My Lady Rotha: A Romance

  CHAPTER XVIII.

  A SUDDEN EXPEDITION.

  I did not after that suffer the grass to grow under my feet. I wentout, and with my own eyes searched the fields at the back, and everyditch and water-hole. I had the loss cried in the camp, my lady on herreturn offered a reward, we sent even to the nearer villages, wepatrolled the roads, we omitted nothing that could by any chance availus. Yet evening fell, and night, and found us still searching; and nonearer, as far as we could see, to success. The child was gonemysteriously. Left to play alone for two minutes in the stillness ofthe afternoon, he had vanished as completely as if the earth hadopened and swallowed him.

  Baffled, we began to ask, while Marie sat pale and brooding in acorner, or now and again stole to the door to listen, who could havetaken him and with what motive? There were men and women in the campcapable of anything. It seemed probable to some that these had stolenthe child for the sake of his clothes. Others suggested witchcraft.But in my own mind, I leaned to neither of these theories. Isuspected, though I dared not utter the thought, that the general haddone it. Without knowing how much of the story Count Hugo had confidedto him, I took it as certain that the father had said enough toapprise him of the boy's value. And this being so, what more probablethan that the general, whom I was prepared to credit with anyatrocity, had taken instant steps to possess himself of the child?

  My lady said and did all that was kind on the occasion, and for a fewhours it occupied all our thoughts. At the end of that time, however,about sunset, General Tzerclas rode to the door, and with him, to mysurprise, the Waldgrave. They would see her, and detained her so longthat when she sent for me on their departure, I was sore on Marie's,account, and inclined to blame her as indifferent to our loss. But asingle glance at her face put another colour on the matter. I saw thatsomething had occurred to excite and disturb her.

  'Martin,' she said earnestly, 'I am going to employ you on an errandof importance. Listen to me and do not interrupt me. General Tzerclasstarts to-morrow with the larger part of his forces to intercept oneof Wallenstein's convoys, which is expected to pass twelve leagues tothe south of this. There will be sharp fighting, I am told, and mycousin, the Waldgrave Rupert, is going. He is not at present--I mean,I am afraid he may do something rash. He is young,' my lady continuedwith dignity and a heightened colour, 'and I wish he would stay here.But he will not.'

  I guessed at once that this affair of the convoy was the businesswhich had brought Count Hugo to the camp. And I was beginning toconsider what advantage we might make of it, and whether the general'sabsence might not afford us both a pretext for departure and theopportunity, when my lady's next words dispelled my visions.

  'I want you,' she said slowly, 'to go with him. He has a high opinionof you, and will listen to you.'

  'The general?' I cried in amazement.

  'Who spoke of him?' she exclaimed angrily. 'I said the WaldgraveRupert. I wish you to go with him to see that he does not run anyunnecessary risk.'

  I coughed dryly, and stood silent.

  'Well?' my lady said with a frown. 'Do you understand?'

  'I understand, my lady,' I answered firmly; 'but I cannot go.'

  '_You cannot go!_ when I send you!' she murmured, unable, I think, tobelieve her ears. 'Why not, sirrah? Why not, if you please?'

  'Because my first duty is to your excellency,' I stammered. 'And aslong as you are here, I dare not--and will not leave you!'

  'As long as I am here!' she retorted, red with anger and surprise.'You have still that maggot in your head, then? By my soul, MasterMartin, if we were at home I would find means to drive it out! But Iknow what it is! What you really want is to stay by the side of thatpuling girl! Oh, I am not blind,' my lady continued viciously, seeingthat she had found at last the way to hurt me. 'I know what has beengoing on.'

  'But Count Leuchtenstein----' I muttered.

  'Don't bring him in!' my lady cried, in such a voice that I dared gono farther. 'General Tzerclas has told me of him. I understand what isbetween them, and you do not. Presumptuous booby!' she continued,flashing at me a glance of scorn, which made me tremble. 'But I willthwart you! Since you will not leave me, I will go myself. I will go,but Mistress Marie shall stay here till we return.'

  'But if there is to be fighting?' I said humbly.

  'Ah! So you have changed your note, have you!' she cried triumphantly.I had seldom seen her more moved. 'If there is to be fighting'--shemocked my tone. 'Well, there is to be, but I shall go. And now do yougo, and have all ready for a start at daybreak, or it will be theworse for you! One of my women will accompany me. Fraulein Anna willstay here with your--other mistress!'

  She pointed to the door as she spoke, and once more charged me to beready; and I went away dazed. Everything seemed on a sudden to beturned upside down--the child lost, my lady offended, the Waldgravedesperate, the general in favour. It was hard to see which way my dutylay. I would fain have stayed in the camp a day to make farther searchfor the child, but I must go. I would gladly have got clear of thecamp, but we were to travel in the general's company. As to leavingMarie, my lady wronged me. I knew of no special danger whichthreatened the girl, nor any reason why she should not be safe whereshe was. If the child were found she would be here to receive it.

  On the other hand, there was my discovery of the beggar's fate, fromthe immediate consequences of which Count Hugo's arrival had saved me.This sudden expedition should favour me there; the general would havehis hands full of other things, and Ludwig be hard put to it to gainhis ear. I might now, if I pleased, discover the matter to my lady,and open her eyes. But I had no proof; even if time permitted, and Icould take the Countess to that part of the camp, I could not be surethat the body was still there. And to accuse General Tzerclas of sucha thing without proof would be to court my own ruin.

  While I was puzzling over this, I saw the Waldgrave outside, and,thinking to profit by his advice, I went to meet him. But I found himin a peculiar mood, talking, laughing, and breaking into snatches ofsong; all with a wildness and _abandon_ that frightened while theypuzzled me. He laughed at my doubts, and walking up and down, whilehis servants scoured his breast-piece and cleaned his harness by thelight of a lantern, he persisted in talking of nothing but theexpedition before us and the pleasure of striking a blow or two.

  'We are rusting, man!' he cried feverishly, clapping me on the back.'You have the rust on you yet, Martin But--

  "Clink, clink, clink! Sword and stirrup and spur! Ride, ride, ride, Fast as feather or fur!"

  To-morrow or the next day we will have it off.'

  'You have heard about the child, my lord,' I said gravely, trying tobring him back to the present.

  'I have heard that Von Werder, the dullest man at a board I ever met,turns out to be Hugo of Leuchtenstein, whom God preserve!' he answeredrecklessly. 'And that your girl's brat of a brother turns out to behis brat! And no sooner is the father found than the son is lost; andthat both have gone as mysteriously as they came. But Himmel! man,what's the odds when we are going to fight to-morrow! What compareswith that? Ca! ca! steady and the point!'

  I thought of Marie; and it seemed to me that there were other thingsin the world besides fighting. For love makes a man both brave and acoward. But the argument would scarcely have been to the Waldgrave'smind, and, seeing that he would neither talk nor hear reason, I lefthim and went away to make my preparations.

  But on the road next day I noticed that though now and then he flashedinto the same wild merriment, he was on the whole as dull as he hadbeen gay. Our party rode at the head of the column, that we mightescape the dust and have the best of the road, the general and hisprincipal officers accompanying us and leaving the guidance of themarch to inferiors. Our force consisted of about six hundred horse andfour hundred foot; and as we were to return to the camp, we took withus neither sutlers nor ordinary baggage, while camp
followers wereinterdicted under pain of death. Yet the amount of our impedimentaastonished me. Half a dozen sumpter horses were needed to carry thegeneral's tent and equipage; his officers required a score more. Theammunition for the foot soldiers, who were sufficiently burdened withtheir heavy matchlocks, provided farther loads; and in fine, whilesupposed to be marching in light fighting order, we had something likea hundred packhorses in our train. Then there were men to lead them,and cooks and pages and foot-boys and the general's band, and but thatour way lay through woodland tracks and by-routes, I verily believethat we should have had his coach and dwarf also.

  The sight of all these men and horses in motion was so novel andexhilarating, and the morning air so brisk, that I soon recovered frommy parting with Marie, and began to take a more cheerful view of theposition. I came near to sympathizing with my lady, whose pleasure anddelight knew no bounds. The long lines of horsemen winding through thewood, the trailing pikes and waving pennons, gratified her youthfulfancy for war; while as our march lay through the forest, she wasshocked by none of those traces of its ravages which had appalled uson first leaving Heritzburg. The general waited on her with the utmostattention, riding by her bridle-rein and talking with her by the hourtogether. Whenever I looked at them I noticed that her eye was brightand her colour high, and I guessed that he was unfolding the plan ofambition which I was sure he masked under a cold and reserveddemeanour. Alas! I could think of nothing more likely to take mylady's fancy, no course more sure to enlist her sympathy and interest.But I was helpless; I could do nothing. And for the Waldgrave, if hestill had any power he would not use it.

  My lady gave him opportunities. Several times I saw her try to drawhim into conversation, and whenever General Tzerclas left her for awhile she turned to the younger man and would have talked to him. Buthe seemed unable to respond. When he was not noisily gay, he rode likea mute. He seemed half sullen, half afraid; and she presently gave himup, but not before her efforts had caught Tzerclas' eye. The generalhad been called for some purpose to the rear of the column, and on hisreturn found the two talking, my lady's attitude such that it was veryevident she was the provocant. He did not try to resume his place, butfell in behind them; and riding there, almost, if not quite, withinearshot, cast such ugly glances at them as more than confirmed me inthe belief that in his own secret way he loved my mistress; and that,after a more dangerous fashion than the Waldgrave.

  The general waited on her with the utmost attention,riding by her bridle-rein ...]

  This was late in the afternoon, and another hour brought us whomarched at the head of the column to our camping-ground for the night.We lay in a rugged, wooded valley, not very commodious, but chosenbecause only one high ridge divided it from a second valley, throughwhich the main road and the river had their course. Our instructionswere that the convoy, which was bound for Wallenstein's army thenmarching on Nuremberg, would pass through this second valley some timeduring the following day; but until the hour came for making theproper dispositions, all persons in our force were forbidden to mountthe intervening ridge under pain of death. We had even to do withoutfires--lest the smoke should betray our presence--and for this onenight lay under something like the strict discipline which I hadexpected to find prevailing in a military camp. The only fire that waspermitted cooked the general's meal, which he shared with my lady andthe Waldgrave and the principal officers.

  Even so the order caused trouble. The pikemen and musketeers did notcome in till an hour before midnight, when they trudged into campdusty and footsore and murmuring at their leaders. When, in thisstate, they learned that fires were not to be lighted, disgust grewrapidly into open disobedience. On a sudden, in half a dozen quartersat once, flames flickered up, and the camp, dark before, becamepeopled in a moment with strange forms, whose eighteen-foot weaponsand cumbrous headpieces flung long shadows across the valley.

  We had lain down to rest, but at the sound of the altercation and thevarious cries of 'Pikes! Pikes!' and 'Mutiny!' which broke out, wecame out of our lairs in the bracken to learn what was happening.Calling young Jacob and three or four of the Heritzburg men to myside, I ran to my lady to see that nothing befell her in theconfusion. The noise had roused her, and we found her at the door ofher tent looking out. The newly-kindled fires, flaming and cracklingon the sloping sides of the valley, lit up a strange scene ofdisorder--of hurrying men and plunging horses, for the alarm hadextended to the horse lines--and for a moment I thought that themutiny might spread and cut the knot of our difficulties, or whelm usall in the same ruin.

  I had scarcely conceived the thought, when the general passed near uson his way from his tent, whence he had just been called; and at thesight my new-born hopes vanished. He was bare-headed; he carried noarms, and had nothing in his hand but a riding-switch. But the stern,grim aspect of his face, in which was no mercy and no quailing, wasworth a thousand pikes. The firelight shone on his pale, olive cheekand brooding eyes, as he went by us, not seeing us; and after that Idid not doubt what would happen, although for a moment the tumult ofoaths and cries seemed to swell rather than sink, and I saw more thanone pale-lipped officer climbing into his saddle that he might be ableto fly, if necessary.

  The issue agreed with my expectations. The heart of the disorder layin a part of the camp separated from our quarters by a brook, but nearenough in point of distance; so that we saw, my lady and all, prettyclearly what followed. For a moment, for a few seconds, during whichyou could hear a pin drop through the camp, the general stood, hislife in the balance, unarmed in the midst of armed men. But he hadthat set courage which seems to daunt the common sort and paralyse thefinger on the trigger; and he prevailed. The knaves lowered theirweapons and shrank back cowering before him. In a twinkling the fireswere beaten out by a hundred eager feet, and the general strode backto us through the silent, obsequious camp.

  He distinguished my lady standing at the door of her tent, and steppedaside. 'I am sorry that you have been disturbed, Countess,' he saidpolitely. 'It shall not occur again. I will hang up a dozen of thosehounds to-morrow, and we shall have less barking.'

  'You are not hurt?' my lady asked, in a voice unlike her own.

  He laughed, deigning no answer in words. Then he said, 'You have nofire? Camp rules are not for you. Pray have one lit.' And he went onto his tent.

  I had the curiosity to pass near it when my lady retired. I found adozen men, cuirassiers of his privileged troop, peeping and squintingunder the canvas which had been hung round the fire. I joined them andlooked; and saw him lying at length, wrapped in his cloak, reading'Caesar's Campaigns' by the light of the blaze, as if nothing hadhappened.