The Dove in the Eagle's Nest, Charlotte M. Yonge [i want to read a book txt] 📗

the castle, and the two monks were kept there for a full fortnight, during which Christmas solemnities were observed in the chapel, for the first time since the days of Friedmund the Good.  The corpse of Kunigunde, preserved—we must say the word—salted, was placed in a coffin, and laid in that chapel to await the melting of the snows, when the vault at the Hermitage could be opened.  And this could not be effected till Easter had nearly come round again, and it was within a week of their sixteenth birthday that the two young Barons stood together at the coffin’s head, serious indeed, but more with the thought of life than of death. CHAPTER XII
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For the first time in her residence at Adlerstein, now full half her life, the Freiherrinn Christina ventured to send a messenger to Ulm, namely, a lay brother of the convent of St. Ruprecht, who undertook to convey to Master Gottfried Sorel her letter, informing him of the death of her mother-in-law, and requesting him to send the same tidings to the Freiherr von Adlerstein Wildschloss, the kinsman and godfather of her sons.

She was used to wait fifty-two weeks for answers to her letters, and was amazed when, at the end of three, two stout serving-men were guided by Jobst up the pass; but her heart warmed to their flat caps and round jerkins, they looked so like home.  They bore a letter of invitation to her and her sons to come at once to her uncle’s house.  The King of the Romans, and perhaps the Emperor, were to come to the city early in the summer, and there could be no better opportunity of presenting the young Barons to their sovereign.  Sir Kasimir of Adlerstein Wildschloss would meet them there for the purpose, and would obtain their admission to the League, in which all Swabian nobles had bound themselves to put down robbery and oppression, and outside which there was nothing but outlawry and danger.

“So must it be?” said Ebbo, between his teeth, as he leant moodily against the wall, while his mother was gone to attend to the fare to be set before the messengers.

“What! art not glad to take wing at last?” exclaimed Friedel, cut short in an exclamation of delight.

“Take wing, forsooth!  To be guest of a greasy burgher, and call cousin with him!  Fear not, Friedel; I’ll not vex the motherling.  Heaven knows she has had pain, grief, and subjection enough in her lifetime, and I would not hinder her visit to her home; but I would she could go alone, nor make us show our poverty to the swollen city folk, and listen to their endearments.  I charge thee, Friedel, do as I do; be not too familiar with them.  Could we but sprain an ankle over the crag—”

“Nay, she would stay to nurse us,” said Friedel, laughing; “besides, thou art needed for the matter of homage.”

“Look, Friedel,” said Ebbo, sinking his voice, “I shall not lightly yield my freedom to king or Kaiser.  Maybe, there is no help for it; but it irks me to think that I should be the last Lord of Adlerstein to whom the title of Freiherr is not a mockery.  Why dost bend thy brow, brother?  What art thinking of?”

“Only a saying in my mother’s book, that well-ordered service is true freedom,” said Friedel.  “And methinks there will be freedom in rushing at last into the great far-off!”—the boy’s eye expanded and glistened with eagerness.  “Here are we prisoners—to ourselves, if you like—but prisoners still, pent up in the rocks, seeing no one, hearing scarce an echo from the knightly or the poet world, nor from all the wonders that pass.  And the world has a history going on still, like the Chronicle.  Oh, Ebbo, think of being in the midst of life, with lance and sword, and seeing the Kaiser—the Kaiser of the holy Roman Empire!”

“With lance and sword, well and good; but would it were not at the cost of liberty!”

However Ebbo forbore to damp his mother’s joy, save by the one warning—“Understand, mother, that I will not be pledged to anything.  I will not bend to the yoke ere I have seen and judged for myself.”

The manly sound of the words gave a sweet sense of exultation to the mother, even while she dreaded the proud spirit, and whispered, “God direct thee, my son.”

Certainly Ebbo, hitherto the most impetuous and least thoughtful of the two lads, had a gravity and seriousness about him, that, but for his naturally sweet temper, would have seemed sullen.  His aspirations for adventure had hitherto been more vehement than Friedel’s; but, when the time seemed at hand, his regrets at what he might have to yield overpowered his hopes of the future.  The fierce haughtiness of the old Adlersteins could not brook the descent from the crag, even while the keen, clear burgher wit that Ebbo inherited from the other side of the house taught him that the position was untenable, and that his isolated glory was but a poor mean thing after all.  And the struggle made him sad and moody.

Friedel, less proud, and with nothing to yield, was open to blithe anticipations of what his fancy pictured as the home of all the beauty, sacred or romantic, that he had glimpsed at through his mother.  Religion, poetry, learning, art, refinement, had all come to him through her; and though he had a soul that dreamt and soared in the lonely grandeur of the mountain heights, it craved further aliment for its yearnings for completeness and perfection.  Long ago had Friedel come to the verge of such attainments as he could work out of his present materials, and keen had been his ardour for the means of progress, though only the mountain tarn had ever been witness to the full outpouring of the longings with which he gazed upon the dim, distant city like a land of enchantment.

The journey was to be at once, so as to profit by the escort of Master Sorel’s men.  Means of transport were scanty, but Ebbo did not choose that the messengers should report the need, and bring back a bevy of animals at the burgher’s expense; so the mother was mounted on the old white mare, and her sons and Heinz trusted to their feet.  By setting out early on a May morning, the journey could be performed ere night, and the twilight would find them in the domains of the free city, where their small numbers would be of no importance.  As to their appearance, the mother wore a black woollen gown and mantle, and a black silk hood tied under her chin, and sitting loosely round the stiff frame of her white cap—a nun-like garb, save for the soft brown hair, parted over her brow, and more visible than she sometimes thought correct, but her sons would not let her wear it out of sight.

The brothers had piece by piece surveyed the solitary suit of armour remaining in the castle; but, though it might serve for defence, it could not be made fit for display, and they must needs be contented with blue cloth, spun, woven, dyed, fashioned, and sewn at home, chiefly by their mother, and by her embroidered on the breast with the white eagle of Adlerstein.  Short blue cloaks and caps of the same, with an eagle plume in each, and leggings neatly fashioned of deerskin, completed their equipments.  Ebbo wore his father’s sword, Friedel had merely a dagger and crossbow.  There was not a gold chain, not a brooch, not an approach to an ornament among the three, except the medal that had always distinguished Ebbo, and the coral rosary at Christina’s girdle.  Her own trinkets had gone in masses for the souls of her father and husband; and though a few costly jewels had been found in Frau Kunigunde’s hoards, the mode of their acquisition was so doubtful, that it had seemed fittest to bestow them in alms and masses for the good of her soul.

“What ornament, what glory could any one desire better than two such sons?” thought Christina, as for the first time for eighteen years she crossed the wild ravine where her father had led her, a trembling little captive, longing for wings like a dove’s to flutter home again.  Who would then have predicted that she should descend after so long and weary a time, and with a gallant boy on either side of her, eager to aid her every step, and reassure her at each giddy pass, all joy and hope before her and them?  Yet she was not without some dread and misgiving, as she watched her elder son, always attentive to her, but unwontedly silent, with a stern gravity on his young brow, a proud sadness on his lip.  And when he had come to the Debateable Ford, and was about to pass the boundaries of his own lands, he turned and gazed back on the castle and mountain with a silent but passionate ardour, as though he felt himself doing them a wrong by perilling their independence.

The sun had lately set, and the moon was silvering the Danube, when the travellers came full in view of the imperial free city, girt in with mighty walls and towers—the vine-clad hill dominated by its crowning church; the irregular outlines of the unfinished spire of the cathedral traced in mysterious dark lacework against the pearly sky; the lofty steeple-like gate-tower majestically guarding the bridge.  Christina clasped her hands in thankfulness, as at the familiar face of a friend; Friedel glowed like a minstrel introduced to his fair dame, long wooed at a distance; Ebbo could not but exclaim, “Yea, truly, a great city is a solemn and a glorious sight!”

The gates were closed, and the serving-men had to parley at the barbican ere the heavy door was opened to admit the party to the bridge, between deep battlemented stone walls, with here and there loopholes, showing the shimmering of the river beneath.  The slow, tired tread of the old mare sounded hollow; the river rushed below with the full swell of evening loudness; a deep-toned convent-bell tolled gravely through the stillness, while, between its reverberations, clear, distinct notes of joyous music were borne on the summer wind, and a nightingale sung in one of the gardens that bordered the banks.

“Mother, it is all that I dreamt!” breathlessly murmured Friedel, as they halted under the dark arch of the great gateway tower.

Not however in Friedel’s dreams had been the hearty voice that proceeded from the lighted guard-room in the thickness of the gateway.  “Freiherrinn von Adlerstein!  Is it she?  Then must I greet my old playmate!”  And the captain of the watch appeared among upraised lanterns and torches that showed a broad, smooth, plump face beneath a plain steel helmet.

“Welcome, gracious lady, welcome to your old city.  What! do you not remember Lippus Grundt, your poor Valentine?”

“Master Philip Grundt!” exclaimed Christina, amazed at the breadth of visage and person; “and how fares it with my good Regina?”

“Excellent well, good lady.  She manages her trade and house as well as the good man Bartoläus Fleischer himself.  Blithe will she be to show you her goodly ten, as I shall my eight,” he continued, walking by her side; “and Barbara—you remember Barbara Schmidt, lady—”

“My dear Barbara?—That do I indeed!  Is she your wife?”

“Ay, truly, lady,” he answered, in an odd sort of apologetic tone; “you see, you returned not, and the housefathers, they would have it so—and Barbara is a good housewife.”

“Truly do I rejoice!” said Christina, wishing she could convey to him how welcome he had been to marry any one he liked, as far as she was concerned—he, in whom her fears of mincing goldsmiths had always taken form—then signing with her hand, “I have my sons likewise to show her.”

“Ah, on foot!” muttered Grundt, as a not well-conceived apology for not having saluted the young gentlemen.  “I greet you well, sirs,” with a bow, most haughtily returned by Ebbo, who was heartily wishing himself on his mountain.  “Two lusty, well-grown Junkern indeed, to whom my Martin will be proud to show the humours of Ulm.  A fair good night, lady!  You will find the old folks right cheery.”

Well did Christina know the turn down the street, darkened by the overhanging brows of the tall houses, but each lower window laughing with the glow of light within that threw out the heavy mullions and the circles and diamonds of the latticework, and here and there the brilliant tints of stained glass sparkled like jewels in the upper panes, pictured with Scripture scene, patron saint, or trade emblem.  The familiar porch was reached, the familiar knock resounded on the iron-studded door.  Friedel lifted his mother from her horse, and felt that she was quivering from head to foot, and at the same moment the light streamed from the open door on the white horse, and the two young faces, one eager, the other with knit brows and uneasy eyes.  A kind of echo pervaded the house, “She is come! she is come!” and