The Fiery Angel (24 page)

I listened to this, my sentence, without betraying any sign of emotion or dissatisfaction; in the most businesslike manner I arranged with Matthew about the various details of the encounter and asked him to call for me when the time had come. After having seen Matthew off, I ordered Martha to serve me dinner, for I did not wish weakness on my part to influence the outcome of the affair, and then, taking hold of my long sword, I began to exercise my arm, trying to regain the necessary suppleness. It was at this occupation that Renata found me, appearing in the doorway, all wrapped in a cloak, like some ghost, and, piercing me with her searching and threatening glance:

“Rupprecht,”—she said—“you swore to me yesterday!”

I replied:

“I will fulfil what I have promised, Renata. But what if now Count Heinrich slay me?”

Thrusting her head back, Renata said firmly:

“And what of it, then?”

I bowed ceremoniously as two opponents bow before the commencement of the combat, sheathed my sword, and again, as yesterday, left the room: for to gainsay Renata I had no will, and I did not wish to be weakened by her influence.

The remaining time I spent in writing a letter to my mother, to whom I had sent no news of me all the seven years since secretly I left the parental roof. Shortly did I relate in this letter all my adventures, concealing, of course, those that had occurred since my return to Europe, and begged forgiveness for all the insults and troubles I had caused during my life. Further, I did not forget to write also my testament, addressed to Renata, in which I commissioned her to take out of the sum of money left to me such amount as she found necessary, and to send the remainder to my family at Losheim. In some remarkable way my relatives, father and mother, brothers and sisters, to whom I had scarcely given ever a thought, suddenly became extraordinarily dear to me, and I clearly remembered their faces, their voices, and longed terribly to embrace them, and tell them that I had not forgotten them. Probably, the threat of death softens even the firmest spirits, as strong heat softens metals, for I felt myself no longer like a hunted boar, but like a baby that has no breast on which to cry out its heart.

At half-past two, Matthew, still not downhearted, came for me, and began to hasten me in a friendly way, though all my preparations were limited to putting on a warm cloak and attaching my sword to my belt. Before my actual departure, I warned Matthew that I had a small matter to attend to, and he winked slyly, pointing to the room of Renata, into which, it was quite true, I could not refrain from going once more. For the third time, I made an effort to draw her attention to me, to drag from her, almost by force, at least one heartfelt word addressed to me, and finding her at the prie-dieu, as if in prayer, I said to her:

“Renata, I go, I have come to bid you farewell. Perhaps we shall never see each other again in this life, Renata. …”

Renata turned her pale face towards me, and I took it in with my glance, searching her features for the least hope, concealed somewhere in the fold of the lips, in some wrinkle near the eyes—but the expression of this face was like a sentence of execution to me, and the words that I now heard for the second time were unbending and merciless, like a stone that falls inevitably but without malice:

“Rupprecht, remember what you swore to me!”

However, this cruelty of Renata rather added to my strength than shook me, as her caress probably would have done, for I felt that I had nothing dear to me to love, and therefore nothing to fear. I returned to Matthew with a countenance almost cheerful, and when, having come out, we seated ourselves on the horses he had obtained for us (for we had rather a long way to go) I even laughed not a little at the amusing figure the mounted professor cut. All the way Matthew entertained me with jokes and witticisms, with which he desired to keep up my spirits, and I deliberately forced myself to take them as near to heart as I could, so as not to think that of which it was horrifying to think. From outside, one might have taken us for two merchants who, having clinched a profitable deal in the city, had drunk deep and well, and were returning to their home village laden with presents for their wives.

Having accomplished rather a long distance along the heavy, frozen road, we distinguished at last in the distant haze of the rapidly diminishing winter’s day, a sloping hillock, and two horsemen, darkling before it against the edge of the wood.

“Eigho, we are late, it seems!”—said Matthew—“Master Knight is impatient, first he came, maybe he is anxious to be carried away last!”

Approaching, we bowed in silence, and I saw again Count Heinrich, wrapped in a dark cloak, and his companion, a youth slim as a maiden, with a tender, oblong face, in a biretta with a feather, like one of the portraits of Hans Holbein. Then we alighted from our horses, and while we two, Count Heinrich and I, remained facing each other, our comrades walked aside to arrange the final terms. Heinrich stood before me motionless, half covering his face, leaning on the hilt of his sword, as if welded with it from one piece of metal, and I could not guess whether he were calm, indignant, or weary of his fate like myself.

At last our comrades returned to us, and Matthew, shrugging his shoulders and trying by all means to make it clear he thought it superfluous, declared to us that the Count’s friend, Lucian Stein, desired to attempt a reconciliation. If, then, I am to be truthful, and not afraid to admit myself a coward, I must confess that at this intelligence my heart began to beat in gladness, and it seemed to me that this exquisite in a velvet cape must be a messenger from Heaven.

But this was the speech of Lucian Stein which was addressed to me:

“From our parleys of this morning,”—he said—“it has transpired that you, honourable sir, are by descent not of knightly house, and therefore my friend, Count Heinrich, could, in honour, disregard the insults you have heaped on him, and not accept your challenge. But, seeing in you a man of education and upbringing, he does not reply to you with a refusal, and is ready, with arms in his hands, to prove the flimsiness of your assertions. However, before entering the combat, he thinks it necessary to offer that, having thought better of it, you should cease this quarrel peacefully. For, except in extreme cases, man, a being made after the image and pattern of God, must not threaten the life of another man. If you, honourable sir, are prepared to admit that you were led by someone into an error, that you regret and apologise for your words of yesterday—my friend will willingly stretch out his hand to you.”

Despite the arrogance of these words, I would not perhaps have shirked the ignominy of apologising, for it was still the best door left open to me for a retreat, but the first part of the speech made it impossible for me to do so. Lucian’s hint that yesterday I had falsely called myself a knight made all the blood rush to my face, and I was ready to strike the speaker, whose life was not forbidden me, and to whom therefore, with full freedom, I could show the strength of my unknightly arm. And, still in the throes of this excitement, which prevented me, like some mountainous sea-wave, from seeing the goal upon the beach beyond, I replied:

“I do not withdraw any one of my words. I repeat, that Count Heinrich von Otterheim—is a deceiver, a hypocrite, and a dishonest man. May God be our judge!”

At my answer, Matthew sighed with relief like an ox gathering breath, and Lucian, turning aside, walked back to Heinrich.

We threw off our cloaks and unsheathed our swords, while our comrades traced on the ground, barely whitened with hoar-frost, a circle out of which we were not to step. I studied Heinrich’s expression, and saw that it was concentrated and manly, as though from behind his angelic features gazed an earthly man, and thought to myself that thus he had borne himself in those hours when, as a man, he answered Renata’s caresses. Then, exchanging with him the customary bow, I noticed that he was supple as a boy, that all his movements were unstudied and beautiful as those of an ancient statue, and remembered the words of entrancement with which Renata had described him to me. But scarcely had our blades crossed, scarcely had steel clinked against steel, than in me started and woke the soul of a warrior: I forgot at once everything except the fight, and my life, bounded by the narrow distance between me and my opponent, and by those few short moments during which our combat would last. All the details of the struggle, fleeting, momentary—the effort of the lunge, the speed of the parry, the degree of suppleness of the opposing blade—at once became events containing in them each as much significance as a whole year of life.

I knew that I should not break the pledge I had given to Renata, for she had chained my will with almost supernatural force, but I had hoped that I should be able and contrive, without touching Count Heinrich, to knock the sword out of his hand, and thus end the combat with honour to myself. Soon, however, I was satisfied that I had quite baselessly misjudged the fencing art of my opponent, for beneath my blade I found a sword firm, fast and full of skill. To all my artifices Heinrich replied immediately with the ease of a master, and very soon himself took the offensive, forcing me to concentrate my whole attention upon beating off his dangerous lunges. As if handicapped by the fact that I could not strike myself, I parried the thrusts of my opponent with difficulty, and the point of his sword rushed every moment at me from the front, from the side, and from below. Losing the hope of a successful issue to the fight, I was losing at the same time self-control: my fingers became blue from the frost, my sword no longer obeyed me; I saw before me, as it were a wheel of whirling fiery blades, and in the middle of them, also fiery, the image of Heinrich—Madiël. And already it began to appear to me that the eyes of Heinrich shone somewhere far above me, that our fight was taking place in the untrammelled supra-terrestrial spaces, that it was not I who was repulsing the thrust of an enemy, but the dark spirit Lucifer, hard pressed from the heights above the stars by the Archistrategus Michael, and pursued by him into the darkness of Hell …

And suddenly, at one of my untrue ripostes, Count Heinrich with force flung off my sword, and I saw the glitter of the hostile blade at my very breast. Immediately afterwards I felt a dull hit, and a piercing thrust, as always when one is wounded by cold steel; the sword fell from my grasp, a crimson cloud rapidly obscured my vision—and I fell.

A
S I learned later, there hastened to my assistance, while I lay prostrate and unconscious on the cold ground, not only Matthew but also my opponent and his friend. Count Heinrich showed all the signs of extreme despair, bitterly reproached himself for having accepted the challenge, and said that if I were to die he would know no rest all his life. Having bandaged my wound, all three constructed a kind of hurdle, and decided to carry me into the city on foot, for they feared to submit me to a shaking on horseback on a bad road. Meanwhile, I perceived scarcely anything of what was happening to me, and lay submerged in a confused, almost beatific, consciousness, that was interrupted by a hurtful pricking pain that forced me to open my eyes—but, seeing above me the blue skies, I imagined for some reason that I was floating in a boat and, comforted, let my mind and soul slide once more into delirium.

I have no recollection of how I was carried home or of how Renata greeted me, but Matthew told me afterwards that she met the circumstances with fortitude and efficiency. I passed the days that immediately followed also in unconsciousness, as always happens in cases of inflammation of a wound and loss of blood, and I cannot even relate here the apparitions of my fever, for words, created for matters of reason, have no correspondence to the phantasms of madness. I know only that in some strange way the memory of Renata never entered into this delirium: all the painful happenings of the immediate past were erased from my memory as chalk writing is erased from a slate by a sponge, and I imagined myself as I was during the years of my life in New Spain. When, in a rare moment of consciousness, I saw before me the intent face of Renata, I imagined that she was Angelica, the baptised Indian maid with whom I lived for some time in Cempoalla, and from whom, not without regret, I had to part, owing to her unseemly behaviour. And therefore, in my delirium, I always indignantly pushed away Renata’s hands and angrily said to her, in reply to all her solicitude: “Why are you here? Begone! I would not have you near me!”—and Renata accepted this rough usage from the invalid without a murmur.

My combat with Heinrich had taken place on a Wednesday, and only on Saturday, at the hour of the night mass, did I first recover my senses sufficiently to recognise the room that bounded my horizon and the days through which life carried me, and, finally, Renata, in her pink blouse with the white and dark blue trimmings, in which I had seen her on the first day of our acquaintance. She, who was watching my face attentively, suddenly guessed by my eyes that I had come to, and flew towards me in a burst of joy and hope, crying:

“Rupprecht! Rupprecht! You know me!”

My consciousness was as yet very unclear, like a misty distance in which masts appear as towers, but I already was able to recollect that I had fought with swords against Count Heinrich, and, in trying to draw breath, I distinctly felt a torturing pain through all my chest. It came into my mind that I was dying of the wound, and that this ray of memory must be the last, that so often presages the coming end. And, by virtue of that whimsicality of the human soul that enables the criminal to crack jokes with the executioner on the scaffold, I tried to say to Renata those words that seemed to me most graceful for the occasion, though they came not at all from my heart:

“See, Renata; here I am, dying—in order that your Heinrich may live. …”

With a sob, Renata fell on her knees before the bed, pressed her hand to my lips, and not so much spoke to me as shouted, as if through some wall: