CHAPTER XX.

CASTING OUT A DEVIL.

It was thus two hours past noon when Nigel and his men rode out of the north gate of Fulda, and took the road that leads along the left bank of the river Fulda, which steadily pursues its way till it finds an opening in Taunus and so breaks into Hesse Cassel. Whether Count von Teschen had taken that road, or returned, seemed of little moment, for he had at least two hours' start, and as he had but a single man-servant, and both of them were well mounted, pursuit promised little result; for the speed of Nigel's command was perforce the speed of the worst horse. Moreover, as they were approaching a country of doubtful friendliness, it was wiser to approach it in good order and condition than upon horses blown with haste.

At the frontier of Hesse was a small military post the captain of which challenged their further passage.

Nigel made a civil reply that he was commanding a regiment of the Emperor's horse and purposed to ride through Hesse Cassel into Lower Saxony. The captain requested that he would stay his march till the wishes of the Landgrave could be ascertained. To this Nigel made the firm answer that he was unable to wait for such permission, the more so that the Emperor was not at war with Hesse but with Sweden. The captain told him that he passed at his own peril, and called in his handful of men. Nigel rode on to Hersfeld. Such of the inhabitants that he met or overtook preserved a sullen demeanour, which did not savour of anything but hostility. Perhaps they regarded him and his men as the woeful harbingers of great armies, and few of them, indeed, made any guess as to the master he served, being disquieted at the uncouth aspect of the strangers.

But at Hersfeld he found something more than sullenness. For outside the gates on the town's common was drawn up a considerable body of well-armed infantry, and the numerous pennons showed that here was a muster camp. Two regiments were disposed in battle array in the dense battalion formation usual with all armies but that of Gustavus. A little in front of these was a group of richly-dressed officers, and in the middle one of high rank.

Nigel halted his men and rode forward with Hildebrand till he came within saluting distance, when, after a cold acknowledgment, the general commanding the Hessians motioned him to come forward.

Nigel advanced a few steps and reined in his horse.

"Who are you?" was the curt inquiry.

"Colonel Nigel Charteris of the Imperial Service, with my regiment of horse. I am leading them through the territories of Hesse Cassel to join Count Tilly."

"By whose authority?"

"The Emperor's, and with the goodwill of the princes his allies!"

"His Majesty takes strange measures to preserve their goodwill, sir. I am William of Hesse! These are my territories, not the Emperor's."

"Your Highness will surely of grace accord us a day's journey through your dominions, and such little provender as we pay for. It is a peaceful errand so far as your Highness is concerned."

"Then you should have stayed at the frontier till my guards had asked my will."

"I crave pardon, your Highness. I was told in Fulda that your Highness had set out on a journey; and I might have waited an ill-convenient time."

"It is possible, colonel. You might have gone other ways."

"The Emperor would doubtless be surprised to hear that the Landgrave of Hesse Cassel was unwilling to give his men passage. But if it be denied to them, I have no instructions to make war."

"'Tis just as well!" said the Landgrave with a grim smile on his thick lips. "We have that about us that would stop you. You will go hence, if you so choose, across the river into Thüringia, and make what way you can. I am not ruler there. But further passage through Hesse you cannot have."

Nigel showed no outward perturbation. He took one level, leisurely survey of the officers of the Landgrave, saluted, and said--

"Adieu, your Highness! It will please the Emperor to know that the hospitality, which is denied to him, is accorded to the Duke of Friedland."

The point of this remark lay in this, that Count von Teschen was seated on horseback among the suite of the Landgrave.

"One does not inquire into the quality of the merchant, but into the goodness of his wares!" was the quick reply. For all his sternness the Landgrave looked into Nigel's eyes with a half smile, and made a little motion of farewell with gauntleted hand. He was a man and knew a man.

Nigel and Hildebrand bade their regiment of rough-riders turn about and make for the river bank. The advance-guard was bidden to stop wherever the river should be fordable. Then they planned to cross into Thüringia and march north by the way of Erfurt, and thence to the camp of Gustavus.

The _contretemps_ at Hersfeld was a surprise to both of them. Nor was it to be explained by the presence of Count von Teschen. It was plain that the Landgrave was about to take up arms against the Emperor, and that the Emperor was ill-informed as to the real state of matters in the Protestant States, of which Hesse Cassel was one of the smallest.

As to Wallenstein, Nigel against his own inclination was beginning to have doubts of his loyalty. Father Lamormain had more than hinted them. The Landgrave's irony about the merchant and his merchandise showed that at the opposite poles of policy and belief similar ideas were current. And Nigel was honestly grieved. But his path at all events was plain. He was for the Emperor.

So having come to the ford he set his horse at the water, and though it reached his stirrups and ran swiftly, he made light of it. By the fall of evening they had reached the hamlet of Salzungen and bivouacked by the river Werra.

Water and green grass ripening into long hay were there in plenty, and Nigel had learned in the school of Wallenstein sufficient of the art of exacting creature-comforts for the men. It was merely an outskirt of the forest land, gently undulating from the hamlet church down to the river; and across the river farther down, where a wooden bridge spanned it, the road wound into gentle rising lands, behind which rose steeper pine-covered hills, and there was a great expanse of sky and comparatively open country. There was no chance of a surprise here, and except from equal numbers of cavalry, a thing unlikely to expect, there was nothing to fear.

At the ford near Hersfeld he had left a vedette of three picked men to watch and capture any one that crossed during the next five or six hours. There was still a hope that it might be the Count von Teschen. And if his path lay in another direction, it might be some messenger to rouse the opposition of the people of the forest.

At midnight the vedette came in and reported that no one had crossed.

When the vedette came Nigel roused himself to hear their report, bade them take the refreshment provided for them, and go to sleep. The first sentinels had been relieved, and all was quiet save for the sound of horses tearing the rich grass as they took fresh mouthfuls, or the chant of some still unsated grasshoppers. He was soon asleep again.

But not so heavily as before. The couch of hay on which he lay in an open shed did not, once his sleep was broken, prove quite so soft and alluring as it had three hours before. And at two o'clock, which sounded from the nearest steeple, he found himself cold and wakeful. Then from the main street of the hamlet his ear caught the sound of horse's hoofs, not of a horse being ridden but led. One horse! Two horses! It might be some early villager; or, again, it might be Count von Teschen.

Nigel got up, wrapped in his cloak as he was, went out and summoned the sentry who was on guard beside the hut. Taking the man's musket himself, he bade him go and see who the horsemen were, and himself walked to and fro in the cold air, musket on arm. Then after a few steps he stood still, for he had heard a low call. It was a familiar one, the call of the Bohemian to his horse. Some wakeful trooper might have uttered it in pure negligence. But it was repeated. And then from another direction, it was not easy to tell which, it was answered. Nigel was alert now, wondering what this might mean. Still dark, he had nothing but his ears to trust to, but down among the lines he thought he heard movements. So he roused the two nearest men, and sending one away in the direction of the noise he bade the other be on the alert. Then he resumed his place, appearing to sleep on his post but in reality watching with ears and eyes.

Two forms began to make themselves apparent, wriggling and crouching along the ground in between the sleeping troopers, mere shapes, but moving, and moving towards the hut. Of a sudden one sprang at him, knife in hand, to feel the butt of the sentry's musket hit him one tremendous blow beneath the chin and then nothing more upon earth. The other who made straight into the hut was faced at the opening by a trooper, who, firing his musket point-blank, blew half the man's face away, and in doing so roused the camp.

"Seize all the Bohemians!" was the next order. But quickly as it was carried out in the almost total darkness, the confusion, the protests, the excitement among the horses, which threatened to stampede, all contributed to the partial success of the plot. For some twenty-five or thirty men galloped in wild disorder across the grasslands and gained the wooded bridge before they could be stopped, and for the present it was hopeless to pursue. The sentry was found by the roadside leading to the village, stunned by a blow from a pistol butt.

Nigel, except for Hildebrand, kept his own counsel. But at dawn, as soon as the troopers had broken their fast and horses were fed and watered, he made a close inquiry, released such of the Bohemians as seemed to have kept quiet, distributed them by twos and threes through the other troops, and the rest, about a dozen in all, he deprived of their arms and made them ride in the middle of the regiment, scowling and disconsolate.

So Count von Teschen had scored his first point, and the second point. But Nigel was determined not to let him get too far ahead, to husband his horses with all the skill he could command, and follow his own road to Erfurt. If he could get even with von Teschen on the way so much the better.

It was a summer morning. Not a few of the village folk came out to look at the regiment from a respectful distance. And as Nigel and Hildebrand rode over the little bridge whence they could see in either direction the little river peacefully meandering, the line of tiny trees along its banks, the shimmering haze over the meadows, and heard the church bell summoning the faithful to early mass, all the world seemed at peace. Over the low hill to another hamlet called Schweina, where they got a stirrup-cup, and then the road, still mounting, wound by an ascent that tried the horses towards the castle of Altenstein, which was nearly the highest point of the range of hills they had to cross, peering out of the thick woods. As yet they had seen no sign of the Count von Teschen. A short halt to breathe the horses and then onward again, and after a short farther ascent they found on the ridge of the range a fair road, wooded to the left, and bounded on the right by grasslands which sloped down to the valley, a world of greenery beneath a canopy of the bluest sky. A mile further on, to avoid a long detour, they had to clamber by a rough path over a spur of the woody hill before meeting the road again, and here they became aware they were not the only wayfarers, for, as Nigel was almost out of the woodland shade, he heard the murmur of many voices and the articulate sound of one strong resonant voice.

Nigel passed the word to halt, while he looked upon the business that was forward, and to do that the better he forced his horse through the undergrowth some few dozen yards farther along. Upon a waggon, from which the horses had been taken, stood Pastor Rad.

At first Nigel saw vaguely a great multitude, and his first thought was that this was an assemblage of the Lutherans for worship in a place convenient to the many scattered hamlets. Then as his horse stood more steadily and he could choose his own window in the leaves, he saw that a great many of them were men, and that they were armed in some measure; and, thirdly, he noticed that whatever the ultimate business might be, that which was being transacted was a sort of trial.

There was Pastor Rad standing in an ox-waggon, his long yellow hair partly matted on his brow and partly hanging in disorder, for he was manifestly very hot. Down below, facing him, sat a girl, her hair flowing down to her waist, in a plain dusky blue robe. She was manifestly being talked at, preached at, the object of public ignominy. In a ring round her at a little distance sat two rows of grim-faced elders, or whatever functionaries corresponded to that body in the Lutheran community.

"Come forth, Satan!" bellowed Pastor Rad, so that it reached even to the ears of Nigel and Hildebrand.

And all the ring of elders fell forthwith upon their knees and cried with a loud voice, "Come forth, Satan!"

The girl involuntarily put her hands to her ears because of the clamour.

"What in the name of heaven are they about?" Nigel asked.

"'Tis an exorcising. The girl has an evil spirit!" said Hildebrand, crossing himself. "'Tis none of our business! Let us get on!"

But the girl wept and stood up crying aloud for a deliverer. She evidently dreaded the next step of the exorcisers. And with good reason, for Pastor Rad issued some brief directions and two men seized the girl, and, thrusting her hands between the rails of the waggon, were proceeding to bind them; another stood forward with a whip of many thongs.

"God condemn the Lutherans!" said Hildebrand, and spat upon the ground. "They are going to whip the devil out of her."

Once more the girl tried to wrench herself free, and in doing so turned her face, throwing back her flowing hair as she did so, in such wise that Nigel got a glimpse of it.

"By God's Son!" Nigel exclaimed, with a burst of passionate indignation that almost startled Hildebrand. "Go back! lead the men into the open, halt them in three lines and await my order! Tschk!"

Bowing his head and urging his horse he broke through the saplings and galloped to the girl's side.

It needed but his brief "Loose her!" to make her torturers undo the clumsy fastening they had begun, and "Elspeth Reinheit!" for her to fling her arms around his saddle-peak.

"Take me away! Save me! Save me! Captain!"

Nigel unclasped her arms and bade her once more sit down upon the low bench. "Fear no more, maiden!" he added with such decision in his voice as poured fresh courage into her. Then he faced sternly up at the Pastor and asked him--

"What have you against this maiden?"

But the Pastor, full to overflowing with spiritual drunkenness, shouted--

"The Lord hath delivered into our hands her paramour also! Behold him that sinned with the damsel. Now shall the lying devil come out of her and she shall confess!"

"What say you?" was Nigel's response, hurled at the minister in a voice that spoke of his indignation.

"That you, Captain of the host of the Evil One, did'st lie with the damsel at Magdeburg! Deny it not!"

Before the Pastor knew what he did, Nigel had leaned over in his stirrups and, seizing him by the raiment, tumbled him to the ground and struck him two shrewd blows with the flat of his sword, which completed his confusion.

The men of the assembly sprang up, and with one accord were making for the bold intruder, but the immediate appearance of Hildebrand and his men caused every one to stand stark still.

"Know all men!" shouted Nigel in the temporary silence, "this maiden, Elspeth Reinheit, is as pure as snow. Your Pastor lies foully when he says other. It is true she succoured me when I was in sore need in Magdeburg. But do not your Scriptures say--'If thine enemy hunger, feed him. If he thirst, give him drink'? This did she, and for this I spared not only her life, but the life of her slanderer, Pastor Rad. Is this true, maiden?"

"Before God, it is true!" said Elspeth.

"Nevertheless, I leave her not here to your ruthlessness and your religion! Maiden!"

She sprang up at the word! Nigel lifted her upon his saddle, and giving his horse the spur, bore her to the regiment, who, understanding nothing of what had gone before, manifested a jovial indifference not unmingled later with some rough jokes, which would perhaps have put Nigel to the blush. For a woman, especially a woman in her youth, not ill-looking, was the ordained prey of the soldier of fortune, who having abducted her in one hour, as willingly dropped her in the next to patch up her life and the rags of her honour as she would.