The Dove in the Eagle's Nest Part 32

"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, m.u.f.fled 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?"

"Hus.h.!.+ 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 ident.i.ty. 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 ma.s.ses 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 pa.s.sed 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?"