The Knights of the Cross

It was already about midnight when the old knight awoke as from sleep, and called the servant.

"Where is Brother Rotgier?" he asked.

But the servant, unnerved by the silence, events and sleeplessness, apparently did not understand him, but looked at him with fear and replied in a trembling voice: "I do not know, sir...."

The old man burst out into laughter and said mildly: "Child, I asked whether he is already in the chapel."

"Yes, sir."

"Very well then. Tell Diedrich to come here with a lantern and wait until my return; let him also have a small kettle of coals. Is there already a light in the chapel?"

"There are candles burning about the coffin."

Zygfried put on his cloak and left.

When he entered the chapel, he looked around to see whether anybody else was present; then he closed the door carefully, approached the coffin, put aside two of the six candles burning in large brazen candlesticks in front of him, and knelt down before it.

As his lips did not move, it showed that he was not praying. For some time he only looked at the drawn yet still handsome face of Rotgier as though he were trying to discover in it traces of life.

Then amid the dead silence in the chapel he began to call in suppressed tones: "Dear little son! Dear little son!"

Then he remained silent; it seemed as though he were expecting an answer.

Then he stretched out his hand and pushed his emaciated talon-like fingers under the cloak, uncovered Rotgier's breast and began to feel about it, looking everywhere at the middle and sides below the ribs and along the shoulder-blades: at last he touched the rent in the clothing which extended from the top of the right shoulder down to the armpit, his fingers penetrated and felt along the whole length of the wound, then he cried with a loud voice which sounded like a complaint: "Oh!... What merciless thing is this!... Yet thou saidst that fellow was quite a child!... The whole arm! The whole arm? So many times thou hast raised it against the Pagans in defence of the Order.... In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. Thou foughtest falsely, and so succumbed in a false cause; be absolved and may thy soul...."

The words were cut short on his lips which began to tremble, and deep silence reigned once more in the chapel.

"Dear little son! Dear little son!"

Now there was something like a petition in Zygfried's voice, and at the same time it seemed as he lowered his voice as though his petition contained some important and terrible secret.