Chapter XVIII: I Hear of Ilsa

Now for the first time I began truly to labor for what did not concern that most unsatisfactory thing called myself. That a man of parts and fortune owed anything in the way of service to his fellow-men, beyond observing the polite social conventionalities, is something I learned from no preceptor in Padua, Bologna, or Florence. But I strove to make amends now; and perhaps the mere novelty of the task made it the more pleasing. With all the energy that in me lay I applied myself to studying and bettering the condition of my peasants. Here were over a thousand folk with immortal souls, dwelling in the Regenstein and the hamlets around it, and I their absolute lord and master, with “imperial right of pit and gallows”; in other words, with power to consign them to any form of misery, including the grave. My father had left his German lordship largely to Adolf’s rough rule and fostering, and the latter shaggy individual had dispensed a severe but at least impartial justice. Now, however, I resolved to prove that because a nobleman spoke Latin and read Greek, he was not incapacitated for studying the needs of his dependants. My first step was to dismiss upon a meagre pension Father Jakob, the chaplain who had too long afflicted the Regenstein with the mouthings which he had called homilies, and with his irregular life. The first Sunday after my return I had caught him in the buttery, eating soup previous to saying mass.

“Magister Jakob,” said I, raising my eyebrows, “do you not know that this is forbidden by the Church?”

“Nonsense, Countly Grace,” had been his answer, between the smacking spoonfuls. “The Saviour gets through bolts and locks; and this soup won’t stop the holy wafer.”

I left him to continue his feast, but when that day in the crowded chapel he spent the whole sermon hour talking endlessly about the manner of raiment worn by the angel who appeared to Mary,--whether with white, red, or variegated clothes, and about the precise aspect of St. Joseph, my wrath boiled over. My first duty to the Regenstein was to see that the simple piety of my peasants was not polluted longer by such as he.

The next day all my dependants were buzzing with a horror they hardly suppressed in my sight. The Lord Graf had actually had Father Jakob clapped in a dungeon, “there to stay three days, to have bread and water only, and to meditate upon his sins,” while a messenger had sped toward Wittenberg, begging Dr. Luther to send some pious and tolerably learned priest! I think if Adolf had not stood stoutly by me, my Regensteiners would have mutinied at the order to lock up the Chaplain; for he had threatened them with all the fury of the Vatican and the thunders of heaven. But the three days passed. Father Jakob emerged from his dungeon a sadder and hungrier man. The pinnacles of the Regenstein still rose proudly in the sky. No plague had swept off the children or harried the flocks. I had won a moral victory that gave me an invaluable hold over my peasantry. In due time an honest and sincerely devout young parson, a pupil of Dr. Luther, came to take up the parish, and much genuine comfort I was to gain from his support and company.

But this was only the beginning. The peasants needed far more than better sermons. Very few of my subjects could read, much less write. Their huts were such that often I felt the swine were better housed than the children. Their agriculture was utterly crude. Repeated bad harvests had driven them to desperation. I heard many rumors that my subjects were becoming impregnated with the _Bundschuh_ movement,--that secret league among the peasants, farther south, which in a few years was to culminate in bloody revolt against their lords, and infinite ruin and misery. Many were in debt to the Halberstadt usurers, and ever becoming more hopelessly involved. All over Germany again prices were increasing direfully. The price of black bread had trebled in half a generation. Along with this I found that Adolf, with a loyalty to my interest admirable in any other case, had been exacting the uttermost farthing in the way of rents and dues. I was horrified to learn that even while I was in Leipzig a peasant, caught by my underlings cutting down a tree illicitly, had had his feet put in the stocks, and his soles burned nigh to a crisp in a slow fire. It was easy to halt deeds like that. Easy when I had my Venetian bankers, to satisfy some of the most greedy usurers, to distribute seed corn, and breeding cattle, to arrange for the opening of a school in the largest hamlet, to bestow direct alms upon the most needy. All this won me the noisy popularity which the down-trodden will usually fling to the generous. But to put matters so that my Regensteiners should become self-respecting, prosperous folk, would be the work not of weeks, but of years--and of infinite labor and patience.

For that spirit of labor and patience I made daily prayer,--for I was frequently praying now. I tried indeed to remember Luther’s mandate--to trust, to work, and not to question curiously; but incessantly I read the new, strange book--the Bible. A Vulgate, a Septuagint, an Erasmus’s Greek New Testament I had brought from Wittenberg--and I read them with all the avidity with which as a young lad I had first devoured the tomes of Cicero. I tried to forget the issues of doctrine, the pressing matters of debate and doubt; to read, to read, and ever again to read--and I marvelled more and more. Here was a new world to me; a world of eternal spiritual values, and I entered into it with that keen and novel delight the exploring Spaniards must enjoy in the Indies when bursting upon some silver city ruled by a golden-clad cazique and his feather-crowned warriors. I remember how late, very late one night I closed the volume. I had just finished reading the great argument of Job. “Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him.”

“O foolish Grecians and Latinists,” I cried aloud to my empty chamber; “will ye indeed praise Euripides and Lucretius and withhold your praise from this!”

And every night I launched out upon my voyagings of discovery,--now in Genesis, now in Isaiah, now in the Gospels,--and always found that which rewarded me more than all the precious silks and porcelains from Zipango or Cathay. A personal record this? Yes,--but I tell no secrets: my experience was that of a myriad others up and down broad Germany, who were for the first time learning to find the imperishable gold, prompted by the lessons of the friar of Wittenberg.

Thus for some months I worked, read, studied, and strove to crush all thoughts of Ilsa from my heart.

* * * * *

In October came a break in my chosen routine. Thus it came. Pseudo-friars who eked out scanty alms by thievery, and masterless rogues who had turned poachers, had plagued us all the summer; but now one morning Adolf came dancing in to me with gleeful eyes and an excited story.

“A right true robber” had been found on the Regenstein lands. He had pillaged hen-roosts for some nights at Plattenberg, and last night a farmer, one Gustav Lampe, had waited behind his barn, suspecting an inroad. By the light of the moon he had caught the rascal in the act and article of making off with a game bag of choice poultry, and had pounced upon him. But the robber had whipped out a knife as long as one’s arm, and left poor Lampe helpless beside the hay cock, with a desperately wounded shoulder. Lampe had raised a great clamor. The neighbors had turned out. The thief had dropped his bag, and run for dear life to the western woods towards Michaelstein, and there he was surely hiding. At first dawn they had come to the castle for dogs, horses, and weapons, and “they did not doubt his Countly Grace would bestir himself.”

Only one thing was left for me to do. If I could not suppress common crime, I had lost all hold on my peasantry. Moritz was invited to join us with a band from Blankenburg. All that day the great dogs bayed in the wood, and some fifty of us beat up the thickets; in mid afternoon we found our quarry. He was a tall, powerful man, and made a desperate run for it. At last the dogs cornered him under a giant fir tree. It was a sight when I broke in upon them,--the fellow lunging about with his big knife, striving with despair to keep the brutes from his throat, and the dogs all leaping at him with as good will as upon a boar or stag. He had killed one hound already, when Adolf whipped them off, and then he sullenly dropped his knife.

“Better hanging than being eaten alive,” he muttered between his pantings, as my men roped his hands behind him, and we all trooped triumphantly back to the Regenstein. The women and children came out to greet us, as if we were Roman conquerors, and they “oh-ed,” and “ah-ed” long at our captive. As for Adolf, without consulting me, he ordered Rüdiger (who attended to such nice matters), “to get the gibbet and running noose ready.” However, I was not prepared for such speedy justice. I did not flinch from the disagreeable task of passing on the life of a fellow-man; but hanging even a worse wretch without formality was another matter. In the great hall I held court. Moritz stood at my right hand as assessor; the prisoner, pale, and pinioned, was before me; the whole room was crowded with uncouth retainers flashing their spears and partizans; while behind the men pressed the brightly kirtled women. The ruddy torch-light added a touch of barbaric color to the whole. I felt I was a Turkish pasha about to order in the black slave with his bow string.

The guilt of the prisoner was undoubted. Lampe was not so wounded he could not come and identify. The robberies had been extensive. The way the fellow had used his knife showed he would not stick at murder. Adolf was already whispering to a varlet to “bring in the new parson to confess this fine bird before he gets his dance on nothing,” when I began to interrogate the prisoner.

“What have you to say to these charges?”

“Nothing.” He held down his head in stolid defiance.

“You know your life then is forfeit?”

“I suppose so.”

“How came a great hulking fellow of your age to turn rogue? You should have been an honest man. Whence came you?”

“From Quedlinburg.” I saw Moritz’s ears prick.

“Quedlinburg? And what did you there?”

“I was an honest peasant on the abbey lands. A month ago the Vogt[8] of the Abbess came to demand my rent. He required too much. I am a man of hot temper. Words flew, I struck him. Then he slandered me to the Abbess with all manner of vileness. My Lady Abbess when she once believes the worst of a man has as much mercy as a hawk for a sparrow. I was sorely and publicly flogged.”

“Flogged he was--by St. Stephen!” cried Adolf, plucking back the fellow’s tattered shirt and disclosing a foul row of scarcely healed welts; “but like enough for good causes.”

“Ay, call me liar an you will,” growled the fellow, snapping at his red tangle of a beard; “a few sweet words more or less will not hurt, when all’s to end on the halter.”

“Go on, rogue,” I enjoined; “why did that flogging make you take to the Regenstein woods? Answer that.”

“Because my little farm was seized from me. The cattle were sold by the Vogt, who grasped my poor worldly gear. With never a groschen in my bag I was led to the verge of the abbey domain, and told ‘Begone; if you come back, it won’t be whips for you, but gallows.’ So I sought your woods. I was desperate, and had to keep from starving.”

“Umph! Have you a wife and children?”

“My wife is with the saints these ten years--God rest her well! I’ve no sons. One daughter is honestly married to a smith in Wernigerode. The other is a lay servitor at Quedlinburg abbey.”

“Is, you say?” I asked, feeling my pulses tingle. “Was she not dismissed when you were disgraced?”

“No, she was kept; the abbess did not push her fury so far.”

“What’s your name, fellow?”

“Gunter, Countly Grace, Gunter of the Brook--for by it was my poor farm.”

I rose abruptly from the judgment seat. I had reached a sudden decision.

“Adolf,” I commanded, “conduct this man to my private chamber. I will interrogate him apart from this rabble. Graf Moritz, do me the honor to come with me.”

“But the gallows?” pressed Adolf in dismay.

“There’ll be no hanging at present. Let Rüdiger unrig them.”

“And your Lordship will be alone with this villain?” cried Adolf, as if misdoubting his ears.

“Exactly so. Obey me.” My tone brooked no denying. To the immense disappointment of the crowded hall I had the fellow into my own room, and there with only Moritz for witness I drew out all I wished to know. The case was not an unusual one: an honest, well-meaning man paying for one burst of passion by being transformed into a lawless knave. But I pass over his own personal story; it was what he had to tell of his daughter who served at the abbey which I lit on as if his words were pearls.

His daughter Trude had served for a number of years in the scullery of the nuns of Quedlinburg. She was a “pious and honest maid,” her father avowed, “in whom the Lady Abbess had great confidence, and indeed it was for her sake, I think, I was merely flogged and driven out, not hanged outright.” She knew all the convent gossip, what young Sister Marthe said, and what old Kunigund said, besides picking up a good many stories on her own account,--all of which tales, mostly silly and harmless enough, she was wont to pass on to her father when they met on Sundays and feast days. Very good. I led the fellow through a long maze, he, poor wretch, never dreaming whither all my talk ran, and instantly expecting Adolf and Rüdiger to come in and march him straight to the gibbet.

“Now, fellow, recollect carefully.” I put all possible menace into my tone. “Do not lie, or your eyes are gouged out and hot coals inserted. Has your daughter ever spoken of a kinswoman of the abbess who lately entered the convent?”

“The new Sister Ilsa?”

“Yes, scoundrel, that I think was the name. Now tell all this Trude of yours had to say about that new Sister Ilsa.”

“Well, Sister Ilsa entered the convent in the winter. She had a very short novitiate. A dispensation from the bishop or something like that--your Countly Grace knows better than I. They said she was the abbess’s niece, but I think My Lady showed her more rather than less severity on that account. Bread and water all day in her cell, for the most trivial error in telling her beads; and then to lie all night in the cold chapel before the altar, her arms spread out cross-fashion.”

“That is Aunt Theckla for a surety!” muttered Moritz in my ear.

“The poor thing would be all blue and pale from the cold until the summer came. The nuns said she was very pious; no one more rigorous with herself than she. She seemed very unhappy. Often Trude said she looked to have been weeping. Once Sister Marthe said that there was a long story about this nun; that her father had died a raging and godless man; that she had once a lover who seemed a fine brave ritter indeed; but who presently seemed like to prove as bad as her father. So Sister Ilsa had sought the convent to pray for their souls, but she was finding no peace, much less happiness. ‘She is not the kind for the convent,’ Sister Marthe said; ‘still vows are vows, and so she must make the best of it.’”

If Moritz had not given my elbow a mighty nudge, I would have cried out some witless thing, even before that felon. As it was, I plucked up strength to ask--my own lips twitching.

“How long since you heard this from Trude?”

“The day, Countly Grace, before I had the quarrel with the Vogt: ah! mercy! pity! great lords. I was in great misery! I have tried indeed to live honest!” Down he went on his knees, and began at once bleating and bellowing. I clapped my hands: Adolf and two others entered expectantly.

“Take this fellow out,” I commanded. “Take him to the dungeon. Keep him snug on prison fare for the nonce. He is not to die.”

“Not to die!” faltered Adolf, almost dropping his tall halberd. “A proven robber!”

“I have my reasons. Rüdiger can take down his rope.”

“But at least, your Grace will graciously order his nose to be cut off flush with his face,” urged my lieutenant, still blinking.

“Not even that.” I drew money from my pouch. “Take these ten gulden to Lampe and tell him these will salve his wound. Tell those cackling geese in the hall that for high reasons of policy, too profound for them to know, the execution is postponed. Now hale him out.”

“Oh! Countly Grace! Countly Grace!” Gunter was bawling in ecstacy, “you give me life. You are sparing me! I am your slave forever! All the Saints prosper you! May you--”

“Trot on, ape,” ordered Adolf with a kick, “and take that face of yours down to the dungeon. Holy Wounds! But you could look the part of the devil at the miracle play, and without a mask, either.”

Out they went, and Moritz turned to me, wondering.

“Mary and all angels!” he swore to me in his turn. “What are you doing, Walter?”

I seized his hands and almost danced with him round the room. “Do you not see? Through this fellow’s Trude I can learn all that happens at the convent. I might even some day--”

He clapped his hand over my mouth.

“Hush!” he enjoined; “playing with a nun is playing with fire in a magazine.”

“I know, I know.” I shot back to him, “I will be prudent. I will be wise. But one thing I have which I had not an hour ago.”

“And what is that?” he demanded.

“A little hope!” I answered.

FOOTNOTES:

[8] A kind of business steward.