The Fiery Angel (46 page)
I confess that, while I was walking along the dark halls and passages, the thought several times came into my head to return and die beside Renata, but by arguments of logic I contrived to soothe myself, and, having completed the return journey, I came out under the night sky through the door near which Michael was waiting for me. Seeing me, he exclaimed:
“At last, Master Rupprecht! You were long overdue! Any moment we might have been seized like mice in a mousetrap. And where is the maiden?”
Hardly had I had time to reply, when the sister who was keeping guard over the doorway approached us impetuously, and, in a strangling voice, repeated the question:
“Where is Sister Maria?”
I replied to both:
“Sister Maria is dead.”
But scarcely had I uttered these words, when the pious sister flung herself at me, like a maddened cat, clutched at the collar of my jacket, and screamed unrestrainedly, so that she might have aroused the whole convent.
“It is you who have slain her, villain!”
With all my strength, I pulled the woman off me, pressed my hand over her mouth, and said:
“I swear to you by the immaculate body of Christ that Sister Maria did not die by my hand, but if you howl once more, you I shall certainly kill!”
After that I flung her away from me, and the nun, dropping to the ground, began to weep softly, while Michael and I quickly walked across the deserted courtyard to the exit gates, which the other portress opened before us silently and without delay. And when we were outside the cloister, Michael asked me:
“This means, the job has failed?”
I replied:
“Yes, the job has failed, but I shall not return to camp. Tell the Count that I shall ride to the castle and await him there.”
Michael did not oppose me with a word, but escorted me to the slope where the horses were waiting us, helped me into the saddle, and at parting I gave him a golden pistole, saying:
“You know, Michael, that I am not wealthy, but I should like to reward you, for you placed yourself in mortal danger for my sake. Had they found us at the cloister, we should both have been marched to the bonfire.”
Only then could I at last press spurs to my horse, to urge him into the night and once again be alone, without people, alone with myself, which was as necessary for me as it is for a dolphin to breathe on the surface of the water. I did not know the exact route to the castle of the Count, but, turning the horse roughly in the direction of the castle, I dropped slack the reins, and allowed it to gallop across meadows, rifts and hills. I thought in that hour no definite thoughts, but one realisation in all fullness governed my numbed soul: that on the whole earth, with all its lands, seas, rivers, mountains and habitations, I was once more—alone. At times, too, I vividly remembered the face of Renata, distorted by her death struggle, and at the thought that never would it be given to me to behold it more, I sighed sorrowfully in the silence of the dark fields, and birds, frightened by the sudden sound, fluttered, starting up out of their nests, and flew in circles round me.
When it began to grow light, I found my way and, riding forward on the proper road, I reached the Castle Wellen about the hour of early Mass. The castle retainers were surprised at my unexpected appearance, separate, moreover, from the Count, and at first they suspected me of some crime, though my return itself contradicted such an absurd supposition—but in the end they admitted me and allowed me to occupy my room. There, worn out by the four-and-twenty hours I had spent without sleep, hours during which I had lived through a whole lifetime of hopes, despair, horror, and sorrow, I flung myself into my bed and slept until the late twilight. In the evening the Countess herself, mastering her disdain for me, called me to her chamber and questioned me about our journey with the Archbishop and the reasons for my return, but I still felt myself so weak that I was unable to compose a truth-like story, and she probably took me for a man who had lost his reason. On the following day, everyone in the castle treated me with a sort of timid caution, and perhaps, finally, might have thought it necessary to put me on a chain, if the Count had not arrived towards the decline of day.
I was as glad to see the Count as if he had been a blood relation, and, when we were left alone, I told him frankly all that I had experienced in the subterranean vaults—while he told me what had happened at the convent after my departure. According to his words, when Renata was found dead in the prison, none doubted that the Devil had slain her, and that served as new evidence against her and her companions. Brother Thomas, nowise considering the case finished, had immediately summoned for examination many other sisters, whom he thought might be suspected of connection with the demons, and all these, as soon as they had been submitted to the first tortures, had hastened to assail themselves with the most ruinous accusations. According to the evidence of the sisters, the whole convent, and pious Mother Martha herself, were all guilty of horrible crimes, of pacts with the Devil, of flights to the Sabbath, of celebrating the Black Mass, and all the rest. Like a many-ringed snake, the accusations began to uncoil, and it might well be expected that, sooner or later, our names, those of the Count, myself and Michael, would be involved in the inquiry.
“I hastened here especially to warn you, Rupprecht”—said the Count, in conclusion—“Of course, the accusations may threaten me as well, but hardly will this despicable Thersites, Thomas, dare to menace me directly. In any case, do not concern yourself about me, and know that, remembering the principles of Cicero expressed in his deliberations in ‘
De amititia
,’ I do not repent in the least having come to your aid. Whereas you may well pay cruelly for our night adventure, especially as your flight serves as weighty evidence against you. Therefore I advise you: leave this land immediately and change your name for a while.”
Of course I was not slow to thank the Count for his continuous care on my behalf, and I replied that his advice coincided with my own decision, which in truth it did. There and then the Count offered me a sum of money, partly as remuneration for my services as secretary and also simply as a friendly present, but I preferred to refuse it, for, as it was, I was without it already much beholden to the Count, and this weighed on me. The Count then, weeping, embraced me and kissed me, and though this kiss was given me not as from an equal to an equal, but more like an act of grace or a politeness, yet I remember it with gladness, for all his actions the Count performed without after-thought, and with the simple soul of a child.
In the early morning of the next day, I left for ever the Castle von Wellen, and rode one of the Count’s horses as far as Adenau. From there I proceeded on foot, and to questions who I might be I began to answer that I was a former landsknecht, heading for my birthplace, and that my name was Bernhard. I directed my road towards the south, for I desired at all costs to visit my native Losheim, to which I had now come so near, and after a three days’ journey I reached the green slopes of the Hochwald, so familiar to me from childhood.
That night I spent at the hostelry “
Halber Mond
,” which lay on the very outskirts of Losheim, and, questioning the landlord with circumspection, I managed to find out, giving thanks therefor to the Creator, that my father and mother were alive, that my brothers and sisters lived happily and in affluence, and that all thought me perished during the Italian campaign. At dawn, by a by-path I had known well when still a boy, I walked towards my native town, which for nine long years I had not seen, and which I remembered like a fairy-tale heard in childhood, but the details of which I visualised with such clarity as though I had but yesterday walked all through its streets. If my emotion was strong when, after my wanderings beyond the Ocean, I saw again from afar upon the barge the outlines of the City of Köln, then now the sight of these native walls, these tiled roofs familiar from childhood, was a blow too mighty for my exhausted soul, protected by no shield, and I had perforce, seating myself on one of the wayside stones, to wait until my heart had quietened down, for I had not for a time the strength to make a step.
I did not wish to go into the town, for I did not wish to appear before my parents like the prodigal son in the Evangels, a beggar and miserable: to me this would have been a tormenting shame, and to them it could only have brought unnecessary sorrow, so that it was better to leave them in the conviction that I was no longer amongst the living, to which they had resigned themselves. But I insistently desired to see our house, in which I had been born, and spent the years of childhood and youth—for I felt that the sight of this little old house would be for my soul like some fortifying draught, that would give me strength to begin a new life. Therefore, branching off the main road, I climbed a steep hill that rises behind the village, a place where in the evening pairs of lovers walk, but which was quite deserted at so early an hour, and from thence I could see the whole of Losheim, and especially our small house, which stands near the hill itself. Lying on the ground, I peered, with the thirst of a drunkard gazing at wine, into the empty streets, at the houses, the owners of which I could enumerate by name, at the little house of the apothecary, where of old had lived my Friedrich, of whose fate the innkeeper had been able to tell me nothing, into the deep gardens, around the stern lines of the big church—and then shifted my glance back once more to my native house, to this structure of stones that was as dear to me as a living being. I studied in detail all the changes that the years had wrought in our habitation: I saw how the trees had broadened in our garden; noticed that the roof slanted just a little, and the walls leaned just a trifle crooked; remarked that the curtains had been altered in the windows; I reconstructed in my memory the distribution of the furniture in the rooms, and tried to guess what new pieces were standing there and what old ones had disappeared; but I took no note of how passed the time, of the fact that in the village people had begun to move about, and that the sun, which was already risen high on the horizon, had begun to scorch me mightily.
Suddenly opened the door of our house—on the threshold appeared first a bent old lady, then, following her, an old gentleman, getting on in years but yet trying to be brisk: they were father and mother, whom I could not but recognise in spite of the distance, both by their features and by their carriage. Walking down the porch, and speaking of something together, they sat down on a small bench beside the house, warming their old backs in the warmth of the rising sun. I—the roving vagabond, hiding in the outskirts of the town, I—a failure as a landsknecht, a failure as a sailor, a failure as a gold-seeker even after scouring the forests of New Spain, I—a sinner who had sold his soul to the Devil, who had reached to the edge of inexpressible happiness, and fallen into the pit of nethermost despair, I—the son of these two old people—watched them covertly, like a thief, not daring to kneel before them, to kiss their wrinkled hands, to beg their blessing. Never in my life did I experience such an access of the emotion of filial love as at this moment, aware that my father and mother were the only two human beings in all this universe who concerned themselves about me, to whom I was not a stranger—and all the time that these two tiny, bent figures sat near the porch, talking of something, perhaps of me, I did not tear my glance from them, satiating my eyes with the long unfamiliar spectacle of domestic bliss. And when the old people had risen, and, moving slowly, returned to the house, when our old, squinting door had shut behind them, I kissed instead of them my native soil, rose also, and walked away without turning back.
That same day I was already at Merzig.
My purpose was to return to New Spain, but I had not sufficient money to carry out this far journey at my own expense. Therefore, in the Imperial City of Strassburg, I entered, under the name of Bernhard, the service of a trading house that sent its employees out to various foreign lands, and they eagerly engaged me for my knowledge of several languages and my swordsmanship. As a trader’s agent, I spent about three months, and the story of two encounters that I had during this time must certainly be added to this faithful narrative.
We were sent into Savoy to purchase silks, and our route lay through the Western Alps to the City of Geneva. As is well known, on the Alpine roads are encountered a multitude of difficult crossings over mountain streams, which caused us especial trouble on this occasion owing to the strong rains that had passed just before our arrival, transforming rivulets into turbulent torrents, and in many places tearing down bridges. Before one of these streams we had to tarry an especially long space, for it was impossible to ford it, and our guides and ourselves had to erect a temporary bridge. Simultaneously with ourselves, the guides of two travellers who had been riding in the opposite direction to us and were now standing on the opposite bank of the stream, busied themselves in the same way. But whilst we were attired very modestly, as befits merchants who ride on business bent, the cloaks and hats of these two travellers denoted their noble descent, and, in conformity with this, they took no part in the work, standing aside and proudly waiting for its termination.
When the structure had, however, been contrived, the noble seigneurs, especially one of them, desired to cross the first, and on this account there ensued an angry quarrel between them and my comrades, though I sought to persuade the latter to pay no attention to so trifling a circumstance. The quarrel might easily have developed into an armed fight, but happily the second of the knights persuaded his companion to cede place to us, and our small caravan was the first to cross, with shouts of victory, and to lead its horses along the logs placed for that purpose. Reaching the other side, I considered it appropriate to thank the knight who, by his courtesy and common sense, had saved us from an unseemly battle, but, when I approached him, I recognised, with astonishment and emotion, in him Count Heinrich, and in his companion Lucian Stein.