The Fiery Angel (45 page)

Having negotiated the hillock, we came to the gates of the cloister, in the black shadow of its walls, and Michael pointed out to us where some distance away loomed the dim outlines of the two horses guarded by one of our men, and said:

“Thither, Master Rupprecht, you must carry your booty—I shall be waiting for you and I know the straight road to the castle. Trust me—falcons would not catch us.”

In the meantime the Count knocked softly with the hilt of his sword on the iron of the gates, so that in the moonlit silence the sound came meek and plaintive, like a sob. From behind the gate came a woman’s voice, also subdued, which asked:

“Who’s there?”

The Count replied with the pass-word agreed upon:

“The land of Judah is no smaller than the provinces of Judah.”

At once the gates, as if by witchcraft, softly opened, and at that moment I believed as firmly in the success of our undertaking as if I were already safe with Renata behind the trusty protection of the arrow-slits of the Castle von Wellen. The sister who opened the gates to us looked at us with fear, and was very pale—or perhaps she seemed so only in the light of the moon, but she did not utter a word. The feebly-lighted convent yard was quite deserted, yet we crossed it creeping beneath the walls, like three ghosts, and approaching the rear part of the chapel, we came upon the horrible door giving access to the subterranean world, to Renata. Here, on a flat stone, half asleep, there sat on guard another nun, who jumped up at our approach, trembling all over.

The Count repeated the pass-word and the sister fell to her knees, repeating in a strangled voice:

“Blessed be he that cometh in the name of the Lord! March on, march on! lead from her prison the innocent victim, heaped with chains by the devices of the Enemy! Sister Maria is holy and may her enemies be dumfoundered with shame! Christ Jesus is her Immaculate Spouse!”

Michael rudely interrupted these mutterings, whispering to the sister:

“Enough cackle, we are not in a hen-house! Open the door!”

The nun, taking out a huge iron key, tried to unlock the door, but her hands trembled so that she could not fit the head of the key into the aperture of the lock, and so Michael, taking it from her, unlocked it himself. When the black entrance to the vaults gaped open, Michael carefully struck a flame, lit the small torch that he had brought with him and handed it to me, while the Count said:

“Rupprecht, descend. At the back of the hall in which we conducted the examination this morning is a door closed by a bolt. Unfasten it: behind it is the cell of your Maria. Hasten, Michael will wait for you, and may the mother of love, the Cnidian Cyprian, come to your aid! Farewell!”

I was too excited to make any answer to the Count, but, clutching the torch in my hand, I rushed into the dark depths, and hastened, stumbling, along the steps of the slippery staircase, until I reached the hall of our inquiry. Our table, at which I had written down the fatal answers of Renata, was bare and looked like a huge tomb; the gloomy frame of the strappado with its raised arm yet towered in the depths, and as I looked at it I shivered; my steps sounded sonorous in the emptiness, and shadows fluttered around—maybe they were bats. Having walked a few paces further as instructed by the Count, I stumbled against a wooden door with bars forged in iron, and closed by a heavy bolt, and thrusting this back not without difficulty, I found myself in an arched chamber, low and stiflingly moist.

Moving my torch around, I gradually lit up all the corners of the prison, and distinguished in its far corner a heap of straw, and upon it a prostrate body, barely covered with the rags of clothing; I realised that this was Renata, and with a sinking of the heart approached and knelt beside her miserable couch. In the swaying light of the torch, I could clearly distinguish Renata’s face, pale like that of a corpse, with shut, as if lifeless eyes, her stretched out, motionless, exhausted arms, her breast, hardly lifted by her breath—and for about a minute endured a silence, for I dared not utter a word in this holy place. At last, reminding myself that every moment was numbered, I whispered softly:

“Sister Maria!”

There was no reply, and I repeated more loudly:

“Renata!”

At this call Renata opened her eyes, slightly, turned her head towards me, looked at me searchingly, recognised me, and, as if not at all surprised at seeing me by her side, uttered in a weak, scarcely discernible voice:

“Begone, Rupprecht! I forgive you all, but—begone.”

For the moment I was completely taken aback by these words, but then, having reflected that Renata, racked by torture and imprisonment, must be delirious, I replied, putting into my words all the tenderness of which I was capable:

“Renata! my dearest Renata! beloved! my only one! I bring you liberation and freedom. The gates are opened wide, we shall flee from hence, horses await us. Then we shall sail to New Spain, where a new life shall begin for us. I will serve you like a slave, and in nothing oppose myself to your decisions. For I love you as dearly as ever, Renata, I love you more than my life, more than the salvation of my soul. If you are able, rise, give me your hand, follow me. Or allow me to carry you in my arms, I am strong enough. But we must hasten.”

Having spoken these words with extreme emotion, I awaited the answer, bending to the very face of Renata, but she, not having stirred, in the same soft voice, without inflection, without modulation, answered as follows:

“I shall not follow you, Rupprecht! Once you nearly destroyed me, but I saved my soul from your talons! They have tortured me, they have crucified me—oh! but know they did not, that thus they were commanded by Jesus Christ! Blood, blood! I have seen my blood! How good! how sweet! It has washed away all my sins. Again he will fly to me like a large butterfly and I shall hide him in my tresses. No, no, really, he is just a butterfly, and nothing more. How dare you be here beside me, Rupprecht?”

This strange and disconnected speech convinced me that Renata had indeed lost from her sufferings the power of consecutive thought, but I yet made an effort to bring her to reason, saying to her:

“Renata! Hear me, try to understand me. You are in prison, in the convent prison. You are being tried by the inquisitory court and a horrible execution threatens you. To save your life you must flee and I have prepared all for your flight. Remember you said once to me that you loved me. Trust unto me and you will be set free. Then I shall give you your liberty to do as you will; remain with me, or leave me, or enter a nunnery again. I ask of you nothing, I do not ask love, I desire only to tear you from the executioners and save you from the flames. Is it possible that you desire torture and the torments of fire?

Renata exclaimed:

“Yes! Yes! I desire torture and fire! Just now I saw my Madiël and he told me that by death I shall expiate my whole life. He is all of flame, his eyes are blue as the skies, and his hair is of fine gold thread. He told me that he will receive my soul in his embracing arms, and that in the life eternal we shall never part, never. I forgive, I forgive, both you and Heinrich, for Madiël has forgiven me all. I am happy, I desire naught else. Only leave me alone; let me be with him; you frightened him away; begone—and he will return.”

With final persistence, I exclaimed:

“Renata, I swear to you by all that is holiest to me, I cannot leave you here! God and my conscience command me to remove you hence. You are exhausted, you are ill, you cannot reason soundly. Listen to me as a friend, as one older than you! It is not an expiatory death that awaits you here—you are only delivering yourself into the hands of brutal monks and bigots sunk deep in ignorance. Only come out from hence, only breathe the fresh air, only glance at the sun, and if within three days you should say to me: I desire to return to the prison—I swear that I myself will lead you hither.”

Renata raised herself a little with difficulty, and, looking me straight in the face, said, as if fully in possession of her faculties:

“I tell you, that I desire nothing from you! Your presence inspires me only with revulsion. Go from hence, return to life once more, kiss your Agnes, and I, may they lift me again upon the strappado. You want me to flee with you somewhither! Oh, dear, dear Heinrich, he would not have insulted me thus! I should only have said to him that I desired to die, and he would at once have understood me. And you, once a landsknecht, always a landsknecht, all you understand is how to slay an enemy. Well then, slay me, I have not the strength to defend myself!”

In these cruel and unjust words I recognised the old Renata, she who once made me fall to the earth in impotent despair or grind my teeth at an undeserved affront, but I did not allow myself to yield to impulse and forget that Renata was now not responsible for what she was saying, like an ailing person become delirious, or an unfortunate possessed by an evil spirit. And so I said firmly:

“Renata! I swear by the All Highest, I love you! and therefore I shall save you even against your will!”

Having spoken thus, I carefully leaned the torch against a projection of the wall, and then, clenching my teeth and trying not to look Renata in the face, I firmly bent over her, and, seizing her in my arms, desired to lift her from her couch of straw. Sensing my intention, Renata flew into a terrible excitement, shrank back, pressed into the corner of her cell, and screamed in a loud and despairing voice:

“Madiël! Madiël! protect me! save me!”

Paying no heed to this scream, I did not allow myself to be deflected from the purpose before me, and between us there began an insensate struggle, as Renata, who could hardly use her arms, exhausted by torture, strove to beat me back with her whole body, twisting frenziedly, flinging herself in all directions, using every means to free herself from my embrace. She did not disdain attempting to topple me over, pushing at me with her feet, and also did not hesitate wickedly to plunge her teeth into my hands, and in the intervals of the struggle she shouted into my face furious insults:

“Accursed one! Accursed one! You profit by my weakness! You are repulsive to me! Let me go, I shall shatter my head against these walls! Anything were better than to be with you! You are—the Devil! Madiël! Madiël! Defend me!”

Suddenly, when I already felt myself victor, Renata’s movements all at once grew weaker, and, uttering a piercing and horrible scream of pain, she drooped in my hands without movement, as droops the stem of a flower broken off. Quickly guessing that something had happened to Renata, I speedily lowered her back on to the straw, and loosened my embrace, but she was already like one dead, and it looked to me as though she were not breathing. Searching hurriedly round the cell, I found a little water in an earthenware jug and moistened her temples, after which she sighed feebly, but to me, who had so often been witness of the expiration of wounded after battle, there was left no doubt that her last moment was approaching. I do not know whether the efforts that she had made in resisting me had had a fatal effect upon her, or whether her frail being had not been able to support those merciless trials that it had in general been her lot to suffer, but in any case all the signs pointed clearly to the approach of the end, for the expression of her face acquired a special solemnity, all her body became strangely rigid, and she piteously clutched at the straw with her contorted fingers.

I could render no help to Renata, and continued to kneel beside her couch, gazing into her face, but suddenly, for one brief moment, she came to, saw me, smiled at me with her soft and tender smile, and whispered:

“Dearest Rupprecht! how happy I am—that you are with me!”

No curses such as Renata had previously rained upon me could have affected me as those simple words, uttered upon the very brink of the grave—tears poured from my eyes unrestrained, and, pressing my lips to the cold-growing fingers of Renata, as the faithful press theirs to a revered sacred relic, I exclaimed:

“Renata! Renata! I love you!”

At this moment it seemed to me of the most vital importance to engrave in her soul only these words, so that with their echo alone she should wake to another life, but Renata was probably already unable to hear my sorrowful exclamation, for, as she whispered her last greeting, she suddenly fell backwards, and shivered horribly, as if in the last struggle with death. Three times she rose from her couch, trembling and suffocating, either warding off some horrible apparition or advancing to meet someone beloved, and thrice she fell back, and in her chest already sounded the death rattle, even now like no sound of life. Falling back for the third time, she remained completely motionless, and, placing my ear to her breast, I heard no more the beat of her heart, and realised that from this world, in which she could have expected only persecution and suffering, her soul had passed on into the world of spirits, demons and genii, to which she had always striven.

When I became convinced that Renata was no more, I closed her eyes and softly kissed her brow, which was covered in cold sweat—and though at this moment I loved her with all the intensity of my being, with a love no less than that of which the poets sing—yet from all my soul I delivered a prayer that her hope might be fulfilled, that she might meet her Madiël, and, if only after death, know peace and happiness. Then I sat down upon the floor of the prison beside the corpse of Renata to reflect on the position, for her death not only did not deprive me of the ability to reason, but even returned to me my self-control, broken by the sight of her sufferings, and the tears even dried in my eyes. After a short meditation it appeared to me unanswerable that it would be purposeless to endanger my life, and the honour of the Count who had so magnanimously aided me, for the sake of a soulless body, and that the wisest thing I could do was to depart secretly. After this decision, I touched for the last time the lips of the dead Renata with my kisses, then crossed her arms on her breast, once more arrested my glance on her motionless face, that I might drink in her features for ever, and at last, taking my torch, I directed my steps away from the fatal vault.