THE EAGLETS IN THE CITY
AFTER having once accepted Master Gottfried, Ebbo froze towards him and
Dame Johanna no more, save that a naturally imperious temper now and then
led to fitful stiffnesses and momentary haughtiness, which were easily
excused 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 that
of the simpler-minded Friedel.
They were early afoot, but not before the heads of the household were
coming forth for the morning devotions at the cathedral; and the streets
were stirring into activity, and becoming so peopled that the boys
supposed that it was a great fair day. They had never seen so many
people together even at the Friedmund Wake, and it was several days
before 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 that
perhaps no sublunary thing could have realized their expectations, and
Friedel avowed that he did not know what he thought of it. It was not
such as he had dreamt, and, like a German as he was, he added that he
could not think, he could only feel, that there was something ineffable
in it; yet he was almost disappointed to find his visions unfulfilled,
and the hues of the painted glass less pure and translucent than those of
the ice crystals on the mountains. However after his eye had become
trained, the deep influence of its dim solemn majesty, and of the echoes
of its organ tones, and chants of high praise or earnest prayer, began to
enchain his spirit; and, if ever he were missing, he was sure to be found
among the mysteries of the cathedral aisles, generally with Ebbo, who
felt the spell of the same grave fascination, since whatever was true of
the one brother was generally true of the other. They were essentially
alike, though some phases of character and taste were more developed in
the one or the other.
Master Gottfried was much edified by their perfect knowledge of the names
and numbers of his books. They instantly, almost resentfully, missed the
Cicero’s _Offices_ that he had parted with, and joyfully hailed his new
acquisitions, often sitting with heads together over the same book,
reading like active-minded youths who were used to out-of-door life and
exercise in superabundant measure, and to study as a valued recreation,
with only food enough for the intellect to awaken instead of satisfying
it.
They were delighted to obtain instruction from a travelling student, then
attending the schools of Ulm—a meek, timid lad who, for love of learning
and desire of the priesthood, had endured frightful tyranny from the
Bacchanten or elder scholars, and, having at length attained that rank,
had so little heart to retaliate on the juniors that his contemporaries
despised him, and led him a cruel life until he obtained food and shelter
from Master Gottfried at the pleasant cost of lessons to the young
Barons. Poor Bastien! this land of quiet, civility, and books was a
foretaste of Paradise to him after the hard living, barbarity, and coarse
vices of his comrades, of whom he now and then disclosed traits that made
his present pupils long to give battle to the big shaggy youths who used
to send out the lesser lads to beg and steal for them, and cruelly
maltreated such as failed in the quest.
Lessons in music and singing were gladly accepted by both lads, and from
their uncle’s carving they could not keep their hands. Ebbo had begun by
enjoining Friedel to remember that the work that had been sport in the
mountains would be basely mechanical in the city, and Friedel as usual
yielded his private tastes; but on the second day Ebbo himself was
discovered 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 in
hand and prove himself not unadroit in the craft. Friedel however
excelled in delicacy of touch and grace and originality of conception,
and produced such workmanship that Master Gottfried could not help
stroking his hair and telling him it was a pity he was not born to belong
to 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 only
enough for a gentleman! For what I am thou must be!”
But Ebbo did not find fault with the skill Friedel was bestowing on his
work—a carving in wood of a dove brooding over two young eagles—the
device that both were resolved to assume. When their mother asked what
their lady-loves would say to this, Ebbo looked up, and with the fullest
conviction in his lustrous eyes declared that no love should ever rival
his motherling in his heart. For truly her tender sweetness had given
her sons’ affection a touch of romance, for which Master Gottfried liked
them the better, though his wife thought their familiarity with her
hardly accordant with the patriarchal discipline of the citizens.
The youths held aloof from these burghers, for Master Gottfried wisely
desired to give them time to be tamed before running risk of offence,
either to, or by, their wild shy pride; and their mother contrived to
time her meetings with her old companions when her sons were otherwise
occupied. Master Gottfried made it known that the marriage portion he
had designed for his niece had been intrusted to a merchant trading in
peltry to Muscovy, and the sum thus realized was larger than any bride
had yet brought to Adlerstein. Master Gottfried would have liked to
continue the same profitable speculations with it; but this would have
been beyond the young Baron’s endurance, and his eyes sparkled when his
mother spoke of repairing the castle, refitting the chapel, having a
resident chaplain, cultivating more land, increasing the scanty stock of
cattle, and attempting the improvements hitherto prevented by lack of
means. He fervently declared that the motherling was more than equal to
the wise spinning Queen Bertha of legend and lay; and the first pleasant
sense of wealth came in the acquisition of horses, weapons, and
braveries. In his original mood, Ebbo would rather have stood before the
Diet in his home-spun blue than have figured in cloth of gold at a
burgher’s expense; but he had learned to love his uncle, he regarded the
marriage portion as family property, and moreover he sorely longed to
feel himself and his brother well mounted, and scarcely less to see his
mother in a velvet gown.
Here was his chief point of sympathy with the housemother, who, herself
precluded from wearing miniver, velvet, or pearls, longed to deck her
niece therewith, in time to receive Sir Kasimir of Adlerstein
Wildschloss, as he had promised to meet his godsons at Ulm. The knight’s
marriage had lasted only a few years, and had left him no surviving
children except one little daughter, whom he had placed in a nunnery at
Ulm, under the care of her mother’s sister. His lands lay higher up the
Danube, 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 only
returned to Germany when the Netherlanders had refused the regency of
Maximilian, and driven him out of their country, depriving him of the
custody of his children.
Pfingsttag, or Pentecost-day, was the occasion of Christina’s first full
toilet, and never was bride more solicitously or exultingly arrayed than
she, while one boy held the mirror and the other criticized and admired
as the aunt adjusted the pearl-bordered coif, and long white veil
floating over the long-desired black velvet dress. How the two lads
admired and gazed, caring far less for their own new and noble attire!
Friedel was indeed somewhat concerned that the sword by his side was so
much handsomer than that which Ebbo wore, and which, for all its dinted
scabbard and battered hilt, he was resolved never to discard.
It was a festival of brilliant joy. Wreaths of flowers hung from the
windows; rich tapestries decked the Dome Kirk, and the relics were
displayed in shrines of wonderful costliness of material and beauty of
workmanship; little birds, with thin cakes fastened to their feet, were
let loose to fly about the church, in strange allusion to the event of
the day; the clergy wore their most gorgeous robes; and the exulting
music of the mass echoed from the vaults of the long-drawn aisles, and
brought a rapt look of deep calm ecstasy over Friedel’s sensitive
features. The beggars evidently considered a festival as a harvest-day,
and crowded round the doors of the cathedral. As the Lady of Adlerstein
came out leaning on Ebbo’s arm, with Friedel on her other side, they
evidently attracted the notice of a woman whose thin brown face looked
the darker for the striped red and yellow silk kerchief that bound the
dark locks round her brow, as, holding out a beringed hand, she fastened
her glittering jet black eyes on them, and exclaimed, “Alms! if the fair
dame and knightly Junkern would hear what fate has in store for them.”
“We meddle not with the future, I thank thee,” said Christina, seeing
that her sons, to whom gipsies were an amazing novelty, were in extreme
surprise 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 were
shrouded by the widow’s veil ere ever they wore the matron’s coif shall
yet 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 steps
were checked by a call from Master Gottfried just behind. “Frau
Freiherrinn, Junkern, not so fast. Here is your noble kinsman.”
A tall, fine-looking person, in the long rich robe worn on peaceful
occasions, stood forth, doffing his eagle-plumed bonnet, and, as the lady
turned and curtsied low, he put his knee to the ground and kissed her
hand, saying, “Well met, noble dame; I felt certain that I knew you when
I beheld you in the Dome.”
“He was gazing at her all the time,” whispered Ebbo to his brother; while
their mother, blushing, replied, “You do me too much honour, Herr
Freiherr.”
“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 how
long since our meeting was.”
Thereupon, in true German fashion, Sir Kasimir embraced each youth in the
open street, and then, removing his long, embroidered Spanish glove, he
offered his hand, or rather the tips of his fingers, to lead the Frau
Christina home.
Master Sorel had invited him to become his guest at a very elaborate
ornamental festival meal in honour of the great holiday, at which were to
be present several wealthy citizens with their wives and families, old
connections of the Sorel family. Ebbo had resolved upon treating them
with courteous reserve and distance; but he was surprised to find his
cousin of Wildschloss comporting himself among the burgomasters and their
dames as freely as though they had been his equals, and to see that they
took such demeanour as perfectly natural. Quick to perceive, the boy
gathered that the gulf between noble and burgher was so great that no
intimacy could bridge it over, no reserve widen it, and that his own
bashful hauteur was almost a sign that he knew that the gulf had been
passed by his own parents; but shame and consciousness did not enable him
to alter his manner but rather added to its stiffness.
“The Junker is like an Englishman,” said Sir Kasimir, who had met many of
the exiles of the Roses at the court of Mary of Burgundy; and then he
turned to discuss with the guildmasters the interruption to trade caused
by Flemish jealousies.
After the lengthy meal, the tables were removed, the long gallery was
occupied by musicians, and Master Gottfried crossed the hall to tell his
eldest grandnephew that to him he should depute the opening of the dance
with the handsome bride of the Rathsherr, Ulrich Burger. Ebbo blushed up
to the eyes, and muttered that he prayed his uncle to excuse him.
“So!” said the old citizen, really displeased; “thy kinsman might have
proved to thee that it is no derogation of thy lordly dignity. I have
been patient with thee, but thy pride passes—”
“Sir,” interposed Friedel hastily, raising his sweet candid face with a
look between shame and merriment, “it is not that; but you forget what
poor mountaineers we are. Never did we tread a measure save now and then
with our mother on a winter evening, and we know no more than a chamois
of your intricate measures.”
Master Gottfried looked perplexed, for these dances were matters of great
punctilio. It was but seven years since the Lord of Praunstein had
defied the whole city of Frankfort because a damsel of that place had
refused to dance with one of his Cousins; and, though “Fistright” and
letters of challenge had been made illegal, yet the whole city of Ulm
would have resented the affront put on it by the young lord of
Adlerstein. Happily the Freiherr of Adlerstein Wildschloss was at hand.
“Herr Burgomaster,” he said, “let me commence the dance with your fair
lady niece. By your testimony,” he added, smiling to the youths, “she
can tread a measure. And, after marking us, you may try your success
with the Rathsherrinn.”
Christina would gladly have transferred her noble partner to the
Rathsherrinn, 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 past
one another, and moved in interlacing lines and curves, with a grand slow
movement that displayed her quiet grace and his stately port and courtly
air.
“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 a
stag 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 are
mere deceivers. Depend on it the woman had spied his insolent looks when
she made her ribald prediction.”
“See,” said Friedel, who had been watching the steps rather than
attending, “it will be easy to dance it now. It is a figure my mother
once 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 to
mark his antics.”
Friedel came forward, and the substitution was undetected by all save
their mother and uncle; by the latter only because, addressing Ebbo, he
received a reply in a tone such as Friedel never used.
Natural grace, quickness of ear and eye, and a skilful partner, rendered
Friedel’s so fair a performance that he ventured on sending his brother
to attend the councilloress with wine and comfits; while he in his own
person performed another dance with the city dame next in pretension, and
their mother was amused by Sir Kasimir’s remark, that her second son
danced 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 give
him the preference; it was his mother’s tender meekness in which lay her
power with him; and if he yielded to Gottfried Sorel’s wisdom and
experience, it was with the inward consciousness of voluntary deference
to one of lower rank. But here was Wildschloss, of the same noble blood
with himself, his elder, his sponsor, his protector, with every right to
direct him, so that there was no choice between grateful docility and
headstrong folly. If the fellow had been old, weak, or in any way
inferior, it would have been more bearable; but he was a tried warrior, a
sage counsellor, in the prime vigour of manhood, and with a kindly
reasonable authority to which only a fool could fail to attend, and which
for 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 to
his mother. Sir Kasimir lodged at a neighbouring hostel; but he spent
much time with his cousins, and tried to make them friends with his
squire, Count Rudiger. A great offence to Ebbo was however the
criticisms of both knight and squire on the bearing of the young Barons
in military exercises. Truly, with no instructor but the rough
lanzknecht Heinz, they must, as Friedel said, have been born paladins to
have equalled youths whose life had been spent in chivalrous training.
“See us in a downright fight,” said Ebbo; “we could strike as hard as any
courtly minion.”
“As hard, but scarce as dexterously,” said Friedel, “and be called for
our pains the wild mountaineers. I heard the men-at-arms saying I sat my
horse as though it were always going up or down a precipice; and Master
Schmidt went into his shop the other day shrugging his shoulders, and
saying we hailed one another across the market-place as if we thought Ulm
was a mountain full of gemsbocks.”
“Thou heardst! and didst not cast his insolence in his teeth?” cried
Ebbo.
“How could I,” laughed Friedel, “when the echo was casting back in my
teeth my own shout to thee? I could only laugh with Rudiger.”
“The chief delight I could have, next to getting home, would be to lay
that fellow Rudiger on his back in the tilt-yard,” said Ebbo.
But, as Rudiger was by four years his senior, and very expert, the upshot
of these encounters was quite otherwise, and the young gentlemen were
disabused of the notion that fighting came by nature, and found that, if
they desired success in a serious conflict, they must practise diligently
in the city tilt-yard, where young men were trained to arms. The
crossbow was the only weapon with which they excelled; and, as shooting
was a favourite exercise of the burghers, their proficiency was not as
exclusive as had seemed to Ebbo a baronial privilege. Harquebuses were
novelties to them, and they despised them as burgher weapons, in spite of
Sir Kasimir’s assurance that firearms were a great subject of study and
interest to the King of the Romans. The name of this personage was, it
may be feared, highly distasteful to the Freiherr von Adlerstein, both as
Wildschloss’s model of knightly perfection, and as one who claimed
submission from his haughty spirit. When Sir Kasimir spoke to him on the
subject of giving his allegiance, he stiffly replied, “Sir, that is a
question for ripe consideration.”
“It is the question,” said Wildschloss, rather more lightly than agreed
with the Baron’s dignity, “whether you like to have your castle pulled
down about your ears.”
“That has never happened yet to Adlerstein!” said Ebbo, proudly.
“No, because since the days of the Hohenstaufen there has been neither
rule nor union in the empire. But times are changing fast, my Junker,
and within the last ten years forty castles such as yours have been
consumed by the Swabian League, as though they were so many walnuts.”
“The shell of Adlerstein was too hard for them, though. They never
tried.”
“And wherefore, friend Eberhard? It was because I represented to the
Kaiser and the Graf von Wurtemberg that little profit and no glory would
accrue from attacking a crag full of women and babes, and that I, having
the honour to be your next heir, should prefer having the castle
untouched, and under the peace of the empire, so long as that peace was
kept. When you should come to years of discretion, then it would be for
you to carry out the intention wherewith your father and grandfather left
home.”
“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 Genoese
merchant, it had gone hard with Adlerstein.”
“Could Adlerstein be taken?” demanded Ebbo triumphantly.
“Your grandmother thought not,” said Sir Kasimir, with a shade of irony
in his tone. “It would be a troublesome siege; but the League numbers
1,500 horse, and 9,000 foot, and, with Schlangenwald’s concurrence, you
would be assuredly starved out.”
Ebbo was so much the more stimulated to take his chance, and do nothing
on compulsion; but Friedel put in the question to what the oaths would
bind them.
“Only to aid the Emperor with sword and counsel in field or Diet, and
thereby win fame and honour such as can scarce be gained by carrying prey
to 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 we
are of age? I suppose the Swabian League would attempt nothing against
minors, unless we break the peace?”
“Probably not; I will do my utmost to give the Freiherr there time to
grow beyond his grandmother’s maxims,” said Wildschloss. “If
Schlangenwald do not meddle in the matter, he may have the next five
years to decide whether Adlerstein can hold out against all Germany.”
“Freiherr Kasimir von Adlerstein Wildschloss,” said Eberhard, turning
solemnly on him, “I do you to wit once for all that threats will not
serve with me. If I submit, it will be because I am convinced it is
right. Otherwise we had rather both be buried in the ruins of our
castle, as its last free lords.”
“So!” said the provoking kinsman; “such burials look grim when the time
comes, but happily it is not coming yet!”
Meantime, as Ebbo said to Friedel, how much might happen—a disruption of
the empire, a crusade against the Turks, a war in Italy, some grand means
of making the Diet value the sword of a free baron, without chaining him
down to gratify the greed of hungry Austria. If only Wildschloss could
be shaken off! But he only became constantly more friendly and
intrusive, almost paternal. No wonder, when the mother and her uncle
made him so welcome, and were so intolerably grateful for his impertinent
interference, while even Friedel confessed the reasonableness of his
counsels, as if that were not the very sting of them.
He even asked leave to bring his little daughter Thekla from her convent
to see the Lady of Adlerstein. She was a pretty, flaxen-haired maiden of
five years old, in a round cap, and long narrow frock, with a little
cross at the neck. She had never seen any one beyond the walls of the
nunnery; and, when her father took her from the lay sister’s arms, and
carried her to the gallery, where sat Hausfrau Johanna, in dark green,
slashed with cherry colour, Master Gottfried, in sober crimson, with gold
medal and chain, Freiherrinn Christina, in silver-broidered black, and
the two Junkern stood near in the shining mail in which they were going
to the tilt yard, she turned her head in terror, struggled with her
scarce known father, and shrieked for Sister Grethel.
“It was all too sheen,” she sobbed, in the lay sister’s arms; “she did
not want to be in Paradise yet, among the saints! O! take her back! The
two bright, holy Michaels would let her go, for indeed she had made but
one mistake in her Ave.”
Vain was the attempt to make her lift her face from the black serge
shoulder where she had hidden it. Sister Grethel coaxed and scolded, Sir
Kasimir reproved, the housemother offered comfits, and Christina’s soft
voice was worst of all, for the child, probably taking her for Our Lady
herself, began to gasp forth a general confession. “I will never do so
again! Yes, it was a fib, but Mother Hildegard gave me a bit of
marchpane not to tell—” Here the lay sister took strong measures for
closing the little mouth, and Christina drew back, recommending that the
child should be left gradually to discover their terrestrial nature.
Ebbo had looked on with extreme disgust, trying to hurry Friedel, who had
delayed to trace some lines for his mother on her broidery pattern. In
passing the step where Grethel sat with Thekla on her lap, the clank of
their armour caused the uplifting of the little flaxen head, and two wide
blue 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 his
hands were gauntleted, she let him lift her up, and curiously smoothed
and 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 cousin
Friedel von Adlerstein, and here is Ebbo, my brother.”
It was not in Ebbo’s nature not to smile encouragement at the fair little
face, with its wistful look. He drew off his glove to caress her silken
hair, and for a few minutes she was played with by the two brothers like
a newly-invented toy, receiving their attentions with pretty
half-frightened graciousness, until Count Rudiger hastened in to summon
them, and Friedel placed her on his mother’s knee, where she speedily
became perfectly happy, and at ease.
Her extreme delight, when towards evening the Junkern returned, was
flattering even to Ebbo; and, when it was time for her to be taken home,
she made strong resistance, clinging fast to Christina, with screams and
struggles. To the lady’s promise of coming to see her she replied,
“Friedel and Ebbo, too,” and, receiving no response to this request, she
burst out, “Then I won’t come! I am the Freiherrinn Thekla, the heiress
of Adlerstein Wildschloss and Felsenbach. I won’t be a nun. I’ll be
married! You shall be my husband,” and she made a dart at the nearest
youth, 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 will
come for you if you are naughty.”
“Will you come if I am good?” said the spoilt cloister pet, clinging
tight to Ebbo.
“Yes,” said her father, as she still resisted, “come back, my child, and
one day shall you see Ebbo, and have him for a brother.”
Thereat Ebbo shook off the little grasping fingers, almost as if they had
belonged to a noxious insect.
“The matron’s coif should succeed the widow’s veil.” He might talk with
scholarly contempt of the new race of Bohemian impostors; but there was
no forgetting that sentence. And in like manner, though his
grandmother’s allegation that his mother had been bent on captivating Sir
Kasimir in that single interview at Adlerstein, had always seemed to him
the most preposterous of all Kunigunde’s forms of outrage, the
recollection would recur to him; and he could have found it in his heart
to wish that his mother had never heard of the old lady’s designs as to
the oubliette. He did most sincerely wish Master Gottfried had never let
Wildschloss 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 the
true secret of his repugnance to this meddlesome kinsman, it was
absolutely impossible to avoid his most distasteful authority and
patronage.
And the mother herself was gently, thankfully happy and unsuspicious,
basking in the tender home affection of which she had so long been
deprived, proud of her sons, and, though anxious as to Ebbo’s decision,
with a quiet trust in his foundation of principle, and above all trusting
to prayer.