By this time the sun stood high over
Cologne. The market-places were crowded with
buyers and sellers, mixed with a loitering swarm of
soldiery, for whose thirsty natures winestalls had
been tumbled up. Barons and knights of the empire,
bravely mounted and thickly followed, poured hourly
into Cologne from South Germany and North. Here,
staring Suabians, and round-featured warriors of the
East Kingdom, swaggered up and down, patting what
horses came across them, for lack of occupation for
their hands. Yonder, huge Pomeranians, with bosks
of beard stiffened out square from the chin, hurtled
mountainous among the peaceable inhabitants.
Troopers dismounted went straddling, in tight hose
and loose, prepared to drink good-will to whomsoever
would furnish the best quality liquor for that solemn
pledge, and equally ready to pick a quarrel with them
that would not. It was a scene of flaring feathers,
wide-flapped bonnets, flaunting hose, blue and battered
steel plates, slashed woollen haunch-bags, leather-leggings,
ensigns, and imperious boots and shoulders. Margarita
was too hurried in her mind to be conscious of an
imprudence; but her limbs trembled, and she instinctively
quickened her steps. When she stood under the
sign of the Three Holy Kings, where dwelt Farina’s
mother, she put up a fervent prayer of thanks, and
breathed freely.
‘I had expected a message from
Lisbeth,’ said Frau Farina; ’but thou,
good heart! thou wilt help us?’
‘All that may be done by me
I will do,’ replied Margarita; ’but his
mother yearns to see him, and I have come to bear her
company.’
The old lady clasped her hands and wept.
’Has he found so good a friend,
my poor boy! And trust me, dear maiden, he is
not unworthy, for better son never lived, and good
son, good all! Surely we will go to him, but
not as thou art. I will dress thee. Such
throngs are in the streets: I heard them clattering
in early this morning. Rest, dear heart, till
I return.’
Margarita had time to inspect the
single sitting-room in which her lover lived.
It was planted with bottles, and vases, and pipes,
and cylinders, piling on floor, chair, and table.
She could not suppress a slight surprise of fear,
for this display showed a dealing with hidden things,
and a summoning of scattered spirits. It was this
that made his brow so pale, and the round of his eye
darker than youth should let it be! She dismissed
the feeling, and assumed her own bright face as Dame
Farina reappeared, bearing on her arm a convent garb,
and other apparel. Margarita suffered herself
to be invested in the white and black robes of the
denial of life.
‘There!’ said the Frau
Farina, ’and to seal assurance, I have engaged
a guard to accompany us. He was sorely bruised
in a street combat yesterday, and was billeted below,
where I nursed and tended him, and he is grateful,
as man should be-though I did little, doing my utmost and
with him near us we have nought to fear.’
‘Good,’ said Margarita,
and they kissed and departed. The guard was awaiting
them outside.
’Come, my little lady, and with
thee the holy sister! ’Tis no step from
here, and I gage to bring ye safe, as sure as my name’s
Schwartz Thier! Hey? The good sister’s
dropping. Look, now! I’ll carry her.’
Margarita recovered her self-command
before he could make good this offer.
‘Only let us hasten there,’ she gasped.
The Thier strode on, and gave them
safe-conduct to the prison where Farina was confined,
being near one of the outer forts of the city.
‘Thank and dismiss him,’ whispered Margarita.
’Nay! he will wait-wilt thou
not, friend! We shall not be long, though it
is my son I visit here,’ said Frau Farina.
’Till to-morrow morning, my
little lady! The lion thanked him that plucked
the thorn from his foot, and the Thier may be black,
but he’s not ungrateful, nor a worse beast than
the lion.’
They entered the walls and left him.
For the first five minutes Schwartz
Thier found employment for his faculties by staring
at the shaky, small-paned windows of the neighbourhood.
He persevered in this, after all novelty had been
exhausted, from an intuitive dread of weariness.
There was nothing to see. An old woman once bobbed
out of an attic, and doused the flints with water.
Harassed by increasing dread of the foul nightmare
of nothing-to-do, the Thier endeavoured to establish
amorous intelligence with her. She responded
with an indignant projection of the underjaw, evanishing
rapidly. There was no resource left him but to
curse her with extreme heartiness. The Thier
stamped his right leg, and then his left, and remembered
the old woman as a grievance five minutes longer.
When she was clean forgotten, he yawned. Another
spouse of the moment was wanted, to be wooed, objurgated,
and regretted. The prison-gate was in a secluded
street. Few passengers went by, and those who
did edged away from the ponderous, wanton-eyed figure
of lazy mischief lounging there, as neatly as they
well could. The Thier hailed two or three.
One took to his legs, another bowed, smirked, gave
him a kindly good-day, and affected to hear no more,
having urgent business in prospect. The Thier
was a faithful dog, but the temptation to betray his
trust and pursue them was mighty. He began to
experience an equal disposition to cry and roar.
He hummed a ballad
’I swore of her I’d
have my will,
And with him I’d have my way:
I learn’d my cross-bow over the hill:
Now what does my lady say?
Give me the good old cross-bow, after
all, and none of these lumbering puff-and-bangs that
knock you down oftener than your man!
’A cross stands in the
forest still,
And a cross in the churchyard grey:
My curse on him who had his will,
And on him who had his way!
Good beginning, bad ending! ’Tisn’t
so always. “Many a cross has the cross-bow
built,” they say. I wish I had mine, now,
to peg off that old woman, or somebody. I’d
swear she’s peeping at me over the gable, or
behind some cranny. They’re curious, the
old women, curse ’em! And the young, for
that matter. Devil a young one here.
’When I’m in for
the sack of a town,
What, think ye, I poke after, up and down?
Silver and gold I pocket in plenty,
But the sweet tit-bit is my lass under twenty.
I should like to be in for the sack
of this Cologne. I’d nose out that pretty
girl I was cheated of yesterday. Take the gold
and silver, and give me the maiden! Her neck’s
silver, and her hair gold. Ah! and her cheeks
roses, and her mouth-say no more! I’m half
thinking Werner, the hungry animal, has cast wolf’s
eyes on her. They say he spoke of her last night.
Don’t let him thwart me. Thunderblast him!
I owe him a grudge. He’s beginning to forget
my plan o’ life.’
A flight of pigeons across the blue
top of the street abstracted the Thier from these
reflections. He gaped after them in despair, and
fell to stretching and shaking himself, rattling his
lungs with loud reports. As he threw his eyes
round again, they encountered those of a monk opposite
fastened on him in penetrating silence. The Thier
hated monks as a wild beast shuns fire; but now even
a monk was welcome.
‘Halloo!’ he sung out.
The monk crossed over to him.
‘Friend!’ said he, ’weariness
is teaching thee wantonness. Wilt thou take service
for a night’s work, where the danger is little,
the reward lasting?’
‘As for that,’ replied
the Thier, ’danger comes to me like greenwood
to the deer, and good pay never yet was given in promises.
But I’m bound for the next hour to womankind
within there. They’re my masters; as they’ve
been of tough fellows before me.’
‘I will seek them, and win their
consent,’ said the monk, and so left him.
‘Quick dealing!’ thought
the Thier, and grew brisker. ’The Baron
won’t want me to-night: and what if he
does? Let him hang himself though,
if he should, ‘twill be a pity I’m not
by to help him.’
He paced under the wall to its farthest
course. Turning back, he perceived the monk at
the gateway.
‘A sharp hand!’ thought the Thier.
‘Intrude no question on me,’
the monk began; ’but hold thy peace and follow:
the women release thee, and gladly.’
‘That’s not my plan o’
life, now! Money down, and then command me’:
and Schwartz Thier stood with one foot forward, and
hand stretched out.
A curl of scorn darkened the cold features of the
monk.
He slid one hand into a side of his
frock above the girdle, and tossed a bag of coin.
’Take it, if ‘tis in thee
to forfeit the greater blessing,’ he cried contemptuously.
The Thier peeped into the bag, and appeared satisfied.
‘I follow,’ said he; ’lead
on, good father, and I’ll be in the track of
holiness for the first time since my mother was quit
of me.’
The monk hurried up the street and
into the marketplace, oblivious of the postures and
révérences of the people, who stopped to stare
at him and his gaunt attendant. As they crossed
the square, Schwartz Thier spied Henker Rothhals starting
from a wine-stall on horseback, and could not forbear
hailing him. Before the monk had time to utter
a reproach, they were deep together in a double-shot
of query and reply.
‘Whirr!’ cried the Thier,
breaking on some communication. ’Got her,
have they? and swung her across stream? I’m
one with ye for my share, or call me sheep!’
He waved his hand to the monk, and
taking hold of the horse’s rein, ran off beside
his mounted confederate, heavily shod as he was.
The monk frowned after him, and swelled with a hard
sigh.
‘Gone!’ he exclaimed,
’and the accursed gold with him! Well did
a voice warn me that such service was never to be
bought!’
He did not pause to bewail or repent,
but returned toward the prison with rapid footsteps,
muttering: ’I with the prison-pass for two;
why was I beguiled by that bandit? Saw I not
the very youth given into my hands there, he that
was with the damsel and the aged woman?’