'Twixt Dog and Wolf (Valancourt Classics) Read online

  Presently Carl was asking them concerning a rumour which had reached the village: that the Freyherr was among his men, as if for war. And ‘O,’ said Gotschalk, with high contempt, ‘Lord Otto is half a monk. He will never know from what side danger comes.’ And ‘No,’ said Rudolf, ‘he will never see the Red Spectre till it is at his door.’

  If a thunderbolt had fallen the cottage folk could hardly have been more astounded. Everybody knew what sort of punishment talk of that sort from a lord’s servant might bring down. And for these two rangers to put themselves even in danger from unknown peasants was beyond reason rash. Yet they seemed perfectly indifferent. And soon a still stranger thing happened. For Rudolf, seeing Elizabeth place the pot over the fire, picked up something from beside him and said: ‘Here is something better than cabbage to put in your pot.’

  He held up his prize in the firelight. It was a large grey hare. Carl sprang from his stool, and grasped his knife. Just such a hare had he brought home that evening, and hidden among the bean-stalks above the cow-stall. For a moment he supposed that the game-keeper had unearthed his game. But he recovered himself, and sat down once more with wary eyes. ‘You take the Freyherr’s game?’ he said. ‘O,’ said Rudolf, with another of his grating laughs, ‘Lord Otto’—(Elizabeth noted and remembered afterwards how they always spoke of the Freyherr as Lord Otto)—‘is open-handed. He never hunts in the place where this was found, and gives good leave to whoso will to help himself.’

  ‘Whoso of his rangers?’ said Carl. ‘Nay, whoso will,’ said Gotschalk. ‘Yet none but a forester born,’ his comrade went on. ‘Born or unborn,’ put in Gotschalk: whereat they both laughed, though what might be the reason of the interruption the others could not guess.

  ‘None but a forester born—with eyes that see in the dark—could have found this hare.’ And, indeed, his eyes shone in the half light like the eyes of a ferret, fiery and red.

  ‘Dark in this moonlight?’ Elizabeth queried, surprised into speaking. For even now from the chimney-hole under the roof the moon made a patch of blue light upon the smoke where it entered the cowl. ‘Why, where could that have been?’

  ‘Dark as pitch,’ said Gotschalk, ‘on the common by the Three Pines.’

  Carl and his wife did not stay to ask how it could possibly be without a moon upon that windy heath. A more moving thought possessed them. ‘The Three Pines!’ they exclaimed with one voice. ‘Why, that is in Hilda’s Land!’

  And the shudder which passed down Elizabeth’s back now almost sharpened itself into a scream. For at that very moment a screech-owl glided past their door, and uttered its dismal sound, the Wicked Hilda’s cry.

  IV

  Blood was in all men’s thoughts. Henry with the Scar had been in the village but half an hour ago, and, standing by the fountain, had related how, when he and William Peterson were on guard upon the castle battlements only two nights agone, they had beheld, proceeding from the eastern heavens, a great army, with lances set and pennons flying, which marched as it were up the sky. Next, turning westward, they saw another army of like aspect move up to meet the first. And the two hosts encountered in mid-heaven. Henry and William saw the spears engage and break, nay, men and horses go down, in the shock, until at last the eastern army overcame the western, and drove it away over the horizon; and awhile the sky remained as clear as if it were a frosty winter’s night. Then, just as they were wondering what this vision might portend, behold the centre of heaven was suffused by a great stream of blood, which again ran out sideways in separate rivulets, and anon this vision also passed.

  It was thus that Henry with the Scar had told his tale by the fountain, and, old halberdier that he was, his face was pale and scared. Now, though it was only the sunset which dyed the water of the fountain, people thought they saw blood in it too. They strained their eyes in the direction to which Henry had pointed as that whence the first army came.

  ‘Yes: I deem Blankenroth lies that way,’ one of the older peasants acknowledged when they appealed to him. For every one knew that the curse upon the castle, Hilda’s curse, would some day be fulfilled, and that a host was destined to march from Blankenroth against the Lord of Rettenberg. Hilda the witch would ride with the army, and the Red Spectre was to lead it. But who was the Red Spectre not many knew, not many liked to ask.

  Elizabeth had listened to this talk, but without much heeding, her mind being occupied by private cares. She left the tank, and passed up beside their field, where a hoe had not fallen for many a day, and the weeds were growing high. What could she do alone? It was business enough to look after Tecla and her calf, to take them out by day, to browse on the edge of the wood, and bring them home at evening: to milk the cow, and pour the milk into the clay holes in the ground, and cover it with straw and dung for cheese-making. How could she work in the fields as well? And Carl, who ought to have seen to this, where was he? Ever since the day when the Two Foresters came to the cottage, Carl had neglected his fields, and spent his time a-hunting in the forest—Was it even in the forest? Or on the moor? Elizabeth never dared to ask where he spent his time, nor to think of the risks they ran—he, Carl, and that other one. Did Carl and he hunt along with the two rangers? Were the Lord’s men only luring them on to discovery and punishment? These things would not bear thinking on. They always had meat in their pot o’ nights now, when her husband was at home. But Elizabeth ate it trembling, and longed for the old days of porridge and cabbage-soup.

  To-night, as she toiled up the steep little path which led to their outlying cottage, she felt too weary and heart-sick for words. She had to go into the house and shake down the dried ferns for Tecla’s bed. She found some cold remnant of the mid-day’s meal, and brought it out to eat at the forest door—for one door faced toward the village and one toward the wood—sitting there always and waiting (as she said to herself) for her husband. The evening was warm enough; the stars were coming out one by one, but there was no moon. A certain thought oppressed her more than it had ever done before. It was that question which was now and again debated in the village, which had given rise not long since to taunts from crazy Jutta: the doubt whether their house was by right in either Lehndorf of Rittenberg or Abbot’s Lehndorf, and had not been built upon a strip stolen from that No-man’s Land which belonged to neither, but was left wild and desolate, with the rest of it thick wood or mere uncultivated heath, which even travellers did not willingly cross—and was known from old traditions as Hilda’s Land. And as she thought these thoughts, Elizabeth heard, as she had done that night when the foresters came to the house, the cry of the screech-owl[3]—Hilda’s cry. It was not near this time, but away in the wood. It curdled the blood in her veins. She longed now to shut herself indoors and light a fire to comfort her. But she felt rooted where she sat, as if she were condemned to wait and wait while the cry should come nearer and nearer, until. . . .

  Some cloud must have spread over the sky or some mist have arisen from the earth, for it grew pitch dark. And now another noise, a strange one at this time of night, smote upon her ear—the baying of hounds: not near this either, but away off. The voices echoed far in the woody distance.

  Some time thus passed. Of a sudden, without a word or a touch, two figures went by her. She knew them instinctively for her husband and Willebald. They had passed her seat, they had rushed into the house; and something was in pursuit of them. This too she knew: yet how? She had felt nothing nor heard so much as the sound of a footfall.

  ‘Willebald, speak! what is it?’ she cried in terror. No answer came; unless indeed it were that she was answered by a growl.

  She followed into the house, crying all the while on Carl and Willebald. But none spoke. Then something ran against her; she fell over it, and felt the shaggy coat of a hound. She fell forwards, and, as her hand touched the floor, she found it all wet, a sticky moistness that she knew well for blood.

  Duri
ng one half second she realised this. But in falling she struck her head against the corner of the hearthstone, and a blanket of oblivion fell around her.

  V

  What cries of mourning were these? what deep wailings as from subterraneous depths, then shot with metallic sounds as of trumpets? There was one order of visions never very far from the mind of Elizabeth, as of any imaginative peasant of those days: these were visions of the under-world, of the devils and the wailing dead, or, again, of the Judgment Day and its awful Trump. Had she then died that moment since, when she felt the blood and struck her head. But, as Elizabeth came more and more to herself, the sounds contracted and lessened, until they became nothing more than the deep low of Tecla and the lighter one of the calf beside her—these, with the crying of cocks in the village! Grey dawn was stealing into the room. Elizabeth looked down, expecting to see the floor all stained with blood. There was nothing; her hands, too, were clean of all trace of it. And, greatest wonder of all, there was Carl seated by the hearthstone, eating his breakfast—no less. The woman sprang up and embraced her husband, a thing not common between them. Carl took it somewhat grumpily. How strange, Elizabeth thought afterwards, that he should have sat by while she lay stretched out upon the earth! But had she really lain there? More and more, as the minutes flew by, the whole thing took for her the shape of a fantastic dream.

  They dined richly that night. Carl, for his part, seemed to have put away all fear, and, for the first time, Elizabeth shared some of the same feeling. She was growing used to the state of things. It seemed ages ago now since she first began to tremble when from time to time her husband brought home a head of game to plenish their larder. Notwithstanding, she noted first at this meal how greatly her husband was changed. Had he indeed put away all fear? Certainly, he was no longer the timid, cautious man she had known only a month ago. But why did he seem to be always waiting for something? listening as if for some summons?

  Elizabeth remembered the story which she had gathered in the village the previous day concerning the battle which Henry of the Scar had seen fought in the heavens. And she told her husband. What should it mean? she questioned. Carl laughed strangely. ‘O,’ he said, ‘Lord Otto is no better than a monk. He will never know from what quarter danger comes.’

  It was just so that Rudolf, the strange Forester, had spoken—just so that he had laughed. Howbeit, for some brief space Carl worked again more in his fields and spent less of his time abroad. Life seemed to have gone back into its old channel, save for one thing which weighed heavy, though unacknowledged, on the housewife’s heart. Not often now did she see her husband’s former comrade, Willebald.

  VI

  Once more was Elizabeth sitting in her cottage, and it was very dark. She was alone: Carl had been gone since early morning. And it seemed to the peasant woman that once again some cloud descended from the sky, or some mist rose from the earth, to make the night ink-black and shut out all the stars. Presently an uneven step ascended their path, and a hand was laid upon the latch. A woman, by the step, and an old one, had entered the room, like one who could see in the darkness.

  ‘Who is it?’ said Elizabeth. ‘Jutta, only old Jutta,’ answered a voice, which she recognised. Whereupon she set herself to prepare the evening meal. All the while she was doing so Jutta was seated on the stool at the opposite corner of the hearthstone, between it and the wall: and she laughed low to herself:—‘Ha-ha ha-ha-ha,’ not loud, but evenly, and without ceasing. The fire fell upon her face, which was bent down. She rocked herself backwards and forwards. The lower part of her body was hidden by the raised hearthstone. ‘Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha,’ low, not loud. It was never any use to interrupt her: besides, it brought ill-luck to speak to her before she spoke. ‘Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha’—till it began to get into a person’s bones.

  At last the old woman looked up into Elizabeth’s face, and asked her old question: ‘Where is Wicked Hilda, Elizabeth of the Corner? Have you found Wicked Hilda?’

  ‘I know nothing of your Wicked Hilda,’ said Elizabeth, though indeed she partly knew.

  ‘That is not true,’ answered the crone, and she laughed once more. ‘That is not true—are you not Elizabeth the Out-born?’ she added in a more questioning tone.

  ‘What of her, then?’ asked the other.

  And at last, in broken fragments, but clearly enough to be understood, Elizabeth got from the woman the whole story, which it was reckoned unlucky even to hint at by most of the villagers of Lehndorf.

  The new moon. Then it was known that the screech-owl came and sat upon one of the holy oaks which enclosed the village, and cried defiance to the priest of Lehndorf, the successor to him who had banned her for eternity. For the screech-owl was once a maiden of Rettenberg Castle, Hilda by name. In fulfilment of a vow, her father and mother had dedicated her to God. But she had a lover; and he collected a host to rescue her. Wherefore one night Rettenberg Castle was surrounded by a troop of horsemen all on black horses. Whence they came none knew. The castle was surprised; and Lord Herbert the Good and the Lady Wilhelmina were cast into a dungeon, and Hilda and her paramour ruled the land. But the peasants revolted, and sent over to the Emperor’s court, at which lived another of the house of Rettenberg, the heir, should it prove that Lord Herbert was dead; and the new lord of Rettenberg came with troops furnished by Emperor Otto, and laid siege to the castle. Then it was that the priest of Lehndorf had made procession thrice round the castle with uplifted cross and lighted tapers. And after the third round he read the ban[4] against the lovers, the book was closed, the bell was rung, and the tapers were blown out. That was the day of the New Moon. And that night the garrison broke through the camp of the besiegers and rode away, the lover with Hilda on his saddle-bow, and all his men behind him. All in black armour on black steeds. And many who saw them close declared that the nostrils of the horses glowed as if they were on fire within. Whither they went none had ever learned.

  When Herbert and his wife were found, it was in a dungeon below the keep. They were bound with iron to two stakes. They had the hue of life but the coldness of death. And since then there had been a part of the forest, with all the Heath of the Three Pines beyond, which none entered willingly, and it was called Hilda’s Land. Once a month, from the edge of that, or even on the gospel oak[5] within the village itself, Hilda, in the likeness of a screech-owl, screamed her defiance of the Priest of Lehndorf.

  When Jutta had finished her story, she sat silent a while, as if listening. Then she spoke to herself, rocking backward and forward. ‘The New Moon,’ she said, ‘the New Moon has just been born.’ And Elizabeth knew for what she was listening, what she herself would hear, as she had heard it one month ago. At the thought thereof her blood turned cold.

  ‘The New Moon,’ said Jutta, ‘the New Moon.’ Then came, as Elizabeth knew that it would come, the long cry of the screech-owl. And in a little time the baying of a hound. Jutta raised her head a little. Her two eyes—almost all of her that was visible now in the dying firelight—seemed to grow larger and to glare like the eyes of a cat: and once again she laughed—not loud, but low, and even and long. ‘It is not Carl that you are waiting for,’ she said.

  The words struck terror on Elizabeth, revealing depths in her soul which she had never sounded.

  ‘It is not Carl for whom you fear, but Willebald.’

  ‘It is false,’ Elizabeth tried to say; but the words died unuttered.

  ‘And they are coming, coming!’ And even as Jutta said this, the baying of the hounds, the screaming of the owl, seemed to have left the shelter of the woods and to be coming towards them.

  ‘I am lost, lost,’ Elizabeth groaned to herself. She tried to feel terror for her husband’s safety; for she knew, she knew not how, that he as well as Willebald were bound up with that sound of hounds and huntsmen which she heard driving through the darkness. All the time she felt within herself that it was for
her husband’s friend that her terrors went abroad. And now to her fancy Jutta’s eyes grew greater and greater, and Jutta herself seemed to be towering—towering; while Elizabeth heard the low, even laughter repeated on all sides of her.

  ‘They are coming, coming; but they will never come again!’ So Jutta cried aloud. And then the shadowy form of a hound seemed to dress itself out of the darkness. Elizabeth instinctively stretched out her hand to touch it, remembering the touch of the hound once before the day that she fell against the hearth-stone. But this time darkness closed round her, and she lost consciousness.

  VII

  It was crazy Jutta who had told her daughter-in-law that Elizabeth of the Corner was ill of the fever: a proof, the village woman thought within herself, that Jutta was indeed a witch, for it was known that the beldame[6] had not left the house for a week. Another villager had gone and nursed Elizabeth. It was no wonder she should have fallen ill. For now it seemed that Carl of the Corner had disappeared. These things made Elizabeth a marked person; and when, after three days, she came once more to the fountain, the neighbours stood a little apart, and some whispered her history among themselves.

  Carl’s wife was debating whether she must not journey to the castle, or at least to one of the rangers’ cottages, to find out if her husband had been taken for poaching. But then, to ask such a thing might betray him. As for the vision she had seen in her cottage, and the screeching of Hilda and the baying of hounds, she put these things as much from her thoughts as she could. Now, as she was still pondering in her mind, she saw old Walter, the head ranger, coming up to the village place itself, his boar spear in his hand, and his cross-bow on his back. Her heart sank. Now perhaps she should know, and know the worst that had happened to Carl and him.