The Red Axe Read online

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  THE RED AXE

  By S.R. Crockett

  1900

  CONTENTS

  I. DUKE CASIMIR RIDES LATE II. THE LITTLE PLAYMATE COMES HOME III. THE RED AXE OF THE WOLFMARK IV. THE PRINCESS HELENE V. THE BLOOD-HOUNDS ARE FED VI. DUKE CASIMIR'S FAMILIAR VII. I BECOME A TRAITOR VIII. AT THE BAR OF THE WHITE WOLF IX. A HERO CARRIES WATER IN THE SUN X. THE LUBBER FIEND XI. THE VISION IN THE CRYSTAL XII. EYES OF EMERALD XIII. CHRISTIAN'S ELSA XIV. SIR AMOROUS IS PLEASED WITH HIMSELF XV. THE LITTLE PLAYMATE SETTLES ACCOUNTS XVI. TWO WOMEN--AND A MAN XVII. THE RED AXE IS LEFT ALONE XVIII. THE PRIME OF THE MORNING XIX. WENDISH WIT XX. THE EARTH-DWELLERS OF NO MAN'S LAND XXI. I STAND SENTRY XXII. HELENE HATES ME XXIII. HUGO OF THE BROADAXE XXIV. THE SORTIE XXV. MINE HOST RUNS HIS LAST RACE XXVI. PRINCE JEHU MILLER'S SON XXVII. ANOTHER MAN'S COAT XXVIII. THE PRINCE'S COMPACT XXIX. LOVES ME--LOVES ME NOT XXX. INSULT AND CHALLENGE XXXI. I FIND A SECOND XXXII. THE WOLVES OF THE MARK XXXIII. THE FLIGHT OF THE LITTLE PLAYMATE XXXIV. THE GOLDEN NECKLACE XXXV. THE DECENT SERVITOR XXXVI. YSOLINDE'S FAREWELL XXXVII. CAPTAIN KARL MILLER'S SONXXXVIII. THE BLACK RIDERS XXXIX. THE FLAG ON THE RED TOWER XL. THE TRIAL OF THE WITCH XLI. THE GARRET OF THE RED TOWER XLII. PRINCESS PLAYMATE XLIII. THE TRIAL FOR WITCHCRAFT XLIV. SENTENCE OF DEATH XLV. THE MESSAGE FROM THE WHITE GATE XLVI. A WOMAN SCORNED XLVII. THE RED AXE DIES STANDING UP XLVIII. HUGO GOTTFRIED, RED AXE OF THE WOLFMARK XLIX. THE SERPENT'S STRIFE L. THE DUNGEON OF THE WOLFSBERG LI. THE NIGHT BEFORE THE MORN LII. THE HEADSMAN'S RIGHT LIII. THE LUBBER FIEND'S RETURN LIV. THE CROWNING OF DUKE OTHO LV. THE LADY YSOLINDE SAVES HER SOUL LVI. HELENA, PRINCESS OF PLASSENBURG

  THE RED AXE

  CHAPTER I

  DUKE CASIMIR RIDES LATE

  Well do I, Hugo Gottfried, remember the night of snow and moonlight whenfirst they brought the Little Playmate home. I had been sleeping--asturdy, well-grown fellow I, ten years or so as to my age--in a stomacherof blanket and a bed-gown my mother had made me before she died at thebeginning of the cold weather. Suddenly something awoke me out of mysleep. So, all in the sharp chill of the night, I got out of my bed,sitting on the edge with my legs dangling, and looked curiously at thebright streams of moonlight which crossed the wooden floor of my garret.I thought if only I could swim straight up one of them, as the motes didin the sunshine, I should be sure to come in time to the place where mymother was--the place where all the pretty white things came from--thesunshine, the moonshine, the starshine, and the snow.

  And there would be children to play with up there--hundreds of childrenlike myself, and all close at hand. I should not any longer have to situp aloft in the Red Tower with none to speak to me--all alone on the topof a wall--just because I had a crimson patch sewn on my blue-cordedblouse, on my little white shirt, embroidered in red wool on each of mywarm winter wristlets, and staring out from the front of both mystockings. It was a pretty enough pattern, too. Yet whenever one of thechildren I so much longed to play with down on the paved roadway beneathour tower caught sight of it he rose instantly out of the dust and hurledoaths and ill-words at me--aye, and oftentimes other missiles that hurteven worse--at a little lonely boy who was breaking his heart with lovinghim up there on the tower.

  "Come down and be killed, foul brood of the Red Axe!" the children cried.And with that they ran as near as they dared, and spat on the wall of ourhouse, or at least on the little wooden panel which opened inward in thegreat trebly spiked iron door of the Duke's court-yard.

  But this night of the first home-coming of the Little Playmate I awokecrying and fearful in the dead vast of the night, when all the otherchildren who would not speak to me were asleep. Then pulling on mycomfortable shoes of woollen list (for my father gave me all things tomake me warm, thinking me delicate of body), and drawing the many-patchedcoverlet of the bed about me, I clambered up the stone stairway to thevery top of the tower in which I slept. The moon was broad, like one ofthe shields in the great hall, whither I went often when the great Dukewas not at home, and when old Hanne would be busy cleaning the pavementand scrubbing viciously at the armor of the iron knights who stood onpedestals round about.

  "One day I shall be a man-at-arms, too," I said once to Hanne, "and ridea-foraying with Duke Ironteeth."

  But old Hanne only shook her head and answered:

  "Ill foraying shalt thou make, little shrimp. Such work as thine is notdone on horseback--keep wide from me, _toadchen_, touch me not!"

  For even old Hanne flouted me and would not let me approach her tooclosely, all because once I had asked her what my father did to witches,and if she were a witch that she crossed herself and trembled whenevershe passed him in the court-yard.

  Now, having little else to do, I loved to look down from the top of thetower at all times. But never more so than when there was snow on theground, for then the City of Thorn lay apparent beneath me, all spreadout like a painted picture, with its white and red roofs and white housesbright in the moonlight--so near that it seemed as though I could patevery child lying asleep in its little bed, and scrape away the snow withmy fingers from every red tile off which the house-fires had not alreadymelted it.

  The town of Thorn was the chief place of arms, and high capital city ofall the Wolfmark. It was a thriving place, too, humming with burghers andtrades and guilds, when our great Duke Casimir would let them alone;perilous, often also, with pikes and discontents when he swooped from thetall over-frowning Castle of the Wolfsberg upon their booths andguilderies--"to scotch the pride of rascaldom," as he told them when theycomplained. In these days my father was little at home, his businesskeeping him abroad all the day about the castle-yard, at secretexaminations in the Hall of Judgment, or in mysterious vaults in thedeepest parts of the castle, where the walls are eighteen feet thick, andfrom which not a groan can penetrate to the outside while the DukeCasimir's judgment was being done upon the poor bodies and souls of menand women his prisoners.

  In the court-yard, too, the dogs, fierce russet-tan blood-hounds,ravined for their fearsome food. And in these days there was plenty ofit, too, so that they were yelling and clamoring all day, and most ofthe night, for that which it made me sweat to think of. And beneath therebellious city cowered and muttered, while the burghers and theirwives shivered in their beds as the howling of Duke Casimir'sblood-hounds came fitfully down the wind, and Duke Casimir's guardsclashed arms under their windows.

  So this night I looked down contentedly enough from my perched eyrie onthe top of the Red Tower. It had been snowing a little earlier in theevening, and the brief blast had swept the sky clean, so that even thebrightest stars seemed sunken and waterlogged in the white floods ofmoonlight. Under my hand lay the city. Even the feet of the watch made noclatter on the pavements. The fresh-fallen snow masked the sound. Thekennels of the blood-hounds were silent, for their dreadful tenants wereabroad that night on the Duke's work.

  Yet, sitting up there on the Wolfsberg, it seemed to me that I coulddistinguish a muttering as of voices full of hate, like men talking lowon their beds the secret things of evil and treason. I discerneddiscontent and rebellion rumbling and brooding over the city that clear,keen night of early winter.

  Then, when after a while I turned from the crowded roofs and looked downupon the gray, far-spreading plain of the Wolfmark, to the east I sawthat which appeared like winking sparks of light moving among the blackclumps of copse and woodland which fringed the river. These wimpled andscattered, and presently grew brighter. A long howl, like that of alonely wolf on the waste when he calls to
his kindred to tell him theirwhere-abouts, came faintly up to my ears.

  A hound gave tongue responsively among the heaped mews and doggeriesbeneath the ramparts. Lights shone in windows athwart the city. Rednightcaps were thrust out of hastily opened casements. The Duke'sstanding guard clamored with their spear-butts on the uneven pavements,crying up and down the streets: "To your kennels, devil's brats, DukeCasimir comes riding home!"

  Then I tell you my small heart beat furiously. For I knew that if Ionly kept quiet I should see that which I had never yet seen--thehome-coming of our famous foraying Duke. I had, indeed, seen DukeCasimir often enough in the castle, or striding across the court-yardto speak to my father, for whom he had ever a remarkable affection. Hewas a tall, swart, black-a-vised man, with a huge hairy mole on hischeek, and long dog-teeth which showed at the sides of his mouth whenhe smiled, almost as pleasantly as those of a she-wolf looking out ofher den at the hunters.

  But I had never seen the Duke of all the Wolfmark come riding home eredaybreak, laden with the plunder of captured castles and the rout ofdeforced cities. For at such times my father would carefully lock thedoor on me, and confine me to my little sleeping-chamber--from whence Icould see nothing but the square of smooth pavement on which thechildren chalked their games, and from which they cried naughtily up atme, the poor hermit of the Red Tower. But this night my father would bewith the Duke, and I should see all. For high or low there was none inthe empty Red Tower to hinder or forbid.

  As I waited, thrilling with expectation, I heard beneath me thequickening pulse-beat of the town. The watch hurried here and there,hectoring, threatening, and commanding. But, in spite of all, mengathered as soon as their backs were turned in the alleys and streetopenings. Clusters of heads showed black for a moment in some darksomeentry, cried "U-g-g-hh!" with a hateful sound, and vanished ere thesteel-clad veterans of the Duke's guard could come upon them. It was likethe hide-and-seek which I used to play with Boldo, my blood-hound puppy,among the dusty waste of the lumber-room over the Hall of Judgment,before my father took him back to the kennels for biting Christian'sElsa, a child who lived in the lower Guard opposite to the Red Tower.

  But this was a stranger hide-and-seek than mine and Boldo's had been. ForI saw one of the men who cried hatefully to the guard stumble on theslippery ice; and lo! or ever he had time to cry out or gather himselfup, the men-at-arms were upon him. I saw the glitter of stabbing steeland heard the sickening sound of blows stricken silently in anger. Thenthe soldiers took the man up by head and heels carelessly, jesting asthey went. And I shuddered, for I knew that they were bringing him to thehorrible long sheds by the Red Tower through which the wind whistled. Butin the moonlight the patch which was left on the snow was black, not red.

  After this the crooked alleys were kept clearer, and I could see down thelong High Street of Thorn right to the Weiss Thor and the snow-whitenedpinnacles of the Palace, out of which Duke Casimir had for the time beingfrightened Bishop Peter. Black stood the Gate Port against the moonlightand the snow when I first looked at it. A moment after it had opened, anda hundred lights came crowding through, like sheep through an entry ontheir way to the shambles--which doubtless is their Hall of Judgment,where there waits for them the Red Axe of a lowlier degree.

  The lights, I say, came thronging through the gate. For though it wasmoonlight, the Duke Casimir loved to come home amid the red flame oftorches, the trail of bituminous reek, and with a dashing train of ridersclattering up to the Wolfsberg behind him, through the streets of Thorn,lying black and cowed under the shadows of its thousand gables.

  So the procession undulated towards me, turbid and tumultuous. First areckless pour of riders urging wearied horses, their sides white-fleckedabove with blown foam, and dark beneath with rowelled blood. Many of thehorsemen carried marks upon them which showed that all had not beenplunder and pleasuring upon their foray. For there were white napkins,and napkins that had once been white, tied across many brows. Helmetsswung clanking like iron pipkins from saddle-bows, and men rode wearilywith their arms in slings, drooping haggard faces upon their chests. Butall passed rapidly enough up the steep street, and tumbled with noise andshouting, helter-skelter into the great court-yard beneath me as Iwatched, secure as God in heaven, from my perch on the Red Tower.

  Then came the captives, some riding horses bare-backed, or held in placebefore black-bearded riders--women mostly these last, with faceswhite-set and strange of eye, or all beblubbered with weeping. Then camea man or two also on horseback, old and reverend. After them a draggledrabble of lads and half-grown girls, bound together with ropes and keptat a dog's trot by the pricking spears of the men-at-arms behind, whothought it a jest to sink a spear point-deep in the flesh of a man'sback--"drawing the claret wine" they called it. For these riders of DukeCasimir were every one jolly companions, and must have their merry jest.

  After the captives had gone past--and sorry I was for them--thebody-guard of Duke Casimir came riding steadily and gallantly, allgentlemen of the Mark, with their sons and squires, landed men, toweredmen, free Junkers, serving the Duke for loyalty and not servitude, thoughever "living by the saddle"--as, indeed, most of the Ritterdom and gentryof the Mark had done for generations.

  Then behind them came Duke Casimir himself. The Eastland blood he hadacquired from his Polish mother showed as he rode gloomily apart,thoughtful, solitary, behind the squared shoulders of his knights. Afterhim another squadron of riders in ghastly armor of black-and-white, withtorches in their hand and grinning skulls upon their shields, closed inthe array. The great gate of the Wolfsberg was open now, and, leavingbehind him the hushed and darkened town, the master rode into his castle.The Wolf was in his lair. But in the streets many a burgher's wifetrembled on her bed, while her goodman peered cautiously over the leadsby the side of a gargoyle, and fancied that already he heard the clamorof the partisans thundering at his door with the Duke's invitation tomeet him in the Hall of Judgment.