When the graf returned to Pulitzberg with his newly married wife and all the store of gold and silver which she brought him, the first news he heard was of the werewolf’s ravenings, and when they told him that his game preserves were ravaged by the demon he swore deep-throated German oaths and sent out invitations to his friends and neighbors to assist him in exterminating this stray hound from Satan’s kennels.
The junkers came from far and wide in gleeful response to the summons. The sport should prove diverting; a wolf hunt ever tried the mettle of the staunchest men and dogs. Also, Otho’s cellars had few equals in the choiceness of their contents, and—there was the fair Margaretta to be seen. Hohenschuh was ever noted for his nice appreciation of a woman, a horse, or a hound, and had wooed, but never offered marriage to, some of the fairest ladies of the Rhineland. Had he, as the vulgar proverb put it, ‘walked through the woods and come out with a crooked stick’?
They made great feast and holiday at the Pulitzberg. Horses were groomed for the chase, weapons honed and polished, leather garments oiled and softened, and the great hounds from Hibernia which were so fierce that none except the kennel master and his aides dared approach them, and then only with a dish of meat for shield, were starved until their bays and howls of savage hunger rent the air like the clamoring of lost souls at hell’s gate.
Dinner had been long since served and the guests had gone unsteadily to bed with more than enough wine to make their sleep devoid of dreams, but Otho lingered in the bower of his lady. It was the same room whence Gertruda, Wolfgang’s bride, had hurled herself to death and damnation, but it had been transformed. Tapestries from the bride’s home decked the walls, Eastern carpets brought by merchants of Venetia from the Holy Land hid the stone tiles of the floor, and lamps with glass shades fancifully wrought in shapes of birds and beasts and monsters of antiquity replaced the rushlights which had lighted it aforetime.
The Countess sate in her high chair of gilded oak with cushions of soft Spanish leather and smiled with bovine pride and affection upon her husband. Her tiring-women had prepared her for the night and she wore a bedgown of fine linen under a loose coat of tabby silk. Her hair, of which she had no very great amount, was neatly plaited round her head and covered with a cap of linen lawn; her broad bare feet rested on the silky back of a small spaniel which was curled up on the floor before her, and her bright, unintelligent eyes were on the Count who, half dressed, had paused to try the weight of the Damascus iron sword he purposed wearing on the morrow’s hunt. One of the lady’s far from slender hands was winding the string of her rosary.
‘And art thou not afeared to take the trail against this devil’s dog, my husband?’ she asked timorously. ‘Will spear or brand prevail against it unless blessed by Holy Church?’
‘By Friar Hilderbrandt, perchance?’ he answered with a laugh. ‘Meseems that tonsured glutton would not be too sorrowful if I were bested by the werewolf. ’Fore heaven, he looks at me as he might look at Satan since——’
He checked himself in mid-word. Gossip traveled fast enow; let his lady learn about Gertruda when she must, and from other lips than his.
‘Aye, but the man counts not; his office is the thing of import,’ she persisted. ‘Let him be the veriest glutton and wine-bibber in the Reichland, if he hath divine authority he hath power to loose or retain sins, to bless or curse——’
‘Power? Bah!’ the Count cut in. ‘What power hath a mumbled Latin phrase compared to this keen iron?’ He swung the beautifully tempered blade in a long arc, so that it whistled through the lamplit air. ‘I tell thee, Margaretta, thou art superstitious as a villein’s wench.’
‘Oh, speak not thus disdainfully of holy things!’ she implored. ‘These werewolves be a fearsome breed of demon beasts. By night they go all stealthily on silent feet, and when the fires burn low or the lights flicker—Sancta Maria!’ There was no breath of breeze through the wide-open casements, but as she spoke the shaded lamp wicks suddenly burnt low, as if a man—or woman—had breathed on them, not quite enough to put them out, but gently, as if trying them.
Graf Otho laughed again—a short, sharp, chiding laugh. ‘Anon thou’lt tell me that the werewolf may be in this very guarded house of mine,’ he scoffed.
She nodded solemly. ‘In sooth. When lights burn low and blue by night, and thou hear’st a gentle tapping as of fingers at the door or window-bars——’
Like a stage sound timed to meet its cue there came a light, persistent scratching at the iron-strapped panels of the oaken door.
The Countess broke off with a scream and Otho’s dark face flushed with anger.
‘Do not open, husband!’ she called in a still, faint voice. ‘Leave the door-bolts set and join me in a prayer for our deliverance——’
‘Pray thou, then, till thy silly marrow-bones are softened by the stone!’ he stormed as he strode toward the door. ‘By Saint Sebastian his arrows, I’ll have the chuckle-headed lout hanged from the highest turret of the—ha!’
With anger-quickened fingers he had snapped the heavy triple bolts back and jerked the iron ring that served the door in lieu of a knob. As the oaken frame swung back, the lamplight streamed out in the darkened corridor, straight into the shaggy face of a great she-wolf. The hair of her ruff bristled as though blown upon by some blast of hell-heat; her black lips were curled back, showing rows of glinting teeth and fangs as hard and sharp as sabers. Across her muzzle was a smear of red, fresh blood.
The aspect of the beast was terrible enough, but fear merged into mounting horror as Otto looked into her eyes. No beast’s eyes, these, but woman’s eyes, long, blue, and fringed with dark and curling lashes—the empty, luster-lacking eyes of a dead woman who walks up and down the earth by night, a truant from her unblessed grave.
Otho thrust his sword straight at the great gray head that reared higher than his waist. The beast-thing moved a little, moved so slightly that it hardly seemed to move at all, and the blade passed harmlessly beside its shaggy jowl.
Now panic seized him and he rained a perfect storm of sword-strokes at the monster, yet not once did his steel strike home, and the blue, lack-luster eyes held his with a dead, winkless stare as dreadful and unnerving as the accusations of a guilty conscience.
Cursing, flailing blow on ineffectual blow at the great she-wolf, he gave ground. And inch by inch the wolf advanced on him, not menacingly, but with the steady pressure of relentless fate. Now he stood beside the open casement, and through it he could hear the clamor of the water on the rocks two hundred feet and more below. Dimly, but with terrible insistence, he could hear a woman’s voice:
‘Look in mine eyes . . . see in them thy doom——’
Then the she-wolf sprang.
The ‘Jesu-Mary!’ of his scream was cut short by the snapping of her jaws upon his neck, and out the window hurtled man and beast—if beast it were. Their bodies flew apart—save for the horrid point of contact where her fangs locked in his throat—whirling like the arms of a child’s pinwheel through the blackness of the chasm, till they fell upon the jagged rocks beside the shouting water of the torrent.
They found the Countess mad with fear next morning, and on the rock-toothed bottom of the ravine they found Otho’s body, battered almost beyond recognition. But there was neither sign nor token of a wolf’s carcass. So they set the story of the wolf down to the ravings of the maddened woman, and said her madness came upon her when she saw her husband fall to death. Could a wolf—even with passports signed by Satan—penetrate the cordon of two hundred fully-armed retainers who kept ward at Pulitzberg?
The Lady Margaretta bore a daughter six months later, but foster parents reared the girl, for her reason never came back and she died a gibbering idiot in the Convent of Our Lady of Eternal Pity without knowing that the Emperor, as was his right by law, took guardianship of her child, and possession of her splendid dowry, and the castle of Pulitzberg and all the lands appurtenant thereto.
Sister Clarisse of the Angels was on
watch in the infirmary on the night the Countess died, and she affirmed with sobs and trembling that as the poor, afflicted creature breathed her last there came a scratching at the window-bars, and when she looked up sore afraid she saw the face of a great shaggy wolf beyond the mullions.
She also swore, and would not be denied, that it had blue eyes, woman’s eyes, the eyes of a dead woman who walks up and down the earth by night, a truant from her unblessed grave.
But Sister Clarisse of the Angels was a very old nun. No one in the convent remembered when she came, but there were stories of her youth, how she had greatly loved a young man from across the Alps, and how he, having been denied her hand in marriage, took poison in her presence, and died writhing horribly before her. They said it had unhinged her mind. At any rate she saw things which no other of the sisterhood could see, and much of what she said was taken with a liberal dose of salt. Besides, the Convent of Our Lady of Eternal Pity was a very holy place. How could any demon-wolf, no matter how malignant, dare set its foot within the sacred confines of the convent close?
The wolf’s raids ceased for some time after Otho’s death; then they began again, and now it was the flock of Wolfgang the franklin which suffered most.
A dour, silent man was Wolfgang, and cruel. No beggar ever had an alms at his door, no tenant crofter had a day’s grace for the payment of his rent. He gave no greeting when he passed a neighbor on the road, and returned none. He mortified the flesh as if he were a Carmelite, tasting neither wine nor beer, and eating flesh but rarely. When the neighbors sought his aid to hunt the wolf-thing down he drove them from his land with bitter words and curses, but when the beast struck at his own flocks he took his grisarme down from the wall, strapped his long sword on his thigh, and set forth to track the monster by himself.
The fields were silver-plated in the flood of argent moonlight, from the little lakes that gathered in the hollows, jewel-bright flashes scintillated; the sky was filled to the brim with big, cool, untroubled stars. In the coppices of yew and hemlock purple shadows, shot with pleats of moonlight, seemed to shift and change position as if they were a company of elfmen dancing to the music of the night wind in the boughs.
Wolfgang strode across the fields unmindful of the beauty of the scene. What lure has beauty for a man who has no loved face to which he can compare it? Can a cracked bell peal a joy-paean, or a broken heart beat high?
Far away, so faint that it was scarcely audible, yet swelling, heightening slowly in a quavering crescendo, came a long-drawn, howling bay—the belling of a questing wolf! He gripped the ash stave of his spear as if it were a walking-staff and hurried toward the sound.
‘Beast or devil, traitor hound or goblin damned, I come to grips with it tonight!’ he swore savagely.
Now against the rim of a far hilltop he saw something moving. The moonlight picked it out against the sun-bleached stubble of the mowed field and he recognized the lazy, tireless lope. In sooth, it was a wolf. But what a wolf! Higher than the largest mastiff it stood, almost great as a calf, and from the freedom of its gait he knew that it was young and vigorous, not beset with age like most beasts which were lone hunters and attacked sheep folds instead of deer or cattle.
Almost as he saw it the great beast seemed to descry him, and as if it welcomed an ordeal by battle, changed its course, coming toward him in a swift, unhurried run, leaping hedges and stone walls as easily as if they had been lines of shadow on the moon-besilvered fields. Down the long slope of the hill he watched it charge, and his fingers tightened on his spear shaft. Soon they would be in striking distance of each other. Soon . . .
Abruptly as if it had run into a barrier of steel bars the wolf halted in its course. He saw it straighten its forelegs, dig its hind feet in the turf, as it checked itself in mid-stride. Then he saw, and realized the reason for its sudden, almost panic-stricken halt. Cutting through the meadow, so fringed with rank-grown grass and cress that it was hardly visible a dozen feet away, was a small, swift-running rivulet.
‘Herr Gott!’ His throat closed with a quick, instinctive fear. Witches, warlocks, sprites, and goblins cannot cross a living stream. This wolf, this beast that towered over all beasts of its kind that he had ever seen, balked at the little brooklet’s rim. . . .
But the fear that gripped his throat never reached his stomach-pit to paralyze him. As the wolf-thing changed its course and ran toward the old Roman road he wheeled and followed in its trail. Two miles away the post road crossed another . . . witches were confused by crossroads, too. If he could drive the demon to the intersection . . .
Now the goblin-beast seemed fleeing. It stretched its long legs in a longer stride, and though the man ran till his breath came in quick, gasping sobs, his quarry distanced him, and disappeared into the shadows of the woods that lay between the farmland and the high road.
Nathless, he would follow. If so be he met the wolf-thing they would join in battle. Accumulated hatred boiled up in his veins like scum upon the surface in a brewing-kettle. What if death betide? Must not the long, long silence of the grave be pleasant to a man whose heart had died within his breast upon his wedding night?
He emerged from the wood and hurried toward the crossroads. A great oak tree stood at the thwarting of the ways, and round it reached a disk of shadow. Was that the movement of a body by the black bole? It might have been a trick of light and shade fused and confused by the wind in the branches, yet if the witch-wolf had sought covert he might come to weapon-reach of it. He paused a moment, spat upon his hands, then hastened toward the tree with grisarme advanced.
A wisp of cloud, leaden-gray, with frayed-out, tattered edges, swept across the bleached disk of the moon. A strange, eery twilight crept over the landscape, and objects seemed to lose their outlines, blending into one another as if they had been patterns in a colorless kaleidoscope.
Savage as the beast he sought, Wolfgang bared his teeth as he rushed at the darkness. ‘Have I found thee at last, O thou creature of the night——’
The partizan fell clattering to the roadway flints and he staggered back as from a blow, for in answer to his hail a voice replied: ‘Aye, thou hast found me. Here am I.’
She came slowly from the dimness of the shadows, garbed in her linen wedding robe, a chaplet of cornflowers wound around her bright fair hair, and in her eyes the liebeslicht—the lovelight—shone as if reflected from the far bright stars that light the gates of Paradise.
‘Gertruda—liebchen!’
‘Husband!’
He shook his head and shut his eyes and passed his hand across them. This was a troll-inspired vision. Gertruda moldered in her grave, her unmarked, solitary grave . . . the spirits of the blessed come not to earth again . . . ha, but was she blessed? She who threw herself to death unshriven. . . .
Through the confusion of his thoughts he heard her soft words, ‘——thou wouldst not come to me, and come to thee in this form I could not. Here I am vulnerable to thy steel; wilt thou choose to kill me now, or wilt thou bide with me and become even as I——’
‘Be thou spirit damned or soul that bends from Paradise to knit the fragments of my broken heart, thou art my one and only love, my flesh, my blood, my life, and I will be as thou art!’ he answered hoarsely as he took her in his arms.
A wild, fierce light of elation blazed suddenly in her blue eyes. ‘Together!’ she exclaimed as her lips sought his with avid hunger. ‘Come, lie with me in my dark-sodded bed by day, and sleep through sunshine and through rain until the moon assumes dominion of the sky; then—ah, then we’ll range the hills and fields together——’
‘Though the pathway lead to lowest Niffleheim—together!’ he responded, and pressed his lips against her red mouth.
‘Together, yea,’ a third voice spoke, ‘but not in sin or defiance of heaven!’
A dreadful pain pierced Wolfgang’s back beneath the shoulder blade; he felt the pang of it drive through his heart, his breast . . . ‘Gertruda—beloved!’ he gasped, then choked
and died.
‘Ah, it is done—thanks, kindly Father—Wolfgang, husband—lover!’ Blood stopped her words as the sharp sword point drove into her heart.
Friar Hilderbrandt had been praying by Gertruda’s grave. Tales of the werewolf ravaging the countryside had come to him, but he had less fear of the goblin brute than he had of the Devil; which was none at all. For despite his gluttony and fondness for the tankard, Friar Hilderbrandt was a man of faith, believing with implicit confidence in the goodness of his God, and regarding Him much as a child regards his father. God was his shield and buckler in assaults by the enemy, his ever-present help in time of trouble, and would not forsake him if he came in conflict with a demon member of that demon host not yet made fast in hell. So Friar Hilderbrandt walked serenely—albeit with somewhat of a waddle—alone through wood and field and darksome, stone-locked mountain pass, and never was molested by man or beast or devil.
All through the night he had been watching at the bed of one who passed from transient life to life eternal, and the silver pallor that betokens coming dawn was spreading in the east ere he reached Gertruda’s sepulcher. Now, as he finished his orisons and with some effort got up from his knees, far away, but drawing nearer by the second, came the hunting-call of a lone wolf.
‘Laus Deo!’ said Friar Hilderbrandt, and crossed himself. Then he set off down the road toward the village. He did not hurry, nor did he glance back. He had commended himself to divine protection. The affair was Heaven’s, not his.
But the howling grew nearer. Across the field he saw the wolf come charging, and stopped in his tracks. He could not outrun a puppy, much less a full-grown wolf. Let whatever was to come betide him here and save him the exertion of a useless flight.
Night Creatures Page 13