CHAPTER XTHE 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’shay to be stored for the winter’s fodder of the goats, and of poor SirEberhard’s old white mare, the only steed as yet ridden by the youngBarons.
The boys were fourteen years old. So monotonous was their mother’s lifethat it was chiefly their growth that marked the length of her residencein the castle. Otherwise there had been no change, except that the elderBaroness was more feeble in her limbs, and still more irritable andexcitable in temper. There were no events, save a few hunting adventuresof the boys, or the yearly correspondence with Ulm; and the same lifecontinued, 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 norstrength.
The boys’ love was entirely given to their mother. Far from diminishingwith their dependence on her, it increased with the sense of protection;and, now that they were taller than herself, she seemed to be cherishedby them more than ever. Moreover, she was their oracle. Quick-wittedand active-minded, loving books the more because their grandmotherthought signing a feud-letter the utmost literary effort becoming to anoble, they never rested till they had acquired all that their mothercould teach them; or, rather, they then became more restless than ever.Long ago had her whole store of tales and ballads become so familiar, byrepetition, that the boys could correct her in the smallest variation;reading and writing were mastered as for pleasure; and the NurembergChronicle, with its wonderful woodcuts, excited such a passion ofcuriosity that they must needs conquer its Latin and read it forthemselves. This _World History_, with _Alexander and the NineWorthies_, the cities and landscapes, and the oft-repeated portraits, wasEberhard’s study; but Friedmund continued—constant to Walther ofVögelweide. Eberhard cared for no character in the Vulgate so much asfor Judas the Maccabee; but Friedmund’s heart was all for King David; andto both lads, shut up from companionship as they were, every acquaintancein their books was a living being whose like they fancied might be metbeyond their mountain. And, when they should go forth, like Dietrich ofBerne, in search of adventures, doughty deeds were chiefly to fall to thelot of Ebbo’s lance; while Friedel was to be their Minnesinger; andindeed certain verses, that he had murmured in his brother’s ear, hadleft no doubt in Ebbo’s mind that the exploits would be worthily sung.
The soft dreamy eye was becoming Friedel’s characteristic, as fire andkeenness distinguished his brother’s glance. When at rest, the twinscould be known apart by their expression, though in all other respectsthey were as alike as ever; and let Ebbo look thoughtful or Friedel eagerand they were again undistinguishable; and indeed they were constantlychanging looks. Had not Friedel been beside him, Ebbo would have beendeemed a wondrous student for his years; had not Ebbo been the standardof comparison, Friedel would have been in high repute for spirit andenterprise and skill as a cragsman, with the crossbow, and in all featsof arms that the Schneiderlein could impart. They shared alloccupations; and it was by the merest shade that Ebbo excelled with theweapon, and Friedel with the book or tool. For the artist nature was inthem, not intentionally excited by their mother, but far too strong to beeasily discouraged. They had long daily gazed at Ulm in the distance,hoping to behold the spire completed; and the illustrations in theirmother’s books excited a strong desire to imitate them. The floor hadoften been covered with charcoal outlines even before Christina waspersuaded to impart the rules she had learnt from her uncle; and hercarving-tools were soon seized upon. At first they were used only uponknobs of sticks; but one day when the boys, roaming on the mountain, hadlost their way, and coming to the convent had been there hospitablywelcomed by Father Norbert, they came home wild to make carvings likewhat they had seen in the chapel. Jobst the Kohler was continuallyimportuned for soft wood; the fair was ransacked for knives; and even theold Baroness could not find great fault with the occupation, base andmechanical though it were, which disposed of the two restless spiritsduring the many hours when winter storms confined them to the castle.Rude as was their work, the constant observation and choice of subjectswere an unsuspected training and softening. It was not in vain that theylived in the glorious mountain fastness, and saw the sun descend in hismajesty, dyeing the masses of rock with purple and crimson; not in vainthat they beheld peak and ravine clothed in purest snow, flushed withrosy light at morn and eve, or contrasted with the purple blue of thesky; or that they stood marvelling at ice caverns with gigantic crystalpendants shining with the most magical pure depths of sapphire andemerald, “as if,” said Friedel, “winter kept in his service all thejewel-forging dwarfs of the motherling’s tales.” And, when the snowmelted and the buds returned, the ivy spray, the smiling saxifrage, thepurple gentian bell, the feathery rowan leaf, the symmetrical lady’smantle, were hailed and loved first as models, then for themselves.
One regret their mother had, almost amounting to shame. Every virtuousperson 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 sonshad never felt the weight of a blow, except once when their grandmothercaught 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 wassure to fall upon her for insulting the noble birth of her sons, and thusgave them a triumph far worse for them than impunity. In truth, the boyshad their own way, or rather the Baron had his way, and his way was BaronFriedmund’s. Poor, bare, and scanty as were all the surroundings oftheir life, everything was done to feed their arrogance, with only oneinfluence to counteract their education in pride and violence—a mother’sinfluence, indeed, but her authority was studiously taken from her, andher position set at naught, with no power save what she might derive fromtheir love and involuntary honour, and the sight of the pain caused herby their wrong-doings.
And so the summer’s hay-harvest was come. Peasants clambered into thegreen nooks between the rocks to cut down with hook or knife the flowerygrass, for there was no space for the sweep of a scythe. The best cropwas on the bank of the Braunwasser, by the Debateable Ford, but this wascut and carried on the backs of the serfs, much earlier than the mountaingrass, and never without much vigilance against the Schlangenwaldern; butthis year the Count was absent at his Styrian castle, and little had beenseen or heard of his people.
The full muster of serfs appeared, for Frau Kunigunde admitted of noexcuses, and the sole absentee was a widow who lived on the ledge of themountain next above that on which the castle stood. Her son reported herto be very ill, and with tears in his eyes entreated Baron Friedel toobtain leave for him to return to her, since she was quite alone in hersolitary hut, with no one even to give her a drink of water. Friedelrushed 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 anduseless, 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 andbrother.
“Foolish lad not to have come to me!” said the young Baron. “Where ishe? I’ll send him at once.”
But Christina interposed an offer to go and take Koppel’s place besidehis mother, and her skill was so much prized over all the mountain-side,that the alternative was gratefully accepted, and she was escorted up thesteep path by her two boys to the hovel, where she spent the day inattendance on the sick woman.
Evening came on, the patient was better, but Koppel did not return, nordid the young Barons come to fetch their mother home. The last sunbeamswere dying off the mountain-tops, and, beginning to suspect somethingam
iss, she at length set off, and half way down met Koppel, who repliedto her question, “Ah, then, the gracious lady has not heard of our luck.Excellent booty, and two prisoners! The young Baron has been a heroindeed, and has won himself a knightly steed.” And, on her furtherinterrogation, he added, that an unusually rich but small company hadbeen reported by Jobst the Kohler to be on the way to the ford, where hehad skilfully prepared a stumbling-block. The gracious Baroness hadcaused Hatto to jodel all the hay-makers together, and they had fallen onthe travellers by the straight path down the crag. “Ach! did not theyoung Baron spring like a young gemsbock? And in midstream down cametheir 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. Sucha prize the saints have not sent since the old Baron’s time.”
Christina pursued her walk in dismay at this new beginning of freebootingin its worst form, overthrowing all her hopes. The best thing that couldhappen would be the immediate interference of the Swabian League, whileher sons were too young to be personally held guilty. Yet this mightinvolve ruin and confiscation; and, apart from all consequences, shebitterly grieved that the stain of robbery should have fallen on herhitherto 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 ofgoods.
“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 turnswith me. Where is Friedel? And, mother, Heinz said I struck as good astroke as any of them, and I have a sword for Friedel now. Why does henot come? And, motherling, this is for you, a gown of velvet, a realblack 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 hisdelight, but she did not move.
“Don’t you like the velvet?” he continued. “We always said that, thefirst prize we won, the motherling should wear velvet. Do but look atit.”
“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 doingof mine; and the horses fell. The Schlangenwaldern don’t even wait tolet 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 mereniceness.”
“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, wereit a knightly exploit, I were the first to exult.”
“Thou! thou craftsman’s girl! dost presume to call in question theknightly deeds of a noble house! There!” cried the furious Baroness,striking her face. “Now! dare to be insolent again.” Her hand wasuplifted for another blow, when it was grasped by Eberhard, and, the nextmoment, he likewise held the other hand, with youthful strength farexceeding hers. She had often struck his mother before, but not in hispresence, and the greatness of the shock seemed to make him cool andabsolutely dignified.
“Be still, grandame,” he said. “No, mother, I am not hurting her,” andindeed the surprise seemed to have taken away her rage and volubility,and unresistingly she allowed him to seat her in a chair. Still holdingher 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 myhonoured 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 ourgracious and beloved dame. Long live the Freiherrinn Christina!” And thevoices of almost all the serfs present mingled in the cry.
“And hear you all,” continued Eberhard, “she shall rule all, and never betrampled on more. Grandame, you understand?”
The old woman seemed confounded, and cowered in her chair withoutspeaking. Christina, almost dismayed by this silence, would havesuggested to Ebbo to say something kind or consoling; but at that momentshe 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 andjodel. He was hurrying with them, but his mother caught his arm. “OEbbo, 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, andwhispered in her ear, “Friedel said it would be a treacherous attack, andI called him a craven. Oh, mother, we never parted thus before! He wentup the hillside. Oh, where is he?”
Infected by the boy’s despairing voice, yet relieved that Friedel atleast had withstood the temptation, Christina still held Ebbo’s hand, anddescended the steps with him. The clear blue sky was fast showing thestars, and into the evening stillness echoed the loud wide jodeln, castback 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 mego, 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 Ebbothrilled 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 hisvoice again, in hopes that the answer would sound less distant; but,instead of this, its intonations conveyed, to these adepts in mountainlanguage, that Friedel stood in need of help.
“Depend upon it,” said the startled Ebbo, “that he has got up amongstthose rocks where the dead chamois rolled down last summer;” then, asChristina 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 Friedelhas the sense to be patient rather than risk his bones if he cannot movesafely in the dark.”
“Up after him!” said Ebbo, emitting a variety of shouts intimating speedyaid, and receiving a halloo in reply that reassured even his mother.Equipped with a rope and sundry torches of pinewood, Heinz and two of theserfs were speedily ready, and Christina implored her son to let her comeso 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 initself very steep, but which she could never have climbed had daylightshown her what it overhung. Guided by the constant exchange of jodeln,they reached a height where the wind blew cold and wild, and Ebbo pointedto an intensely black shadow overhung by a peak rising like the gable ofa 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; andsteering their course round the rocks above the pool, the rescuers madetheir way towards the base of the peak, which was in fact the summit ofthe mountain, the top of the Eagle’s Ladder, the highest step of whichthey had attained. The peak towered over them, and beneath, the castlelights seemed as if it would be easy to let a stone fall straight down onthem.
Friedel’s cry seemed to come from under their feet. “I am here! I amsafe; only it grew so dark that I durst not climb up or down.”<
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The Schneiderlein explained that he would lower down a rope, which, whenfastened 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, whenmy lady eagle came sailing overhead, so low that I could see this poorlittle thing, and hear it bleat.”
“Thou hast been to the Eyrie—the inaccessible Eyrie!” exclaimed Ebbo, inamazement.
“That’s a mistake. It is not hard after the first” said Friedel. “Ionly 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, andtheir 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 nestlein the nook where I was, and wait for day. I grieved for my mother’sfear; 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; theywere but a moment’s anger. I wanted to save the kid. I think it is oldmother Rika’s white kid. But oh, motherling! I grieve to have thusfrightened you.”
Not a single word passed between them upon Ebbo’s exploits. WhetherFriedel had seen all from the heights, or whether he intuitivelyperceived that his brother preferred silence, he held his peace, and bothwere solely occupied in assisting their mother down the pass, thedifficulties of which were far more felt now than in the excitement ofthe ascent; only when they were near home, and the boys were walking inthe darkness with arms round one another’s necks, Christina heard Friedelsay 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 severancebetween the brothers. Alas! had the moment come when their paths mustdiverge? Could Ebbo’s step not be redeemed?
Ursel reported that Dame Kunigunde had scarcely spoken again, but hadretired, like one stunned, into her bed. Friedel was half asleep afterthe exertions of the day; but Ebbo did not speak, and both soon betookthemselves to their little turret chamber within their mother’s.
Christina prayed long that night, her heart full of dread of theconsequence of this transgression. Rumours of freebooting castlesdestroyed by the Swabian League had reached her every wake day, and, ifthis outrage were once known, the sufferance that left Adlersteinunmolested must be over. There was hope indeed in the weakness anduncertainty of the Government; but present safety would in reality be theruin of Ebbo, since he would be encouraged to persist in the career ofviolence now unhappily begun. She knew not what to ask, save that hersons might be shielded from evil, and might fulfil that promise of herdream, the star in heaven, the light on earth. And for the present!—thegood God guide her and her sons through the difficult morrow, and turnthe heart of the unhappy old woman below!
When, exhausted with weeping and watching, she rose from her knees, shestole softly into her sons’ turret for a last look at them. Generallythey were so much alike in their sleep that even she was at fault betweenthem; but that night there was no doubt. Friedel, pale after the day’shunger and fatigue, slept with relaxed features in the most completecalm; but though Ebbo’s eyes were closed, there was no repose in hisface—his hair was tossed, his colour flushed, his brow contracted, thearm flung across his brother had none of the ease of sleep. She doubtedwhether he were not awake; but, knowing that he would not brook anyendeavour to force confidence he did not offer, she merely hung over themboth, murmured a prayer and blessing, and left them.
The Dove in the Eagle's Nest Page 12