The Dove in the Eagle's Nest

CHAPTER XI: THE CHOICE IN LIFE

"Friedel, wake!"

"Is it day?" said Friedel, slowly wakening, and crossing himself as he opened his eyes. "Surely the sun is not up--?"

"We must be before the sun!" said Ebbo, who was on his feet, beginning to dress himself. "Hush, and come! Do not wake the mother. It must be ere she or aught else be astir! Thy prayers--I tell thee this is a work as good as prayer."

Half awake, and entirely bewildered, Friedel dipped his finger in the pearl mussel shell of holy water over their bed, and crossed his own brow and his brother's; then, carrying their shoes, they crossed their mother's chamber, and crept down stairs. Ebbo muttered to his brother, "Stand thou still there, and pray the saints to keep her asleep;" and then, with bare feet, moved noiselessly behind the wooden partition that shut off his grandmother's box-bedstead from the rest of the hall. She lay asleep with open mouth, snoring loudly, and on her pillow lay the bunch of castle keys, that was always carried to her at night. It was a moment of peril when Ebbo touched it; but he had nerved himself to be both steady and dexterous, and he secured it without a jingle, and then, without entering the hall, descended into a passage lit by a rough opening cut in the rock. Friedel, who began to comprehend, followed him close and joyfully, and at the first door he fitted in, and with some difficulty turned, a key, and pushed open the door of a vault, where morning light, streaming through the grated window, showed two captives, who had started to their feet, and now stood regarding the pair in the doorway as if they thought their dreams were multiplying the young Baron who had led the attack.

"Signori--" began the principal of the two; but Ebbo spoke.

"Sir, you have been brought here by a mistake in the absence of my mother, the lady of the castle. If you will follow me, I will restore all that is within my reach, and put you on your way."

The merchant's knowledge of German was small, but the purport of the words was plain, and he gladly left the damp, chilly vault. Ebbo pointed to the bales that strewed the hall. "Take all that can be carried," he said. "Here is your sword, and your purse," he said, for these had been given to him in the moment of victory. "I will bring out your horse and lead you to the pass."

"Give him food," whispered Friedel; but the merchant was too anxious to have any appetite. Only he faltered in broken German a proposal to pay his respects to the Signora Castellana, to whom he owed so much.

"No! Dormit in lecto," said Ebbo, with a sudden inspiration caught from the Latinized sound of some of the Italian words, but colouring desperately as he spoke.

The Latin proved most serviceable, and the merchant understood that his property was restored, and made all speed to gather it together, and transport it to the stable. One or two of his beasts of burden had been lost in the fray, and there were more packages than could well be carried by the merchant, his servant, and his horse. Ebbo gave the aid of the old white mare--now very white indeed--and in truth the boys pitied the merchant's fine young bay for being put to base trading uses, and were rather shocked to hear that it had been taken in payment for a knight's branched velvet gown, and would be sold again at Ulm.

"What a poor coxcomb of a knight!" said they to one another, as they patted the creature's neck with such fervent admiration that the merchant longed to present it to them, when he saw that the old white mare was the sole steed they possessed, and watched their tender guidance both of her and of the bay up the rocky path so familiar to them.

"But ah, signorini miei, I am an infelice infelicissimo, ever persecuted by le Fate."

"By whom? A count like Schlangenwald?" asked Ebbo.

"Das Schicksal," whispered Friedel.

"Three long miserable years did I spend as a captive among the Moors, having lost all, my ships and all I had, and being forced to row their galleys, gli scomunicati."

"Galleys!" exclaimed Ebbo; "there are some pictured in our World History before Carthage. Would that I could see one!"

"The signorino would soon have seen his fill, were he between the decks, chained to the bench for weeks together, without ceasing to row for twenty-four hours together, with a renegade standing over to lash us, or to put a morsel into our mouths if we were fainting."

"The dogs! Do they thus use Christian men?" cried Friedel.

"Si, si--ja wohl. There were a good fourscore of us, and among them a Tedesco, a good man and true, from whom I learnt la lingua loro."

"Our tongue!--from whom?" asked one twin of the other.

"A Tedesco, a fellow-countryman of sue eccellenze."

"Deutscher!" cried both boys, turning in horror, "our Germans so treated by the pagan villains?"

"Yea, truly, signorini miei. This fellow-captive of mine was a cavaliere in his own land, but he had been betrayed and sold by his enemies, and he mourned piteously for la sposa sua--his bride, as they say here. A goodly man and a tall, piteously cramped in the narrow deck, I grieved to leave him there when the good confraternita at Genoa paid my ransom. Having learnt to speak il Tedesco, and being no longer able to fit out a vessel, I made my venture beyond the Alps; but, alas! till this moment fortune has still been adverse. My mules died of the toil of crossing the mountains; and, when with reduced baggage I came to the river beneath there--when my horses fell and my servants fled, and the peasants came down with their hayforks--I thought myself in hands no better than those of the Moors themselves."

"It was wrongly done," said Ebbo, in an honest, open tone, though blushing. "I have indeed a right to what may be stranded on the bank, but never more shall foul means be employed for the overthrow."

The boys had by this time led the traveller through the Gemsbock's Pass, within sight of the convent. "There," said Ebbo, "will they give you harbourage, food, a guide, and a beast to carry the rest of your goods. We are now upon convent land, and none will dare to touch your bales; so I will unload old Schimmel."

"Ah, signorino, if I might offer any token of gratitude--"

"Nay," said Ebbo, with boyish lordliness, "make me not a spoiler."

"If the signorini should ever come to Genoa," continued the trader, "and would honour Gian Battista dei Battiste with a call, his whole house would be at their feet."

"Thanks; I would that we could see strange lands!" said Ebbo. "But come, Friedel, the sun is high, and I locked them all into the castle to make matters safe."

"May the liberated captive know the name of his deliverers, that he may commend it to the saints?" asked the merchant.

"I am Eberhard, Freiherr von Adlerstein, and this is Freiherr Friedmund, my brother. Farewell, sir."

"Strange," muttered the merchant, as he watched the two boys turn down the pass, "strange how like one barbarous name is to another. Eberardo! That was what we called il Tedesco, and, when he once told me his family name, it ended in stino; but all these foreign names sound alike. Let us speed on, lest these accursed peasants should wake, and be beyond the control of the signorino."

"Ah!" sighed Ebbo, as soon as he had hurried out of reach of the temptation, "small use in being a baron if one is to be no better mounted!"

"Thou art glad to have let that fair creature go free, though," said Friedel.

"Nay, my mother's eyes would let me have no rest in keeping him. Otherwise--Talk not to me of gladness, Friedel! Thou shouldst know better. How is one to be a knight with nothing to ride but a beast old enough to be his grandmother?"

"Knighthood of the heart may be content to go afoot," said Friedel. "Oh, Ebbo, what a brother thou art! How happy the mother will be!"

"Pfui, Friedel; what boots heart without spur? I am sick of being mewed up here within these walls of rock! No sport, not even with falling on a traveller. I am worse off than ever were my forefathers!"

"But how is it? I cannot understand," asked Friedel. "What has changed thy mind?"

"Thou, and the mother, and, more than all, the grandame. Listen, Friedel: when thou camest up, in all the whirl of eagerness and glad preparation, with thy grave face and murmur that Jobst had put forked stakes in the stream, it was past man's endurance to be baulked of the fray. Thou hast forgotten what I said to thee then, good Friedel?"

"Long since. No doubt I thrust in vexatiously."

"Not so," said Ebbo; "and I saw thou hadst reason, for the stakes were most maliciously planted, with long branches hid by the current; but the fellows were showing fight, and I could not stay to think then, or I should have seemed to fear them! I can tell you we made them run! But I never meant the grandmother to put yon poor fellow in the dungeon, and use him worse than a dog. I wot that he was my captive, and none of hers. And then came the mother; and oh, Friedel, she looked as if I were slaying her when she saw the spoil; and, ere I had made her see right and reason, the old lady came swooping down in full malice and spite, and actually came to blows. She struck the motherling--struck her on the face, Friedel!"

"I fear me it has so been before," said Friedel, sadly.

"Never will it be so again," said Ebbo, standing still. "I took the old hag by the hands, and told her she had ruled long enough! My father's wife is as good a lady of the castle as my grandfather's, and I myself am lord thereof; and, since my Lady Kunigunde chooses to cross me and beat my mother about this capture, why she has seen the last of it, and may learn who is master, and who is mistress!"

"Oh, Ebbo! I would I had seen it! But was not she outrageous? Was not the mother shrinking and ready to give back all her claims at once?"

"Perhaps she would have been, but just then she found thou wast not with me, and I found thou wast not with her, and we thought of nought else. But thou must stand by me, Friedel, and help to keep the grandmother in her place, and the mother in hers."

"If the mother WILL be kept," said Friedel. "I fear me she will only plead to be left to the grandame's treatment, as before."

"Never, Friedel! I will never see her so used again. I released this man solely to show that she is to rule here.--Yes, I know all about freebooting being a deadly sin, and moreover that it will bring the League about our ears; and it was a cowardly trick of Jobst to put those branches in the stream. Did I not go over it last night till my brain was dizzy? But still, it is but living and dying like our fathers, and I hate tameness or dullness, and it is like a fool to go back from what one has once begun."

"No; it is like a brave man, when one has begun wrong," said Friedel.

"But then I thought of the grandame triumphing over the gentle mother--and I know the mother wept over her beads half the night. She SHALL find she has had her own way for once this morning."

Friedel was silent for a few moments, then said, "Let me tell thee what I saw yesterday, Ebbo."

"So," answered the other brother.

"I liked not to vex my mother by my tidings, so I climbed up to the tarn. There is something always healing in that spot, is it not so, Ebbo? When the grandmother has been raving" (hitherto Friedel's worst grievance) "it is like getting up nearer the quiet sky in the stillness there, when the sky seems to have come down into the deep blue water, and all is so still, so wondrous still and calm. I wonder if, when we see the great Dome Kirk itself, it will give one's spirit wings, as does the gazing up from the Ptarmigan's Pool."

"Thou minnesinger, was it the blue sky thou hadst to tell me of?"

"No, brother, it was ere I reached it that I saw this sight. I had scaled the peak where grows the stunted rowan, and I sat down to look down on the other side of the gorge. It was clear where I sat, but the ravine was filled with clouds, and upon them--"

"The shape of the blessed Friedmund, thy patron?"

"OUR patron," said Friedel; "I saw him, a giant form in gown and hood, traced in grey shadow upon the dazzling white cloud; and oh, Ebbo! he was struggling with a thinner, darker, wilder shape bearing a club. He strove to withhold it; his gestures threatened and warned! I watched like one spell-bound, for it was to me as the guardian spirit of our race striving for thee with the enemy."

"How did it end?"

"The cloud darkened, and swallowed them; nor should I have known the issue, if suddenly, on the very cloud where the strife had been, there had not beamed forth a rainbow--not a common rainbow, Ebbo, but a perfect ring, a soft-glancing, many-tinted crown of victory. Then I knew the saint had won, and that thou wouldst win."

"I! What, not thyself--his own namesake?"

"I thought, Ebbo, if the fight went very hard--nay, if for a time the grandame led thee her way--that belike I might serve thee best by giving up all, and praying for thee in the hermit's cave, or as a monk."

"Thou!--thou, my other self! Aid me by burrowing in a hole like a rat! What foolery wilt say next? No, no, Friedel, strike by my side, and I will strike with thee; pray by my side, and I will pray with thee; but if thou takest none of the strokes, then will I none of the prayers!"

"Ebbo, thou knowest not what thou sayest."

"No one knows better! See, Friedel, wouldst thou have me all that the old Adlersteinen were, and worse too? then wilt thou leave me and hide thine head in some priestly cowl. Maybe thou thinkest to pray my soul into safety at the last moment as a favour to thine own abundant sanctity; but I tell thee, Friedel, that's no manly way to salvation. If thou follow'st that track, I'll take care to get past the border-line within which prayer can help."

Friedel crossed himself, and uttered an imploring exclamation of horror at these wild words.

"Stay," said Ebbo; "I said not I meant any such thing--so long as thou wilt be with me. My purpose is to be a good man and true, a guard to the weak, a defence against the Turk, a good lord to my vassals, and, if it may not be otherwise, I will take my oath to the Kaiser, and keep it. Is that enough for thee, Friedel, or wouldst thou see me a monk at once?"

"Oh, Ebbo, this is what we ever planned. I only dreamed of the other when--when thou didst seem to be on the other track."

"Well, what can I do more than turn back? I'll get absolution on Sunday, and tell Father Norbert that I will do any penance he pleases; and warn Jobst that, if he sets any more traps in the river, I will drown him there next! Only get this priestly fancy away, Friedel, once and for ever!"

"Never, never could I think of what would sever us," cried Friedel, "save--when--" he added, hesitating, unwilling to harp on the former string. Ebbo broke in imperiously,

"Friedmund von Adlerstein, give me thy solemn word that I never again hear of this freak of turning priest or hermit. What! art slow to speak? Thinkest me too bad for thee?"

"No, Ebbo. Heaven knows thou art stronger, more resolute than I. I am more likely to be too bad for thee. But so long as we can be true, faithful God-fearing Junkern together, Heaven forbid that we should part!"

"It is our bond!" said Ebbo; "nought shall part us."

"Nought but death," said Friedmund, solemnly.

"For my part," said Ebbo, with perfect seriousness, "I do not believe that one of us can live or die without the other. But, hark! there's an outcry at the castle! They have found out that they are locked in! Ha! ho! hilloa, Hatto, how like you playing prisoner?"

Ebbo would have amused himself with the dismay of his garrison a little longer, had not Friedel reminded him that their mother might be suffering for their delay, and this suggestion made him march in hastily. He found her standing drooping under the pitiless storm which Frau Kunigunde was pouring out at the highest pitch of her cracked, trembling voice, one hand uplifted and clenched, the other grasping the back of a chair, while her whole frame shook with rage too mighty for her strength.

"Grandame," said Ebbo, striding up to the scene of action, "cease. Remember my words yestereve."

"She has stolen the keys! She has tampered with the servants! She has released the prisoner--thy prisoner, Ebbo! She has cheated us as she did with Wildschloss! False burgherinn! I trow she wanted another suitor! Bane--pest of Adlerstein!"

Friedmund threw a supporting arm round his mother, but Ebbo confronted the old lady. "Grandmother," he said, "I freed the captive. I stole the keys--I and Friedel! No one else knew my purpose. He was my captive, and I released him because he was foully taken. I have chosen my lot in life," he added; and, standing in the middle of the hall, he took off his cap, and spoke gravely:- "I will not be a treacherous robber-outlaw, but, so help me God, a faithful, loyal, godly nobleman."

His mother and Friedel breathed an "Amen" with all their hearts; and he continued,

"And thou, grandame, peace! Such reverence shalt thou have as befits my father's mother; but henceforth mine own lady-mother is the mistress of this castle, and whoever speaks a rude word to her offends the Freiherr von Adlerstein."

That last day's work had made a great step in Ebbo's life, and there he stood, grave and firm, ready for the assault; for, in effect, he and all besides expected that the old lady would fly at him or at his mother like a wild cat, as she would assuredly have done in a like case a year earlier; but she took them all by surprise by collapsing into her chair and sobbing piteously. Ebbo, much distressed, tried to make her understand that she was to have all care and honour; but she muttered something about ingratitude, and continued to exhaust herself with weeping, spurning away all who approached her; and thenceforth she lived in a gloomy, sullen acquiescence in her deposition.

Christina inclined to the opinion that she must have had some slight stroke in the night, for she was never the same woman again; her vigour had passed away, and she would sit spinning, or rocking herself in her chair, scarcely alive to what passed, or scolding and fretting like a shadow of her old violence. Nothing pleased her but the attentions of her grandsons, and happily she soon ceased to know them apart, and gave Ebbo credit for all that was done for her by Friedel, whose separate existence she seemed to have forgotten.

As long as her old spirit remained she would not suffer the approach of her daughter-in-law, and Christina could only make suggestions for her comfort to be acted on by Ursel; and though the reins of government fast dropped from the aged hands, they were but gradually and cautiously assumed by the younger Baroness.

Only Elsie remained of the rude, demoralized girls whom she had found in the castle, and their successors, though dull and uncouth, were meek and manageable; the men of the castle had all, except Matz, been always devoted to the Frau Christina; and Matz, to her great relief, ran away so soon as he found that decency and honesty were to be the rule. Old Hatto, humpbacked Hans, and Heinz the Schneiderlein, were the whole male establishment, and had at least the merit of attachment to herself and her sons; and in time there was a shade of greater civilization about the castle, though impeded both by dire poverty and the doggedness of the old retainers. At least the court was cleared of the swine, and, within doors, the table was spread with dainty linen out of the parcels from Ulm, and the meals served with orderliness that annoyed the boys at first, but soon became a subject of pride and pleasure.

Frau Kunigunde lingered long, with increasing infirmities. After the winter day, when, running down at a sudden noise, Friedel picked her up from the hearthstone, scorched, bruised, almost senseless, she accepted Christina's care with nothing worse than a snarl, and gradually seemed to forget the identity of her nurse with the interloping burgher girl. Thanks or courtesy had been no part of her nature, least of all towards her own sex, and she did little but grumble, fret, and revile her attendant; but she soon depended so much on Christina's care, that it was hardly possible to leave her. At her best and strongest, her talk was maundering abuse of her son's low-born wife; but at times her wanderings showed black gulfs of iniquity and coarseness of soul that would make the gentle listener tremble, and be thankful that her sons were out of hearing. And thus did Christina von Adlerstein requite fifteen years of persecution.

The old lady's first failure had been in the summer of 1488; it was the Advent season of 1489, when the snow was at the deepest, and the frost at the hardest, that the two hardy mountaineer grandsons fetched over the pass Father Norbert, and a still sturdier, stronger monk, to the dying woman.

"Are we in time, mother?" asked Ebbo, from the door of the upper chamber, where the Adlersteins began and ended life, shaking the snow from his mufflings. Ruddy with exertion in the sharp wind, what a contrast he was to all within the room!

"Who is that?" said a thin, feeble voice.

"It is Ebbo. It is the Baron," said Christina. "Come in, Ebbo. She is somewhat revived."

"Will she be able to speak to the priest?" asked Ebbo.

"Priest!" feebly screamed the old woman. "No priest for me! My lord died unshriven, unassoilzied. Where he is, there will I be. Let a priest approach me at his peril!"

Stony insensibility ensued; nor did she speak again, though life lasted many hours longer. The priests did their office; for, impenitent as the life and frantic as the words had been, the opinions of the time deemed that their rites might yet give the departing soul a chance, though the body was unconscious.

When all was over, snow was again falling, shifting and drifting, so that it was impossible to leave 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.