OLD IRON AND NEW STEEL
THE clear sunshine of early summer was becoming low on the hillsides.
Sparkling and dimpling, the clear amber-coloured stream of the
Braunwasser rippled along its stony bed, winding in and out among the
rocks so humbly that it seemed to be mocked by the wide span of the arch
that crossed it in all the might of massive bulwarks, and dignified
masonry of huge stones.
Some way above, a clearing of the wood below the mountain showed huts,
and labourers apparently constructing a mill so as to take advantage of
the leap of the water from the height above; and, on the left bank, an
enclosure was traced out, within which were rising the walls of a small
church, while the noise of the mallet and chisel echoed back from the
mountain side, and masons, white with stone-dust, swarmed around.
Across the bridge came a pilgrim, marked out as such by hat, wallet, and
long staff, on which he leant heavily, stumbling along as if both halting
and footsore, and bending as one bowed down by past toil and present
fatigue. Pausing in the centre, he gazed round with a strange
disconcerted air—at the castle on the terraced hillside, looking down
with bright eyes of glass glittering in the sunshine, and lighting up
even that grim old pile; at the banner hanging so lazily that the
tinctures and bearings were hidden in the folds; then at the crags, rosy
purple in evening glow, rising in broad step above step up to the Red
Eyrie, bathed in sunset majesty of dark crimson; and above it the sweep
of the descending eagle, discernible for a moment in the pearly light of
the sky. The pilgrim’s eye lighted up as he watched it; but then,
looking down at bridge, and church, and trodden wheel-tracked path, he
frowned with perplexity, and each painful step grew heavier and more
uncertain.
Near the opposite side of the enclosure there waited a tall,
rugged-looking, elderly man with two horses—one an aged mare, mane, tail,
and all of the snowiest silvery white; the other a little shaggy dark
mountain pony, with a pad-saddle. And close to the bank of the stream
might be seen its owner, a little girl of some seven years, whose tight
round lace cap had slipped back, as well as her blue silk hood, and
exposed a profusion of loose flaxen hair, and a plump, innocent face,
intent upon some private little bit of building of her own with some
pebbles from the brook, and some mortar filched from the operations
above, to the great detriment of her soft pinky fingers.
The pilgrim looked at her unperceived, and for a moment was about to
address her; but then, with a strange air of repulsion, dragged himself
on to the porch of the rising church, where, seated on a block of stone,
he could look into the interior. All was unfinished, but the portion
which had made the most progress was a chantry-chapel opposite to the
porch, and containing what were evidently designed to be two monuments.
One was merely blocked out, but it showed the outline of a warrior,
bearing a shield on which a coiled serpent was rudely sketched in red
chalk. The other, in a much more forward state, was actually under the
hands of the sculptor, and represented a slender youth, almost a boy,
though in the full armour of a knight, his hands clasped on his breast
over a lute, an eagle on his shield, an eagle-crest on his helmet, and,
under the arcade supporting the altar-tomb, shields alternately of eagles
and doves.
But the strangest thing was that this young knight seemed to be sitting
for his own effigy. The very same face, under the very same helmet, only
with the varied, warm hues of life, instead of in cold white marble, was
to be seen on the shoulders of a young man in a gray cloth dress, with a
black scarf passing from shoulder to waist, crossed by a sword-belt. The
hair was hidden by the helmet, whose raised visor showed keen, finely-cut
features, and a pair of dark brown eyes, of somewhat grave and sad
expression.
“Have a care, Lucas,” he presently said; “I fear me you are chiselling
away too much. It must be a softer, more rounded face than mine has
become; and, above all, let it not catch any saddened look. Keep that
air of solemn waiting in glad hope, as though he saw the dawn through his
closed eyelids, and were about to take up his song again!”
“Verily, Herr Freiherr, now the likeness is so far forward, the actual
sight of you may lead me to mar it rather than mend.”
“So is it well that this should be the last sitting. I am to set forth
for Genoa in another week. If I cannot get letters from the Kaisar, I
shall go in search of him, that he may see that my lameness is no more an
impediment.”
The pilgrim passed his hand over his face, as though to dissipate a
bewildering dream; and just then the little girl, all flushed and
dabbled, flew rushing up from the stream, but came to a sudden standstill
at sight of the stranger, who at length addressed her. “Little lady,” he
said, “is this the Debateable Ford?”
“No; now it is the Friendly Bridge,” said the child.
The pilgrim started, as with a pang of recollection. “And what is yonder
castle?” he further asked.
“Schloss Adlerstein,” she said, proudly.
“And you are the little lady of Adlerstein Wildschloss?”
“Yes,” again she answered; and then, gathering courage—“You are a holy
pilgrim! Come up to the castle for supper and rest.” And then,
springing past him, she flew up to the knight, crying, “Herr Freiherr,
here is a holy pilgrim, weary and hungry. Let us take him home to the
mother.”
“Did he take thee for a wild elf?” said the young man, with an
elder-brotherly endeavour to right the little cap that had slidden under
the chin, and to push back the unmanageable wealth of hair under it, ere
he rose; and he came forward and spoke with kind courtesy, as he observed
the wanderer’s worn air and feeble step. “Dost need a night’s lodging,
holy palmer? My mother will make thee welcome, if thou canst climb as
high as the castle yonder.”
The pilgrim made an obeisance, but, instead of answering, demanded
hastily, “See I yonder the bearing of Schlangenwald?”
“Even so. Schloss Schlangenwald is about a league further on, and thou
wilt find a kind reception there, if thither thou art bent.”
“Is that Graff Wolfgang’s tomb?” still eagerly pursued the pilgrim; and
receiving a sign in the affirmative, “What was his end?”
“He fell in a skirmish.”
“By whose hand?”
“By mine.”
“Ha!” and the pilgrim surveyed him with undisguised astonishment; then,
without another word, took up his staff and limped out of the building,
but not on the road to Schlangenwald. It was nearly a quarter of an hour
afterwards that he was overtaken by the young knight and the little lady
on their horses, just where the new road to the castle parted from the
old way by the Eagle’s Ladder. The knight reined up as he saw the poor
man’s slow, painful steps, and said, “So thou art not bound for
Schlangenwald?”
“I would to the village, so please you—to the shrine of the Blessed
Friedmund.”
“Nay, at this rate thou wilt not be there till midnight,” said the young
knight, springing off his horse; “thou canst never brook our sharp
stones! See, Thekla, do thou ride on with Heinz to tell the mother I am
bringing her a holy pilgrim to tend. And thou, good man, mount my old
gray. Fear not; she is steady and sure-footed, and hath of late been
used to a lame rider. Ah! that is well. Thou hast been in the saddle
before.”
To go afoot for the sake of giving a lift to a holy wayfarer was one of
the most esteemed acts of piety of the Middle Age, so that no one durst
object to it, and the palmer did no more than utter a suppressed murmur
of acknowledgment as he seated himself on horseback, the young knight
walking by his rein. “But what is this?” he exclaimed, almost with
dismay. “A road to the castle up here!”
“Yes, we find it a great convenience. Thou art surely from these parts?”
added the knight.
“I was a man-at-arms in the service of the Baron,” was the answer, in an
odd, muffled tone.
“What!—of my grandfather!” was the exclamation.
“No!” gruffly. “Of old Freiherr Eberhard. Not of any of the Wildschloss
crew.”
“But I am not a Wildschloss! I am grandson to Freiherr Eberhard! Oh,
wast thou with him and my father when they were set upon in the hostel?”
he cried, looking eagerly up to the pilgrim; but the man kept his
broad-leaved hat slouched over his face, and only muttered, “The son of
Christina!” the last word so low that Ebbo was not sure that he caught
it, and the next moment the old warrior exclaimed exultingly, “And you
have had vengeance on them! When—how—where?”
“Last harvest-tide—at the Debateable Strand,” said Ebbo, never able to
speak of the encounter without a weight at his heart, but drawn on by the
earnestness of the old foe of Schlangenwald. “It was a meeting in full
career—lances broken, sword-stroke on either hand. I was sore wounded,
but my sword went through his collar-bone.”
“Well struck! good stroke!” cried the pilgrim, in rapture. “And with
that sword?”
“With this sword. Didst know it?” said Ebbo, drawing the weapon, and
giving it to the old man, who held it for a few moments, weighed it
affectionately, and with a long low sigh restored it, saying, “It is
well. You and that blade have paid off the score. I should be content.
Let me dismount. I know my way to the hermitage.”
“Nay, what is this?” said Ebbo; “thou must have rest and food. The
hermitage is empty, scarce habitable. My mother will not be balked of
the care of thy bleeding feet.”
“But let me go, ere I bring evil on you all. I can pray up there, and
save my soul, but I cannot see it all.”
“See what?” said Ebbo, again trying to see his guest’s face. “There may
be changes, but an old faithful follower of my father’s must ever be
welcome.”
“Not when his wife has taken a new lord,” growled the stranger, bitterly,
“and he a Wildschloss! Young man, I could have pardoned aught else!”
“I know not who you may be who talk of pardoning my lady-mother,” said
Ebbo, “but new lord she has neither taken nor will take. She has refused
every offer; and, now that Schlangenwald with his last breath confessed
that he slew not my father, but sold him to the Turks, I have been only
awaiting recovery from my wound to go in search of him.”
“Who then is yonder child, who told me she was Wildschloss?”
“That child,” said Ebbo, with half a smile and half a blush, “is my wife,
the daughter of Wildschloss, who prayed me to espouse her thus early,
that so my mother might bring her up.”
By this time they had reached the castle court, now a well-kept,
lordly-looking enclosure, where the pilgrim looked about him as one
bewildered. He was so infirm that Ebbo carefully helped him up the stone
stairs to the hall, where he already saw his mother prepared for the
hospitable reception of the palmer. Leaving him at the entrance, Ebbo
crossed the hall to say to her in a low voice, “This pilgrim is one of
the old lanzknechts of my grandfather’s time. I wonder whether you or
Heinz will know him. One of the old sort—supremely discontented at
change.”
“And thou hast walked up, and wearied thyself!” exclaimed Christina,
grieved to see her son’s halting step.
“A rest will soon cure that,” said Ebbo, seating himself as he spoke on a
settle near the hall fire; but the next moment a strange wild low shriek
from his mother made him start up and spring to her side. She stood with
hands clasped, and wondering eyes. The pilgrim—his hat on the ground,
his white head and rugged face displayed—was gazing as though devouring
her with his eyes, murmuring, “Unchanged! unchanged!”
“What is this!” thundered the young Baron. “What are you doing to the
lady?”
“Hush! hush, Ebbo!” exclaimed Christina. “It is thy father! On thy
knees! Thy father is come! It is our son, my own lord. Oh, embrace
him! Kneel to him, Ebbo!” she wildly cried.
“Hold, mother,” said Ebbo, keeping his arm round her, though she
struggled against him, for he felt some doubts as he looked back at his
walk with the stranger, and remembered Heinz’s want of recognition. “Is
it certain that this is indeed my father?”
“Oh, Ebbo,” was the cry of poor Christina, almost beside herself, “how
could I not be sure? I know him! I feel it! Oh, my lord, bear with
him. It is his wont to be so loving! Ebbo, cannot you see it is
himself?”
“The young fellow is right,” said the stranger, slowly. “I will answer
all he may demand.”
“Forgive me,” said Ebbo, abashed, “forgive me;” and, as his mother broke
from him, he fell upon his knee; but he only heard his father’s cry, “Ah!
Stine, Stine, thou alone art the same,” and, looking up, saw her, with
her face hidden in the white beard, quivering with a rapture such as he
had never seen in her before. It seemed long to him ere she looked up
again in her husband’s face to sob on: “My son! Oh! my beautiful twins!
Our son! Oh, see him, dear lord!” And the pilgrim turned to hear Ebbo’s
“Pardon, honoured father, and your blessing.”
Almost bashfully the pilgrim laid his hand on the dark head, and murmured
something; then said, “Up, then! The slayer of Schlangenwald kneeling!
Ah! Stine, I knew thy little head was wondrous wise, but I little
thought thou wouldst breed him up to avenge us on old Wolfgang! So
slender a lad too! Ha! Schneiderlein, old rogue, I knew thee,” holding
out his hand. “So thou didst get home safe?”
“Ay, my lord; though, if I left you alive, never more will I call a man
dead,” said Heinz.
“Worse luck for me—till now,” said Sir Eberhard, whose tones, rather than
his looks, carried perfect conviction of his identity. It was the old
homely accent, and gruff good-humoured voice, but with something subdued
and broken in the tone. His features had grown like his father’s, but he
looked much older than ever the hale old mountaineer had done, or than
his real age; so worn and lined was his face, his skin tanned, his
eyelids and temples puckered by burning sun, his hair and beard white as
the inane of his old mare, the proud Adlerstein port entirely gone. He
stooped even more without his staff than with it; and, when he yielded
himself with a sigh of repose to his wife’s tendance, she found that he
had not merely the ordinary hurts of travelling, but that there were old
festering scars on his ankles. “The gyves,” he said, as she looked up at
him, with startled, pitying eyes. “Little deemed I that they would ever
come under thy tender hands.” As he almost timidly smoothed the braid of
dark hair on her brow—“So they never burnt thee for a witch after all,
little one? I thought my mother would never keep her hands off thee, and
used to fancy I heard the crackling of the flame.”
“She spared me for my children’s sake,” said Christina; “and truly Heaven
has been very good to us, but never so much as now. My dear lord, will
it weary thee too much to come to the castle chapel and give thanks?” she
said, timidly.
“With all my heart,” he answered, earnestly. “I would go even on my
knees. We were not without masses even in Tunis; but, when Italian and
Spaniard would be ransomed, and there was no mind of the German, I little
thought I should ever sing Brother Lambert’s psalm about turning our
captivity as rivers in the south.”
Ebbo was hovering round, supplying all that was needed for his father’s
comfort; but his parents were so completely absorbed in one another that
he was scarcely noticed, and, what perhaps pained him more, there was no
word about Friedel. He felt this almost an injustice to the brother who
had been foremost in embracing the idea of the unknown father, and
scarcely understood how his parents shrank from any sorrowful thought
that might break in on their new-found joy, nor that he himself was so
strange and new a being in his father’s eyes, that to imagine him doubled
was hardly possible to the tardy, dulled capacity, which as yet seemed
unable to feel anything but that here was home, and Christina.
When the chapel bell rang, and the pair rose to offer their thanksgiving,
Ebbo dutifully offered his support, but was absolutely unseen, so fondly
was Sir Eberhard leaning on his wife; and her bright exulting smile and
shake of the head gave an absolute pang to the son who had hitherto been
all in all to her.
He followed, and, as they passed Friedmund’s coffin, he thought his
mother pointed to it, but even of this he was uncertain. The pair knelt
side by side with hands locked together, while notes of praise rose from
all voices; and meantime Ebbo, close to that coffin, strove to share the
joy, and to lift up a heart that _would_ sink in the midst of
self-reproach for undutifulness, and would dislike the thought of the
rude untaught man, holding aloof from him, likely to view him with
distrust and jealousy, and to undo all he had achieved, and further
absorbing the mother, the mother who was to him all the world, and for
whose sake he had given his best years to the child-wife, as yet nothing
to him.
It was reversing the natural order of things that, after reigning from
infancy, he should have to give up at eighteen to one of the last
generation; and some such thought rankled in his mind when the whole
household trooped joyfully out of the chapel to prepare a banquet for
their old new lord, and their young old lord was left alone.
Alone with the coffin where the armour lay upon the white cross, Ebbo
threw himself on his knees, and laid his head upon it, murmuring, “Ah,
Friedel! Friedel! Would that we had changed places! Thou wouldst brook
it better. At least thou didst never know what it is to be lonely.”
“Herr Baron!” said a little voice.
His first movement was impatient. Thekla was apt to pursue him wherever
he did not want her; but here he had least expected her, for she had a
great fear of that coffin, and could hardly be brought to the chapel at
prayer times, when she generally occupied herself with fancies that the
empty helmet glared at her. But now Ebbo saw her standing as near as she
durst, with a sweet wistfulness in her eyes, such as he had never seen
there before.
“What is it, Thekla?” he said. “Art sent to call me?”
“No; only I saw that you stayed here all alone,” she said, clasping her
hands.
[Picture: “‘No; only I saw that you stayed here all alone,’ she said,
clasping her hands.” Page 269]
“Must I not be alone, child?” he said, bitterly. “Here lies my brother.
My mother has her husband again!”
“But you have me!” cried Thekla; and, as he looked up between amusement
and melancholy, he met such a loving eager little face, that he could not
help holding out his arms, and letting her cling to him. “Indeed,” she
said, “I’ll never be afraid of the helmet again, if only you will not lay
down your head there, and say you are alone.”
“Never, Thekla! while you are my little wife,” said he; and, child as she
was, there was strange solace to his heart in the eyes that, once vacant
and wondering, had now gained a look of love and intelligence.
“What are you going to do?” she said, shuddering a little, as he rose and
laid his hand on Friedel’s sword.
“To make thee gird on thine own knight’s sword,” said Ebbo, unbuckling
that which he had so long worn. “Friedel,” he added, “thou wouldst give
me thine. Let me take up thy temper with it, thine open-hearted love and
humility.”
He guided Thekla’s happy little fingers to the fastening of the belt, and
then, laying his hand on hers, said gravely, “Thekla, never speak of what
I said just now—not even to the mother. Remember, it is thy husband’s
first secret.”
And feeling no longer solitary when his hand was in the clasp of hers, he
returned to the hall, where his father was installed in the baronial
chair, in which Ebbo had been at home from babyhood. His mother’s
exclamation showed that her son had been wanting to her; and she looked
fuller than ever of bliss when Ebbo gravely stood before his father, and
presented him with the good old sword that he had sent to his unborn son.
“You are like to use it more than I,—nay, you have used it to some
purpose,” said he. “Yet must I keep mine old comrade at least a little
while. Wife, son, sword, should make one feel the same man again, but it
is all too wonderful!”
All that evening, and long after, his hand from time to time sought the
hilt of his sword, as if that touch above all proved to him that he was
again a free noble in his own castle.
The story he told was thus. The swoon in which Heinz had left him had
probably saved his life by checking the gush of blood, and he had known
no more till he found himself in a rough cart among the corpses. At
Schlangenwald’s castle he had been found still breathing, and had been
flung into a dungeon, where he lay unattended, for how long he never
knew, since all the early part of the time was lost in the clouds of
fever. On coarse fare and scanty drink, in that dark vault, he had
struggled by sheer obstinacy of vitality into recovery. In the very
height of midsummer alone did the sun peep through the grating of his
cell, and he had newly hailed this cheerful visitor when he was roughly
summoned, placed on horseback with eyes and hands bound, and only allowed
sight again to find himself among a herd of his fellow Germans in the
Turkish camp. They were the prisoners of the terrible Turkish raid of
1475, when Georg von Schenk and fourteen other noblemen of Austria and
Styria were all taken in one unhappy fight, and dragged away into
captivity, with hundreds of lower rank.
To Sir Eberhard the change had been greatly for the better. The Turk had
treated him much better than the Christian; and walking in the open air,
chained to a German comrade, was far pleasanter than pining in his lonely
dungeon. At Adrianople, an offer had been made to each of the captives,
if they would become Moslems, of entering the Ottoman service as Spahis;
but with one voice they had refused, and had then been draughted into
different divisions. The fifteen nobles, who had been offered for
ransom, were taken to Constantinople, to await its arrival, and they had
promised Sir Eberhard to publish his fate on their return to their homes;
and, though he knew the family resources too well to have many hopes, he
was rather hurt to find that their promise had been unfulfilled.
“Alas! they had no opportunity,” said Ebbo. “Gulden were scarce, or were
all in Kaisar Friedrich’s great chest; the ransoms could not be raised,
and all died in captivity. I heard about it when I was at Wurms last
month.”
“The boy at Wurms?” almost gasped Sir Eberhard in amaze.
“I had to be there about matters concerning the Wildschloss lands and the
bridge,” said Ebbo; “and both Dankwart von Schlangenwald and I made
special inquiries about that company in case you should have shared their
fate. I hoped to have set forth at that time, but the Kaisar said I was
still too lame, and refused me license, or letters to the Sultan.”
“You would not have found me,” said his father, narrating how he with a
large troop of captives had been driven down to the coast; where they
were transferred to a Moorish slave-dealer, who shipped them off for
Tunis. Here, after their first taste of the miseries of a sea life, the
alternative of Islam or slavery was again put before them. “And, by the
holy stone of Nicæa,” said Sir Eberhard, “I thought by that time that the
infidels had the advantage of us in good-will and friendliness; but, when
they told me women had no souls at all, no more than a horse or dog, I
knew it was but an empty dream of a religion; for did I not know that my
little Ermentrude, and thou, Stine, had finer, clearer, wiser souls than
ever a man I had known? ‘Nay, nay,’ quoth I, ‘I’ll cast in my lot where
I may meet my wife hereafter, should I never see her here.’” He had then
been allotted to a corsair, and had thenceforth been chained to the bench
of rowers, between the two decks, where, in stifling heat and stench, in
storm or calm, healthy or diseased, the wretched oarsmen were compelled
to play the part of machinery in propelling the vessel, in order to
capture Christian ships—making exertions to which only the perpetual lash
of the galley-master could have urged their exhausted frames; often not
desisting for twenty or thirty hours, and rowing still while sustenance
was put into their mouths by their drivers. Many a man drew has last
breath with his last stroke, and was at the first leisure moment hurled
into the waves. It was the description that had so deeply moved Friedel
long ago, and Christina wept over it, as she looked at the bowed form
once so proud and free, and thought of the unhealed scars. But there,
her husband added, he had been chained next to a holy friar of German
blood, like himself a captive of the great Styrian raid; and, while some
blasphemed in their misery, or wildly chid their patron saints, this good
man strove to show that all was to work out good; he had a pious saying
for all that befell, and adored the will of God in thus purifying him;
“And, if it were thus with a saint like him, I thought, what must it be
with a rough freebooting godless sinner such as I had been? See”—and he
took out a rosary of strung bladders of seaweed; “that is what he left me
when he died, and what I meant to have been telling for ever up in the
hermitage.”
“He died, then?”
“Ay—he died on the shore of Corsica, while most of the dogs were off
harrying a village inland, and we had a sort of respite, or I trow he
would have rowed till his last gasp. How he prayed for the poor wretches
they were gone to attack!—ay, and for all of us—for me also—There’s
enough of it. Such talk skills not now.”
It was plain that Sir Eberhard had learnt more Christianity in the hold
of his Moorish pirate ship than ever in the Holy Roman Empire, and a
weight was lifted off his son’s mind by finding that he had vowed never
to return to a life of violence, even though fancying a life of penance
in a hermitage the only alternative.
Ebbo asked if the Genoese merchant, Ser Gian Battista dei Battiste, had
indeed been one of his fellow-captives.
“Ha!—what?” and on the repetition, “Truly I knew him, Merchant Gian as we
used to call him; but you twang off his name as they speak it in his own
stately city.”
Christina smiled. “Ebbo learnt the Italian tongue this winter from our
chaplain, who had studied at Bologna. He was told it would aid in his
quest of you.”
“Tell me not!” said the traveller, holding up his hands in deprecation;
“the Junker is worse than a priest! And yet he killed old Wolfgang! But
what of Gian? Hold,—did not he, when I was with him at Genoa, tell me a
story of being put into a dungeon in a mountain fortress in Germany, and
released by a pair of young lads with eyes beaming in the sunrise, who
vanished just as they brought him to a cloister? Nay, he deemed it a
miracle of the saints, and hung up a votive picture thereof at the shrine
of the holy Cosmo and Damian.”
“He was not so far wrong in deeming _one_ of the lads near of kin to the
holy ones,” said Christina, softly.
And Ebbo briefly narrated the adventure, when it evidently appeared that
his having led at least one foray gave his father for the first time a
fellow-feeling for him, and a sense that he was one of the true old
stock; but, when he heard of the release, he growled, “So! How would a
lad have fared who so acted in my time? My poor old mother! She must
have been changed indeed not to have scourged him till he had no strength
to cry out.”
“He was my prisoner!” said Ebbo, in his old defiant tone; “I had the
right.”
“Ah, well! the Junker has always been master here, and I never!” said the
elder knight, looking round rather piteously; and Ebbo, with a sudden
movement, exclaimed, “Nay, sir, you are the only lord and master, and I
stand ready to be the first to obey you.”
“You! A fine young book-learned scholar, already knighted, and with all
these Wildschloss lands too!” said Sir Eberhard, gazing with a strange
puzzled look at the delicate but spirited features of this strange
perplexing son. “Reach hither your hand, boy.”
And as he compared the slender, shapely hand of such finely-textured skin
with the breadth of his own horny giant’s paw, he tossed it from him,
shaking his head with a gesture as if he had no commands for such
feminine-looking fingers to execute, and mortifying Ebbo not a little.
“Ah!” said Christina, apologetically, “it always grieved your mother that
the boys would resemble me and mine. But, when daylight comes, Ebbo will
show you that he has not lost the old German strength.”
“No doubt—no doubt,” said Sir Eberhard, hastily, “since he has slain
Schlangenwald; and, if the former state of things be at an end, the less
he takes after the ancient stock the better. But I am an old man now,
Stine, though thou look’st fair and fresh as ever, and I do not know what
to make of these things. White napery on the table; glass drinking
things;—nay, were it not for thee and the Schneiderlein, I should not
know I was at home.”
He was led back to his narration, and it appeared that, after some years
spent at the oar, certain bleedings from the lungs, the remains of his
wound, had become so much more severe as to render him useless for naval
purposes; and, as he escaped actually dying during a voyage, he was
allowed to lie by on coming into port till he had in some degree
recovered, and then had been set to labour at the fortifications, chained
to another prisoner, and toiling between the burning sand and burning
sun, but treated with less horrible severity than the necessities of the
sea had occasioned on board ship, and experiencing the benefit of
intercourse with the better class of captives, whom their miserable fate
had thrown into the hands of the Moors.
It was a favourite almsdeed among the Provençals, Spaniards, and Italians
to send money for the redemption of prisoners to the Moors, and there was
a regular agency for ransoms through the Jews; but German captives were
such an exception that no one thought of them, and many a time had the
summons come for such and such a slave by name, or for five poor
Sicilians, twenty Genoese, a dozen Marseillais, or the like, but still no
word for the Swabian; till he had made up his mind that he should either
leave his bones in the hot mud of the harbour, or be only set free by
some gallant descent either of the brave King of Portugal, or of the
Knights of Rhodes, of whom the captives were ever dreaming and
whispering.
At length his own slave name was shouted; he was called up by the captain
of his gang, and, while expecting some fresh punishment, or, maybe, to
find himself sold into some domestic form of slavery, he was set before a
Jewish agent, who, after examining him on his name, country, and station,
and comparing his answers with a paper of instructions, informed him that
he was ransomed, caused his fetters to be struck off, and shipped him off
at once for Genoa, with orders to the captain to consign him to the
merchant Signor del Battiste. By him Sir Eberhard had been received with
the warmest hospitality, and treated as befitted his original station,
but Battista disclaimed the merit of having ransomed him. He had but
acted, he said, as the agent of an Austrian gentleman, from whom he had
received orders to inquire after the Swabian baron who had been his
fellow-captive, and, if he were still living, to pay his ransom, and
bring him home.
“The name—the name!” eagerly asked Ebbo and his mother at once.
“The name? Gian was wont to make bad work of our honest German names,
but I tried to learn this—being so beholden to him. I even caused it to
be spelt over to me, but my letters long ago went from me. It seems to
me that the man is a knight-errant, like those of thy ballads, Stine—one
Ritter Theur—Theur—”
“Theurdank!” cried Ebbo.
“Ay, Theurdank. What, you know him? There is nothing you and your
mother don’t know, I believe.”
“Know him! Father, he is our greatest and noblest! He has been kind to
me beyond description. He is the Kaisar! Now I see why he had that
strange arch look which so vexed me when he forbade me on my allegiance
to set forth till my lameness should be gone! Long ago had he asked me
all about Gian Battista. To him he must have written.”
“The Kaisar!” said Sir Eberhard. “Nay, the poor fellows I left in Turkey
ever said he was too close of fist for them to have hope from him.”
“Oh! that was old Kaisar Friedrich. This is our own gallant Maximilian—a
knight as true and brave as ever was paladin,” said Christina; “and most
truly loving and prizing our Ebbo.”
“And yet I wish—I wish,” said Ebbo, “that he had let me win my father’s
liberty for myself.”
“Yea, well,” said his father, “there spoke the Adlerstein. We never were
wont to be beholden to king or kaisar.”
“Nay,” say Ebbo, after a moment’s recollection, colouring as he spoke;
“it is true that I deserved it not. Nay, Sir Father, it is well. You
owe your freedom in very truth to the son you have not known. It was he
who treasured up the thought of the captive German described by the
merchant, and even dreamt of it, while never doubting of your death; it
was he who caught up Schlangenwald’s first hint that you lived, while I,
in my pride, passed it by as merely meant to perplex me; it was he who
had formed an absolute purpose of obtaining some certainty; and at last,
when my impetuosity had brought on the fatal battle, it was he who bought
with his own life the avowal of your captivity. I had hoped to have
fulfilled Friedel’s trust, and to have redeemed my own backwardness; but
it is not to be. While I was yet lying helpless on my bed, the Emperor
has taken it out of my power. Mother, you receive him from Friedel’s
hands, after all.”
“And well am I thankful that so it should be,” said Christina. “Ah,
Ebbo! sorely should I have pined with anxiety when thou wast gone. And
thy father knows that thou hadst the full purpose.”
“Yea, I know it,” said the old man; “and, after all, small blame to him
even if he had not. He never saw me, and light grieves the heart for
what the eye hath not seen.”
“But,” added the wife, “since the Romish king freed you, dear lord, cared
he not better for your journey than to let you come in this forlorn
plight?”
This, it appeared, was far from being his deliverer’s fault. Money had
been supplied, and Sir Eberhard had travelled as far as Aosta with a
party of Italian merchants; but no sooner had he parted with them than he
was completely astray. His whole experience of life had been as a robber
baron or as a slave, and he knew not how to take care of himself as a
peaceful traveller; he suffered fresh extortions at every stage, and
after a few days was plundered by his guides, beaten, and left devoid of
all means of continuing the journey to which he could hardly hope for a
cheerful end. He did not expect to find his mother living,—far less that
his unowned wife could have survived the perils in which he had involved
her; and he believed that his ancestral home would, if not a ruin, be
held by his foes, or at best by the rival branch of the family, whose
welcome of the outlawed heir would probably be to a dungeon, if not a
halter. Yet the only magnet on earth for the lonely wanderer was his
native mountain, where from some old peasant he might learn how his fair
young bride had perished, and perhaps the sins of his youth might be
expiated by continual prayer in the hermitage chapel where his sister lay
buried, and whence he could see the crags for which his eye and heart had
craved so long with the home-sickness of a mountaineer.
And now, when his own Christina had welcomed him with all the overflow of
her loving heart, unchanged save that hers had become a tenderer yet more
dignified loveliness; when his gallant son, in all the bloom of young
manhood, received him with dutiful submission; when the castle, in a
state of defence, prosperity, and comfort of which he had never dreamt,
was again his own;—still the old man was bewildered, and sometimes
oppressed almost to distress. He had, as it were, fallen asleep in one
age of the world, and wakened in another, and it seemed as if he really
wished to defer his wakening, or else that repose was an absolute novelty
to him; for he sat dozing in his chair in the sun the whole of the next
day, and scarcely spoke.
Ebbo, who felt it a necessity to come to an understanding of the terms on
which they were to stand, tried to refer matters to him, and to explain
the past, but he was met sometimes by a shake of the head, sometimes by a
nod—not of assent, but of sleep; and his mother advised him not to harass
the wearied traveller, but to leave him to himself at least for that day,
and let him take his own time for exertion, letting things meantime go on
as usual. Ebbo obeyed, but with a load at his heart, as he felt that all
he was doing was but provisional, and that it would be his duty to resign
all that he had planned, and partly executed, to this incompetent,
ignorant rule. He could certainly, when not serving the Emperor, go and
act for himself at Thekla’s dower castle of Felsenbach, and his mother
might save things from going to utter ruin at Adlerstein; but no
reflection or self-reproach could make it otherwise than a bitter pill to
any Telemachus to have to resign to one so unlike Ulysses in all but the
length of his wanderings,—one, also, who seemed only half to like, and
not at all to comprehend, his Telemachus.
Meantime Ebbo attended to such matters as were sure to come each day
before the Herr Freiherr. Now it was a question whether the stone for
the mill should be quarried where it would undermine a bit of grass land,
or further on, where the road was rougher; now Berend’s swine had got
into Barthel’s rye, and Barthel had severely hurt one of them—the Herr
Freiherr’s interference could alone prevent a hopeless quarrel; now a
waggon with ironwork for the mill claimed exemption from toll as being
for the Baron: and he must send down the toll, to obviate injustice
towards Schlangenwald and Ulm. Old Ulrich’s grandson, who had run away
for a lanzknecht, had sent a letter home (written by a comrade), the
Baron must read and answer it. Steinmark’s son wanted to be a poor
student: the Herr Freiherr must write him a letter of recommendation.
Mother Grethel’s ewe had fallen into a cleft; her son came to borrow a
rope, and ask aid, and the Baron must superintend the hoisting the poor
beast up again. Hans had found the track of a wolf, and knew the hole
where a litter of cubs abode; the Freiherr, his wolf-hound, and his spear
were wanted for their destruction. Dietrich could not tell how to manage
his new arquebus: the Baron must teach him to take aim. Then there was a
letter from Ulm to invite the Baron to consult on the tax demanded by the
Emperor for his Italian war, and how far it should concern the profits of
the bridge; and another letter from the Markgraf of Wurtemburg, as chief
of the Swabian League, requesting the Lord of Adlerstein to be on the
look-out for a band of robbers, who were reported to be in neighbouring
hills, after being hunted out of some of their other lurking-places.
That very night, or rather nearly at the dawn of a summer morning, there
was a yelling below the castle, and a flashing of torches, and tidings
rang through it that a boor on the outskirts of the mountain had had his
ricks fired and his cattle driven by the robbers, and his young daughters
carried off. Old Sir Eberhard hobbled down to the hall in time to see
weapons flashing as they were dealt out, to hear a clear decided voice
giving orders, to listen to the tramp of horse, and watch more reitern
pass out under the gateway than ever the castle had counted in his
father’s time. Then he went back to his bed, and when he came down in
the morning, found all the womankind of the castle roasting and boiling.
And, at noon, little Thekla came rushing down from the watch-tower with
news that all were coming home up the Eagle’s Steps, and she was sure
_her_ baron had sent her, and waved to her. Soon after, _her_ baron in
his glittering steel rode his cream-coloured charger (once Friedel’s)
into the castle court, followed by his exultant merrymen. They had
overtaken the thieves in good time, made them captives, and recovered the
spoil unhurt; and Heinz and Koppel made the castle ring with the deed of
their young lord, who had forced the huge leader of the band to the
earth, and kept him down by main strength till they could come to bind
him.
“By main strength?” slowly asked Sir Eberhard, who had been stirred into
excitement.
“He was a loose-limbed, awkward fellow,” said Ebbo, “less strong than he
looked.”
“Not only that, Sir,” said Heinz, looking from his old master to his
young one; “but old iron is not a whit stronger than new steel, though
the one looks full of might, and you would think the other but a toy.”
“And what have you done with the rogues’ heads?” asked the old knight.
“I looked to see them on your spears. Or have you hung them?”
“Not so, Sir,” said Ebbo. “I sent the men off to Stuttgard with an
escort. I dislike doing execution ourselves; it makes the men so
lawless. Besides, this farmer was Schlangenwalder.”
“And yet he came to you for redress?”
“Yes, for Sir Dankwart is at his commandery, and he and I agreed to look
after each other’s lands.”
Sir Eberhard retired to his chair as if all had gone past his
understanding, and thence he looked on while his son and wife hospitably
regaled, and then dismissed, their auxiliaries in the rescue.
Afterwards Christina told her son that she thought his father was rested,
and would be better able to attend to him, and Ebbo, with a painful
swelling in his heart, approached him deferentially, with a request that
he would say what was his pleasure with regard to the Emperor, to whom
acknowledgments must in the first place be made for his release, and next
would arise the whole question of homage and investiture.
“Look you here, fair son,” said Sir Eberhard, rousing himself, “these
things are all past me. I’ll have none of them. You and your Kaisar
understand one another, and your homage is paid. It boots not changing
all for an old fellow that is but come home to die.”
“Nay, father, it is in the order of things that you should be lord here.”
“I never was lord here, and, what is more, I would not, and could not be.
Son, I marked you yesterday. You are master as never was my poor father,
with all the bawling and blows that used to rule the house, while these
fellows mind you at a word, in a voice as quiet as your mother’s.
Besides, what should I do with all these mills and bridges of yours, and
Diets, and Leagues, and councils enough to addle a man’s brain? No, no;
I could once slay a bear, or strike a fair stroke at a Schlangenwalder,
but even they got the better of me, and I am good for nothing now but to
save my soul. I had thought to do it as a hermit up there; but my little
Christina thinks the saints will be just as well pleased if I tell my
beads here, with her to help me, and I know that way I shall not make so
many mistakes. So, young Sir, if you can give the old man a corner of
the hearth while he lives, he will never interfere with you. And, maybe,
if the castle were in jeopardy in your absence, with that new-fangled
road up to it, he could tell the fellows how to hold it out.”
“Sir—dear father,” cried the ardent Ebbo, “this is not a fit state of
things. I will spare you all trouble and care; only make me not
undutiful; take your own place. Mother, convince him!”
“No, my son,” said Sir Eberhard; “your mother sees what is best for me.
I only want to be left to her to rest a little while, and repent of my
sinful life. As Heinz says, the rusty old iron must lie by while the new
steel does the work. It is quiet that I need. It is joy enough for me
to see what she has made you, and all around. Ah! Stine, my white dove,
I knew thine was a wise head; but when I left thee, gentle little
frightened, fluttering thing, how little could I have thought that all
alone, unaided, thou wouldst have kept that little head above water, and
made thy son work out all these changes—thy doing—and so I know they are
good and seemly. I see thou hast made him clerkly, quick-witted, and yet
a good knight. Ah! thou didst tell me oft that our lonely pride was not
high nor worthy fame. Stine, how didst do it?”
“I did it not, dear husband; God did it for me. He gave the boys the
loving, true tempers that worked out the rest! He shielded them and me
in our days of peril.”
“Yes, father,” added Ebbo, “Providence guarded us; but, above all, our
chief blessing has been the mother who has made one of us a holy saint,
and taught the other to seek after him! Father, I am glad you see how
great has been the work of the Dove you brought to the Eagle’s Nest.”