Part 43 (1/2)

”Put in the key!” commanded my father, making as if he would come out of bed and hasten me himself.

I thrust in the key, indeed, but with no more faith than if I had been bidden to put it into a mouse-hole.

Nevertheless, it turned easy as thinking, and a little door swung open, cunningly fitted. Here were dresses, books, parchments huddled together.

”Bring all these to me,” he said.

And I brought them carefully in my arms and laid them on the bed.

The eye of old Dessauer fell on something among them and was instantly fascinated. It was a woman's waist-belt of thick bars of gold laid three and three, with crests and letters all over it.

The Chancellor put his hand forward for it, and my father allowed him to take it, following him, however, with a questioning eye.

Then Dessauer put his hand into his bosom and drew out a chain of gold--the necklace of the woodman, in-deed--and laid the two side by side. He uttered a shrill cry as he did so.

”The belt of the lost Princess!” he cried; ”the little Princess of Pla.s.senburg!”

And, laying them one above the other, each group of six bars read thus:

[Ill.u.s.tration: o o o H o o o H o o o H o o o | | | o o o E o o o E o o o E o o o The Necklace | | | o o o L o o o L o o o L o o o

o o o E o o o E o o o E o o o | | | o o o N o o o N o o o N o o o The Belt | | | o o o E o o o E o o o E o o o]

With delight on his face, like that of a mathematician when his calculations work out truly, Dessauer reached over his hand for the papers also, but my father stayed him.

”Who may you be that has a chain to match mine?” he asked, with his mighty hand on Dessauer's wrist.

”I am the State's Chancellor of Pla.s.senburg, and it needed but this to show me our true Princess.”

”Here, then,” said my father, ”is more and better.”

And he handed him the papers.

”It meets! It meets!” cried Dessauer, enthusiastically, as he glanced them over. ”It is complete. It would stand probation in the Dict of the Emperor.”

”But yet all that will not prevent Helene Gottfried dying at the stake!”

cried my father, sadly, and fell back unconscious on his bed.

We spent this heaviest of nights at the palace of Bishop Peter--Dessauer with the prelate--I, praise to the holy pyx, in the kitchen with the serving men and maids. Peter of the Pigs was there, but no more eager to fight. The lay brother who had gone with the letter, and the conductor who had run away from the dread door of the Hall of Justice, had returned, and had spread a favorable report of our courage.

Certainly the house of Peter the Bishop might be a poor one and scantily provendered, but there was little sign of it that night. For if the master went fasting and his guests lived on pulse (as they said in Thorn), certainly not so Bishop Peter's servants.

For there were pasties of larks, with sauce of b.u.t.ter and herbs, most excellent and toothsome. There were rabbits from the sand-hills, and pigeons from the towers of the minster. The clear chill Rhenish vied with the more generous wine of Burgundy and the red juice of a.s.smanhauser. For me, as was natural, I ate little. I spoke not at all. But I looked so dangerous with my swarthy face and desperate eye, I dare say, also I was so well armed, that the roysterers left me severely alone.

But I drank--Lord, what did I not drink that night! I poured down my gullet all and sundry that was given me. And to render these Bishop's thralls their dues, there was no lack and no inhospitality. But the strange thing of it was that, though I am a man more than ordinarily temperate, that night I poured the Rhenish into me like water down a cistern-pipe and felt it not. G.o.d forgive me, I wanted to make me drunken and forgetful, and lo! the dog's swill would not bite.

So I cursed their drink, and asked if they had no Lyons Water-of-Life, stark and mordant, or social Hollands, or indeed anything that was not mere compound of whey and dirty water. Whereat they wondered, and held me thereafter in great respect as a good companion and approven worthy drinker.