Part 42 (1/2)

I saw Count Hugo that night. He sent for me to his quarters at Hesel, and told me frankly that he would have let me go back had he thought good could come of it.

'But it would have been looking for a needle in a bundle of hay, my friend,' he continued. 'Tzerclas' men would have picked you up, or the peasants killed you for a soldier, and in a month perhaps the girl would have returned safe and sound, to find you dead.'

'My lord!' I cried pa.s.sionately, 'she saved your child. It was to her as her own!'

'I know it,' he answered with gravity, which of itself rebuked me.

'And where is my child?'

I shook my head.

'Yet I do not give up my work and the task G.o.d and the times have given me, and go out looking for it!' he answered severely. 'Leaving Scot, and Swede, and Pole, and Switzer to divide my country. For shame! You have your work too, and it lies by your lady's side. See to it that you do it. For the rest I have scouts out, who know the country; if I learn anything through them you shall hear it. And now of another matter. How long has the Waldgrave been like this, my friend?'

'Like this, my lord?' I muttered stupidly.

He nodded. 'Yes, like this,' he repeated. 'I have heard him called a brave man. Coming of his stock, he should be; and when I saw him in Tzerclas' camp he had the air of one. Now he starts at a shadow, is in a trance half his time, and a tremor the other half. What ails him?'

I told him how he had been wounded, fighting bravely, and that since that he had not been himself.

Count Hugo rubbed his chin gravely. 'It is a pity,' he said. 'We want all--every German arm and every German head. We want you. Man alive!'

he continued, roused to anger, I suppose, by my dull face, 'do you know what is in front of you?'

'No, my lord,' I said in apathy.

He opened his mouth as if to hurl a volley of words at me. But he thought better of it and shut his lips tight. 'Very well,' he said grimly. 'Wait three days and you will see.'

But in truth, I had not to wait three days. Before sunset of the next I began to see, and, downcast as I was, to p.r.i.c.k up my ears in wonder.

Beyond Romhild and between that town and Bamberg, the great road which runs through the valley of the Pegnitz, was such a sight as I had never seen. For many miles together a column of dust marked its course, and under this went on endless marching. We were but a link in a long chain, dragging slowly southwards. Now it was a herd of oxen that pa.s.sed along, moving tediously and painfully, driven by half-naked cattle-men and guarded by a troop of grimy horse. Now it was a reinforcement of foot from Fulda, rank upon rank of shambling men trailing long pikes, and footsore, and parched as they were, getting over the ground in a wonderful fas.h.i.+on. After them would come a long string of waggons, bearing corn, and hay, and malt, and wines; all lurching slowly forward, slowly southward; often delayed, for every quarter of a mile a horse fell or an axle broke, yet getting forward.

And then the most wonderful sight of all, a regiment of Swedish horse pa.s.sed us, marching from Erfurt. All their horses were grey, and all their head-pieces, backs and b.r.e.a.s.t.s of black metal, matched one another. As they came on through the dust with a tramp which shook the ground, they sang, company by company, to the music of drums and trumpets, a hymn, 'Versage nicht, du Hauflein klein!' Behind them a line of light waggons carried their wives and children, also singing.

And so they went by us, eight hundred swords, and I thought it a marvel I should never see beaten.

When they were gone out of sight, there were still droves of horses and mighty flocks of sheep to come, and cargoes of pork, and more foot and horse and guns. Some companies wore buff coats and small steel caps, and carried arquebuses; and some marched smothered in huge headpieces with backs and b.r.e.a.s.t.s to match. And besides all the things I have mentioned and the crowds of sutlers and horse-boys that went with them, there were munition waggons closely guarded, and pack-horses laden with powder, and always and always waggons of corn and hay.

And all hurrying, jostling, crawling southwards. It seemed to me that the world was marching southwards; that if we went on we must fall in at the end of this with every one we knew. And the thought comforted me.

Steve put it into words after his fas.h.i.+on. 'It must be a big place we are going to,' he said, about noon of the second day, 'or who is to eat all this? And do you mark, Master Martin? We meet no one coming back. All go south. This place Nuremberg that they talk of must be worth seeing.'

'It should be,' I said.

And after that the excitement of the march began to take hold of me. I began to think and wonder, and look forward, with an eagerness I did not understand, to the issues of this.

We lay a night at Bamberg, where the crowd and confusion and the stress of people were so great that Steve would have it we had come to Nuremberg. And certainly I had never known such a hurly-burly, nor heard of it except at the great fair at Dantzic. The night after we lay at Erlangen, which we found fortified, trenched, and guarded, with troops lying in the square, and the streets turned into stables. From that place to Nuremberg was a matter of ten miles only; but the press was so great on the road that it took us a good part of the day to ride from one to the other. In the open country on either side of the way strong bodies of horse and foot were disposed. It seemed to me that here was already an army and a camp.

But when late in the afternoon we entered Nuremberg itself, and viewed the traffic in the streets, and the endless lines of gabled houses, the splendid mansions and bridges, the climbing roofs and turrets and spires of this, the greatest city in Germany, then we thought little of all we had seen before. Here thousands upon thousands rubbed shoulders in the streets; here continuous boats turned the river into solid land. Here we were told were baked every day a hundred thousand loaves of bread; and I saw with my own eyes a list of a hundred and thirty-eight bakehouses. The roar of the ways, choked with soldiers and citizens, the babel of strange tongues, the clamour of bells and trumpets, deafened us. The constant crowding and pus.h.i.+ng and halting turned our heads. I forgot my grief and my hope too. Who but a madman would look to find a single face where thousands gazed from the windows? or could deem himself important with this swarming, teeming hive before him? Steve stared stupidly about him; I rode dazed and perplexed. The troopers laughed at us, or promised us greater things when we should see the Swedish Lager outside the town, and Wallenstein's great camp arrayed against it. But I noticed that even they, as we drew nearer to the heart of the city, fell silent at times, and looked at one another, surprised at the great influx of people and the s.h.i.+fting scenes which the streets presented.

For myself and Steve and the men, we were as good as nought. A house in the Ritter-Stra.s.se was a.s.signed to my lady for her quarters--no one could lodge in the city without the leave of the magistrates; and we were glad to get into it and cool our dizzy heads, and look at one another. Count Hugo stayed awhile, standing with my lady and the Waldgrave in one of the great oriels that overlooked the street. But a mounted messenger, sent on from the Town House, summoned him, and he took horse again for the camp. I do not know what we should have done without him at entering. The soldiers, who crowded the streets, showed scant respect for names, and would as soon have jostled my lady as a citizen's wife; but wherever he came hats were doffed and voices lowered, and in the greatest press a way was made for him as by magic.

For that night we had seen enough. I thought we had seen all, or that nothing in my life would ever surprise me again. But next day my lady went up to the Burg on the hill in the middle of the city to look abroad, and took Steve and myself with her. And then I found that I had not seen the half. The city, all roofs and spires and bridges, girt with a wall of seventy towers, roared beneath us; and that I had expected. But outside the wall I now saw a second city of huts and tents, with a great earthwork about it, and bastions and demilunes and picquets posted.

This was the Swedish Lager. It lay princ.i.p.ally to the south of the city proper, though on all sides it encircled it more or less. They told me that there lay in it about forty thousand soldiers and twenty thousand horses, and twenty thousand camp followers; but the number was constantly increasing, death and disease notwithstanding, so that it presently stood as high as sixty thousand fighting men and half as many followers, to say nothing of the garrison that lay in the city, or the troops posted to guard the approaches. It seemed to me, gazing over that mighty mult.i.tude from the top of the hill, that nothing could resist such a force; and I looked abroad with curiosity for the enemy.