then he went back to Jorian and kicked him in the ribs. Therotund man sat up with an execration.
"Come!" cried Boris, "don't lie there like Reynard the Fox waiting forKayward the Hare. We want no malingering here. There's a man at death'sdoor down on the shingle. Come and help me to carry him to the house."
It was a heavy task, and Jorian's head spun with the shock of the waveand the weight of their burden long before they reached the point wherethe boundary wall approached nearest to the house.
"We can never hope to get him up that ladder and down the other side,"said Boris, shaking his head.
"Even if we had the ladder!" answered Jorian, glad of a chance togrumble; "but, thanks to your stupidity, it is on the other side of thewall."
Without noticing his companion's words, Boris took a handful of smallpebbles and threw them up at a lighted window. The head of Werner vonOrseln immediately appeared, his grizzled hair blown out like a mistyaureole about his temples.
"Come down!" shouted Boris, making a trumpet of his hands to fight thewind withal. "We have found a drowned man on the beach!"
And indeed it seemed literally so, as they carried their burden roundthe
walls to the wicket door and waited. It seemed an interminable timebefore Werner von Orseln arrived with the dumb man's lantern in hishand.
They carried the body into the great hall, where the Duchess and the oldservitor met them. There they laid him on a table. Joan herself liftedthe lantern and held it to his face. His fair hair clustered about hishead in wet knots and shining twists. The features of his face werewhite as death and carven like those of a statue. But at the sight theheart of the Duchess leaped wildly within her.
"Conrad!" she cried--that word and no more. And the lantern fell to thefloor from her nerveless hand.
There was no doubt in her mind. She could make no mistake. The regularfeatures, the pillar-like neck, the massive shoulders, the strongclean-cut mouth, the broad white brow--and--yes, the slight tonsure ofthe priest. It was the White Knight of the Courtland lists, the noblePrince of the summer parlour, the red-robed prelate of her marriage-day,Conrad of Courtland, Prince and Cardinal, but to her--"_he_"--the only"he."