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Updated: September 12, 2025
'Tis to see Master von Sturm, not to court pretty Mistress Ysolinde, that I asked you to visit the lawyer's house by the Weiss Thor." But I was not sorry to be able to proclaim my destination as loud as I dared without causing suspicion. "Hanne," I cried down the turret stairs, "I pray you bring me the silken shoes with the ribbon bows of silk.
And as she spoke of my father and of me I saw the eyes of the Lady Ysolinde fixed upon her, as it had been to read her inner soul. And I am glad, for I shall ride thither under his escort. Indeed, and in truth, my home is far more there than here in Thorn. But I would fain have a companion of my own sex. So I have come to beg of you, Mistress Helene, that you will accompany me.
Which, when presently he did, a huge, grinning face appeared, pushing forward at first slowly and with difficulty, then, as soon as the ears had crossed the narrows of the pass, the whole head to the neck was glaring down and grinning to us. "Lubber Jan," said Ysolinde, "what do you up there?" The head only grinned and waggled pleasantly, as it had been through a horse-collar at Dantzig fair.
For what with the turmoil of my thoughts and the myriad of impressions, hopes, fears, visions, regrets to leave the Red Tower, the city of Thorn, the hope of seeing again that high-poised head of burned gold of the Lady Ysolinde, I paused stock-still, moidered and dazed, till a light hand touched me on the shoulder and the soft, even voice spoke in my ear.
But Ysolinde looked neither to right nor left, nor yet spoke to any, keeping her eyes fixed, as it seemed, on the shining blade of the Red Axe in my hand. I walked to the edge of the scaffold, and I looked at the barrier of the enclosure. They were of the same height, and the distance between them little more than six feet. I examined them again, and yet more intently.
At the door of the little room in which she had first received me so long ago, the Lady Ysolinde was waiting for me. She did not shut the door till Sir Respectable had betaken him down again to his own place. Then quite frankly and undisguisedly she took my hand, like one who had come to the end of make-believe.
The unnumbered birds were every one awake, responsive and emulous. The deep silence of midsummer was broken up. It was like another spring. The Princess Ysolinde came out to take the air. She was wrapped in her gown of sea-green silk, with sparkles of dull copper upon it. The dress fitted her like a snake's skin, and glittered like it too as she swayed her lithe body in walking.
Here at last was the explanation of the threadbare and inexplicable jest of Jorian and Boris, "The Prince hath a Princess, and she is oft upon her travels !" But, after all, what a Wendish barking about so small an egg. I have heard an emperor proclaimed with less cackle. Ysolinde, Princess of Plassenburg yes, that made a difference.
It is her own will that she should die by my hand." Helene came forward and put her hand in mine in token that I spoke truly, and there fell a great silence across the people. I saw the Lady Ysolinde straining at her father's hand, like a dog in a leash when the quarry rises.
Altogether, it was a strange enough apartment for the daughter of a lawyer in the city of Thorn, within a mile of the bare feudal strengths of the Red Tower and the Wolfsberg. All this while Ysolinde had kept my hand, a thing which at once thrilled and shamed me.
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