The Dove in the Eagle's Nest

CHAPTER X: THE EAGLE'S PREY

"It fell about the Lammas tide, When moor men win their hay,"

That all the serfs of Adlerstein were collected to collect their lady's hay to be stored for the winter's fodder of the goats, and of poor Sir Eberhard's old white mare, the only steed as yet ridden by the young Barons.

The boys were fourteen years old. So monotonous was their mother's life that it was chiefly their growth that marked the length of her residence in the castle. Otherwise there had been no change, except that the elder Baroness was more feeble in her limbs, and still more irritable and excitable in temper. There were no events, save a few hunting adventures of the boys, or the yearly correspondence with Ulm; and the same life continued, of shrinking in dread from the old lady's tyrannous dislike, and of the constant endeavour to infuse better principles into the boys, without the open opposition for which there was neither power nor strength.

The boys' love was entirely given to their mother. Far from diminishing with their dependence on her, it increased with the sense of protection; and, now that they were taller than herself, she seemed to be cherished by them more than ever. Moreover, she was their oracle. Quick-witted and active-minded, loving books the more because their grandmother thought signing a feud-letter the utmost literary effort becoming to a noble, they never rested till they had acquired all that their mother could teach them; or, rather, they then became more restless than ever. Long ago had her whole store of tales and ballads become so familiar, by repetition, that the boys could correct her in the smallest variation; reading and writing were mastered as for pleasure; and the Nuremberg Chronicle, with its wonderful woodcuts, excited such a passion of curiosity that they must needs conquer its Latin and read it for themselves. This World History, with Alexander and the Nine Worthies, the cities and landscapes, and the oft-repeated portraits, was Eberhard's study; but Friedmund continued--constant to Walther of Vogelweide. Eberhard cared for no character in the Vulgate so much as for Judas the Maccabee; but Friedmund's heart was all for King David; and to both lads, shut up from companionship as they were, every acquaintance in their books was a living being whose like they fancied might be met beyond their mountain. And, when they should go forth, like Dietrich of Berne, in search of adventures, doughty deeds were chiefly to fall to the lot of Ebbo's lance; while Friedel was to be their Minnesinger; and indeed certain verses, that he had murmured in his brother's ear, had left no doubt in Ebbo's mind that the exploits would be worthily sung.

The soft dreamy eye was becoming Friedel's characteristic, as fire and keenness distinguished his brother's glance. When at rest, the twins could be known apart by their expression, though in all other respects they were as alike as ever; and let Ebbo look thoughtful or Friedel eager and they were again undistinguishable; and indeed they were constantly changing looks. Had not Friedel been beside him, Ebbo would have been deemed a wondrous student for his years; had not Ebbo been the standard of comparison, Friedel would have been in high repute for spirit and enterprise and skill as a cragsman, with the crossbow, and in all feats of arms that the Schneiderlein could impart. They shared all occupations; and it was by the merest shade that Ebbo excelled with the weapon, and Friedel with the book or tool. For the artist nature was in them, not intentionally excited by their mother, but far too strong to be easily discouraged. They had long daily gazed at Ulm in the distance, hoping to behold the spire completed; and the illustrations in their mother's books excited a strong desire to imitate them. The floor had often been covered with charcoal outlines even before Christina was persuaded to impart the rules she had learnt from her uncle; and her carving-tools were soon seized upon. At first they were used only upon knobs of sticks; but one day when the boys, roaming on the mountain, had lost their way, and coming to the convent had been there hospitably welcomed by Father Norbert, they came home wild to make carvings like what they had seen in the chapel. Jobst the Kohler was continually importuned for soft wood; the fair was ransacked for knives; and even the old Baroness could not find great fault with the occupation, base and mechanical though it were, which disposed of the two restless spirits during the many hours when winter storms confined them to the castle. Rude as was their work, the constant observation and choice of subjects were an unsuspected training and softening. It was not in vain that they lived in the glorious mountain fastness, and saw the sun descend in his majesty, dyeing the masses of rock with purple and crimson; not in vain that they beheld peak and ravine clothed in purest snow, flushed with rosy light at morn and eve, or contrasted with the purple blue of the sky; or that they stood marvelling at ice caverns with gigantic crystal pendants shining with the most magical pure depths of sapphire and emerald, "as if," said Friedel, "winter kept in his service all the jewel-forging dwarfs of the motherling's tales." And, when the snow melted and the buds returned, the ivy spray, the smiling saxifrage, the purple gentian bell, the feathery rowan leaf, the symmetrical lady's mantle, were hailed and loved first as models, then for themselves.

One regret their mother had, almost amounting to shame. Every virtuous person believed in the efficacy of the rod, and, maugre her own docility, she had been chastised with it almost as a religious duty; but her sons had never felt the weight of a blow, except once when their grandmother caught them carving a border of eagles and doves round the hall table, and then Ebbo had returned the blow with all his might. As to herself, if she ever worked herself up to attempt chastisement, the Baroness was sure to fall upon her for insulting the noble birth of her sons, and thus gave them a triumph far worse for them than impunity. In truth, the boys had their own way, or rather the Baron had his way, and his way was Baron Friedmund's. Poor, bare, and scanty as were all the surroundings of their life, everything was done to feed their arrogance, with only one influence to counteract their education in pride and violence--a mother's influence, indeed, but her authority was studiously taken from her, and her position set at naught, with no power save what she might derive from their love and involuntary honour, and the sight of the pain caused her by their wrong-doings.

And so the summer's hay-harvest was come. Peasants clambered into the green nooks between the rocks to cut down with hook or knife the flowery grass, for there was no space for the sweep of a scythe. The best crop was on the bank of the Braunwasser, by the Debateable Ford, but this was cut and carried on the backs of the serfs, much earlier than the mountain grass, and never without much vigilance against the Schlangenwaldern; but this year the Count was absent at his Styrian castle, and little had been seen or heard of his people.

The full muster of serfs appeared, for Frau Kunigunde admitted of no excuses, and the sole absentee was a widow who lived on the ledge of the mountain next above that on which the castle stood. Her son reported her to be very ill, and with tears in his eyes entreated Baron Friedel to obtain leave for him to return to her, since she was quite alone in her solitary hut, with no one even to give her a drink of water. Friedel rushed with the entreaty to his grandmother, but she laughed it to scorn. Lazy Koppel only wanted an excuse, or, if not, the woman was old and useless, and men could not be spared.

"Ah! good grandame," said Friedel, "his father died with ours."

"The more honour for him! The more he is bound to work for us. Off, junker, make no loiterers."

Grieved and discomfited, Friedel betook himself to his mother and brother.

"Foolish lad not to have come to me!" said the young Baron. "Where is he? I'll send him at once."

But Christina interposed an offer to go and take Koppel's place beside his mother, and her skill was so much prized over all the mountain-side, that the alternative was gratefully accepted, and she was escorted up the steep path by her two boys to the hovel, where she spent the day in attendance on the sick woman.

Evening came on, the patient was better, but Koppel did not return, nor did the young Barons come to fetch their mother home. The last sunbeams were dying off the mountain-tops, and, beginning to suspect something amiss, she at length set off, and half way down met Koppel, who replied to her question, "Ah, then, the gracious lady has not heard of our luck. Excellent booty, and two prisoners! The young Baron has been a hero indeed, and has won himself a knightly steed." And, on her further interrogation, he added, that an unusually rich but small company had been reported by Jobst the Kohler to be on the way to the ford, where he had skilfully prepared a stumbling-block. The gracious Baroness had caused Hatto to jodel all the hay-makers together, and they had fallen on the travellers by the straight path down the crag. "Ach! did not the young Baron spring like a young gemsbock? And in midstream down came their pack-horses and their wares! Some of them took to flight, but, pfui, there were enough for my young lord to show his mettle upon. Such a prize the saints have not sent since the old Baron's time."

Christina pursued her walk in dismay at this new beginning of freebooting in its worst form, overthrowing all her hopes. The best thing that could happen would be the immediate interference of the Swabian League, while her sons were too young to be personally held guilty. Yet this might involve ruin and confiscation; and, apart from all consequences, she bitterly grieved that the stain of robbery should have fallen on her hitherto innocent sons.

Every peasant she met greeted her with praises of their young lord, and, when she mounted the hall-steps, she found the floor strewn with bales of goods.

"Mother," cried Ebbo, flying up to her, "have you heard? I have a horse! a spirited bay, a knightly charger, and Friedel is to ride him by turns with me. Where is Friedel? And, mother, Heinz said I struck as good a stroke as any of them, and I have a sword for Friedel now. Why does he not come? And, motherling, this is for you, a gown of velvet, a real black velvet, that will make you fairer than our Lady at the Convent. Come to the window and see it, mother dear."

The boy was so joyously excited that she could hardly withstand his delight, but she did not move.

"Don't you like the velvet?" he continued. "We always said that, the first prize we won, the motherling should wear velvet. Do but look at it."

"Woe is me, my Ebbo!" she sighed, bending to kiss his brow.

He understood her at once, coloured, and spoke hastily and in defiance. "It was in the river, mother, the horses fell; it is our right."

"Fairly, Ebbo?" she asked in a low voice.

"Nay, mother, if Jobst DID hide a branch in midstream, it was no doing of mine; and the horses fell. The Schlangenwaldern don't even wait to let them fall. We cannot live, if we are to be so nice and dainty."

"Ah! my son, I thought not to hear you call mercy and honesty mere niceness."

"What do I hear?" exclaimed Frau Kunigunde, entering from the storeroom, where she had been disposing of some spices, a much esteemed commodity. "Are you chiding and daunting this boy, as you have done with the other?"

"My mother may speak to me!" cried Ebbo, hotly, turning round.

"And quench thy spirit with whining fooleries! Take the Baron's bounty, woman, and vex him not after his first knightly exploit."

"Heaven knows, and Ebbo knows," said the trembling Christina, "that, were it a knightly exploit, I were the first to exult."

"Thou! thou craftsman's girl! dost presume to call in question the knightly deeds of a noble house! There!" cried the furious Baroness, striking her face. Now! dare to be insolent again." Her hand was uplifted for another blow, when it was grasped by Eberhard, and, the next moment, he likewise held the other hand, with youthful strength far exceeding hers. She had often struck his mother before, but not in his presence, and the greatness of the shock seemed to make him cool and absolutely dignified.

"Be still, grandame," he said. "No, mother, I am not hurting her," and indeed the surprise seemed to have taken away her rage and volubility, and unresistingly she allowed him to seat her in a chair. Still holding her arm, he made his clear boyish voice resound through the hall, saying, "Retainers all, know that, as I am your lord and master, so is my honoured mother lady of the castle, and she is never to be gainsay'ed, let her say or do what she will."

"You are right, Herr Freiherr," said Heinz. "The Frau Christina is our gracious and beloved dame. Long live the Freiherrinn Christina!" And the voices of almost all the serfs present mingled in the cry.

"And hear you all," continued Eberhard, "she shall rule all, and never be trampled on more. Grandame, you understand?"

The old woman seemed confounded, and cowered in her chair without speaking. Christina, almost dismayed by this silence, would have suggested to Ebbo to say something kind or consoling; but at that moment she was struck with alarm by his renewed inquiry for his brother.

"Friedel! Was not he with thee?"

"No; I never saw him!"

Ebbo flew up the stairs, and shouted for his brother; then, coming down, gave orders for the men to go out on the mountain-side, and search and jodel. He was hurrying with them, but his mother caught his arm. "O Ebbo, how can I let you go? It is dark, and the crags are so perilous!"

"Mother, I cannot stay!" and the boy flung his arms round her neck, and whispered in her ear, "Friedel said it would be a treacherous attack, and I called him a craven. Oh, mother, we never parted thus before! He went up the hillside. Oh, where is he?"

Infected by the boy's despairing voice, yet relieved that Friedel at least had withstood the temptation, Christina still held Ebbo's hand, and descended the steps with him. The clear blue sky was fast showing the stars, and into the evening stillness echoed the loud wide jodeln, cast back from the other side of the ravine. Ebbo tried to raise his voice, but broke down in the shout, and, choked with agitation, said, "Let me go, mother. None know his haunts as I do!"

"Hark!" she said, only grasping him tighter.

Thinner, shriller, clearer came a far-away cry from the heights, and Ebbo thrilled from head to foot, then sent up another pealing mountain shout, responded to by a jodel so pitched as to be plainly not an echo. "Towards the Red Eyrie," said Hans.

"He will have been to the Ptarmigan's Pool," said Ebbo, sending up his voice again, in hopes that the answer would sound less distant; but, instead of this, its intonations conveyed, to these adepts in mountain language, that Friedel stood in need of help.

"Depend upon it," said the startled Ebbo, "that he has got up amongst those rocks where the dead chamois rolled down last summer; then, as Christina uttered a faint cry of terror, Heinz added, "Fear not, lady, those are not the jodeln of one who has met with a hurt. Baron Friedel has the sense to be patient rather than risk his bones if he cannot move safely in the dark."

"Up after him!" said Ebbo, emitting a variety of shouts intimating speedy aid, and receiving a halloo in reply that reassured even his mother. Equipped with a rope and sundry torches of pinewood, Heinz and two of the serfs were speedily ready, and Christina implored her son to let her come so far as where she should not impede the others. He gave her his arm, and Heinz held his torch so as to guide her up a winding path, not in itself very steep, but which she could never have climbed had daylight shown her what it overhung. Guided by the constant exchange of jodeln, they reached a height where the wind blew cold and wild, and Ebbo pointed to an intensely black shadow overhung by a peak rising like the gable of a house into the sky. "Yonder lies the tarn," he said. "Don't stir. This way lies the cliff. Fried-mund!" exchanging the jodel for the name.

"Here!--this way! Under the Red Eyrie," called back the wanderer; and steering their course round the rocks above the pool, the rescuers made their way towards the base of the peak, which was in fact the summit of the mountain, the top of the Eagle's Ladder, the highest step of which they had attained. The peak towered over them, and beneath, the castle lights seemed as if it would be easy to let a stone fall straight down on them.

Friedel's cry seemed to come from under their feet. "I am here! I am safe; only it grew so dark that I durst not climb up or down."

The Schneiderlein explained that he would lower down a rope, which, when fastened round Friedel's waist, would enable him to climb safely up; and, after a breathless space, the torchlight shone upon the longed-for face, and Friedel springing on the path, cried, "The mother!--and here!" -

"Oh, Friedel, where have you been? What is this in your arms?"

He showed them the innocent face of a little white kid.

"Whence is it, Friedel?"

He pointed to the peak, saying, "I was lying on my back by the tarn, when my lady eagle came sailing overhead, so low that I could see this poor little thing, and hear it bleat."

"Thou hast been to the Eyrie--the inaccessible Eyrie!" exclaimed Ebbo, in amazement.

"That's a mistake. It is not hard after the first" said Friedel. "I only waited to watch the old birds out again."

"Robbed the eagles! And the young ones?"

"Well," said Friedmund, as if half ashamed, "they were twin eaglets, and their mother had left them, and I felt as though I could not harm them; so I only bore off their provisions, and stuck some feathers in my cap. But by that time the sun was down, and soon I could not see my footing; and, when I found that I had missed the path, I thought I had best nestle in the nook where I was, and wait for day. I grieved for my mother's fear; but oh, to see her here!"

"Ah, Friedel! didst do it to prove my words false?" interposed Ebbo, eagerly.

"What words?"

"Thou knowest. Make me not speak them again."

"Oh, those!" said Friedel, only now recalling them. "No, verily; they were but a moment's anger. I wanted to save the kid. I think it is old mother Rika's white kid. But oh, motherling! I grieve to have thus frightened you."

Not a single word passed between them upon Ebbo's exploits. Whether Friedel had seen all from the heights, or whether he intuitively perceived that his brother preferred silence, he held his peace, and both were solely occupied in assisting their mother down the pass, the difficulties of which were far more felt now than in the excitement of the ascent; only when they were near home, and the boys were walking in the darkness with arms round one another's necks, Christina heard Friedel say low and rather sadly, "I think I shall be a priest, Ebbo."

To which Ebbo only answered, "Pfui!'

Christina understood that Friedel meant that robbery must be a severance between the brothers. Alas! had the moment come when their paths must diverge? Could Ebbo's step not be redeemed?

Ursel reported that Dame Kunigunde had scarcely spoken again, but had retired, like one stunned, into her bed. Friedel was half asleep after the exertions of the day; but Ebbo did not speak, and both soon betook themselves to their little turret chamber within their mother's.

Christina prayed long that night, her heart full of dread of the consequence of this transgression. Rumours of freebooting castles destroyed by the Swabian League had reached her every wake day, and, if this outrage were once known, the sufferance that left Adlerstein unmolested must be over. There was hope indeed in the weakness and uncertainty of the Government; but present safety would in reality be the ruin of Ebbo, since he would be encouraged to persist in the career of violence now unhappily begun. She knew not what to ask, save that her sons might be shielded from evil, and might fulfil that promise of her dream, the star in heaven, the light on earth. And for the present!--the good God guide her and her sons through the difficult morrow, and turn the heart of the unhappy old woman below!

When, exhausted with weeping and watching, she rose from her knees, she stole softly into her sons' turret for a last look at them. Generally they were so much alike in their sleep that even she was at fault between them; but that night there was no doubt. Friedel, pale after the day's hunger and fatigue, slept with relaxed features in the most complete calm; but though Ebbo's eyes were closed, there was no repose in his face--his hair was tossed, his colour flushed, his brow contracted, the arm flung across his brother had none of the ease of sleep. She doubted whether he were not awake; but, knowing that he would not brook any endeavour to force confidence he did not offer, she merely hung over them both, murmured a prayer and blessing, and left them.