I waited breathlessly. Would she—— Before I framed the question in my mind I had its answer. She was driving him around the building in a never-ceasing circle, lashing, scourging, beating him without surcease or mercy.
Again it seemed that time hung in abeyance. How long the beater and the beaten trod their dreadful via Dolorosa I had no idea. I do know that it seemed an age before I heard the far-off crowing of a cock and, fainter still, but silver-sweet in the cool summer morning air, the echo of our bugles sounding reveille in Coblenz.
The beaten man turned in his path and ran into the chapel, paused to genuflect before the altar, staggered drunkenly across the flagstones to the tomb, and fell across it. For a long, shuddering moment he lay there, his arms outstretched across the graven image of himself, then raised his swollen, lash-bruised face. I noticed with a start there was no trace of priest or bride left in the sanctuary.
The woman dropped her scourge and took the young man’s cheeks between her crushed and mangled hands. For just a moment she stood thus, then bent and pressed a kiss upon his bloody, swollen lips. Her loosened hair fell round their faces, hiding them from me as with a cloak, and I turned my eyes away. Dreadful as the agony of scourging was, the kiss—this embrace of renunciation and farewell—seemed infinitely more so.
The sky was brightening swiftly. In a branch a sleepy bird awoke and scolded musically. I turned again toward the chapel. It was empty. On its bed of weathered stone the statue of Junker Gustav Hohenneitschütz lay with folded hands imploring mercy. The fragment of his epitaph still showed against the moss-discolored granite—‘orate pro ejs—pray for them’—but of ghostly knight and ghostly peasant maid, of spectral priest and phantom bride there was no sign nor trace.
‘Lord, what a nightmare that was!’ I exclaimed.
But even as I said it I knew that I had not dreamed; that what I’d seen had been no dream-bound vision of a sleeping man, but something terrible, inexorable, and tragic. ‘He was wicked, foolish, headstrong, now he bears a dreadful penalty!’ the caretaker had said of the Junker Gustav Hohenneitschütz.
Why? I wondered as I tramped along the road to Coblenz. Who was he and what was his crime? Where did the peasant girl fit in? Why did she scourge his tortured ghost around the chapel from the fall of dusk till cock-crow, and, most of all I wondered, why did she embrace him when the terrible ordeal was done?
‘Hi, Lug!’ apKern called to me as I sat in the lobby of the Monopole digesting a so-so dinner and wondering what was happening in Brooklyn right then. The Dodgers would be playing out at Ebbets Field, and——
‘Hullo yourself,’ I answered none too cordially. apKern had recently been transferred to the Office of Civil Affairs where there was more to do than at the provost marshal’s, and as a result both his leaves and his attentions to the little buck-toothed British girl at Cologne had been curtailed. I had troubles of my own and didn’t want to spend an evening listening to his grievances, but his next words made me move over and make a place for him beside me on the lounge:
‘I think I know somebody who can shed some light on the mystery of the haunted chapel you’ve been deviling everyone about these last two weeks.’
His accusation wasn’t accurate. I wasn’t going to be fool enough to tell them I’d seen ghosts at Castle Hohenneitschütz—they’d have me up before the psychiatrist so fast my head would swim, and the best thing I could hope for was a discharge for mental disability if I let that story out—but I had made inquiries about the Hohenneitschütz legend, and probably had been a nuisance with my questions. ‘Who is it?’ I demanded, tendering him my cigarette case. apKern was chronically just out of cigarettes. I knew he’d stay with me as long as mine held out.
‘Cove from the Benedictine convent down by the Castor Platz, sort o’ sub-prior or something, named Brother Ambrose. He comes into the O.C.A. ’bout every ten days, and the other day I got to talkin’ with him. Seems like the Night-Shirt family’s chapel was supplied by Benedictine fraters in the Middle Ages, and most of their records are down in his convent library. He wasn’t very talkative. Said there was a curse on ’em, and that there chapel is an evil place, ’specially on Midsummer Eve.’ He gave me an appraising look. ‘That would have been about the time you visited the ruins, wouldn’t it?’
I nodded. ‘And——’ I prompted, as he took a second cigarette, but made no move to continue his narrative.
‘Well, that’s about all, I guess. This Brother Ambrose feller seems to have the dope on the old chapel, so, if you’d like, I’ll make a date for you to visit him next time he comes in. He’s due tomorrow or the next day to get his fuel order renewed.’
‘apKern,’ I asked, ‘how would you like a nice, long brandy-soda?’ Two minutes later we were in the bar and I was ordering ‘Zwei branntwein.’
One doesn’t bribe a frater of the Order of Saint Benedict, but I did something very like it when I called at the old convent by the Castor Platz two days later. Tobacco was at a premium in Germany those days, and I’d stopped at the Q.M. for a big tin of Prince Albert on the off chance that Brother Ambrose, like most of his countrymen, was addicted to pipe-smoking. The smile that lit the little cleric’s face when I presented him with the gift was a reward all by itself. Even if he knew nothing about the Hohenneitschütz curse, I was repaid, I felt, as I watched while he tamped long-cut in his china pipe and set it glowing like a little furnace.
But virtue was not be its reward alone that time. ‘Ach, yes,’ he answered in his oddly thick English, ‘those Hohenneitschütz, I know him—as who does not around these parts? He was a very wicked family, false to his vows of knighthood, false to his plighted word, false to everything. But ah, Herr Leutnant, he has paid a dreadful penalty! On each Midsummer Eve——’
‘I know,’ I shot the interruption at him. ‘I was in the chapel of the Hohenneitschütz on Midsummer Eve.’
If I had suddenly announced that I was Mephistopheles or Martin Luther’s shade, he could not have been taken more completely aback. ‘You—the Herr Leutnant was in that devil-ridden, accursed place on Saint John’s Eve?’ he faltered. ‘Did you—did the Herr Leutnant see——’
‘Natürlich. I saw the priest and bride and bridegroom, I saw the peasant maiden’s ghost when she came in to stop the wedding; I saw her scourge him from the altar and around the chapel——’
‘Heilige Maria!’ the little frater blessed himself fearfully. ‘Then it is truly true; it is not merely legend—there are such things!’
‘It’s true enough,’ I answered grimly. ‘I wasn’t asleep and I wasn’t drunk that night. On the contrary I was very wide awake and alert, expecting——’ I broke off lamely. After all, it was hardly courteous to tell him that I’d been on the lookout for some of his countrymen, expecting to be wiped out but resolved to take a few of them along for company. ‘It seemed to me that I was witnessing the re-enactment of a scene from one of those old tragic dramas,’ I completed. ‘I’ve heard it said there is a theory that stones and wood and similar insensate matter have power to absorb vibrations from human beings laboring under great emotion, and give them off again, like tableaux vivants, when a person emotionally attuned to them comes near. I was very much keyed up that night, and possibly that would explain why I perceived that scene, but why should it be there to see? Do you know the history of the Hohenneitschütz legend—or should I say their curse? Can you explain what that scene meant?’
He bowed his head in silence a moment, pulling at his pipe with long, thoughtful puffs. ‘All my life—and I am nearing seventy—I’ve heard the legend of the Hohenneitschütz, now from this one, now from that. In our archives we have documents which tell of it, but I have never read them through. You read Latin, Herr Leutnant, nicht wahr?’
‘Not well enough to translate mediaeval parchments, Father.’
‘Jawohl, I might have known as much. The classics are neglected in the schools these days. Never mind. I will read the records for you and inscribe an English translation——�
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‘But that would take you weeks, months, perhaps,’ I objected.
‘When time hangs heavy on an old man’s hands he does not count the minutes, my son,’ he assured me with a smile. ‘You have been most generous to me’—he tapped the tall red canister of tobacco affectionately. ‘Cannot I do you some small favor in return?’
Whether Brother Ambrose had done me a favor was a moot point I thought as I looked at the great sheaf of manuscript the lay brother had brought me. Ambrose was a scholar with the Teuton’s love of detail. He made a literal translation of the records of the Hohenneitschütz, and though it was informative to read their armory contained sallets—which, I gleaned, were a form of helmet something like our own tin hats—for a thousand men, five hundred arcubalists, and enough arrows to supply them for a month-long siege, it was certainly not helpful in determining the reason for the family curse. Also, though he had written English in a lovely, clerkly hand which was almost wholly undecipherable, he had been thinking in German, with the result that his nouns and pronouns bunched at the beginning of his sentences, the adjectives were strung along the middle, and the verbs packed in close order at the end.
It was a long time before I came to the meat of it, but when I’d winnowed out the chaff of cluttering data I was in possession of a story as poetical as that of Faust or Tannhaüser and as tragically appealing as the song of Tristan and Isolde or Troilus and Cressida.
The Roman Empire of the East and the proud Hohenneitschütz family found oblivion the same year, it appeared, for it was on a lovely April evening in the year of Our Lord 1453 that the young Graf Gustav von Hohenneitschütz und von Ketlar rode the white horse he had jestingly named Weiss Tod—Pale Death—through the lush alleys of the wide greenwood that rimmed his father’s castle round on every side.
It was the season which the Germans call vorfrüling—the forespring—the spring-before-the-spring—and the newly budded trees were bright with shining green leaves or frothy with a snow of blossoms. A soft breeze played among the branches and the black soil had a sweet, warm smell. In the meadows calves and lambs skipped playfully, the birds were carrolling as they sought straws and twigs to build their nests, and Gustav, being young and heart-whole and romantic, felt the urge for song well in his throat resistlessly as the sap forcing its way through the tree trunks.
‘The minstrels sing of a jovial king;
A wonderful king was he——’
he raised his voice in the old lied, then broke the song abruptly as he reined Pale Death back almost on his haunches. Unmindful of the charger’s hoofs a flock of geese had debouched into the wood path, waddling majestically in long single file, pausing now and then to stretch their serpentine necks down to nibble at a sprig of new, fresh grass, then taking up their march again with slow, unhurried rhythm.
‘Herr Gott,’ the young knight swore, ‘is my road to be blocked by these coufounded, squawking—ah, mädchen, I am sorry if I startled you!’
Shepherding her toddling charges with a long thin wand of peeled willow, came the goose-girl, and at the sight of her young Gustav’s annoyed frown gave way to a quick smile.
She was a pretty thing, this peasant girl, straight and slender as a reed beside the river’s rim, yet with a sweetly rounded figure whose desirability not even the almost shapeless smock she wore could quite conceal. Her hair was dark brown, clustering round her white brow in a coronel of loose curls like the tendrils of new grape vines, then sweeping down each side of her face and cataracting over her shoulders until it nearly reached her waist. Her skin was very white and smooth, her lips as red as the rose Gabriel brought Our Lady. Her eyes were dark blue, blue as distant hills before rain, blue as midnight skies in winter. Round her head, as it had been a crown, she wore a chaplet of wild flowers, her one-piece smock of coarse blue linen was bound in at her small waist by a rough cord of plaited hemp. Her arms and feet were bare, but as he looked down he thought that he never had seen such white, slim, shapely feet; her insteps were two lines of arching loveliness, her ankles were as sharply cut as those of a blood-mare, her heels were narrow and the long, straight toes that never had been cramped by rigid shoes were like the fingers of a high-born lady’s hands. Certes, this were loveliness enough for anyone upon a soft spring evening.
The dark blue eyes moved up to his, demurely bright. ‘I am not feared, my lord,’ she told him softly, ‘only startled at thy advent. I had not thought there was another in the grünwald at this hour of the day, for the sun is sinking quickly, and with darkness comes those whom good Christians should not see——’
‘Do they, i’ faith?’ he answered laughing. ‘And who might they be, pretty one?’
‘Hast thou forgotten this is May Eve, Herr? It is the feast of Saint Walpurga, and tonight is Walpurgis-Nacht when the olden gods who were but devils and the witches who adore them gather for their unclean rites in secret places——’
His laughter cut her sober warning short. ‘Well spoken, mädchen! There be trolls and devils and all sorts of wicked beings in the wood this night, and here is he who will defend thee from them all. ’Fore God, I’ll bring thee to thy father’s cot unharmed, though twenty times ten thousand witches barred our way!’
She signed herself with the cross as he spoke and turned serious eyes on him reprovingly. ‘It is not well to speak thus lightly of the hosts of evil, good my lord. Thy challenge might be heard——’
He had dismounted from Pale Death and now he bent and took one of her slim feet in his hand. ‘Up with thee, pretty one,’ he made, and raised her to the saddle. ‘Thou shalt ride like any princess to thy home, and I shall be thy courier and knight-defender.’
Well-favored as the maiden was her escort matched her beauty. He was well made, though somewhat inclined to the lankiness of youth, with long fair hair and apple-cheeks and wide blue eyes that verged on gray. If his chin receded somewhat, the small beard of flaxen hair obscured the failing, and he walked with the slight swagger that denoted all his kind and kin, for he was of the herzogs, noblest blood of the empire, and answerable to no one but the church, the kaiser, and his father for his actions.
His apparel matched her person: a shirt of fine white linen, hose of brown silk, high boots of Spanish leather, and a doublet of brown satin slashed with gold and laced with gold-tipped points. A closely-fitting silk cap with an eagle’s feather in its crown topped his fair hair, from his shoulders hung a heel-length cloak of bright red velvet fastened with a golden clasp at the throat.
‘How art thou called?’ he asked as he paced by her side, one hand upon the saddle-bow, the other steadying her in her seat. ‘Methinks ’twould take a name of wondrous sweetness to do justice to thy beauty, little forest-girl.’
‘My name is Else, an’ it please your lordship,’ she responded softly. There was no need to ask if she had any other, for he knew well she did not. Peasants, like the beasts they drove to labor in the fields, had no family designations, nor would they for some centuries to come.
‘It pleases me most excellently well,’ he assured her. ‘Knowest thou who I am?’
‘Yea, thou art the young Graf Gustav who one day will be our lord and master,’ she replied, and a slow flush mounted to her cheeks and brow.
‘One day, quotha? Am I not thy lord and master now mädchen?’
She blushed still more violently, and he had to strain his ears to catch her whispered answer. ‘Aye, lord, as God is to thee so art thou to poor Else.’
‘Well spoken. And thou wilt obey me in all things, as becomes a peasant maiden when her lord commands?’
‘Thou knowest it——’
‘Then I command thee, as my serf and thing and chattel, to embrace me straightway, fairest Else.’
She put her hands upon his shoulders and leant downward till her lips touched his. The fragrance of her hair swirled round him, her arms clasped round his neck, he felt the quickening of her breath against his mouth—— ‘Bei Gott,’ he muttered in a voice gone suddenly as hard and
sharp as honed steel, ‘thou art the loveliest thing in all the world, my Else,’ and swung her down from the saddle.
The chronicle does not record their idyl, but it is not hard to picture it. There were other meetings in the grünwald when the moonstained trees and shrubbery stood about them like a sentinel host, meetings when he held her close against his heart and they rehearsed the aching sweetness of their first kiss. The owl and the fledermaus—the little, harmless, cheeping bat—heard their love vows, the stoat and weasel and the little timid rabbits that made nests deep in the wildwood watched them from the covert of the flowering thorn bush. ‘Ich liebe dich—I love thee, little Else of the greenwood,’ he told her not once but a hundred times each night, and she, struck speechless by his condescension—breathless with adoration as the daughters of men when the sons of God first looked on them and found them fair—could not say anything at all. But her sweet bare arms showed whiter than the apple blossoms drifting from the forming fruit as they crept tightening round his neck and drew him to the yielding sweetness of her lips, the tender warmth and pulsing of her bosom.
We know the Junker Gustav’s breed, its stiff-necked arrogancy, its pride of blood and family, its blind worship of caste. But she was a woman, sweet and young and lovely as a half-blown rose. He was a man, young, impetuous, and sanguine. What else could matter in the softness of the scented woodland summer night? His heart, his blood, his youth were in league to defeat his pride. So, almost but not quite inexplicably, we find them standing hand in hand upon the packed-earth floor of the hut where a peasant village priest had his rectory while they repeated after the brown-cassocked religious the sacramental words that made their twain one flesh.
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