The Dove in the Eagle's Nest

“Ha?  What, this is my girl?  What says she?  My blessing, eh?  There then, thou hast it, child, such as I have to give, though they’ll tell thee at Adlerstein that I am more wont to give the other sort of blessing!  Now, give me a kiss, girl, and let me see thee!  How now!” as he folded her in his rough arms; “thou art a mere feather, as slight as our sick Jungfrau herself.”  And then, regarding her, as she stood drooping, “Thou art not half the woman thy mother was—she was stately and straight as a column, and tall withal.”

“True!” replied Hausfrau Johanna, in a marked tone; “but both she and her poor babe had been so harassed and wasted with long journeys and hardships, that with all our care of our Christina, she has never been strong or well-grown.  The marvel is that she lived at all.”

“Our Christina is not beautiful, we know,” added her uncle, reassuringly taking her hand; “but she is a good and meek maiden.”

“Well, well,” returned the Lanzknecht, “she will answer the purpose well enough, or better than if she were fair enough to set all our fellows together by the ears for her.  Camilla, I say—no, what’s her name, Christina?—put up thy gear and be ready to start with me to-morrow morning for Adlerstein.”

“For Adlerstein?” re-echoed the housemother, in a tone of horrified dismay; and Christina would have dropped on the floor but for her uncle’s sustaining hand, and the cheering glance with which he met her imploring look.

“Let us come up to the gallery, and understand what you desire, brother,” said Master Gottfried, gravely.  “Fill the cup of greeting, Hans.  Your followers shall be entertained in the hall,” he added.

“Ay, ay,” quoth Hugh, “I will show you reason over a goblet of the old Rosenburg.  Is it all gone yet, brother Goetz?  No?  I reckon there would not be the scouring of a glass left of it in a week if it were at Adlerstein.”

So saying, the trooper crossed the lower room, which contained a huge tiled baking oven, various brilliantly-burnished cooking utensils, and a great carved cupboard like a wooden bedstead, and, passing the door of the bathroom, clanked up the oaken stairs to the gallery, the reception-room of the house.  It had tapestry hangings to the wall, and cushions both to the carved chairs and deep windows, which looked out into the street, the whole storey projecting into close proximity with the corresponding apartment of the Syndic Moritz, the goldsmith on the opposite side.  An oaken table stood in the centre, and the gallery was adorned with a dresser, displaying not only bright pewter, but goblets and drinking cups of beautifully-shaped and coloured glass, and saltcellars, tankards, &c. of gold and silver.

“Just as it was in the old man’s time,” said the soldier, throwing himself into the housefather’s chair.  “A handful of Lanzknechts would make short work with your pots and pans, good sister Johanna.”

“Heaven forbid!” said poor Johanna under her breath.  “Much good they do you, up in a row there, making you a slave to furbishing them.  There’s more sense in a chair like this—that does rest a man’s bones.  Here, Camilla, girl, unlace my helmet!  What, know’st not how?  What is a woman made for but to let a soldier free of his trappings?  Thou hast done it!  There!  Now my boots,” stretching out his legs.

“Hans shall draw off your boots, fair brother,” began the dame; but poor Christina, the more anxious to propitiate him in little things, because of the horror and dread with which his main purpose inspired her, was already on her knees, pulling with her small quivering hands at the long steel-guarded boot—a task to which she would have been utterly inadequate, but for some lazy assistance from her father’s other foot.  She further brought a pair of her uncle’s furred slippers, while Reiter Hugh proceeded to dangle one of the boots in the air, expatiating on its frail condition, and expressing his intention of getting a new pair from Master Matthias, the sutor, ere he should leave Ulm on the morrow.  Then, again, came the dreaded subject; his daughter must go with him.

“What would you with Christina, brother?” gravely asked Master Gottfried, seating himself on the opposite side of the stove, while out of sight the frightened girl herself knelt on the floor, her head on her aunt’s knees, trying to derive comfort from Dame Johanna’s clasping hands, and vehement murmurs that they would not let their child be taken from them.  Alas! these assurances were little in accordance with Hugh’s rough reply, “And what is it to you what I do with mine own?”

“Only this, that, having bred her up as my child and intended heiress, I might have some voice.”

“Oh! in choosing her mate!  Some mincing artificer, I trow, fiddling away with wood and wire to make gauds for the fair-day!  Hast got him here?  If I like him, and she likes him, I’ll bring her back when her work is done.”

“There is no such person as yet in the case,” said Gottfried.  “Christina is not yet seventeen, and I would take my time to find an honest, pious burgher, who will value this precious jewel of mine.”

“And let her polish his flagons to the end of her days,” laughed Hugh grimly, but manifestly somewhat influenced by the notion of his brother’s wealth.  “What, hast no child of thine own?” he added.

“None, save in Paradise,” answered Gottfried, crossing himself.  “And thus, if Christina should remain with me, and be such as I would have her, then, brother, my wealth, after myself and my good housewife, shall be hers, with due provision for thee, if thou shouldst weary of thy wild life.  Otherwise,” he added, looking down, and speaking in an under tone, “my poor savings should go to the completion of the Dome Kirk.”

“And who told thee, Goetz, that I would do ought with the girl that should hinder her from being the very same fat, sourkrout-cooking, pewter-scrubbing housewife of thy mind’s eye?”

“I have heard nothing of thy designs as yet, brother Hugh, save that thou wouldst take her to Adlerstein, which men greatly belie if it be not a nest of robbers.”

“Aha! thou hast heard of Adlerstein!  We have made the backs of your jolly merchants tingle as well as they could through their well-lined doublets!  Ulm knows of Adlerstein, and the Debateable Ford!”

“It knows little to its credit,” said Gottfried, gravely; “and it knows also that the Emperor is about to make a combination against all the Swabian robber-holds, and that such as join not in it will fare the worse.”

“Let Kaiser Fritz catch his bear ere he sells its hide!  He has never tried to mount the Eagle’s Ladder!  Why, man, Adlerstein might be held against five hundred men by sister Johanna with her rock and spindle!  ’Tis a free barony, Master Gottfried, I tell thee—has never sworn allegiance to Kaiser or Duke of Swabia either!  Freiherr Eberhard is as much a king on his own rock as Kaiser Fritz ever was of the Romans, and more too, for I never could find out that they thought much of our king at Rome; and, as to gainsaying our old Freiherr, one might as well leap over the abyss at once.”

“Yes, those old free barons are pitiless tyrants,” said Gottfried, “and I scarce think I can understand thee aright when I hear thee say thou wouldst carry thy daughter to such an abode.”

“It is the Freiherr’s command,” returned Hugh.  “Look you, they have had wondrous ill-luck with their children; the Freiherrinn Kunigunde has had a dozen at least, and only two are alive, my young Freiherr and my young Lady Ermentrude; and no wonder, you would say, if you could see the gracious Freiherrinn, for surely Dame Holda made a blunder when she fished her out of the fountain woman instead of man.  She is Adlerstein herself by birth, married her cousin, and is prouder and more dour than our old Freiherr himself—fitter far to handle shield than swaddled babe.  And now our Jungfrau has fallen into a pining waste, that ’tis a pity to see how her cheeks have fallen away, and how she mopes and fades.  Now, the old Freiherr and her brother, they both dote on her, and would do anything for her.  They thought she was bewitched, so we took old Mother Ilsebill and tried her with the ordeal of water; but, look you, she sank as innocent as a puppy dog, and Ursel was at fault to fix on any one else.  Then one day, when I looked into the chamber, I saw the poor maiden sitting, with her head hanging down, as if ’twas too heavy for her, on a high-backed chair, no rest for her feet, and the wind blowing keen all round her, and nothing to taste but scorched beef, or black bread and sour wine, and her mother rating her for foolish fancies that gave trouble.  And, when my young Freiherr was bemoaning himself that we could not hear of a Jew physician passing our way to catch and bring up to cure her, I said to him at last that no doctor could do for her what gentle tendance and nursing would, for what the poor maiden needed was to be cosseted and laid down softly, and fed with broths and possets, and all that women know how to do with one another.  A proper scowl and hard words I got from my gracious Lady, for wanting to put burgher softness into an Adlerstein; but my old lord and his son opened on the scent at once.  ‘Thou hast a daughter?’ quoth the Freiherr.  ‘So please your gracious lordship,’ quoth I; ‘that is, if she still lives, for I left her a puny infant.’  ‘Well,’ said my lord, ‘if thou wilt bring her here, and her care restores my daughter to health and strength, then will I make thee my body squire, with a right to a fourth part of all the spoil, and feed for two horses in my stable.’  And young Freiherr Eberhard gave his word upon it.”

Gottfried suggested that a sick nurse was the person required rather than a child like Christina; but, as Hugh truly observed, no nurse would voluntarily go to Adlerstein, and it was no use to wait for the hopes of capturing one by raid or foray.  His daughter was at his own disposal, and her services would be repaid by personal advantages to himself which he was not disposed to forego; in effect these were the only means that the baron had of requiting any attendance upon his daughter.

The citizens of old Germany had the strongest and most stringent ideas of parental authority, and regarded daughters as absolute chattels of their father; and Master Gottfried Sorel, though he alone had done the part of a parent to his niece, felt entirely unable to withstand the nearer claim, except by representations; and these fell utterly disregarded, as in truth every counsel had hitherto done, upon the ears of Reiter Hugh, ever since he had emerged from his swaddling clothes.  The plentiful supper, full cup of wine, the confections, the soft chair, together perhaps with his brother’s grave speech, soon, however, had the effect of sending him into a doze, whence he started to accept civilly the proposal of being installed in the stranger’s room, where he was speedily snoring between two feather beds.

Then there could be freedom of speech in the gallery, where the uncle and aunt held anxious counsel over the poor little dark-tressed head that still lay upon good Johanna’s knees.  The dame was indignant and resolute: “Take the child back with him into a very nest of robbers!—her own innocent dove whom they had shielded from all evil like a very nun in a cloister!  She should as soon think of yielding her up to be borne off by the great Satan himself with his horns and hoofs.”

“Hugh is her father, housewife,” said the master-carver.

“The right of parents is with those that have done the duty of parents,” returned Johanna.  “What said the kid in the fable to the goat that claimed her from the sheep that bred her up?  I am ashamed of you, housefather, for not better loving your own niece.”

“Heaven knows how I love her,” said Gottfried, as the sweet face was raised up to him with a look acquitting him of the charge, and he bent to smooth back the silken hair, and kiss the ivory brow; “but Heaven also knows that I see no means of withholding her from one whose claim is closer than my own—none save one; and to that even thou, housemother, wouldst not have me resort.”

“What is it?” asked the dame, sharply, yet with some fear.

“To denounce him to the burgomasters as one of the Adlerstein retainers who robbed Philipp der Schmidt, and have him fast laid by the heels.”

Christina shuddered, and Dame Johanna herself recoiled; but presently exclaimed, “Nay, you could not do that, good man, but wherefore not threaten him therewith?  Stand at his bedside in early dawn, and tell him that, if he be not off ere daylight with both his cut-throats, the halberdiers will be upon him.”

“Threaten what I neither could nor would perform, mother?  That were a shrewish resource.”

“Yet would it save the child,” muttered Johanna.  But, in the meantime, Christina was rising from the floor, and stood before them with loose hair, tearful eyes, and wet, flushed cheeks.  “It must be thus,” she said, in a low, but not unsteady voice.  “I can bear it better since I have heard of the poor young lady, sick and with none to care for her.  I will go with my father; it is my duty.  I will do my best; but oh! uncle, so work with him that he may bring me back again.”

“This from thee, Stina!” exclaimed her aunt; “from thee who art sick for fear of a lanzknecht!”

“The saints will be with me, and you will pray for me,” said Christina, still trembling.

“I tell thee, child, thou knowst not what these vile dens are.  Heaven forfend thou shouldst!” exclaimed her aunt.  “Go only to Father Balthazar, housefather, and see if he doth not call it a sending of a lamb among wolves.”

“Mind’st thou the carving I did for Father Balthazar’s own oratory?” replied Master Gottfried.

“I talk not of carving!  I talk of our child!” said the dame, petulantly.

“Ut agnus inter lupos,” softly said Gottfried, looking tenderly, though sadly, at his niece, who not only understood the quotation, but well remembered the carving of the cross-marked lamb going forth from its fold among the howling wolves.

“Alas!  I am not an apostle,” said she.

“Nay, but, in the path of duty, ’tis the same hand that sends thee forth,” answered her uncle, “and the same will guard thee.”

“Duty, indeed!” exclaimed Johanna.  “As if any duty could lead that silly helpless child among that herd of evil men, and women yet worse, with a good-for-nothing father, who would sell her for a good horse to the first dissolute Junker who fell in his way.”

“I will take care that he knows it is worth his while to restore her safe to us.  Nor do I think so ill of Hugh as thou dost, mother.  And, for the rest, Heaven and the saints and her own discretion must be her guard till she shall return to us.”

“How can Heaven be expected to protect her when you are flying in its face by not taking counsel with Father Balthazar?”

“That shalt thou do,” replied Gottfried, readily, secure that Father Balthazar would see the matter in the same light as himself, and tranquillize the good woman.  It was not yet so late but that a servant could be despatched with a request that Father Balthazar, who lived not many houses off in the same street, would favour the Burgomeisterinn Sorel by coming to speak with her.  In a few minutes he appeared,—an aged man, with a sensible face, of the fresh pure bloom preserved by a temperate life.  He was a secular parish-priest, and, as well as his friend Master Gottfried, held greatly by the views left by the famous Strasburg preacher, Master John Tauler.  After the good housemother had, in strong terms, laid the case before him, she expected a trenchant decision on her own side, but, to her surprise and disappointment, he declared that Master Gottfried was right, and that, unless Hugh Sorel demanded anything absolutely sinful of his daughter, it was needful that she should submit.  He repeated, in stronger terms, the assurance that she would be protected in the endeavour to do right, and the Divine promises which he quoted from the Latin Scriptures gave some comfort to the niece, who understood them, while they impressed the aunt, who did not.  There was always the hope that, whether the young lady died or recovered, the conclusion of her illness would be the term of Christina’s stay at Adlerstein, and with this trust Johanna must content herself.  The priest took leave, after appointing with Christina to meet her in the confessional early in the morning before mass; and half the night was spent by the aunt and niece in preparing Christina’s wardrobe for her sudden journey.

Many a tear was shed over the tokens of the little services she was wont to render, her half-done works, and pleasant studies so suddenly broken off, and all the time Hausfrau Johanna was running on with a lecture on the diligent preservation of her maiden discretion, with plentiful warnings against swaggering men-at-arms, drunken lanzknechts, and, above all, against young barons, who most assuredly could mean no good by any burgher maiden.  The good aunt blessed the saints that her Stina was likely only to be lovely in affectionate home eyes; but, for that matter, idle men, shut up in a castle, with nothing but mischief to think of, would be dangerous to Little Three Eyes herself, and Christina had best never stir a yard from her lady’s chair, when forced to meet them.  All this was interspersed with motherly advice how to treat the sick lady, and receipts for cordials and possets; for Johanna began to regard the case as a sort of second-hand one of her own.  Nay, she even turned it over in her mind whether she should not offer herself as the Lady Ermentrude’s sick-nurse, as being a less dangerous commodity than her little niece: but fears for the well-being of the master-carver, and his Wirthschaft, and still more the notion of gossip Gertrude Grundt hearing that she had ridden off with a wild lanzknecht, made her at once reject the plan, without even mentioning it to her husband or his niece.

By the time Hugh Sorel rolled out from between his feather beds, and was about to don his greasy buff, a handsome new suit, finished point device, and a pair of huge boots to correspond, had been laid by his bedside.

“Ho, ho!  Master Goetz,” said he, as he stumbled into the Stube, “I see thy game.  Thou wouldst make it worth my while to visit the father-house at Ulm?”

“It shall be worth thy while, indeed, if thou bringest me back my white dove,” was Gottfried’s answer.

“And how if I bring her back with a strapping reiter son-in-law?” laughed Hugh.  “What welcome should the fellow receive?”

“That would depend on what he might be,” replied Gottfried; and Hugh, his love of tormenting a little allayed by satisfaction in his buff suit, and by an eye to a heavy purse that lay by his brother’s hand on the table, added, “Little fear of that.  Our fellows would look for lustier brides than yon little pale face.  ’Tis whiter than ever this morning,—but no tears.  That is my brave girl.”

“Yes, father, I am ready to do your bidding,” replied Christina, meekly.

“That is well, child.  Mark me, no tears.  Thy mother wept day and night, and, when she had wept out her tears, she was sullen, when I would have been friendly towards her.  It was the worse for her.  But, so long as thou art good daughter to me, thou shalt find me good father to thee;” and for a moment there was a kindliness in his eye which made it sufficiently like that of his brother to give some consolation to the shrinking heart that he was rending from all it loved; and she steadied her voice for another gentle profession of obedience, for which she felt strengthened by the morning’s orisons.

“Well said, child.  Now canst sit on old Nibelung’s croup?  His back-bone is somewhat sharper than if he had battened in a citizen’s stall; but, if thine aunt can find thee some sort of pillion, I’ll promise thee the best ride thou hast had since we came from Innspruck, ere thou canst remember.”

“Christina has her own mule,” replied her uncle, “without troubling Nibelung to carry double.”

“Ho! her own!  An overfed burgomaster sort of a beast, that will turn restive at the first sight of the Eagle’s Ladder!  However, he may carry her so far, and, if we cannot get him up the mountain, I shall know what to do with him,” he muttered to himself.

But Hugh, like many a gentleman after him, was recusant at the sight of his daughter’s luggage; and yet it only loaded one sumpter mule, besides forming a few bundles which could be easily bestowed upon the saddles of his two knappen, while her lute hung by a silken string on her arm.  Both she and her aunt thought she had been extremely moderate; but his cry was, What could she want with so much?  Her mother had never been allowed more than would go into a pair of saddle-bags; and his own Jungfrau—she had never seen so much gear together in her life; he would be laughed to scorn for his presumption in bringing such a fine lady into the castle; it would be well if Freiherr Eberhard’s bride brought half as much.

Still he had a certain pride in it—he was, after all, by birth and breeding a burgher—and there had been evidently a softening and civilizing influence in the night spent beneath his paternal roof, and old habits, and perhaps likewise in the submission he had met with from his daughter.  The attendants, too, who had been pleased with their quarters, readily undertook to carry their share of the burthen, and, though he growled and muttered a little, he at length was won over to consent, chiefly, as it seemed, by Christina’s obliging readiness to leave behind the bundle that contained her holiday kirtle.

He had been spared all needless irritation.  Before his waking, Christina had been at the priest’s cell, and had received his last blessings and counsels, and she had, on the way back, exchanged her farewells and tears with her two dearest friends, Barbara Schmidt, and Regina Grundt, confiding to the former her cage of doves, and to the latter the myrtle, which, like every German maiden, she cherished in her window, to supply her future bridal wreath.  Now pale as death, but so resolutely composed as to be almost disappointing to her demonstrative aunt, she quietly went through her home partings; while Hausfrau Johanna adjured her father by all that was sacred to be a true guardian and protector of the child, and he could not forbear from a few tormenting auguries about the lanzknecht son-in-law.  Their effect was to make the good dame more passionate in her embraces and admonitions to Christina to take care of herself.  She would have a mass said every day that Heaven might have a care of her!

Master Gottfried was going to ride as far as the confines of the free city’s territory, and his round, sleek, cream-coloured palfrey, used to ambling in civic processions, was as great a contrast to raw-boned, wild-eyed Nibelung, all dappled with misty grey, as was the stately, substantial burgher to his lean, hungry-looking brother, or Dame Johanna’s dignified, curled, white poodle, which was forcibly withheld from following Christina, to the coarse-bristled, wolfish-looking hound who glared at the household pet with angry and contemptuous eyes, and made poor Christina’s heart throb with terror whenever it bounded near her.

Close to her uncle she kept, as beneath the trellised porches that came down from the projecting gables of the burghers’ houses many a well-known face gazed and nodded, as they took their way through the crooked streets, many a beggar or poor widow waved her a blessing.  Out into the market-place, with its clear fountain adorned with arches and statues, past the rising Dome Kirk, where the swarms of workmen unbonneted to the master-carver, and the reiter paused with an irreverent sneer at the small progress made since he could first remember the building.  How poor little Christina’s soul clung to every cusp of the lacework spire, every arch of the window, each of which she had hailed as an achievement!  The tears had well-nigh blinded her in a gush of feeling that came on her unawares, and her mule had his own way as he carried her under the arch of the tall and beautifully-sculptured bridge tower, and over the noble bridge across the Danube.

Her uncle spoke much, low and earnestly, to his brother.  She knew it was in commendation of her to his care, and an endeavour to impress him with a sense of the kind of protection she would require, and she kept out of earshot.  It was enough for her to see her uncle still, and feel that his tenderness was with her, and around her.  But at last he drew his rein.  “And now, my little one, the daughter of my heart, I must bid thee farewell,” he said.