Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman

by Stanley J Weyman

  Everywhere the hush of expectation stirred the heart; for in the presence of that great host silence seemed a thing supernatural. As the regiment I had joined, the last to arrive, wheeled into position in the middle of the right wing, I asked one of the officers, who stood near me, if the enemy had retired.

  ‘Wait!’ he said grimly — he spoke with a foreign accent— ‘and you will see. But to what regiment do you belong, comrade?’

  ‘To none here,’ I said.

  He looked astonished, and asked me what I was doing there, then.

  I had my lips apart to answer him, when a trumpet sounded, and in an instant, all along the line, the Swedish cannon began to fire, shaking the earth and filling the air round us with smoke, that in a twinkling hid everything. This lasted for two or three minutes with a deafening noise; but as far as I could hear, the enemy were still silent. I was wondering what would happen next, and hoping that they had given up the position, when my new friend touched my arm and pointed to the front. I peered through the smoke, and saw dimly that the regiment before us, a German brigade about eight hundred strong, was moving on at a run and making for the hill. A minute elapsed, the smoke rolled between. I listened, trembling. Afterwards I learned that at the same moment two other parties sprang forward and dashed to the assault.

  Then, at last, with an ear-splitting roar that seemed to silence our guns, the enemy spoke. The hill in front, hidden the second before by smoke, became in a moment visible, lit up by a thousand darting flames. Dark masses seemed to topple down, rocks hung midway in air, and involuntarily I stepped back and uttered a cry of horror. Out of that hell of fire came an answering wail of shrieks and curses — the feeble voice of man!

  ‘Ach Gott!’ I said, trembling. My hair stood on end.

  ‘Steady, comrade, steady!’ muttered the man who had before spoken to me. ‘Presently it will be our turn.’

  He had scarcely spoken, when a man came riding along the front with his hat in his hand. He rode a white horse, and wore no back or breast, nor, as far as I could see, any armour.

  ‘Steady, Swedes, steady!’ he cried in a loud voice — he was a big, stout man with a fine presence. ‘Your time will come by-and-by. Then remember Breitenfeld!’

  It was the King of Sweden. In a moment he was gone, passing along the lines; and I drew breath again, wondering what would happen next. I had not long to wait. Men came straggling back across our front, some wounded, some helping their comrades along, all with faces ghastly under the powder-stains. And then like magic a new regiment stood before us, where the other had stood. Again the King’s guns pealed along the line, again I heard the hoarse cry ‘Vorwärts!’ waited a minute, and once more the hill seemed to be rent by the explosion. From every cave and ledge guns flashed forth, lighting up the smoke. The roar died away again — slowly, from west to east — in cries and shrieks; and presently a few men, scores where there had been hundreds, came wandering back like ghosts through the reek.

  ‘This looks ill!’ I muttered. I was no longer scared. The gunpowder was getting into my head.

  ‘Pooh!’ my friend answered. ‘This is only the beginning. It will take men to fill that gap. Wait till our turn comes.’

  By this time the Waldgrave and my errand were forgotten, and I thought only of the battle. I watched two more assaults, saw two more regiments hurl themselves vainly against the fiery breast of the hill; then came a diversion. As the scattered fragments of the last came reeling back, a sudden roar of many voices startled me. The ground seemed to shake, and right across our front came a charge of horse — out of the smoke and into the smoke! In an instant our stragglers were trodden down, cut up, and swept away, before our eyes and within shot of us.

  The men round me uttered shouts of rage. The line swayed, there was an instant’s confusion. Then a harsh voice cried above the tumult, ‘Steady, Gothlanders, steady! Pikes forward! Blow your matches! Steady! steady!’ and in a twinkling, with a crash, such as the ninth wave makes when it falls on a pebbly beach, the horse were on us. I had a glimpse through the smoke of rearing breasts, and floating manes, and grinning teeth, and of men’s faces grim and white, held low behind the steel; and I struck out blindly with my half-pike. Still they came on, and something hit me on the chest and I fell: but instantly a clash of long pikes met over my body, and I scrambled to my feet unhurt! Then a dozen spurts of flame leapt out round me, and the horsemen seemed to melt away.

  Into the smoke; but before I had time to know that they were gone, they had wheeled and were back again like the wind, led by a man on a black horse, who came on so gallantly to the very pike-points, that I thought it must be Pappenheim himself. He wore the black breastplate and helmet of Pappenheim’s cuirassiers; and it was only when his horse reared up on end within a pike’s length of me, and he fired his pistol among us, wounding two men, that I espied under the helmet the stern face and flashing eyes of Tzerclas. He recognised me at the same moment, and hurling his empty pistol in my face, tried to spur his horse over me. But the long pikes meeting before me kept him off, his men vanished, some falling, some flying, and in a moment he stood almost alone.

  Even then his courage did not fail him. Scornfully eyeing our line from end to end, he hurled a bitter taunt at us, and wheeling his horse coolly, prepared to ride off. I think that we should have let him go, in pure admiration of his courage. But a wounded man on whom he trod houghed the horse with his sword. In a moment he was down, and two men running out of the line, fixed him to the earth with their pikes.

  I confess, for myself, I would have spared him for his courage; and I ran to him to see if he was dead. He was not quite gone. He recognised me, and tried to speak. Forgetting the dangers round me, the uproar and tumult, the dim figures of men and horses flying through the smoke, I knelt down by him.

  ‘What is it?’ I said. After all, he was my lady’s cousin.

  ‘Tell him — tell him — the child! He will never get it!’ he breathed. With each word the blood-stained froth rose to his lips, and he clutched my hand in a cold grip.

  He strove to say something more, and raised himself with a last effort on his elbow. ‘Tell her,’ he gasped, his dark face distorted— ‘tell her — I — I — —’

  No more. His eyes turned, his head fell back. He was dead. What he would have said of my lady, whether he would have sent her a message or what, no man will know here. But I fancied it like the man, who might have been great had he ever given a thought to others, that his last word was— “I.”

  His head was scarcely down before I had to run back within the pikes. A fresh charge of horse swept over him, we received them with a volley; they broke, and a Swedish regiment, the West Gothland horse, rode them down. Meanwhile our manœuvres had brought us insensibly into the first line. I found that we were close under the hill, and I was not surprised when a handful of horse whirled up to us out of the mêlée, and one, disengaging himself from the others, rode along our front. It was the King. His face was stained with powder, his horse was bleeding, a ball had ripped up his boot; it was said that he had been placing and pointing cannon with his own hands. But as the regiment greeted him with a hoarse cheer, he smiled as if he had been in a ball-room.

  He raised his hand for silence; such silence as could be obtained where every moment men shot off a cannon, and at no great distance a mortal combat was in progress.

  ‘Men of Gothland!’ he cried, in a clear, ringing voice, ‘it is your turn now! You are My children. Take me this hill! Be steady, strike home, flinch not! Show these Germans what you can do! The word is, God with us. Remember St. Bartholomew’s, and Forward! Forward! Forward!’

  My heart beat furiously; but there was no retreat. Rather than be left standing on the ground, I would have died there. In a moment we were moving on elbow to elbow, with a stern, heavy step. Some one struck up a Swedish psalm, and to the thunder of its rhythm we strode on — on to the very foot of the hill; on, until we reached the rough shale, and the rugged steep stood above us. Wit
h a gallant shout an officer flung his hat on to the slope, a score of Ritt-Meisters sprang forward together; and then for a moment we and all things seemed to stand still. The wood above us belched fire, the eyes were blinded, the ears stunned, rocks and stones rolled down, all creation seemed to be falling on us in fearful ruin. Men were hurled this way and that, or fell in their places, or, reeling to and fro, clutched one another. For an instant, I say, we stood still.

  But for an instant only. Then with a shout of rage the Swedes sprang forward, and grasping boughs, stumps, rocks, swung themselves up, doing such things in their fury as no cool man could do. A row of jagged stakes barred the way; men set their naked breasts against them, and others climbed over on their shoulders. Bleeding, wounded, singed, torn by splinters, all who lived climbed. To get up — up — up — higher, in face of the storm of shot and iron; up, over the bursting mines and through the smoke; up, to where they stood and butchered us, was the only instinct left.

  And we did get up — to a bastion, jutting from the hillside, where a company of picked men with pikes and three cannons waited for us behind a breastwork. They thought to stop us, and stood firm; our men were mad. Flinging themselves against the mouths of the cannon, they scaled the work in a moment, and left not one defender alive!

  God with us!

  Stern and high the shout rang out; but breath was everything, and the scarp still rose above us and the shot still tore our ranks! On! Up a torrent bed now, round one corner and another, to where we were a little out of the line of fire, and an overhanging shoulder covered us. Here we had room to take breath; and for the first time, some hope of life, of ultimate escape, entered my breast. The officer who led us — I learned afterwards that he was the great General Torstensohn — cried, ‘Well done, Swedes!’ and with the confidence of giants we were once more breasting the ascent, when a withering volley, poured in at short range, checked the head of the column. Before we could recover way, a body of pikes rushed to meet us, and in an instant, having the vantage of the ground, rolled us, still fighting desperately, down the steep. The general was swept away, the Ritt-Meisters were down. Once we rallied, but ineffectually. The enemy were reinforced, and in a moment the rout was complete.

  At the moment the tide turned and our men fell back, I happened to be against the rock-wall, in something of a niche; and the stream passed me by. I had two slight wounds, and I stood an instant, giddy and confused, taking breath. The instant showed me my comrades in the act of being slaughtered one by one, and a great horror seized me. I found no hope anywhere. Below were the cruel pikes, in a moment their savage bearers would be reascending; above were the enemy. But above, if I climbed on, I might live a little while; and in that desperate hope I scrambled out of the torrent bed and up the sheer hill on the right. Two or three saw me from the torrent bed, and fired at me; and others shouted, and began to follow. But I only pressed on, right up the scarp, which was there like the side of a house.

  A dozen times I all but fell back; still in a fever of dread I kept on. The sweat poured down me; I had no hope or aim, I thought only of the pikes behind. Presently I came to a jutting shoulder that all but overhung me; to pass it seemed to be impossible. But in my frenzy I did the impossible. I swung myself from root to root; where one stone gave, I clutched another, and yet another; I hung on with tooth and nail. I flattened myself against the rock. I heard the pursuers rail and curse, heard the bullets strike the earth round me, and then in a moment I was up.

  Up; but only to come instantly on a wall crossing the steep and barring my way, and to find a dozen pikes levelled at my breast. Desperate, giving up hope at last — I had long dropped my weapon — I cried mechanically, ‘God with us!’ and threw up my arms.

  I nearly fell backwards — for what did it matter? But the men were quick. In a moment one had me by the collar. ‘And God! They were friends! They were friends, and I was saved.

  One of the first faces that I saw, as I leaned breathless against the wall, unable for the time to answer the questions that poured upon me, was the Waldgrave’s — the Waldgrave’s, with the light of battle in his eyes, a laugh of triumph on his lips. He was wounded, bandaged, blackened, his fair hair singed; but he was happy. Presently I understood why; and why I was safe and among friends.

  ‘A little earlier,’ he said — he seemed in his exaltation not a whit surprised to see me— ‘and you would have had a different reception, Martin. We only turned them out of this an hour ago!’

  All his superior officers had fallen, and his had been the voice that had cheered on the forlorn, to which he was attached — acting from the right flank — and heartened them, just when all seemed lost, to make one more effort, ending in the capture of this sconce. Joined to the mass of the hill only by a narrow neck, it commanded the enemy’s position.

  ‘We only want cannon!’ he said, and in a moment I was as one of the garrison. ‘Three guns, and the day is ours. When will they come? When will they come?’

  ‘You have sent for them?’

  ‘I have sent a dozen times.’

  And he sent as many times more; while we, a mere handful, tired and worn and famished, but every man with a hero’s thoughts, leaned against the breastwork, and gazed down into the plain, where, under the smoke, pigmy troops rushed to and fro, and Nuremberg’s fate hung in the balance. In an hour it would be night. And still no reinforcements came, no cannon.

  Thrice the enemy tried to drive us out. But the neck was narrow, and, pressed along their front by three assaults, they came on half-heartedly and fell back lightly; and we held it. In the mean time, it became more and more clear that elsewhere the day was going against us. Until night fell, and through long hours of darkness, forlorn after forlorn was flung against the heights — in vain. Regiment after regiment, the core of the Swedish army, came on undaunted, only to be repulsed with awful loss; with the single exception of the Waldgrave’s little sconce not a foot of the hill was captured.

  About nine o’clock reinforcements reached us, and some food, but no guns. Two hours later the King drew sullenly back into his lines, and the attack ceased. Even then we looked to see the fight resumed with the dawn; we looked still for victory and revenge. We could not believe that all was over. But towards three o’clock in the morning rain fell, rendering the slopes slippery and impassable; and with the first flush of sunrise came an order from Prince Bernard directing us to withdraw.

  Perhaps the defeat fell as lightly on the Waldgrave as on any man, though to him it was a huge disappointment. For he alone of all had made his footing good. I thought that it was that which made him look so cheerful; but while the rank and file were falling in, he came to me.

  ‘Well, Martin,’ he said. ‘We are both veterans now.’

  I laughed. The rain had ceased. The sun was getting up, and the air was fresh. Far off in the plain the city sparkled with a thousand gems. I thought of Marie, I thought of life, and I thanked God that I was alive.

  ‘I have an errand for you,’ he continued, a laugh in his eyes. ‘Come and see what we took yesterday, besides this sconce.’

  At the back of the work were two low huts, that had perhaps been guardrooms or officers’ quarters. He led the way into one, bending his head as he passed under the low lintel.

  ‘An odd place,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, my lord.’

  ‘Yes, but I mean — an odd place for what I found here,’ he rejoined. ‘Look, man.’

  There were two low bunks in the hut, and on these and on the floor lay a medley of soldiers’ cloaks, pouches, weapons, and ammunition. There was blood on the one wall and the door was shattered, and in a corner, thrown one on another, were two corpses. The Waldgrave took no heed of these, but stepped to the corner bunk and drew away a cloak that lay on it. Something — the sound in that place scared me as a cannon-shot would not have — began to wail. On the bed, staring at us between tears and wonder, lay a child.

  ‘So!’ I said, and stared at it.

  ‘Do you k
now it?’ the Waldgrave asked.

  ‘Know it? No,’ I answered.

  ‘Are you sure?’ he replied, smiling. ‘Look again.’

  ‘Not I!’ I said. ‘How did it come here? A child! A baby! It is horrible.’

  He shrugged his shoulders. ‘We found it in this hut; in that bed. A man to whom we gave quarter said it was — —’

  ‘No!’ I shouted.

  ‘Yes,’ he answered, nodding.

  ‘Tzerclas’ child! Count Leuchtenstein’s child! Do you mean it?’ I cried.

  He nodded. ‘Tzerclas’ child, the man said. The other’s child, I guess. Nay, I am certain. It knows your girl’s name.’

  ‘Marie’s?’

  The Waldgrave nodded. ‘Take it up,’ he said. ‘And take charge of it.’

  But I only stared at it. The thing seemed too wonderful to be true. I told the Waldgrave of Tzerclas’ death, and of what he had muttered about the child.

  ‘Yes, he was a clever man,’ the Waldgrave answered. ‘But, you see, God has proved too clever for him. Come, take it, man.’

  I took it. ‘I had better carry it straight to the Count’s quarters?’ I said.

  The Waldgrave paused, looked away, then looked at me. ‘No,’ he said at last, and slowly, ‘take it to Lady Rotha. Let her give it to him.’

  I understood him, I guessed all he meant; but I made no answer, and we went out together. The rain was still in the air, but the sky was blue, the distance clear. The spire of the distant city shone like my lady’s amethysts. Below us the dead lay in thousands. But we were alive.

  CHAPTER XXXVI.

  A WINGLESS CUPID.

  That was a dreary procession that a little before noon on the 25th of August wound its way back into Nuremberg. The King, repulsed but not defeated, remained in his camp beyond the Rednitz, and with trumpets sounding and banners displayed, strove vainly to tempt his wily antagonist into the plain. Those who returned on this day, therefore, carrying with them the certain news of ill-fortune, were the wounded and the useless, a few prisoners, two or three envoys, half a dozen horse-dealers, and a train of waggons bearing crippled and dying men to the hospital.