The guard pushed the captives rudely into line as the Duke Casimir strode along the front. The women he passed without a sign or so much as a look. They were kept for another day. But the men were judged sharp and sudden, as the Duke in his black armor passed along, and that scarlet Shadow of Death with the broad axe over his shoulder paced noiselessly behind him.
For as each man looked into the eyes of Casimir of the Wolfsberg he read his doom. The Duke turned his wrist sharply down, whereupon the attendant sprites of the Red Shadow seized the man and rent his garment down from his neck—or the hand pointed up, and then the man set his hand to his heart and threw his head back in a long sigh of relief.
It came the turn of the man who carried the babe.
Duke Casimir paused before him, scowling gloomily at him.
"Ha, Lord Prince of so great a province, you will not set yourself up any more haughtily. You will quibble no longer concerning tithes and tolls with Casimir of the Wolfmark."
And the Duke lifted his hand and smote the man on the cheek with his open hand.
Yet the captive only hushed the child that wailed aloud to see her guardian smitten.
He looked Duke Casimir steadfastly in the eyes and spoke no word.
"Great God, man, have you nothing to say to me ere you die?" cried Duke
Casimir, choked with hot, sudden anger to be so crossed.
The elder man gazed steadily at his captor.
"God will judge betwixt me, a man about to die, and you, Casimir of the
Wolfmark," he said at last, very slowly—"by the eyes of this little maid
He will judge!"
"Like enough," cried Casimir, sneeringly. "Bishop Peter hath told me as much. But then God's payments are long deferred, and, so far as I can see, I can take Him into my own hand. And your little maid—pah! since one day you took from me the mother, I, in my turn, will take the daughter and make her a titbit for the teeth of my blood-hounds."
The man answered not again, but only hushed and fondled the little one.
Duke Casimir turned quickly to my father, showing his long teeth like a snarling dog:
"Take the child," he said, "and cast her into the kennels before the man's eyes, that he may learn before he dies to dread more than God's Judgment Seat the vengeance of Duke Casimir!"
Then all the men-at-arms turned away, heart-sick at the horror. But the man with the child never blanched.
High perched on the top tower, I also heard the words and loved the maid. And they tell me (though I do not remember it) that I cried down from the leads of the Red Tower: "My father, save the little maid and give her to me—or else I, Hugo Gottfried, will cast myself down on the stones at your feet!"
At which all the men looked up and saw me in white, a small, lonely figure, with my legs hanging over the top of the wall.
"Go back!" my father shouted. "Go back, Hugo! 'Tis my only son—my successor—the fifteenth of our line, my lord!" he said to the Duke in excuse.
But I cried all the more: "Save the maid's life, or I will fling myself headlong. By Jesu-Mary, I swear it!"
For I thought that was the name of one great saint.
Then my father, who ever doted on me, bent his knee before his master: "A boon!" he cried, "my first and last, Duke Casimir—this maid's life for my son!"
But the Duke hung on the request a long, doubtful moment.
"Gottfried Gottfried," he said, even reproachfully, "this is not well done of you, to make me go back on my word."
"Take the man's life," said my father—"take the man's life for the child's and the fulfilling of your word, and by the sword of St. Peter I will smite my best!"
"Aye," said the man with the babe, "even so do, as the Red Axe says. Save the young child, but bid him smite hard at this abased neck. Ye have taken all, Duke Casimir, take my life. But save the young child alive!"
So, without further word or question, they did so, and the man who had carried the child kissed her once and separated gently the baby hands that clung about his neck. Then he handed her to my father.
"Be gracious to Helene," he said; "she was ever a sweet babe."
Now by this time I was down hammering on the door of the Red Tower, which had been locked on the outside.
Presently some one turned the key, and so soon as I got among the men I darted between their legs.
"Give me the babe!" I cried; "the babe is mine; the Duke himself hath said it." And my father gave her to me, crying as if her heart would break.
Nevertheless she clung to me, perhaps because I was nearer her own age.
Then the dismal procession of the condemned passed us, followed by my father, who strode in front with his axe over his shoulder, and the laughing and jesting men-at-arms bringing up the rear.
As I stood a little aside for them to pass, the hand of the man fell on my head and rested there a moment.
"God's blessing on you, little lad!" he said. "Cherish the babe you have saved, and, as sure as that I am now about to die, one day you shall be repaid." And he stooped and kissed the little maid before he went on with the others to the place of slaughter.
Then I hurried within, so that I might not hear the dull thud of the Red Axe, on the block nor the inhuman howlings of the dogs in the kennels afterwards.
When my father came home an hour later, before even he took off his costume of red, he came up to our chamber and looked long at the little maid as she lay asleep. Then he gazed at me, who watched him from under my lids and from behind the shadows of the bedclothes.
But his quick eye caught the gleam of light in mine.
"You are awake, boy!" he said, somewhat sternly.
I nodded up to him without speaking.
"What would you with the little maid?" he said. "Do you know that you and she together came very near losing me my favor with the Duke, and it might be my life also, both at one time to-night?"
I put my hand on the maiden's head where it lay on the pillow by me.
"She is my little wife!" I said. "The Duke gave her to me out in the court-yard there!"
And this is the whole tale of how the Little Playmate came to dwell with us in the Red Tower.
CHAPTER III
THE RED AXE OF THE WOLFMARK
Just as clearly do I remember the next morning. The Little Playmate lay by me on my bed, wrapped in one of my childish night-gowns—which old Hanne had sought out for her the night before. It was a brisk, chill, nippy daybreak, and I had piled most of the bedclothes upon her. I lay at the nether side clipped tight in my single brown blanket. It was perishing cold. Out of the heaped coverings I saw presently a pair of eyes, great and dark, regarding me.
Then a little voice spoke, sweetly and clearly, but yet strangely sounding to me who had never before heard a babe speak.
"I want my father—tell him to send Grete, my maid, to attend on me, and then to come himself to sit by the bed and amuse me!"
Alas! her father—well I knew what had come to him—that which in the mercy of the Duke Casimir and in the crowning mercy of the Red Axe, I had seen come to so many. The dogs did not howl at all that morning. They, too, were