It was the forenoon of a Sunday, a dull, sleepy time in all countries, and one difficult to get overpast. I was as usual busy with my accoutrement, recently bought with the loan of Master Gerard. The Little Playmate was just returned from the cathedral, and had indeed scarcely laid her finery aside, when there came a loud knocking at the outer gate of the Red Tower. Then one of the guard tramped stolidly from the wicket to the door of our dwelling.

"A lady waits you at the postern," said he, and so tramped his way unceremoniously back to his post.

I knew without any need of telling that it was the Lady Ysolinde. So I rose, and hastily setting my fingers through my hair, went to the gate.

There, attended by the respectable servitor, was, as I had expected, the Lady Ysolinde.

"Good-morrow," she said very courteously to me, and I duly returned her greeting with a low obeisance of respect and welcome.

She wore a large garment, fashioned like a man's cloak, over her festal attire--which, with a hood for the head, wholly enveloped her figure and descended to her feet.

"I have come, as I promised, to see the Little Playmate." These were her first words as we paced together across the wide upper court under the wondering eyes of the men of the Duke's body-guard.

"Pray remember, Lady Ysolinde," said I, with much eagerness, "that I have as yet said nothing of the matter to Helene, and that my father only knows that I am to ride to Pla.s.senburg in order to exercise myself in the practice of arms, before becoming his a.s.sistant here in the Red Tower and in the Hall of Judgment across the way."

My visitor nodded a little impatiently. She who knew so many things, of a surety might be trusted to understand so much without being told.

In the inner doorway Helene met us. And never had it been my fortune to see the meeting of two such women. The Little Playmate had in her hands the broidered handkerchiefs, the long Flemish gloves, and the little illuminated Book of the Hours which I had given her. She had been about to lay them away together, as is the fashion of women. And when she met the Lady Ysolinde I declare that she looked almost as tall. Helene was perhaps an inch or two less in stature than her visitor, but what she lacked in height she more than made up in the supple erectness of her carriage and the vivid and extraordinary alertness of all her movements.

"Lady Ysolinde," said I, as they met with the mutually level eyeshot of women who measure one another, "this is Helene--whom, for love and kindliness, we of the Wolfsberg call the 'Little Playmate.'"

The daughter of Master Gerard impetuously threw back the gray monk's hood which shrouded the ma.s.ses of her tawny hair. She put out both hands to Helene, held her a moment at arm's-length to look into her eyes, even as she had done with me, but in a different way. Then, drawing her nearer, she leaned forward and kissed her on the brow and on both cheeks.

Now I am not ordinarily a close observer, and many things, specially things that pertain to the acts of women, pa.s.s by me unnoticed. But I saw in a moment that there was not, and never could be, more than the semblance of cordial amity between these two women.

I noted the Little Playmate instinctively quiver like a taken bird when she was thus embraced. It was, I think, the undying antipathy of Eve for Lilith, a hatred which is mostly on the side of Eve, the Mother-Woman--its place being taken by sharper and more dangerous envy in the breast of Lilith-without-the wall.

There, face to face, stood the two women who were to make my life, ruling it between them, as it were, striking it out between the impact of their natures, as underneath the blows of two smiths upon the ringing anvil the iron, hissing hot, becomes a sword or a ploughshare.

It was impossible to avoid contrasting them.

Helene, of a bodily beauty infinitely more full of temptation, bloomful with radiant health, the blush of youth and conscious loveliness upon her lips and looking out under the crisp entanglement of her hair, all simple purity and straightness of soul in the fearless innocency of her eyes; the Lady Ysolinde, deeper taught in the mysteries of existence, more conscious of power, not so beautiful, but oftentimes giving the impression of beauty more strongly than her fairer rival, compact of swift delicate graces, half feline, half feminine (if these two be not the same). All these pa.s.sed like clouds over the unquiet sea of her nature, reflecting the changing skies of circ.u.mstance, and were fitted to produce a fascination ever on the verge of repulsion even when it was strongest. Ysolinde was the more ready of speech, but her words were touched constantly with dainty malice and clawed with subtlest spite. She catspawed with men and things, often setting the hidden spur under the velvet foot deeply into the very cheek which she seemed to caress. Such as I read them then, and largely as even now I understand them, were the two women who moulded between them my life's history.

I suppose it is because I am of this Baltic North that I must need think things round and round, and prose of reasons and explanations--even when I write concerning beautiful maids--forever dreaming and dividing, instead of going straight, sword in hand, for their hearts, as is the way of the folk from the English land over-seas, or, more simply still, lying about their favors, which, I hear, is mostly the Frenchman's way.

But enough of intolerable theory.

Instinctively the Lady Ysolinde spoke to our maid of the Red Tower in a manner and tone very different from that which I had ever before heard her employ, at once more equal and more guarded.

"I was told by Master Hugo Gottfried here (whose acquaintance I made at my father's house on the day after his foolish boy's prank of the White Swan) that in the Red Tower of the Wolfsberg dwelt one of mine own age, like myself a maid solitary among men. So to-day I have come to solicit her acquaintance, and to ask her to be kind to me, who have ever been in this city and country as a stranger in a strange land."

It was prettily enough said, and our Helene, easily touched, and perhaps a little ashamed of her first stiffness, put out a hand which the other quickly and securely clasped. Then those two sat down together. Ysolinde von Sturm kept her eyes fixed on the Playmate, but our shy and slender Helene looked steadily past her out over the tumbled red roofs and peaked gables of the city of Thorn to the gray Wolfmark plains which lay spread beneath our windows like a picture in a book.

At intervals, as it came near the hour of their mid-day meal, the blood-hounds howled in the kennels, and by their tone I knew that my father had left the Hall of Judgment where he had been detained all the morning. Also I knew very well that the Lady Ysolinde wished me to find an errand elsewhere, in order that she might talk alone with her companion. But I saw also the appeal in the eyes of the Playmate, and I was resolved not to give her the chance.

"Are you never weary in this dull tower?" asked the lawyer's daughter, still holding the Playmate's hand.

"It is not dull," replied Helene. "I have my work. There are two men as shiftless and helpless as babes to attend to, and none to help me but old Hanne."

"Let men attend to themselves," cried Ysolinde; "that is ever my motto.

They ought to be our servants, not we theirs."

It was said smilingly, yet there was bitterness under the words as well.

"But," said Helene, smiling back at her with a fresh directness all her own, "one of the men saved my life and brought me up as his own daughter, and the other is--is Hugo, here."

And as she spoke of my father and of me I saw the eyes of the Lady Ysolinde fixed upon her, as it had been to read her inner soul.

"And, by-the-way," she said, at last, after a long pause, "you have heard how this same Master Hugo proposes to himself to escape from the prison-house of this city, for a season to exercise himself in arms, and so in roving adventure fulfil that which is not granted to a maid, his 'wandering years.' He goes (so my father tells me) to the Court of the Prince of Pla.s.senburg, with the promise of a company to command. And I am glad, for I shall ride thither under his escort. Indeed, and in truth, my home is far more there than here in Thorn. But I would fain have a companion of my own s.e.x. So I have come to beg of you, Mistress Helene, that you will accompany me. The Princess, I know, has great need of a maid of honor near her person, and will gladly welcome a friend of mine for the post."

The Little Playmate looked up astonished, as well she might, at this direct a.s.sault, which was moreover spoken with a pretty shamefacedness and the air of asking almost too great a favor. And, indeed, if there was any patronage in the thing offered, it was at least carefully kept out of the manner of asking.

"Lady Ysolinde, I cannot accept your too overpowering favor," said Helene, after a pause, "but your kindness in thinking at all of me will always warm my heart."

At this critical moment came my father in, looking more than grave and severe, so that I judged at once that he had been talking to the Duke Casimir and had found his post of chief adviser both thankless and difficult. I knew it could be no matter of his office which worried him, for that day he wore his holiday attire of white Friesland cloth, and the broad bonnet in which I loved best to see him. There was no mark of his calling about him anywhere, save a little Red Axe sewed upon his left breast like a war veteran's decoration.

CHAPTER XVII

THE RED AXE IS LEFT ALONE

Gottfried Gottfried bowed to the guest of his house with the n.o.ble manner which comes to every serious-minded man who deals habitually in the high matters of life and death. I made his introductions to the Lady Ysolinde, and as readily and gracefully he returned his acknowledgments. For the rest I allowed Master Gerard's daughter to develop her own projects to him, which, indeed, she was no long time in doing.

As she proceeded I saw my father change color and become as to his face almost as white as the Friesland cloth in which he was dressed.

Presently, however, as if struck with the sound of a well-known name, he looked up quickly.

"Pla.s.senburg, said you, my lady?" he inquired.

The Lady Ysolinde nodded.

"Yes, to Pla.s.senburg, where the Princess has great need of a maid of honor."

"Her Highness is often upon her travels, I hear it reported," said my father, "while the Prince keeps himself much at home."

"He esteems his armies more than all the marvels of strange countries,"

replied Ysolinde, "and thus he holds the land and folk in great quiet."

"And your father, Master Gerard, would have my son engage with this Prince Karl for a s.p.a.ce. Well, I think it may be good for the lad. For I know well that the shadow of the Red Tower stalks after him through this city of Thorn, and there is no need that he should lie down under it too soon. But this of my little maid is a matter apart, and means a longer and a sorer parting."

"Fear not, my father," cried the Playmate, eagerly, "I would not leave you alone, even to be the Princess of Pla.s.senburg herself."

My father took another strange look from one to the other of the two women, the import of which I understood not then.

"I know not," said he; "I think this thing also might be for the best. As I see it, there are strange times coming upon us in Thorn. And the town of Pla.s.senburg under Karl the Prince is a defenced city, set in a strong province, content and united. It might be wisest that you also should go, little one."

"I cannot go," said Helene, "and leave you alone."