Again he paused--and the world seemed instantly to dissolve into whirling vapor at his words. I had never once thought of such a conclusion. Yet I was indubitably, by my father's death, Hereditary Executioner of the Wolfmark. Red Axe of Thorn I was, and by a terrible chance I had returned in time to be installed in mine office, even as the Lady Ysolinde had foretold.

But a strong thought swelled triumphant in my heart.

"Well," said I, looking the sneering tormentor in the face, "if so be that I am your Hereditary Justicer, it will be long ere a sentence so monstrous shall be carried out by me. I will not slay the innocent, nor pour out the blood of a virgin saint, for a million deaths. You can torture me with all your h.e.l.lish engines, and you will find that a Gottfried has learned how to suffer, as well as, how to make others suffer, in fourteen generations. As G.o.d strengthens me, I will never carry out your sentence--do with me what you will."

"n.o.bly said, Justicer of the Mark!" said Otho. "I had thought of that!

But in case you should refuse to do your lawful office, it may be well for you to remember that I have other instruments that mayhap will please you less."

He threw open a door suddenly, and we looked into an underground hall, where a dozen men were carousing--Duke Casimir's Hussars of Death, black-browed, evil-faced, slack-jowled villains every man of them, cruel and sensual. A blast of ribald oaths came sulphurously up, as if the mouth of h.e.l.l had been opened.

"Listen!" said Otho, with his hand on my shoulder.

And a jest struck to our ears concerning the prisoner, the Little Playmate--a jest which sticks in my memory to this day. And even yet I hope to cleave the jester through the brain, meet him when I may.

The Duke shut the door, and turned to me again. His eyes narrowed to a thin line which glittered with hate and triumph.

"If you, Hugo Gottfried, Hereditary Executioner of the Mark, refuse to do your duty at the time appointed upon the prisoner condemned, I, Duke Otho, solemnly declare that I will cast your fair and tender lamb into that den of wolves down there to work their wills upon. Hark to them!

They will have no misgivings--no qualms, no n.o.ble renunciations."

Then he turned to me airily and confidently.

"Well, my good Justicer, will you carry out the just and merciful sentence of the law, and baptize your Red Axe with the blood of her for whose sake you chose to insult and wound a Duke of the Mark?"

I turned away, sick at heart.

"Give me time. G.o.d's mercy--give me time!" I cried. "At least let me see Helene. I will give you my answer to-night. But, first of all, let me see my beloved."

"I am forgiving and most merciful," he said, smiling till his teeth showed. "Observe, I do not even cast you into prison to make sure of you.

Go your ways" (he sat down and wrote rapidly); "here is a pa.s.s which will enable you to visit the prisoner. At midnight I shall expect you to tell me that to-morrow you will fulfil your office."

He handed me the paper and motioned us away.

"We are free to go?" said I, wonderingly.

"Surely," he replied, smiling. "Are you not both my friends, and can Otho von Reuss be forgetful of old times? Come and go at your pleasure. Be sure to be here to give me your answer at midnight to-night--or--"

He pointed with his hand to the door he had again opened, and with the fingers of his other hand beat time to the blasphemous chorus which came belching up from below.

CHAPTER XLIX

THE SERPENT'S STRIFE

Dazed and death-stricken by the horror of the choice which lay before me, I hastened down the street, hardly waiting for Dessauer, who toiled vainly after me. I knew not what to do nor where to turn. I could neither think nor speak. But it chanced that my steps brought me to the house of the Weiss Thor. Almost without any will of mine own I found myself raising the knocker of the house of Master Gerard von Sturm. Sir Respectable instantly appeared. I asked of him if the Lady Ysolinde would see me--giving my name plainly. For since Duke Otho knew me, there was no need of concealment any more.

The Lady Ysolinde would receive me.

I followed my conductor, but not this time to the room in which I had seen her on the occasion of my last visit.

It was in her father's chamber that I met the Princess. The room was as I had first seen it. Only there was no ascetic old man with keen, deep-set eyes and receding forehead to rear his head back from the table as though he would presently strike across it like a serpent from its coil.

For the moment the room was empty, but, ere I had time to look around, the curtains moved and the Lady Ysolinde appeared. Without entering, she set a hand on the door-post, and stood poised against the heavy curtain, waiting for me to speak.

Her face was pale, her thin nostrils dilated. Anger and scorn sat white and deadly on every feature.

"So," she said, intensely, as I did not speak, "you have come back already, most n.o.ble Hereditary Justicer of the Mark! Even as I told you--so it is. You come to ask mercy from the woman you despised, from the woman whose love you refused. You would beg her to spare her enemy.

Ere you go I shall see you on your knees; ah, that will be sweet. I have been on my knees--can I believe it? Nay, I shall not forget it. I, Ysolinde of Pla.s.senburg, have pled in vain to you--to you!"

And the accent of chill hatred and malice turned me to stone.

"My lady," said I, "well do you know that I would never ask aught for my own life, though the Red Axe itself were at my neck. But it is for the maid I love, for the little child I carried home out of the arms of the man condemned. I ask for her life, who never wronged you or any in all this world. You have heard that task which the Duke hath laid on me, because it is my misfortune to be my father's son--I must take away my love's sweet life, or, if I do not--" I could proceed no further for the horror which rose in my heart.

"I know it," she said, calmly; "my father hath told me all."

"Then," cried I, "if the power lie with you, as you hope for mercy to your own soul, be merciful! Save the maiden Helene from the death of shame, and me from becoming her murderer!"

"Ah," she answered, with delicatest meditative inflection, "this is indeed sweet. The mighty is fallen indeed. The proud one is suppliant now. The knee is bent that would not bend. Hearken, you and your puling babe, to the Princess Ysolinde! Were your lives in that gla.s.s, to save or to destroy--her life and your suffering--to make or to break, I would fling them to destruction, even as I cast this cup into the darkness!"

And as she spoke the wreathed beaker of Venice gla.s.s sped out of the window and crashed on the pavement without.

"Thus would I end your lives," she said, "for the shame that you two put upon me in the day of my weakness."

"Lady," I cried, eagerly, "you do yourself a wrong! Your heart is better than your word. Do this deed of mercy, I beseech you, if so be you can.

And my life is yours forever!"

"Your life is mine, you say," cried she; "aye, and that means what?

The wind that cries about the house. Your life is _mine_--it is a lie. Your life and love both are that chit's for whom you have despised--rejected--ME!"

And I grant that at that moment she looked n.o.ble enough in her anger as she stood discharging her words at me with hissing directness, like bolts shot tw.a.n.ging from the steel cross-bow.

"And, lest you should think that I have not the power to save you, I will tell you this--when you shall see the neck bared for the blade of the Red Axe, the fine tresses you love, that your eyes look upon with desire, all ruthlessly cut away by the shears of your a.s.sistants--ah, I know you will remember then that I, Ysolinde, whom you refused and slighted, had the power in her hand to deliver you both with a word, according to the immaculate laws of the Wolfmark. Aye, and more--power to raise you both to a pinnacle of bliss such as you can hardly conceive. In that hour, when you see me look down upon your anguish, you will know that I can speak the word. You will watch my lips till the axe falls, and under your hand the young life ebbs red. But the lips of Ysolinde will be silent!"

"Such knowledge is an easy boast, Lady Ysolinde!" I answered, thinking to taunt her, that she might reveal whether indeed she had the power she claimed.

"There," she said, pointing to the great collection of black-bound books and papers about the walls; "see, the secret is there--the secret for the lack of which you shall strike your beloved to the death to save her from the unnamable shame. I know it; my father has revealed it to me. I have seen the parchment in these hands. But--you shall never hear it, she never profit by it, and my vengeance shall be sweet--so sweet!"

And she laughed, with a strange crackling laugh that it was a pain to hear.

"G.o.d forgive you, Lady Ysolinde," said I, "if this be so. For if there be a G.o.d, you must burn in Great h.e.l.l for this deed you are about to do. Having had no mercy on the innocent, how shall you ask G.o.d to have mercy on you?"

"I will not ask Him!" she cried. "Instead of puling for mercy I will have had my revenge. And after that, come earth, heaven, or h.e.l.l--I shall not care. All will then be the same to Ysolinde!"

I thought I would try her yet once more.

"The Little Playmate," I said, "the maid whom I have ever loved, though I am not worthy to touch her, is no chance child, no daughter of the Red Axe of Thorn. Leopold von Dessauer hath found and sent to Karl the Prince the full proofs that Helene is the daughter of the last and rightful Prince, and therefore in her own right Princess of Pla.s.senburg."