CHAPTER XIIITHE EAGLETS IN THE CITY
AFTER having once accepted Master Gottfried, Ebbo froze towards him andDame Johanna no more, save that a naturally imperious temper now and thenled to fitful stiffnesses and momentary haughtiness, which were easilyexcused in one so new to the world and afraid of compromising his rank.In general he could afford to enjoy himself with a zest as hearty as thatof the simpler-minded Friedel.
They were early afoot, but not before the heads of the household werecoming forth for the morning devotions at the cathedral; and the streetswere stirring into activity, and becoming so peopled that the boyssupposed that it was a great fair day. They had never seen so manypeople together even at the Friedmund Wake, and it was several daysbefore they ceased to exclaim at every passenger as a new curiosity.
The Dome Kirk awed and hushed them. They had looked to it so long thatperhaps no sublunary thing could have realized their expectations, andFriedel avowed that he did not know what he thought of it. It was notsuch as he had dreamt, and, like a German as he was, he added that hecould not think, he could only feel, that there was something ineffablein it; yet he was almost disappointed to find his visions unfulfilled,and the hues of the painted glass less pure and translucent than those ofthe ice crystals on the mountains. However after his eye had becometrained, the deep influence of its dim solemn majesty, and of the echoesof its organ tones, and chants of high praise or earnest prayer, began toenchain his spirit; and, if ever he were missing, he was sure to be foundamong the mysteries of the cathedral aisles, generally with Ebbo, whofelt the spell of the same grave fascination, since whatever was true ofthe one brother was generally true of the other. They were essentiallyalike, though some phases of character and taste were more developed inthe one or the other.
Master Gottfried was much edified by their perfect knowledge of the namesand numbers of his books. They instantly, almost resentfully, missed theCicero’s _Offices_ that he had parted with, and joyfully hailed his newacquisitions, often sitting with heads together over the same book,reading like active-minded youths who were used to out-of-door life andexercise in superabundant measure, and to study as a valued recreation,with only food enough for the intellect to awaken instead of satisfyingit.
They were delighted to obtain instruction from a travelling student, thenattending the schools of Ulm—a meek, timid lad who, for love of learningand desire of the priesthood, had endured frightful tyranny from theBacchanten or elder scholars, and, having at length attained that rank,had so little heart to retaliate on the juniors that his contemporariesdespised him, and led him a cruel life until he obtained food and shelterfrom Master Gottfried at the pleasant cost of lessons to the youngBarons. Poor Bastien! this land of quiet, civility, and books was aforetaste of Paradise to him after the hard living, barbarity, and coarsevices of his comrades, of whom he now and then disclosed traits that madehis present pupils long to give battle to the big shaggy youths who usedto send out the lesser lads to beg and steal for them, and cruellymaltreated such as failed in the quest.
Lessons in music and singing were gladly accepted by both lads, and fromtheir uncle’s carving they could not keep their hands. Ebbo had begun byenjoining Friedel to remember that the work that had been sport in themountains would be basely mechanical in the city, and Friedel as usualyielded his private tastes; but on the second day Ebbo himself wasdiscovered in the workshop, watching the magic touch of the deft workman,and he was soon so enticed by the perfect appliances as to take tool inhand and prove himself not unadroit in the craft. Friedel howeverexcelled in delicacy of touch and grace and originality of conception,and produced such workmanship that Master Gottfried could not helpstroking his hair and telling him it was a pity he was not born to belongto the guild.
“I cannot spare him, sir,” cried Ebbo; “priest, scholar, minstrel,artist—all want him.”
“What, Hans of all streets, Ebbo?” interrupted Friedel.
“And guildmaster of none,” said Ebbo, “save as a warrior; the rest onlyenough for a gentleman! For what I am thou must be!”
But Ebbo did not find fault with the skill Friedel was bestowing on hiswork—a carving in wood of a dove brooding over two young eagles—thedevice that both were resolved to assume. When their mother asked whattheir lady-loves would say to this, Ebbo looked up, and with the fullestconviction in his lustrous eyes declared that no love should ever rivalhis motherling in his heart. For truly her tender sweetness had givenher sons’ affection a touch of romance, for which Master Gottfried likedthem the better, though his wife thought their familiarity with herhardly accordant with the patriarchal discipline of the citizens.
The youths held aloof from these burghers, for Master Gottfried wiselydesired to give them time to be tamed before running risk of offence,either to, or by, their wild shy pride; and their mother contrived totime her meetings with her old companions when her sons were otherwiseoccupied. Master Gottfried made it known that the marriage portion hehad designed for his niece had been intrusted to a merchant trading inpeltry to Muscovy, and the sum thus realized was larger than any bridehad yet brought to Adlerstein. Master Gottfried would have liked tocontinue the same profitable speculations with it; but this would havebeen beyond the young Baron’s endurance, and his eyes sparkled when hismother spoke of repairing the castle, refitting the chapel, having aresident chaplain, cultivating more land, increasing the scanty stock ofcattle, and attempting the improvements hitherto prevented by lack ofmeans. He fervently declared that the motherling was more than equal tothe wise spinning Queen Bertha of legend and lay; and the first pleasantsense of wealth came in the acquisition of horses, weapons, andbraveries. In his original mood, Ebbo would rather have stood before theDiet in his home-spun blue than have figured in cloth of gold at aburgher’s expense; but he had learned to love his uncle, he regarded themarriage portion as family property, and moreover he sorely longed tofeel himself and his brother well mounted, and scarcely less to see hismother in a velvet gown.
Here was his chief point of sympathy with the housemother, who, herselfprecluded from wearing miniver, velvet, or pearls, longed to deck herniece therewith, in time to receive Sir Kasimir of AdlersteinWildschloss, as he had promised to meet his godsons at Ulm. The knight’smarriage had lasted only a few years, and had left him no survivingchildren except one little daughter, whom he had placed in a nunnery atUlm, under the care of her mother’s sister. His lands lay higher up theDanube, and he was expected at Ulm shortly before the Emperor’s arrival.He had been chiefly in Flanders with the King of the Romans, and had onlyreturned to Germany when the Netherlanders had refused the regency ofMaximilian, and driven him out of their country, depriving him of thecustody of his children.
Pfingsttag, or Pentecost-day, was the occasion of Christina’s first fulltoilet, and never was bride more solicitously or exultingly arrayed thanshe, while one boy held the mirror and the other criticized and admiredas the aunt adjusted the pearl-bordered coif, and long white veilfloating over the long-desired black velvet dress. How the two ladsadmired and gazed, caring far less for their own new and noble attire!Friedel was indeed somewhat concerned that the sword by his side was somuch handsomer than that which Ebbo wore, and which, for all its dintedscabbard and battered hilt, he was resolved never to discard.
It was a festival of brilliant joy. Wreaths of flowers hung from thewindows; rich tapestries decked the Dome Kirk, and the relics weredisplayed in shrines of wonderful costliness of material and beauty ofworkmanship; little birds, with thin cakes fastened to their feet, werelet loose to fly about the church, in strange allusion to the event ofthe day; the clergy wore their most gorgeous robes; and the exultingmusic of the mass echoed from the vaults of the long-drawn aisles, andbrought a rapt look of deep calm ecstasy over Friedel’s sensitivefeatures. The beggars evidently considered a festival as a harvest-day,and crowded round the doors of the cathedral. As the Lady of Adlersteincame out leaning on Ebbo’s arm, with Friedel on her other side, theyevidently att
racted the notice of a woman whose thin brown face lookedthe darker for the striped red and yellow silk kerchief that bound thedark locks round her brow, as, holding out a beringed hand, she fastenedher glittering jet black eyes on them, and exclaimed, “Alms! if the fairdame and knightly Junkern would hear what fate has in store for them.”
“We meddle not with the future, I thank thee,” said Christina, seeingthat her sons, to whom gipsies were an amazing novelty, were in extremesurprise at the fortune-telling proposal.
“Yet could I tell much, lady,” said the woman, still standing in the way.“What would some here present give to know that the locks that wereshrouded by the widow’s veil ere ever they wore the matron’s coif shallyet return to the coif once more?”
Ebbo gave a sudden start of dismay and passion; his mother held him fast.“Push on, Ebbo, mine; heed her not; she is a mere Bohemian.”
“But how knew she your history, mother?” asked Friedel, eagerly.
“That might be easily learnt at our Wake,” began Christina; but her stepswere checked by a call from Master Gottfried just behind. “FrauFreiherrinn, Junkern, not so fast. Here is your noble kinsman.”
A tall, fine-looking person, in the long rich robe worn on peacefuloccasions, stood forth, doffing his eagle-plumed bonnet, and, as the ladyturned and curtsied low, he put his knee to the ground and kissed herhand, saying, “Well met, noble dame; I felt certain that I knew you whenI beheld you in the Dome.”
“He was gazing at her all the time,” whispered Ebbo to his brother; whiletheir mother, blushing, replied, “You do me too much honour, HerrFreiherr.”
“Once seen, never to be forgotten,” was the courteous answer: “and truly,but for the stately height of these my godsons I would not believe howlong since our meeting was.”
Thereupon, in true German fashion, Sir Kasimir embraced each youth in theopen street, and then, removing his long, embroidered Spanish glove, heoffered his hand, or rather the tips of his fingers, to lead the FrauChristina home.
Master Sorel had invited him to become his guest at a very elaborateornamental festival meal in honour of the great holiday, at which were tobe present several wealthy citizens with their wives and families, oldconnections of the Sorel family. Ebbo had resolved upon treating themwith courteous reserve and distance; but he was surprised to find hiscousin of Wildschloss comporting himself among the burgomasters and theirdames as freely as though they had been his equals, and to see that theytook such demeanour as perfectly natural. Quick to perceive, the boygathered that the gulf between noble and burgher was so great that nointimacy could bridge it over, no reserve widen it, and that his ownbashful hauteur was almost a sign that he knew that the gulf had beenpassed by his own parents; but shame and consciousness did not enable himto alter his manner but rather added to its stiffness.
“The Junker is like an Englishman,” said Sir Kasimir, who had met many ofthe exiles of the Roses at the court of Mary of Burgundy; and then heturned to discuss with the guildmasters the interruption to trade causedby Flemish jealousies.
After the lengthy meal, the tables were removed, the long gallery wasoccupied by musicians, and Master Gottfried crossed the hall to tell hiseldest grandnephew that to him he should depute the opening of the dancewith the handsome bride of the Rathsherr, Ulrich Burger. Ebbo blushed upto the eyes, and muttered that he prayed his uncle to excuse him.
“So!” said the old citizen, really displeased; “thy kinsman might haveproved to thee that it is no derogation of thy lordly dignity. I havebeen patient with thee, but thy pride passes—”
“Sir,” interposed Friedel hastily, raising his sweet candid face with alook between shame and merriment, “it is not that; but you forget whatpoor mountaineers we are. Never did we tread a measure save now and thenwith our mother on a winter evening, and we know no more than a chamoisof your intricate measures.”
Master Gottfried looked perplexed, for these dances were matters of greatpunctilio. It was but seven years since the Lord of Praunstein haddefied the whole city of Frankfort because a damsel of that place hadrefused to dance with one of his Cousins; and, though “Fistright” andletters of challenge had been made illegal, yet the whole city of Ulmwould have resented the affront put on it by the young lord ofAdlerstein. Happily the Freiherr of Adlerstein Wildschloss was at hand.“Herr Burgomaster,” he said, “let me commence the dance with your fairlady niece. By your testimony,” he added, smiling to the youths, “shecan tread a measure. And, after marking us, you may try your successwith the Rathsherrinn.”
Christina would gladly have transferred her noble partner to theRathsherrinn, but she feared to mortify her good uncle and aunt further,and consented to figure alone with Sir Kasimir in one of the majestic,graceful dances performed by a single couple before a gazing assembly.So she let him lead her to her place, and they bowed and bent, swept pastone another, and moved in interlacing lines and curves, with a grand slowmovement that displayed her quiet grace and his stately port and courtlyair.
“Is it not beautiful to see the motherling?” said Friedel to his brother;“she sails like a white cloud in a soft wind. And he stands grand as astag at gaze.”
“Like a malapert peacock, say I,” returned Ebbo; “didst not see, Friedel,how he kept his eyes on her in church? My uncle says the Bohemians aremere deceivers. Depend on it the woman had spied his insolent looks whenshe made her ribald prediction.”
“See,” said Friedel, who had been watching the steps rather thanattending, “it will be easy to dance it now. It is a figure my motheronce tried to teach us. I remember it now.”
“Then go and do it, since better may not be.”
“Nay, but it should be thou.”
“Who will know which of us it is? I hated his presumption too much tomark his antics.”
Friedel came forward, and the substitution was undetected by all savetheir mother and uncle; by the latter only because, addressing Ebbo, hereceived a reply in a tone such as Friedel never used.
Natural grace, quickness of ear and eye, and a skilful partner, renderedFriedel’s so fair a performance that he ventured on sending his brotherto attend the councilloress with wine and comfits; while he in his ownperson performed another dance with the city dame next in pretension, andtheir mother was amused by Sir Kasimir’s remark, that her second sondanced better than the elder, but both must learn.
The remark displeased Ebbo. In his isolated castle he knew no superior,and his nature might yield willingly, but rebelled at being put down.His brother was his perfect equal in all mental and bodily attributes,but it was the absence of all self-assertion that made Ebbo so often givehim the preference; it was his mother’s tender meekness in which lay herpower with him; and if he yielded to Gottfried Sorel’s wisdom andexperience, it was with the inward consciousness of voluntary deferenceto one of lower rank. But here was Wildschloss, of the same noble bloodwith himself, his elder, his sponsor, his protector, with every right todirect him, so that there was no choice between grateful docility andheadstrong folly. If the fellow had been old, weak, or in any wayinferior, it would have been more bearable; but he was a tried warrior, asage counsellor, in the prime vigour of manhood, and with a kindlyreasonable authority to which only a fool could fail to attend, and whichfor that very reason chafed Ebbo excessively.
Moreover there was the gipsy prophecy ever rankling in the lad’s heart,and embittering to him the sight of every civility from his kinsman tohis mother. Sir Kasimir lodged at a neighbouring hostel; but he spentmuch time with his cousins, and tried to make them friends with hissquire, Count Rudiger. A great offence to Ebbo was however thecriticisms of both knight and squire on the bearing of the young Baronsin military exercises. Truly, with no instructor but the roughlanzknecht Heinz, they must, as Friedel said, have been born paladins tohave equalled youths whose life had been spent in chivalrous training.
“See us in a downright fight,” said Ebbo; “we could strike as hard as anycourtly minion.”
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��As hard, but scarce as dexterously,” said Friedel, “and be called forour pains the wild mountaineers. I heard the men-at-arms saying I sat myhorse as though it were always going up or down a precipice; and MasterSchmidt went into his shop the other day shrugging his shoulders, andsaying we hailed one another across the market-place as if we thought Ulmwas a mountain full of gemsbocks.”
“Thou heardst! and didst not cast his insolence in his teeth?” criedEbbo.
“How could I,” laughed Friedel, “when the echo was casting back in myteeth my own shout to thee? I could only laugh with Rudiger.”
“The chief delight I could have, next to getting home, would be to laythat fellow Rudiger on his back in the tilt-yard,” said Ebbo.
But, as Rudiger was by four years his senior, and very expert, the upshotof these encounters was quite otherwise, and the young gentlemen weredisabused of the notion that fighting came by nature, and found that, ifthey desired success in a serious conflict, they must practise diligentlyin the city tilt-yard, where young men were trained to arms. Thecrossbow was the only weapon with which they excelled; and, as shootingwas a favourite exercise of the burghers, their proficiency was not asexclusive as had seemed to Ebbo a baronial privilege. Harquebuses werenovelties to them, and they despised them as burgher weapons, in spite ofSir Kasimir’s assurance that firearms were a great subject of study andinterest to the King of the Romans. The name of this personage was, itmay be feared, highly distasteful to the Freiherr von Adlerstein, both asWildschloss’s model of knightly perfection, and as one who claimedsubmission from his haughty spirit. When Sir Kasimir spoke to him on thesubject of giving his allegiance, he stiffly replied, “Sir, that is aquestion for ripe consideration.”
“It is the question,” said Wildschloss, rather more lightly than agreedwith the Baron’s dignity, “whether you like to have your castle pulleddown about your ears.”
“That has never happened yet to Adlerstein!” said Ebbo, proudly.
“No, because since the days of the Hohenstaufen there has been neitherrule nor union in the empire. But times are changing fast, my Junker,and within the last ten years forty castles such as yours have beenconsumed by the Swabian League, as though they were so many walnuts.”
“The shell of Adlerstein was too hard for them, though. They nevertried.”
“And wherefore, friend Eberhard? It was because I represented to theKaiser and the Graf von Wurtemberg that little profit and no glory wouldaccrue from attacking a crag full of women and babes, and that I, havingthe honour to be your next heir, should prefer having the castleuntouched, and under the peace of the empire, so long as that peace waskept. When you should come to years of discretion, then it would be foryou to carry out the intention wherewith your father and grandfather lefthome.”
“Then we have been protected by the peace of the empire all this time?”said Friedel, while Ebbo looked as if the notion were hard of digestion.
“Even so; and, had you not freely and nobly released your Genoesemerchant, it had gone hard with Adlerstein.”
“Could Adlerstein be taken?” demanded Ebbo triumphantly.
“Your grandmother thought not,” said Sir Kasimir, with a shade of ironyin his tone. “It would be a troublesome siege; but the League numbers1,500 horse, and 9,000 foot, and, with Schlangenwald’s concurrence, youwould be assuredly starved out.”
Ebbo was so much the more stimulated to take his chance, and do nothingon compulsion; but Friedel put in the question to what the oaths wouldbind them.
“Only to aid the Emperor with sword and counsel in field or Diet, andthereby win fame and honour such as can scarce be gained by carrying preyto yon eagle roost.”
“One may preserve one’s independence without robbery,” said Ebbo coldly.
“Nay, lad: did you ever hear of a wolf that could live without marauding?Or if he tried, would he get credit for so doing?”
“After all,” said Friedel, “does not the present agreement hold till weare of age? I suppose the Swabian League would attempt nothing againstminors, unless we break the peace?”
“Probably not; I will do my utmost to give the Freiherr there time togrow beyond his grandmother’s maxims,” said Wildschloss. “IfSchlangenwald do not meddle in the matter, he may have the next fiveyears to decide whether Adlerstein can hold out against all Germany.”
“Freiherr Kasimir von Adlerstein Wildschloss,” said Eberhard, turningsolemnly on him, “I do you to wit once for all that threats will notserve with me. If I submit, it will be because I am convinced it isright. Otherwise we had rather both be buried in the ruins of ourcastle, as its last free lords.”
“So!” said the provoking kinsman; “such burials look grim when the timecomes, but happily it is not coming yet!”
Meantime, as Ebbo said to Friedel, how much might happen—a disruption ofthe empire, a crusade against the Turks, a war in Italy, some grand meansof making the Diet value the sword of a free baron, without chaining himdown to gratify the greed of hungry Austria. If only Wildschloss couldbe shaken off! But he only became constantly more friendly andintrusive, almost paternal. No wonder, when the mother and her unclemade him so welcome, and were so intolerably grateful for his impertinentinterference, while even Friedel confessed the reasonableness of hiscounsels, as if that were not the very sting of them.
He even asked leave to bring his little daughter Thekla from her conventto see the Lady of Adlerstein. She was a pretty, flaxen-haired maiden offive years old, in a round cap, and long narrow frock, with a littlecross at the neck. She had never seen any one beyond the walls of thenunnery; and, when her father took her from the lay sister’s arms, andcarried her to the gallery, where sat Hausfrau Johanna, in dark green,slashed with cherry colour, Master Gottfried, in sober crimson, with goldmedal and chain, Freiherrinn Christina, in silver-broidered black, andthe two Junkern stood near in the shining mail in which they were goingto the tilt yard, she turned her head in terror, struggled with herscarce known father, and shrieked for Sister Grethel.
“It was all too sheen,” she sobbed, in the lay sister’s arms; “she didnot want to be in Paradise yet, among the saints! O! take her back! Thetwo bright, holy Michaels would let her go, for indeed she had made butone mistake in her Ave.”
Vain was the attempt to make her lift her face from the black sergeshoulder where she had hidden it. Sister Grethel coaxed and scolded, SirKasimir reproved, the housemother offered comfits, and Christina’s softvoice was worst of all, for the child, probably taking her for Our Ladyherself, began to gasp forth a general confession. “I will never do soagain! Yes, it was a fib, but Mother Hildegard gave me a bit ofmarchpane not to tell—” Here the lay sister took strong measures forclosing the little mouth, and Christina drew back, recommending that thechild should be left gradually to discover their terrestrial nature.Ebbo had looked on with extreme disgust, trying to hurry Friedel, who haddelayed to trace some lines for his mother on her broidery pattern. Inpassing the step where Grethel sat with Thekla on her lap, the clank oftheir armour caused the uplifting of the little flaxen head, and two wideblue eyes looked over Grethel’s shoulder, and met Friedel’s sunny glance.He smiled; she laughed back again. He held out his arms, and, though hishands were gauntleted, she let him lift her up, and curiously smoothedand patted his cheek, as if he had been a strange animal.
“You have no wings,” she said. “Are you St. George, or St. Michael?”
“Neither the one nor the other, pretty one. Only your poor cousinFriedel von Adlerstein, and here is Ebbo, my brother.”
It was not in Ebbo’s nature not to smile encouragement at the fair littleface, with its wistful look. He drew off his glove to caress her silkenhair, and for a few minutes she was played with by the two brothers likea newly-invented toy, receiving their attentions with prettyhalf-frightened graciousness, until Count Rudiger hastened in to summonthem, and Friedel placed her on his mother’s knee, where she speedilybecame perfectly happy, and at ease.
Her extreme delight, when towards evening the Junkern returned, wasflattering even to Ebbo; and, when it was time for her to be taken home,she made strong resistance, clinging fast to Christina, with screams andstruggles. To the lady’s promise of coming to see her she replied,“Friedel and Ebbo, too,” and, receiving no response to this request, sheburst out, “Then I won’t come! I am the Freiherrinn Thekla, the heiressof Adlerstein Wildschloss and Felsenbach. I won’t be a nun. I’ll bemarried! You shall be my husband,” and she made a dart at the nearestyouth, who happened to be Ebbo.
“Ay, ay, you shall have him. He will come for you, sweetest Fraulein,”said the perplexed Grethel, “so only you will come home! Nobody willcome for you if you are naughty.”
“Will you come if I am good?” said the spoilt cloister pet, clingingtight to Ebbo.
“Yes,” said her father, as she still resisted, “come back, my child, andone day shall you see Ebbo, and have him for a brother.”
Thereat Ebbo shook off the little grasping fingers, almost as if they hadbelonged to a noxious insect.
“The matron’s coif should succeed the widow’s veil.” He might talk withscholarly contempt of the new race of Bohemian impostors; but there wasno forgetting that sentence. And in like manner, though hisgrandmother’s allegation that his mother had been bent on captivating SirKasimir in that single interview at Adlerstein, had always seemed to himthe most preposterous of all Kunigunde’s forms of outrage, therecollection would recur to him; and he could have found it in his heartto wish that his mother had never heard of the old lady’s designs as tothe oubliette. He did most sincerely wish Master Gottfried had never letWildschloss know of the mode in which his life had been saved. Yet,while it would have seemed to him profane to breathe even to Friedel thetrue secret of his repugnance to this meddlesome kinsman, it wasabsolutely impossible to avoid his most distasteful authority andpatronage.
And the mother herself was gently, thankfully happy and unsuspicious,basking in the tender home affection of which she had so long beendeprived, proud of her sons, and, though anxious as to Ebbo’s decision,with a quiet trust in his foundation of principle, and above all trustingto prayer.
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