The serfs in unison heaved up the dish-covers and swung them high above their heads, and then filed swiftly away down the middle of the table.
Exposed on the dish then in front of each guest was the 'bird' he had bagged at the end of the morning's drive, plucked of her feathers now, all but her beaked mask, and trussed tightly, knees to chin, wrists to ankles. The forester officers deftly moved away the chairs behind the guests, and with a gesture or two indicated where the 'bird's' bonds might be slit with the knife; then discreetly nodded towards the convenient alcoves behind.
The guests seemed to be too astonished to take these suggestions in for a moment; then the Gauleiter, on the Count's right, having before him a fine bronzed creature with the vividly ornamented mask of a wild turkey-cock glowing against the pale spread of her own abundant blond hair, broke into loud guffaws and leaned forward to pinch his 'bird's' rounded thigh.
Some of the others cheered lustily and flourished their knives, but before any of them could cut the cords of his fowl, Hans von Hackelnberg had hammered on the table with the pommel of his hanger.
«Gentlemen!» he bellowed again, and complete silence and stillness followed on his command.
«Gentlemen!» said the Count, in a more human tone, though still speaking loudly enough for us to hear every word in our little chamber, and with such deliberation and force that I could follow practically all he said: «I hope you may enjoy the carving of your birds as much as you did the shooting of them. The game is yours; let each man satisfy his appetite in the way he likes best, and if anybody finds the meat not tender enough for his liking, my young men will take some of the tough skin off for him.» He pointed to his chief forester, who, grinning, picked up a dog-whip and drew the lash slowly through his fingers. «But,» roared the Count, suddenly violently imperious again, «before you fall to, I invite you to come with me and see some of this same appetising flesh in a different hide. Restrain your appetites, gentlemen, for ten minutes, and I will show you a spectacle of womanhood which, I warrant, will put a keener edge on them. Bitte! Herr Gauleiter!»
He took the Gauleiter by the arm and marched him off to the main door of the hall, below the range of our view. The officers took the other guests in hand, and these, more bewildered by this sudden balking of their sport than they had been even by the unexpected offer of it, were shepherded in a puzzled and ineffectually enquiring flock from the hall, leaving their untasted delicacies to cool, as it were, on the plate under the eyes of the young forester-pages, who prepared to lounge out the interval which wine-cups in their hands on the skin-covered daises.
As the guests herded out of the hall the torch-bearers on the two long cornices turned left and right, and marched out through openings in the angles at the ends of their stone shelves, leaving only a third of their number still immobile on the end cornices to illuminate the hall.
The Doctor swore petulantly at finding the entertainment interrupted when it had scarcely begun. Then he plucked me urgently by the sleeve, whispering, «Let's go down and get a drink, at least, before they come back.» And he promptly began to pull me along the narrow passage from our chamber.
I had no choice but to follow, but managed to enquire why we should not go and see the other spectacle. «No, no, no!» cried the Doctor with surprising vehemence. «I will not! For God's sake, let's get a drink!»
He tumbled down the spiral staircase, and I hard on his heels, but before we reached the outer air I had resolved to give him the slip. The yellow torches, formed into two regular lines, were moving with a steady pace through the dark some little distance from the hall; there was a considerable crowd of serfs and other indistinctly seen people standing about the end of the building, and as the Doctor scurried round to gain the main door, I had no difficulty in shaking off his hold on my sleeve and mingling with the silent crowd. I did not even hear him call after me as I shouldered my way through the serfs and hurried after the torches. I think he was too afraid of the darkness of the Schloss to stay out of the Hall by himself.
I caught the tail of the procession in a few minutes and attached myself to a knot of forester officers who were bringing up the rear. No one took any notice of me, though the light from the torches that flanked the party must have shown them my face and my plain costume. The silver-skinned girls, who looked as tall as grenadiers now that I was close beside them, marched with a deliberate ceremonial step, lifting their knees high at each pace, staring straight to their front and bearing their torches stiffly and steadily. The foresters conversed a little among themselves in low tones, but the guests, cooled by the night air, were strangely silent, and Count von Hackelnberg, still gripping the Gauleiter by the arm, stalked ahead, towering over everyone, and offering not a word of explanation.
We proceeded in this way for some hundreds of yards, until, judging by the tall hedges we had passed, I guessed that we had gone somewhere to one side of the game-park I had seen that morning. The two files of torch-bearers here began to wheel left and right, while the Count and the rest of us stopped and watched them until they had inclined again and formed a large oval ahead of us. Then the Count, with the first note of joviality I had heard from him, bade his guests be seated.
I edged forward and saw under the torchlight a broad bank of turf rimming the lip of a curious oval pit. The Count drew down the Gauleiter to sit beside him on the inner edge of the bank, and the rest of the company ranged themselves, with a little guidance by the foresters, to left and right. I moved quietly off to one end of the line and looked down. The girls now sloped their long torches forward so that the cressets overhung the pit and brightly illuminated it The sides were fifteen or twenty feet high, revetted with smooth white boards, and the floor of the pit was carpeted with closely cropped turf. At each end was an iron grille closing a subterranean passage, It was in miniature a Roman circus, though plain and rustic.
A horn suddenly blew with a high, wild blast that pierced and chilled me. I jerked my head involuntarily round, as everyone else did–as even the torch-bearers must have done, for a dipping wave of movement ran round the ring of cressets. Count von Hackelnberg had risen to his feet and had put his lips to a great, curling silver horn whose shining circle passed over his shoulder and round his body. He blew with all the power of his lungs, and the loud, clamouring urgency of his blast, so near, so wildly returned upon us by the close crowding woods, was well-nigh unbearable.
As it died I heard the rattle of one of the grilles opening. Out into the redly lit oval of turf came three young men, all clad from head to foot in suits of that strange armour I had seen in the keeper's room in the morning. I saw now it was not steel or other metal, but some material which, though obviously hard and tough, was flexible enough to allow them to move easily and lightly. The foremost two carried whips with long, heavy lashes of plaited leather, the third led two fallow does, two gentle, fat, dappled creatures, with silk ribbons round their necks.
They walked into the centre of the arena and stood there. The does trembled a little and pressed close to the keeper who held them by their ribbons; they turned their large ears apprehensively and lifted their heads with big, liquid, dark eyes that shone green for a second now and again as the torchlight filled them.
Von Hackelnberg blew another blast, short, high, peremptory, and before it had ceased I heard the response to it. That same savage caterwauling that I had heard in the morning, rising now to a shrill pitch of lust or hunger, came screaming nearer and nearer behind the second grille; there was the same horrible undertone of half-human babbling, but louder and more insistent now, the high, spiteful screeching which had so jangled the Doctor's nerves.