The Dove in the Eagle's Nest

“My vassals?” said Ebbo; “what could they send?”

“The aid customary on the knighthood of the heir.”

“But there is—there is nothing!” said Friedel.  “They can scarce pay meal and poultry enough for our daily fare; and if we were to flay them alive, we should not get sixty groschen from the whole.”

“True enough!  Knighthood must wait till we win it,” said Ebbo, gloomily.

“Nay, it is accepted,” said Wildschloss.  “The Kaisar loves his iron chest too well to let you go back.  You must be ready with your round sum to the chancellor, and your spur-money and your fee to the heralds, and largess to the crowd.”

“Mother, the dowry,” said Ebbo.

“At your service, my son,” said Christina, anxious to chase the cloud from his brow.

But it was a deep haul, for the avaricious Friedrich IV. made exorbitant charges for the knighting his young nobles; and Ebbo soon saw that the improvements at home must suffer for the honours that would have been so much better won than bought.

“If your vassals cannot aid, yet may not your kinsman—?” began Wildschloss.

“No!” interrupted Ebbo, lashed up to hot indignation.  “No, sir!  Rather will my mother, brother, and I ride back this very night to unfettered liberty on our mountain, without obligation to any living man.”

“Less hotly, Sir Baron,” said Master Gottfried, gravely.  “You broke in on your noble godfather, and you had not heard me speak.  You and your brother are the old man’s only heirs, nor do ye incur any obligation that need fret you by forestalling what would be your just right.  I will see my nephews as well equipped as any young baron of them.”

The mother looked anxiously at Ebbo.  He bent his head with rising colour, and said, “Thanks, kind uncle.  From you I have learnt to look on goodness as fatherly.”

“Only,” added Friedel, “if the Baron’s station renders knighthood fitting for him, surely I might remain his esquire.”

“Never, Friedel!” cried his brother.  “Without thee, nothing.”

“Well said, Freiherr,” said Master Sorel; “what becomes the one becomes the other.  I would not have thee left out, my Friedel, since I cannot leave thee the mysteries of my craft.”

“To-morrow!” said Friedel, gravely.  “Then must the vigil be kept to-night.”

“The boy thinks these are the days of Roland and Karl the Great,” said Wildschloss.  “He would fain watch his arms in the moonlight in the Dome Kirk!  Alas! no, my Friedel!  Knighthood in these days smacks more of bezants than of deeds of prowess.”

“Unbearable fellow!” cried Ebbo, when he had latched the door of the room he shared with his brother.  “First, holding up my inexperience to scorn!  As though the Kaisar knew not better than he what befits me!  Then trying to buy my silence and my mother’s gratitude with his hateful advance of gold.  As if I did not loathe him enough without!  If I pay my homage, and sign the League to-morrow, it will be purely that he may not plume himself on our holding our own by sufferance, in deference to him.”

“You will sign it—you will do homage!” exclaimed Friedel.  “How rejoiced the mother will be.”

“I had rather depend at once—if depend I must—on yonder dignified Kaisar and that noble king than on our meddling kinsman,” said Ebbo.  “I shall be his equal now!  Ay, and no more classed with the court Junkern I was with to-day.  The dullards!  No one reasonable thing know they but the chase.  One had been at Florence; and when I asked him of the Baptistery and rare Giotto of whom my uncle told us, he asked if he were a knight of the Medici.  All he knew was that there were ortolans at Ser Lorenzo’s table; and he and the rest of them talked over wines as many and as hard to call as the roll of Æneas’s comrades; and when each one must drink to her he loved best, and I said I loved none like my sweet mother, they gibed me for a simple dutiful mountaineer.  Yea, and when the servants brought a bowl, I thought it was a wholesome draught of spring water after all their hot wines and fripperies.  Pah!”

“The rose-water, Ebbo!  No wonder they laughed!  Why, the bowls for our fingers came round at the banquet here.”

“Ah! thou hast eyes for their finikin manners!  Yet what know they of what we used to long for in polished life!  Not one but vowed he abhorred books, and cursed Dr. Faustus for multiplying them.  I may not know the taste of a stew, nor the fit of a glove, as they do, but I trust I bear a less empty brain.  And the young Netherlanders that came with the Archduke were worst of all.  They got together and gabbled French, and treated the German Junkern with the very same sauce with which they had served me.  The Archduke laughed with them, and when the Provost addressed him, made as if he understood not, till his father heard, and thundered out, ‘How now, Philip!  Deaf on thy German ear?  I tell thee, Herr Probst, he knows his own tongue as well as thou or I, and thou shalt hear him speak as becomes the son of an Austrian hunter.’  That Romish king is a knight of knights, Friedel.  I could follow him to the world’s end.  I wonder whether he will ever come to climb the Red Eyrie.”

“It does not seem the world’s end when one is there,” said Friedel, with strange yearnings in his breast.

“Even the Dom steeple never rose to its full height,” he added, standing in the window, and gazing pensively into the summer sky.  “Oh, Ebbo! this knighthood has come very suddenly after our many dreams; and, even though its outward tokens be lowered, it is still a holy, awful thing.”

Nurtured in mountain solitude, on romance transmitted through the pure medium of his mother’s mind, and his spirit untainted by contact with the world, Friedmund von Adlerstein looked on chivalry with the temper of a Percival or Galahad, and regarded it with a sacred awe.  Eberhard, though treating it more as a matter of business, was like enough to his brother to enter into the force of the vows they were about to make; and if the young Barons of Adlerstein did not perform the night-watch over their armour, yet they kept a vigil that impressed their own minds as deeply, and in early morn they went to confession and mass ere the gay parts of the city were astir.

“Sweet niece,” said Master Sorel, as he saw the brothers’ grave, earnest looks, “thou hast done well by these youths; yet I doubt me at times whether they be not too much lifted out of this veritable world of ours.”

“Ah, fair uncle, were they not above it, how could they face its temptations?”

“True, my child; but how will it be when they find how lightly others treat what to them is so solemn?”

“There must be temptations for them, above all for Ebbo,” said Christina, “but still, when I remember how my heart sank when their grandmother tried to bring them up to love crime as sport and glory, I cannot but trust that the good work will be wrought out, and my dream fulfilled, that they may be lights on earth and stars in heaven.  Even this matter of homage, that seemed so hard to my Ebbo, has now been made easy to him by his veneration for the Emperor.”

It was even so.  If the sense that he was the last veritable free lord of Adlerstein rushed over Ebbo, he was, on the other hand, overmastered by the kingliness of Friedrich and Maximilian, and was aware that this submission, while depriving him of little or no actual power, brought him into relations with the civilized world, and opened to him paths of true honour.  So the ceremonies were gone through, his oath of allegiance was made, investiture was granted to him by the delivery of a sword, and both he and Friedel were dubbed knights.  Then they shared another banquet, where, as away from the Junkern and among elder men, Ebbo was happier than the day before.  Some of the knights seemed to him as rude and ignorant as the Schneiderlein, but no one talked to him nor observed his manners, and he could listen to conversation on war and policy such as interested him far more than the subjects affected by youths a little older than himself.  Their lonely life and training had rendered the minds of the brothers as much in advance of their fellows as they were behind them in knowledge of the world.

The crass obtuseness of most of the nobility made it a relief to return to the usual habits of the Sorel household when the court had left Ulm.  Friedmund, anxious to prove that his new honours were not to alter his home demeanour, was drawing on a block of wood from a tinted pen-and-ink sketch; Ebbo was deeply engaged with a newly-acquired copy of Virgil; and their mother was embroidering some draperies for the long-neglected castle chapel,—all sitting, as Master Gottfried loved to have them, in his studio, whence he had a few moments before been called away, when, as the door slowly opened, a voice was heard that made both lads start and rise.

“Yea, truly, Herr Guildmaster, I would see these masterpieces.  Ha!  What have you here for masterpieces?  Our two new double-ganger knights?”  And Maximilian entered in a simple riding-dress, attended by Master Gottfried, and by Sir Kasimir of Adlerstein Wildschloss.

Christina would fain have slipped out unperceived, but the king was already removing his cap from his fair curling locks, and bending his head as he said, “The Frau Freiherrinn von Adlerstein?  Fair lady, I greet you well, and thank you in the Kaisar’s name and mine for having bred up for us two true and loyal subjects.”

“May they so prove themselves, my liege!” said Christina, bending low.

“And not only loyal-hearted,” added Maximilian, smiling, “but ready-brained, which is less frequent among our youth.  What is thy book, young knight?  Virgilius Maro?  Dost thou read the Latin?” he added, in that tongue.

“Not as well as we wish, your kingly highness,” readily answered Ebbo, in Latin, “having learnt solely of our mother till we came hither.”

“Never fear for that, my young blade,” laughed the king.  “Knowst not that the wiseacres thought me too dull for teaching till I was past ten years?  And what is thy double about?  Drawing on wood?  How now!  An able draughtsman, my young knight?”

“My nephew Sir Friedmund is good to the old man,” said Gottfried, himself almost regretting the lad’s avocation.  “My eyes are failing me, and he is aiding me with the graving of this border.  He has the knack that no teaching will impart to any of my present journeymen.”

“Born, not made,” quoth Maximilian.  “Nay,” as Friedel coloured deeper at the sense that Ebbo was ashamed of him, “no blushes, my boy; it is a rare gift.  I can make a hundred knights any day, but the Almighty alone can make a genius.  It was this very matter of graving that led me hither.”

For Maximilian had a passion for composition, and chiefly for autobiography, and his head was full of that curious performance, Der Weisse König, which occupied many of the leisure moments of his life, being dictated to his former writing-master, Marcus Sauerwein.  He had already designed the portrayal of his father as the old white king, and himself as the young white king, in a series of woodcuts illustrating the narrative which culminated in the one romance of his life, his brief happy marriage with Mary of Burgundy; and he continued eagerly to talk to Master Gottfried about the mystery of graving, and the various scenes in which he wished to depict himself learning languages from native speakers—Czech from a peasant with a basket of eggs, English from the exiles at the Burgundian court, who had also taught him the use of the longbow, building from architects and masons, painting from artists, and, more imaginatively, astrology from a wonderful flaming sphere in the sky, and the black art from a witch inspired by a long-tailed demon perched on her shoulder.  No doubt “the young white king” made an exceedingly prominent figure in the discourse, but it was so quaint and so brilliant that it did not need the charm of royal condescension to entrance the young knights, who stood silent auditors.  Ebbo at least was convinced that no species of knowledge or skill was viewed by his kaisarly kingship as beneath his dignity; but still he feared Friedel’s being seized upon to be as prime illustrator to the royal autobiography—a lot to which, with all his devotion to Maximilian, he could hardly have consigned his brother, in the certainty that the jeers of the ruder nobles would pursue the craftsman baron.

However, for the present, Maximilian was keen enough to see that the boy’s mechanical skill was not as yet equal to his genius; so he only encouraged him to practise, adding that he heard there was a rare lad, one Dürer, at Nuremburg, whose productions were already wonderful.  “And what is this?” he asked; “what is the daintily-carved group I see yonder?”

“Your highness means, ‘The Dove in the Eagle’s Nest,’” said Kasimir.  “It is the work of my young kinsmen, and their appropriate device.”

“As well chosen as carved,” said Maximilian, examining it.  “Well is it that a city dove should now and then find her way to the eyrie.  Some of my nobles would cut my throat for the heresy, but I am safe here, eh, Sir Kasimir?  Fare ye well, ye dove-trained eaglets.  We will know one another better when we bear the cross against the infidel.”

The brothers kissed his hand, and he descended the steps from the hall door.  Ere he had gone far, he turned round upon Sir Kasimir with a merry smile: “A very white and tender dove indeed, and one who might easily nestle in another eyrie, methinks.”

“Deems your kingly highness that consent could be won?” asked Wildschloss.

“From the Kaisar?  Pfui, man, thou knowst as well as I do the golden key to his consent.  So thou wouldst risk thy luck again!  Thou hast no male heir.”

“And I would fain give my child a mother who would deal well with her.  Nay, to say sooth, that gentle, innocent face has dwelt with me for many years.  But for my pre-contract, I had striven long ago to win her, and had been a happier man, mayhap.  And, now I have seen what she has made of her sons, I feel I could scarce find her match among our nobility.”

“Nor elsewhere,” said the king; “and I honour thee for not being so besotted in our German haughtiness as not to see that it is our free cities that make refined and discreet dames.  I give you good speed, Adlerstein; but, if I read aright the brow of one at least of these young fellows, thou wilt scarce have a willing or obedient stepson.”

CHAPTER XV

THE RIVAL EYRIE

Ebbo trusted that his kinsman of Wildschloss was safe gone with the Court, and his temper smoothed and his spirits rose in proportion while preparations for a return to Adlerstein were being completed—preparations by which the burgher lady might hope to render the castle far more habitable, not to say baronial, than it had ever been.

The lady herself felt thankful that her stay at Ulm had turned out well beyond all anticipations in the excellent understanding between her uncle and her sons, and still more in Ebbo’s full submission and personal loyalty towards the imperial family.  The die was cast, and the first step had been taken towards rendering the Adlerstein family the peaceful, honourable nobles she had always longed to see them.

She was one afternoon assisting her aunt in some of the duties of her wirthschaft, when Master Gottfried entered the apartment with an air of such extreme complacency that both turned round amazed; the one exclaiming, “Surely funds have come in for finishing the spire!” the other, “Have they appointed thee Provost for next year, house-father?”

“Neither the one nor the other,” was the reply.  “But heard you not the horse’s feet?  Here has the Lord of Adlerstein Wildschloss been with me in full state, to make formal proposals for the hand of our child, Christina.”

“For Christina!” cried Hausfrau Johanna with delight; “truly that is well.  Truly our maiden has done honour to her breeding.  A second nobleman demanding her—and one who should be able richly to endow her!”

“And who will do so,” said Master Gottfried.  “For morning gift he promises the farms and lands of Grünau—rich both in forest and corn glebe.  Likewise, her dower shall be upon Wildschloss—where the soil is of the richest pasture, and there are no less than three mills, whence the lord obtains large rights of multure.  Moreover, the Castle was added to and furnished on his marriage with the late baroness, and might serve a Kurfürst; and though the jewels of Freiherrinn Valeska must be inherited by her daughter, yet there are many of higher price which have descended from his own ancestresses, and which will all be hers.”

“And what a wedding we will have!” exclaimed Johanna; “it shall be truly baronial.  I will take my hood and go at once to neighbour Sophie Lemsberg, who was wife to the Markgraf’s Under Keller-Meister.  She will tell me point device the ceremonies befitting the espousals of a baron’s widow.”

Poor Christina had sat all this time with drooping head and clasped hands, a tear stealing down as the formal terms of the treaty sent her spirit back to the urgent, pleading, imperious voice that had said, “Now, little one, thou wilt not shut me out;” and as she glanced at the ring that had lain on that broad palm, she felt as if her sixteen cheerful years had been an injury to her husband in his nameless bloody grave.  But protection was so needful in those rude ages, and second marriages so frequent, that reluctance was counted as weakness.  She knew her uncle and aunt would never believe that aught but compulsion had bound her to the rude outlaw, and her habit of submission was so strong that, only when her aunt was actually rising to go and consult her gossip, she found breath to falter,—

“Hold, dear aunt—my sons—”

“Nay, child, it is the best thing thou couldst do for them.  Wonders hast thou wrought, yet are they too old to be without fatherly authority.  I speak not of Friedel; the lad is gentle and pious, though spirited, but for the baron.  The very eye and temper of my poor brother Hugh—thy father, Stine—are alive again in him.  Yea, I love the lad the better for it, while I fear.  He minds me precisely of Hugh ere he was ’prenticed to the weapon-smith, and all became bitterness.”

“Ah, truly,” said Christina, raising her eyes “all would become bitterness with my Ebbo were I to give a father’s power to one whom he would not love.”

“Then were he sullen and unruly, indeed!” said the old burgomaster with displeasure; “none have shown him more kindness, none could better aid him in court and empire.  The lad has never had restraint enough.  I blame thee not, child, but he needs it sorely, by thine own showing.”

“Alas, uncle! mine be the blame, but it is over late.  My boy will rule himself for the love of God and of his mother, but he will brook no hand over him—least of all now he is a knight and thinks himself a man.  Uncle, I should be deprived of both my sons, for Friedel’s very soul is bound up with his brother’s.  I pray thee enjoin not this thing on me,” she implored.

“Child!” exclaimed Master Gottfried, “thou thinkst not that such a contract as this can be declined for the sake of a wayward Junker!”

“Stay, house-father, the little one will doubtless hear reason and submit,” put in the aunt.  “Her sons were goodly and delightsome to her in their upgrowth, but they are well-nigh men.  They will be away to court and camp, to love and marriage; and how will it be with her then, young and fair as she still is?  Well will it be for her to have a stately lord of her own, and a new home of love and honour springing round her.”

“True,” continued Sorel; “and though she be too pious and wise to reck greatly of such trifles, yet it may please her dreamy brain to hear that Sir Kasimir loves her even like a paladin, and the love of a tried man of six-and-forty is better worth than a mere kindling of youthful fancy.”

“Mine Eberhard loved me!” murmured Christina, almost to herself, but her aunt caught the word.

“And what was such love worth?  To force thee into a stolen match, and leave thee alone and unowned to the consequences!”

“Peace!” exclaimed Christina, with crimson cheek and uplifted head.  “Peace!  My own dear lord loved me with true and generous love!  None but myself knows how much.  Not a word will I hear against that tender heart.”

“Yes, peace,” returned Gottfried in a conciliatory tone,—“peace to the brave Sir Eberhard.  Thine aunt meant no ill of him.  He truly would rejoice that the wisdom of his choice should receive such testimony, and that his sons should be thus well handled.  Nay, little as I heed such toys, it will doubtless please the lads that the baron will obtain of the Emperor letters of nobility for this house, which verily sprang of a good Walloon family, and so their shield will have no blank.  The Romish king promises to give thee rank with any baroness, and hath fully owned what a pearl thou art, mine own sweet dove!  Nay, Sir Kasimir is coming to-morrow in the trust to make the first betrothal with Graf von Kaulwitz as a witness, and I thought of asking the Provost on the other hand.”

“To-morrow!” exclaimed Johanna; “and how is she to be meetly clad?  Look at this widow-garb; and how is time to be found for procuring other raiment?  House-father, a substantial man like you should better understand!  The meal too!  I must to gossip Sophie!”

“Verily, dear mother and father,” said Christina, who had rallied a little, “have patience with me.  I may not lightly or suddenly betroth myself; I know not that I can do so at all, assuredly not unless my sons were heartily willing.  Have I your leave to retire?”

“Granted, my child, for meditation will show thee that this is too fair a lot for any but thee.  Much had I longed to see thee wedded ere thy sons outgrew thy care, but I shunned proposing even one of our worthy guildmasters, lest my young Freiherr should take offence; but this knight, of his own blood, true and wise as a burgher, and faithful and God-fearing withal, is a better match than I durst hope, and is no doubt a special reward from thy patron saint.”

“Let me entreat one favour more,” implored Christina.  “Speak of this to no one ere I have seen my sons.”

She made her way to her own chamber, there to weep and flutter.  Marriage was a matter of such high contract between families that the parties themselves had usually no voice in the matter, and only the widowed had any chance of a personal choice; nor was this always accorded in the case of females, who remained at the disposal of their relatives.  Good substantial wedded affection was not lacking, but romantic love was thought an unnecessary preliminary, and found a vent in extravagant adoration, not always in reputable quarters.  Obedience first to the father, then to the husband, was the first requisite; love might shift for itself; and the fair widow of Adlerstein, telling her beads in sheer perplexity, knew not whether her strong repugnance to this marriage and warm sympathy with her son Ebbo were not an act of rebellion.  Yet each moment did her husband rise before her mind more vividly, with his rugged looks, his warm, tender heart, his dawnings of comprehension, his generous forbearance and reverential love—the love of her youth—to be equalled by no other.  The accomplished courtier and polished man of the world might be his superior, but she loathed the superiority, since it was to her husband.  Might not his one chosen dove keep heart-whole for him to the last?  She recollected that coarsest, cruellest reproach of all that her mother-in-law had been wont to fling at her,—that she, the recent widow, the new-made mother of Eberhard’s babes, in her grief, her terror, and her weakness had sought to captivate this suitor by her blandishments.  The taunt seemed justified, and her cheeks burned with absolute shame “My husband! my loving Eberhard! left with none but me to love thee, unknown to thine own sons!  I cannot, I will not give my heart away from thee!  Thy little bride shall be faithful to thee, whatever betide.  When we meet beyond the grave I will have been thine only, nor have set any before thy sons.  Heaven forgive me if I be undutiful to my uncle; but thou must be preferred before even him!  Hark!” and she started as if at Eberhard’s foot-step; then smiled, recollecting that Ebbo had his father’s tread.  But her husband had been too much in awe of her to enter with that hasty agitated step and exclamation, “Mother, mother, what insolence is this!”

“Hush, Ebbo!  I prayed mine uncle to let me speak to thee.”

“It is true, then,” said Ebbo, dashing his cap on the ground; “I had soundly beaten that grinning ’prentice for telling Heinz.”