Stanley Weyman - My Lady Rotha - A Romance

Klink, however, chose to take offence in his stupid fashion. 'Eh?' he said. 'You are of another mind, Master Schwartz?'

'What is the good of talking like that,' I said, 'when you do not mean it?'

He puffed himself out, and after staring at me for a time, answered slowly: 'But what if I do mean it, Master Steward? What if I do mean it?'

'You don't,' I said. 'The man pays his way.'

I thought to end the matter with that. I soon found that it was not to be shelved so easily. For a moment indeed no one answered me. We are a slow speaking race, and love to have time to think. A minute had not elapsed, however, before one of the men who had spoken earlier took up the cudgels. 'Ay, he pays his way,' he said, thrusting his head forward. 'He pays his way, master; but how? Tell me that.'

I did not answer him.

'Out of the peasant's pocket!' the fellow replied slowly. 'Out of the plunder and booty of Magdeburg. With blood-money, master.'

'I ask no more than to meet one of his kind in the fields,' the man sitting next him, who had also spoken before, chimed in. 'With no one looking on, master. There would be one less wolf in the world then, I will answer for that. He pays his way? Oh, yes, he pays it here.'

I thought a shrug of the shoulders a sufficient answer. These two belonged to the company my lady had raised in the preceding year to serve with the Landgrave according to her tenure. They had come back to the town a week before this with money to spend; some people saying that they had deserted, and some that they had returned to raise volunteers. Either way I was not surprised to find them a little bit above themselves; for foreign service spoils the best, and these had never been anything but loiterers and vagrants, whom it angered me to see on a bench cheek by jowl with the Burgomaster. I thought to treat them with silent contempt, but I soon found that they did not stand alone.

The Minister was the first to come to their support. 'You forget that these people are Papists, Master Schwartz. Rank Roman Papists,' he said.

'So was Tilly!' I retorted, stung to anger. 'Yet you managed to do with him.'

'That was different,' he answered sourly; but he winced.

Then Hofman began on me. 'You see, Master Steward,' he said slowly, 'we are a Protestant town-we are a Protestant town. And it ill beseems us-it ill beseems us to harbour Papists. I have thought over that a long while. And now I think it is time to rid ourselves of them-to abate the nuisance in fact. You see we are a Protestant town, Master Schwartz. You forget that.'

'Then were we not a Protestant town,' I cried, jumping up in a rage, and forgetting all my discretion, 'when we entertained Count Tilly? When you held his stirrup, Burgomaster? and you, Master Dietz, uncovered to him? Were not these people Papists when they came here, and when you received them? But I will tell you what it is,' I continued, looking round scornfully, and giving my anger vent, for such meanness disgusted me. 'When there was a Bavarian army across the river, and you could get anything out of Tilly, you were ready to oblige him, and clean his boots. You could take in Romanists then, but now that he is dead and your side is uppermost, you grow scrupulous, Pah! I am ashamed of you! You are only fit to bully children and girls, and such like!' and I turned away to take up my iron-shod staff.

They were all very red in the face by this time, and the two soldiers were on their feet. But the Burgomaster restrained them. 'Fine words!' he said, puffing out his cheeks-'fine words! Dare say the girl can hear him. But let him be, let him be-let him have his say!'

'There is some else will have a say in the matter, Master Hofman!' I retorted warmly, as I turned to the door, 'and that is my lady. I would advise you to think twice before you act. That is all!'

'Hoop-de-doo-dem-doo!' cried one in derision, and others echoed it. But I did not stay to hear; I turned a deaf ear to the uproar, wherein all seemed to be crying after me at once, and shrugging my shoulders I opened the door and went out.

The sudden change from the warm noisy kitchen to the cold night air sobered me in a moment. As I climbed the dark slippery street which rises to the foot of the castle steps, I began to wish that I had let the matter be. After all, what call had I to interfere, and make bad blood between myself and my neighbours? It was no business of mine. The three were Romanists. Doubtless the man had robbed and hectored in his time, and while his hand was strong; and now he suffered as others had suffered.

It was ten chances to one the Burgomaster would carry the matter to my lady in some shape or other, and the minister would back him up, and I should be reprimanded; or if the Countess saw with my eyes, and sent them off with a flea in their ears, then we should have all the rabble of the town who were at Klink's beck and call, going up and down making mischief, and crying, 'No Popery!' Either way I foresaw trouble, and wished that I had let the matter be, or better still had kept away that night from the Red Hart.

But then on a sudden there rose before me, as plainly as if I had still been looking through the window, a vision of the half-lit room looking on the lane, with the sick man on the pallet, and the slender figure kneeling beside the bed. I saw the cat leap, saw again the girl's frightened gesture as she turned towards the door, and I grew almost as hot as I had been in the kitchen. 'The cowards!' I muttered-'the cowards! But I will be beforehand with them. I will go to my lady early and tell her all.'

You see I had my misgivings, but I little thought what that evening was really to bring forth, or that I had done that in the Red Hart kitchen which would alter all my life, and all my lady's life; and spreading still, as a little crack in ice will spread from bank to bank, would leave scarce a man in Heritzburg unchanged, and scarce a woman's fate untouched.

My Lady Rotha, Countess of Heritzburg in her own right, was at this time twenty-five years old and unmarried. Her maiden state, which seems to call for explanation, I attribute to two things. Partly to the influence of her friend and companion Fraulein Anna Max of Utrecht, who was reputed in the castle to know seven languages, and to consider marriage a sacrifice; and partly to the Countess's own disposition, which led her to set a high value on the power and possessions that had descended to her from her father. Count Tilly's protection, which had exempted Heritzburg from the evils of the war, had rendered the support of a husband less necessary; and so she had been left to follow her own will in the matter, and was now little likely to surrender her independence unless her heart went with the gift.

Not that suitors were lacking, for my lady, besides her wealth, was possessed of the handsomest figure in the world, with beautiful features, and the most gracious and winning address ever known. I remember as if it were yesterday Prince Albert of Rammingen, a great match but an old man. He came in his chariot with a numerous retinue, and stayed long, taking it very hardly that my lady was not to be won; but after a while he went. His place was taken by Count Frederick, a brother of the Margrave of Anspach, a young gentleman who had received his education in France, and was full of airs and graces, going sober to bed every night, and speaking German with a French accent. Him my lady soon sent about his business. The next was a more famous man, Count Thurn of Bohemia, he who began the war by throwing Slawata and Martinitz out of window in Prague, in '19, and paid for it by fifteen years of exile. He wore such an air of mystery, and had such tales to tell of flight and battle and hairbreadth escapes, that he was scarcely less an object of curiosity in the town than Tilly himself; but he knelt in vain. And in fine so it was with them all. My lady would have none of them, but kept her maiden state and governed Heritzburg and saw the years go by, content to all appearance with Fraulein Anna and her talk, which was all of Voetius and Beza and scores of other learned men, whose names I could never remember from one hour to another.