looked when Albrecht rode gallantly out of the pine forest at the foot
of the castle hill on that day when Erna first saw him, once more she
heard the note of a bugle-horn in the valley, and once more a knight
rode out of the covert into sight, followed by his men-at-arms. With
eager curiosity Erna peered out at the new-comer, and almost instantly
her eye caught sight of the pennon of the Von Rittenbergs of
Schaffhausen, and understood that the visitor was her cousin, Count
Stephen, who was probably on his return from Strasburg, and who had
accepted her invitation to repeat his visit to Rittenberg.
For an instant her cheek flushed with vexation, her old dislike of the
count reawakening, but instantly her changed taste asserted itself, and
she smiled. She watched the train as it rode up to the gate, and then
she turned back into her chamber with joyous haste. It came into her
mind that she could make an impression upon her guest, and she began
straightway to consider how she should array herself to go to meet him.
She chose from her jewel-case a string of rubies, and quickly bound it
upon her head like a fillet; and as she did so her woman, Fastrade, came
to announce to her the arrival of Count von Rittenberg.
The Lady Adelaide reached the great hall before her, and Count Stephen
was speaking with the old dame with his back to the stairway by which
Erna descended. The countess was already close to him before he
perceived her. Then he wheeled suddenly, almost turning his back upon
Lady Adelaide in his astonishment at the beauty of the woman before him.
Erna did not lose one shade of the look of amazement and admiration
which came into his face as he looked at her.
"God's blood!" he cried. "What has come to thee, Cousin? Indeed, this
marriage of which they told me at Mayence has made a new creature of
thee. I greet thy ladyship, and that I did not send congratulations on
thy marriage is no fault of mine, since it was all over before I knew of
it."
"It is no matter," replied Erna, giving him her hand and smiling upon
him with a pleased sense of companionship which she had never
experienced in his presence before; "since thou hast come in person to
bring them, we consent to overlook the fact that thou art somewhat
tardy. But hast thou been at Mayence as well as to Strasburg? I did not
know that was in thy mind."
"It was not when I left here," he answered, regarding her with so
undisguised a look of admiration that she blushed under it and turned
aside her eyes; "but being in the way of travelling I pushed on to
Mayence, and there I saw the court, and there I heard of thy marriage."
"Fain would we hear of the court," Lady Adelaide said, leading the way
to a seat in the broad recess of a window. "Sit thee down here, and tell
us what thou canst of the doings and the braveries there, while the page
brings thee a cup of wine. I hope too, on my soul, that thou hast more
wit in speech of woman's apparel than have most of the knights I have
known, for we would know of the raiment of the queen and her damsels,
and in good sooth it is seldom that a knight is cunning enough to tell
anything of that sort rightly, albeit so simple is it that the most
foolish kitchen wench that had but seen the royal train ride past could
describe it all."
"And therein is it to be seen that a knight's head is not like that of a
foolish kitchen wench," laughed Count Stephen, seating himself
comfortably among the cushions beside the two ladies.
"But tell me," Erna said, "from whom didst thou hear of the marriage? It
is not likely that it is a topic which is greatly discussed at court."
"The court concerns itself with many a matter that is of less moment,"
replied he, gallantly; "but it was from a certain Herr von Zimmern that
I had the tidings. He was at an inn where I lodged, and when he heard my
name he made bold to speak to me. He is an ill-favored knave enough, but
a shrewd and a witty."
"I like him not," Erna answered.
A brief silence followed this remark. Erna was confused by the fact that
the count, whom she had found so little to her taste before, should now
seem to her so agreeable. It was impossible for her not to see from his
admiring looks that he was pursuing a somewhat similar train of thought
in regard to her, and at the reflection she blushed faintly once more,
with a thrill of gratified vanity.
"But where," Count Stephen broke the silence to ask, "is the Baron von
Waldstein? I am anxious to meet my new relative, and," he added, with a
look into the face of Erna, "my successful rival."
"My husband," she replied, vainly trying to appear as if she had not
heard the latter part of his remark, "is with Father Christopher. They
study together sometimes."
"God's blood!" cried Von Rittenberg, with a burst of laughter, "hast
thou then married a clerk, Cousin? Fain would I see this new master of
Rittenberg that studies with a priest. If the Huns come, thou mayst have
to call upon the younger branch of the family to defend thee," he
added, turning to the Lady Adelaide. "At least we can bear swords if we
be only the 'Schaffleute.' We are not to be looked for in the cells of
priests."
"Body of Saint Fridolin!" cried Lady Adelaide, in angry return. "It is
not to outsiders that we have been forced to look for defence in the
past, and it were well that thou seest the new lord before thou speakest
scorn of him so lightly. Belike it were not so well were he to hear
thee!"
"My husband is here to speak for himself," Erna interposed, rising with
great dignity as Albrecht, summoned by a page, came into the hall.
The count looked at the superb figure which advanced toward him, and for
an instant he stood struck dumb with astonishment.
"God's blood!" he cried out so loudly that Albrecht heard him half-way
across the wide hall. "That is not a man; it is a god!"
"It is the lord of our poor castle!" returned Lady Adelaide, sweeping
him a sarcastic courtesy. "Accept our thanks that thou hast promised to
defend it and him from the Huns when they come."
XVI
HOW THE COUNT TALKED AND SANG.
The uncanny wood-folk who hovered about Rittenberg in these days might
well have had their fill of minstrelsy and mirth. If life had been
jocund before the return of Count Stephen, it may well be understood
that it was gayer yet now that he had come. Von Rittenberg had vowed his
life to pleasure; and life to him was much what it was to the soulless
creatures of the forest, in that it meant to him nothing higher than the
delights of the senses. He prolonged his stay at the castle upon the
slightest urging, suggesting one amusement after another, and joining
with hearty zest in whatever sports were forward.
"It is well that my steed brought me hither," the count said to his
cousin one day. "Indeed the beast was wiser than I, for I was minded not
to come this way at all, so little did I dream that thou wouldst have
been so changed."
"And is it only thy steed, then, that we have to thank for thy visit?"
she asked with a smile.
"Only the steed," he returned; "for when I was come to the place where
the ways part, I was minded to turn southward, and to ride on homeward
without let or stay; and then it was that my horse would not, and
resolutely set his head toward your castle. My squire will have it that
an old man with a white beard and eyes like fire did catch at the
bridle-rein, but I saw naught, and do not regard his foolish fancy."
Erna laughed and made some jest at the knight's unwillingness to come to
Rittenberg; but Albrecht, who had been by, turned pale, and when he was
next alone with the priest, he said to him:
"Dost thou think, Father, that the folk of the forest can work harm to
one who has won an immortal soul?"
"That thou shouldst know better than I, having lived among them," the
other answered; "only of this be sure: however much they might harm the
body, it is not given them to reach the immortal part. What dost thou
fear?"
"I fear naught," Albrecht answered; "but he who is ruler of the kobolds
in the forest round about Rittenberg, as was my father in the
Neiderwasser valley, is sore incensed by my marriage. He hath had
certain speech with Herr Frederich concerning it, and it is he who
turned the Count von Rittenberg in this direction when he was minded to
ride past. I like it not."
Neither did it make the priest more easy in his mind to learn that the
king of the kobolds was become concerned in the affairs of his mistress;
but there seemed naught that he might do concerning the matter save to
watch for what should come and to pray fervently to the saints for their
gracious protection. He could not divine what it could boot to the
kobold that Count Stephen should come again to Rittenberg, but none the
less he wished the guest gone.
There was little token, however, that the guest was minded to take his
departure. He lingered from day to day, and always he became more and
more the leader in the life of the castle and in all its gayety. It was
a constant source of amazement to Count Stephen that Erna should have so
changed, or, as he phrased it to himself, should so have improved during
his absence. She was no longer a cold passionless maiden, moving in a
world of ideals and pious dreams remote from his ken; she was a
beautiful, passionate woman, who stirred his pulses, and who responded
with eager readiness to any suggestion of pleasure or sport which he
made. He began to feel that he had made a grievous error in refusing
the alliance which had been tacitly offered him, and to nourish a sense
of injustice toward the man who had robbed him of the possession of this
beautiful woman whom now he found so suited to his taste. He did not
reason that to Albrecht must be due in no small measure this
transformation, and if such a thought had crossed his mind he would not
have doubted his own ability to produce the same result had Erna been
his wife instead of the baron's.
It was hardly a proof of the vanity of the count that he believed that
his cousin, as he continually called her, making of the relationship a
pretext for many little familiarities which, albeit they were harmless
enough, caused the eyes of Albrecht to glow with jealous rage, felt the
attraction which their natures had for each other. She showed her liking
by tokens which though they were slight were unmistakable; and Count
Stephen, who had had not a little experience in love affairs, smiled to
himself as he reflected upon the faint pressure of the hand, the half
averted-glance, the almost unheard sigh which he had from time to time
won from Erna.
It was quite in keeping with the count's cleverness that he had not
failed to perceive that the sympathy between Erna and her husband was
becoming fainter. It was evident that every day they found themselves
less wholly one. More and more did the baron give himself up to pious
studies, while Erna was thus more and more thrown into the company of
Von Rittenberg. Count Stephen had secretly a profound contempt for his
host, the idea of piety and that of study being alike ridiculous in his
mind. He admired Albrecht's skill in hunting, his strength, and his
superb figure, but he was never able to look upon the studies which had
become the chief interest of Albrecht's daily life as other than a
subject for jest and ridicule. It is true that he had learned that Erna
resented his jests upon this theme, but he was acute enough to observe
that her anger was turned quite as much toward her husband for giving
occasion for them as at her guest for daring to make them. He found in
the Lady Adelaide an ally, since that worldly old dame liked the ways of
Albrecht no more than did Erna; and the fact that the great-aunt was
really very fond of Albrecht only made her the more irritated at his
course. She joined with Count Stephen, and often the quip which he left
half spoken was taken up and put into words by Lady Adelaide, while Erna
frowned and bit her lips with vexation.
"Good sooth," he said one morning, as he sat with Erna, who was working
a tapestry in which with cunning skill she was depicting those wars of
Charlemagne in which her father had led the Swabian guard of which the
emperor had been so proud, "thy husband should to court. The king is
marvellously well disposed toward learning. Thou knowest he hath
forgiven the offence of Eginhard, the clerk, and wed him to the fair
Emma, his own daughter."
"And what," asked Lady Adelaide, whose bright old eyes were also
watching her needle over the tapestry, "was the offence of Eginhard?"
"It is a fair tale," responded he, laughing. "It made much scandal. This
Eginhard is a man that hath hot blood though he be clerkly, and too hath
he good trim limbs and a winning eye. That he should dare to raise his
glance so high as the daughter of the king might move one to wonder, but
it was not so strange that she should smile upon him when he had done
so, for he might well stir a maiden's fancy. They were secret in their
loves, but not for the fear of the displeasure of even the king, her
father, could they restrain the fury of their passion, and one night did
Eginhard steal to the chamber of the princess, there to enjoy the fruits
of his wooing without more delay, or the form of a priest's blessing."
"Body of Saint Fridolin!" exclaimed Lady Adelaide; "and she a king's
daughter!"
"The night wasted," continued the count, "without that they found it
over-long, I trow; and before they were aware, the dawn began to appear.
Then Eginhard would fain have gone the way he came, across the court,
but the heavens had betrayed them. The snow had fallen and covered the
ground so that he could not step without leaving the trace."
"Body of Saint Fridolin!" cried Lady Adelaide, again; "that was the
judgment of Heaven upon her for betraying the honor of the king."
"Even if it were," Count Stephen rejoined, "the Princess Emma is not one
to be lightly daunted, even by the judgments of Heaven. She was well
aware what would befall her lover if the track of his footsteps were
found leading from her window, but she trusted that her royal father,
who has not been able to rein in his own blood over well, might be moved
to forgive her, if it appeared that the transgression had been hers, and
that she had sought her lover's chamber."
"It is ever the woman who sacrifices herself to the man," muttered Lady
Adelaide. Erna still listened to the tale in silence, while her cousin
watched her with penetrating gaze.
"So the princess took the scribe on her shoulders," the knight went on,
making no reply to the dame's interjection, "and carried him across the
court to his own window, so that only her tracks would appear in the
snow."
"Body of Saint Fridolin!" ejaculated Lady Adelaide, for the third time.
"Is it thus that they do at court? And what said her father when he was
told that she had been with the scribe Eginhard?"
"As fate would have it," the count answered, pulling at the long silky
ears of the hound which lay at his side, "the king himself had been that
morn troubled in his sleep, and had risen to stand by the window looking
out at the newly fallen snow before that the court was astir to besmirch
it with their footsteps; and with his own eyes he saw his daughter carry
her lover across the place."
"What did he?" asked Erna, raising her eyes from her embroidery for the
first time since the tale began.
"Oh, he doubtless cursed for a little, and then he remembered himself,
like the wise man that he is, that it were well not to make a bad matter
worse, and that love is free and not to be constrained even by the
bidding of a king."
He looked into her eyes as he answered thus, and so significant a glance
accompanied his last words that hers fell before it. She flushed and
once more fixed her attention upon her embroidery, while Count Stephen
went on to relate how Charlemagne had told the tale before the whole
court to the shaming of the offenders, and had then forgiven them and
had them married out of hand.
Then, when he had replied to the questions of Lady Adelaide, who found
this gossip a most savory morsel under her tongue, he suddenly caught up
a lute that lay near him upon the cushioned window-ledge, and running
his fingers across the strings with a swift rattling of tinkling notes,
sang not unmusically this song:
"The bird flies jocund through the sky,
And sports in upper air,
Only too soon fluttering to lie,
Caught in the fowler's snare,
The wind constrains the forest tall,
The tempest rules the sea;
The mighty hold the weak in thrall;
And only love is free.
"Nor bonds, nor bars, nor word of hate,
Can love's sweet will control;
Or quench the flame resistless fate
Hath kindled in the soul.
The mind may bow to slavish law,
As kings in chains may be;
Reason to wisdom bend in awe;
Yet still will love be free.
"What's plighted troth or formal vow,
When hearts are turned to fire?
As chaff on tempests blown, I trow,
Such bonds before desire!
Let whosoever come between,
To part my dear and me,
I'd beat down all to reach my queen,
And make our loving free!"
His voice rang out with a strain of passion as he sang these last words.
His eyes shone, and he bent forward toward Erna as if he would constrain
her to understand the message of his song. And when Erna, rising
hastily, dropped her embroidery and hastened out of the hall, there came
into his face a look of triumph which it was ill to see. He bent over
the hound at his feet to conceal it from Lady Adelaide, who looked after
her niece with astonishment.
"Body of Saint Fridolin," quoth the old dame for the hundredth time that
morning, "but she is becoming flighty instead of settling down, now that
she is married."
Meantime Albrecht sat in the chamber of the priest, learning the wonders
of that soul which had been so lately bestowed upon him by Heaven.
XVII
HOW THEY HUNTED THE STAG.
It was on a glorious autumn afternoon, when all the air was fragrant
with the odor of pine trees steeping in the warm sunlight, and dim with
the hazes which were smoke-like without being smoke, that the folk of
Castle Rittenberg set forth to hunt the stag.
While the hounds were baying in the courtyard eager to be off, and the
sound of trampling horse's hoof and jingling bridle-rein, with cry of
groom and laugh of page, came through the open window, Erna and Count
Stephen stood in the hall waiting for Albrecht. At a little distance
stood Fastrade and Elsa, both of whom were to ride with Erna to follow
the hunt; and Elsa said to her companion, pointing to the boar-spear
which still stuck in the head of the deer that hung above the
chimney-place:
"If the baron can but make such another shot as that he made when he
thrust that spear into the bone from the other end of the hall, may I
be there to see!"
The eyes of both Erna and of Count Stephen turned to the spear, as the
damsel spoke; and most vividly before the mind of the countess came up
the picture of Albrecht as he had flung it on his wedding eve, full of
buoyant life and of joyful love.
"I have noticed that spear before," Count Stephen said, turning toward
his cousin. "How came it there? Did the baron in sooth throw it across
the hall?"
"Yea," she answered; and then she was silent because there came over her
a feeling that she had been untrue to her husband by the leaning toward
her companion of which she had been half conscious in her secret heart.
"It was indeed a shrewd shot," observed Count Stephen, looking upward to
the spear, which was high above their heads.
Erna did not reply. Suddenly there came into her mind, with the picture
of that evening when the spear was thrown, the remembrance of the ring
which had been given her by Herr von Zimmern and taken from her by
Albrecht. She tried to recall exactly what had been said, but she had
forgotten her husband's words, only half heard when they were spoken.
She wondered why the ring had never been restored to her, and dimly she
recalled to mind the fact that it had been engraved with symbols which
had looked to her in the brief moment she had seen the jewel, strange
and mysterious.
"Albrecht," she said to him when they had mounted and were riding out of
the courtyard into the way which led down the hill, "dost thou not
remember the ring that Herr von Zimmern would have given me on the eve
of our wedding day?"
A faint shadow crossed his face. He did not look toward her, but
pretended to busy himself with the bridle of his horse.
"Yes," he said, "I remember it. It was overbold of him."
"I see not that; but that is no matter now. What I was wondering was
that thou didst never give me the jewel."
"Hast thou not rings enough?" he asked lightly, although Erna could see
that her words troubled him. "I will give thee more jewels if so be that
there were not enough in the caskets."
"But why not that ring?" Erna persisted, urged on by a secret conviction
that here was some mystery. "I seem to remember that Herr von Zimmern
said something about wonderful powers in that ring which other jewels
have not. I would have the chance to test the matter for myself."
"The ring," Albrecht answered with a seriousness which impressed her,
and which yet rendered her only the more anxious to possess the jewel,
"had indeed strange powers, but they were unhallowed ones. It were not
fitting that a Christian avail himself of the spells which have been
wrought by sinful sorceresses."
"Thou art truly become virtuous," Erna retorted with a tone in which she
had never before spoken to her husband. "Good sooth, when thou camest to
Rittenberg I heard nothing of scruples so nice!"
Albrecht turned and regarded her with a glance so reproachful and so
full of pain that she could not bear it. She struck her palfrey sharply
with her whip, and dashed recklessly down the hill, crying out to Count
Stephen, who had been in advance a little until she thus ran by him, to
race with her. Tears of vexation were in her eyes as she dashed down the
woodland path, and the sting of her own words wounded her to the quick.
She became recklessly gay, and all through the afternoon when she was
not separated from her cousin by the chances of the chase she jested and
laughed with demonstrative merriment.
Through the thickets where the leaves had begun to fall, under pine
boughs which had strewn the ground thick with brown spicy needles year
after year until the horses' feet bounded upon an elastic cushion, past
rocks violet in the sun and rose-hued in the half shadows, over meadows
set with jewel-tinted autumn flowers, sped the hunt, the mellow baying
of the deep-mouthed hounds ringing out upon the air, and the horn from
time to time waking all the echoes into inspiring music. Erna kept well
to the front. She had never ridden so recklessly, and never before had
the passion of the sport so fired her blood. She was, moreover, trying
to escape from the smart of the taunt which she had flung at her
husband, and her palfrey flew so fast that sometimes she even led the
way for the huntsmen to follow.
Count Stephen was never far away from her. Close behind or beside her as
the ways through which they sped allowed him, he pressed forward with
the countess; and Erna was well aware that he had set himself to keep
with her, and that his quest that day was not simply the stag which was
fleeing before the deep-baying hounds, but rather the love of the woman
with whom he went crashing through the thickets where the leaves came
down in showers about the horses and the wood-scents rose balsamic or
musky under the beat of the swift hoofs of their steeds. She was so
conscious of his presence that she could not look at him, but kept her
face turned away, urging her palfrey forward rather as if she were
fleeing than as if she were of the band of pursuers.
And now and then, too, she had a strange sense that she was not alone
with her companion, but as if some unseen creature were following and
were watching her. She tried to shake off the notion; but when the
thickets rustled after they had both drawn rein to listen for the hounds
and to recover again the trail which they had for a moment lost, she had
started and shivered, remembering the sprites of the wood that have the
power of walking invisible. Then she would glance at the count and
backward to where Fastrade strove to urge her palfrey forward lest she
lose track of her mistress altogether, and with a new smile upon her
lips would once more rush madly forward.
The hunt was not long. It was swift and dashing, the stag seeming to
exhaust himself in one grand burst at the outset; and before the light
of the autumn afternoon had waned the yelping of the hounds and the
baying of the beagles told that they were almost upon their prey. Erna
and Count Stephen were riding desperately, following the trail; but now
the countess, who knew the country better than her companion, suddenly
struck off along the side of a hill which the hunt had crossed.
"Come this way," she called back over her shoulder to her cousin. "We
shall intercept them thus at the end of the valley. The stag has
doubled."