Читать книгу The Dove in the Eagle's Nest - Yonge Charlotte Mary - Страница 2

The upper lattices of a tall, narrow window were open, and admitted the view, of first some richly-tinted vine leaves and purpling grapes, then, in dazzling freshness of new white stone, the lacework fabric of a half-built minster spire, with a mason’s crane on the summit, bending as though craving for a further supply of materials; and beyond, peeping through every crevice of the exquisite open fretwork, was the intensely blue sky of early autumn.

The lower longer panes of the window were closed, and the glass, divided into circles and quarrels, made the scene less distinct; but still the huge stone tower was traceable, and, farther off, the slope of a gently-rising hill, clothed with vineyards blushing into autumn richness.  Below, the view was closed by the gray wall of a court-yard, laden with fruit-trees in full bearing, and inclosing paved paths that radiated from a central fountain, and left spaces between, where a few summer flowers still lingered, and the remains of others showed what their past glory had been.

The interior of the room was wainscoted, the floor paved with bright red and cream-coloured tiles, and the tall stove in one corner decorated with the same.  The eastern end of the apartment was adorned with an exquisite small group carved in oak, representing the carpenter’s shop at Nazareth, with the Holy Child instructed by Joseph in the use of tools, and the Mother sitting with her book, “pondering these things in her heart.”  All around were blocks of wood and carvings in varying states of progress—some scarcely shaped out, and others in perfect completion.  And the subjects were equally various.  Here was an adoring angel with folded wings, clasped hands, and rapt face; here a majestic head of an apostle or prophet; here a lovely virgin saint, seeming to play smilingly with the instrument of her martyrdom; here a grotesque miserere group, illustrating a fairy tale, or caricaturing a popular fable here a beauteous festoon of flowers and fruit, emulating nature in all save colour; and on the work-table itself, growing under the master’s hand, was a long wreath, entirely composed of leaves and seed-vessels in their quaint and beauteous forms—the heart-shaped shepherd’s purse, the mask-like skull-cap, and the crowned urn of the henbane.  The starred cap of the poppy was actually being shaped under the tool, copied from a green capsule, surmounted with purple velvety rays, which, together with its rough and wavy leaf, was held in the hand of a young maiden who knelt by the table, watching the work with eager interest.

She was not a beautiful girl—not one of those whose “bright eyes rain influence, and judge the prize.”  She was too small, too slight, too retiring for such a position.  If there was something lily-like in her drooping grace, it was not the queen-lily of the garden that she resembled, but the retiring lily of the valley—so purely, transparently white was her skin, scarcely tinted by a roseate blush on the cheek, so tender and modest the whole effect of her slender figure, and the soft, downcast, pensive brown eyes, utterly dissimilar in hue from those of all her friends and kindred, except perhaps the bright, quick ones of her uncle, the master-carver.  Otherwise, his portly form, open visage, and good-natured stateliness, as well as his furred cap and gold chain, were thoroughly those of the German burgomaster of the fifteenth century; but those glittering black eyes had not ceased to betray their French, or rather Walloon, origin, though for several generations back the family had been settled at Ulm.  Perhaps, too, it was Walloon quickness and readiness of wit that had made them, so soon as they became affiliated, so prominent in all the councils of the good free city, and so noted for excellence in art and learning.  Indeed the present head of the family, Master Gottfried Sorel, was so much esteemed for his learning that he had once had serious thoughts of terming himself Magister Gothofredus Oxalicus, and might have carried it out but for the very decided objections of his wife, Dame Johanna, and his little niece, Christina, to being dubbed by any such surname.

Master Gottfried had had a scapegrace younger brother named Hugh, who had scorned both books and tools, had been the plague of the workshop, and, instead of coming back from his wandering year of improvement, had joined a band of roving Lanzknechts.  No more had been heard of him for a dozen or fifteen years, when he suddenly arrived at the paternal mansion at Ulm, half dead with intermittent fever, and with a young, broken-hearted, and nearly expiring wife, his spoil in his Italian campaigns.  His rude affection had utterly failed to console her for her desolated home and slaughtered kindred, and it had so soon turned to brutality that, when brought to comparative peace and rest in his brother’s home, there was nothing left for the poor Italian but to lie down and die, commending her babe in broken German to Hausfrau Johanna, and blessing Master Gottfried for his flowing Latin assurances that the child should be to them even as the little maiden who was lying in the God’s acre upon the hillside.

And verily the little Christina had been a precious gift to the bereaved couple.  Her father had no sooner recovered than he returned to his roving life, and, except for a report that he had been seen among the retainers of one of the robber barons of the Swabian Alps, nothing had been heard of him; and Master Gottfried only hoped to be spared the actual pain and scandal of knowing when his eyes were blinded and his head swept off at a blow, or when he was tumbled headlong into a moat, suspended from a tree, or broken on the wheel: a choice of fates that was sure sooner or later to befall him.  Meantime, both the burgomeister and burgomeisterinn did their utmost to forget that the gentle little girl was not their own; they set all their hopes and joys on her, and, making her supply the place at once of son and daughter, they bred her up in all the refinements and accomplishments in which the free citizens of Germany took the lead in the middle and latter part of the fifteenth century.  To aid her aunt in all house-wifely arts, to prepare dainty food and varied liquors, and to spin, weave, and broider, was only a part of Christina’s training; her uncle likewise set great store by her sweet Italian voice, and caused her to be carefully taught to sing and play on the lute, and he likewise delighted in hearing her read aloud to him from the hereditary store of MSS. and from the dark volumes that began to proceed from the press.  Nay, Master Gottfried had made experiments in printing and wood-engraving on his own account, and had found no head so intelligent, no hand so desirous to aid him, as his little Christina’s, who, in all that needed taste and skill rather than strength, was worth all his prentices and journeymen together.  Some fine bold wood-cuts had been produced by their joint efforts; but these less important occupations had of late been set aside by the engrossing interest of the interior fittings of the great “Dome Kirk,” which for nearly a century had been rising by the united exertions of the burghers, without any assistance from without.  The foundation had been laid in 1377; and at length, in the year of grace 1472, the crown of the apse had been closed in, and matters were so forward that Master Gottfried’s stall work was already in requisition for the choir.

“Three cubits more,” he reckoned.  “Child, hast thou found me fruits enough for the completing of this border?”

“O yes, mine uncle.  I have the wild rosehip, and the flat shield of the moonwort, and a pea-pod, and more whose names I know not.  But should they all be seed and fruit?”

“Yea, truly, my Stina, for this wreath shall speak of the goodly fruits of a completed life.”

“Even as that which you carved in spring told of the blossom and fair promise of youth,” returned the maiden.  “Methinks the one is the most beautiful, as it ought to be;” then, after a little pause, and some reckoning, “I have scarce seed-pods enough in store, uncle; might we not seek some rarer shapes in the herb-garden of Master Gerhard, the physician?  He, too, might tell me the names of some of these.”

“True, child; or we might ride into the country beyond the walls, and seek them.  What, little one, wouldst thou not?”

“So we go not far,” faltered Christina, colouring.

“Ha, thou hast not forgotten the fright thy companions had from the Schlangenwald reitern when gathering Maydew?  Fear not, little coward; if we go beyond the suburbs we will take Hans and Peter with their halberts.  But I believe thy silly little heart can scarce be free for enjoyment if it can fancy a Reiter within a dozen leagues of thee.”

“At your side I would not fear.  That is, I would not vex thee by my folly, and I might forget it,” replied Christina, looking down.

“My gentle child!” the old man said approvingly.  “Moreover, if our good Raiser has his way, we shall soon be free of the reitern of Schlangenwald, and Adlerstein, and all the rest of the mouse-trap barons.  He is hoping to form a league of us free imperial cities with all the more reasonable and honest nobles, to preserve the peace of the country.  Even now a letter from him was read in the Town Hall to that effect; and, when all are united against them, my lords-mousers must needs become pledged to the league, or go down before it.”

“Ah! that will be well,” cried Christina.  “Then will our wagons be no longer set upon at the Debateable Ford by Schlangenwald or Adlerstein; and our wares will come safely, and there will be wealth enough to raise our spire!  O uncle, what a day of joy will that be when Our Lady’s great statue will be set on the summit!”

“A day that I shall scarce see, and it will be well if thou dost,” returned her uncle, “unless the hearts of the burghers of Ulm return to the liberality of their fathers, who devised that spire!  But what trampling do I hear?”

There was indeed a sudden confusion in the house, and, before the uncle and niece could rise, the door was opened by a prosperous apple-faced dame, exclaiming in a hasty whisper, “Housefather, O Housefather, there are a troop of reitern at the door, dismounting already;” and, as the master came forward, brushing from his furred vest the shavings and dust of his work, she added in a more furtive, startled accent, “and, if I mistake not, one is thy brother!”

“He is welcome,” replied Master Gottfried, in his cheery fearless voice; “he brought us a choice gift last time he came; and it may be he is ready to seek peace among us after his wanderings.  Come hither, Christina, my little one; it is well to be abashed, but thou art not a child who need fear to meet a father.”

Christina’s extreme timidity, however, made her pale and crimson by turns, perhaps by the infection of anxiety from her aunt, who could not conceal a certain dissatisfaction and alarm, as the maiden, led on either side by her adopted parents, thus advanced from the little studio into a handsomely-carved wooden gallery, projecting into a great wainscoated room, with a broad carved stair leading down into it.  Down this stair the three proceeded, and reached the stone hall that lay beyond it, just as there entered from the trellised porch, that covered the steps into the street, a thin wiry man, in a worn and greasy buff suit, guarded on the breast and arms with rusty steel, and a battered helmet with the vizor up, disclosing a weather-beaten bronzed face, with somewhat wild dark eyes, and a huge grizzled moustache forming a straight line over his lips.  Altogether he was a complete model of the lawless Reiter or Lanzknecht, the terror of Swabia, and the bugbear of Christina’s imagination.  The poor child’s heart died within her as she perceived the mutual recognition between her uncle and the new comer; and, while Master Gottfried held out his hands with a cordial greeting of “Welcome, home, brother Hugh,” she trembled from head to foot, as she sank on her knees, and murmured, “Your blessing, honoured father.”

“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.

Christina could not be restrained from springing from her mule, and kneeling on the grass to receive his blessing, her face hidden in her hands, that her father might not see her tears.

“The good God bless thee, my child,” said Gottfried, who seldom invoked the saints; “bless thee, and bring thee back in His own good time.  Thou hast been a good child to us; be so to thine own father.  Do thy work, and come back to us again.”

The tears rained down his cheeks, as Christina’s head lay on his bosom, and then with a last kiss he lifted her again on her mule, mounted his horse, and turned back to the city, with his servant.

Hugh was merciful enough to let his daughter gaze long after the retreating figure ere he summoned her on.  All day they rode, at first through meadow lands and then through more broken, open ground, where at mid-day they halted, and dined upon the plentiful fare with which the housemother had provided them, over which Hugh smacked his lips, and owned that they did live well in the old town!  Could Christina make such sausages?

“Not as well as my aunt.”

“Well, do thy best, and thou wilt win favour with the baron.”

The evening began to advance, and Christina was very weary, as the purple mountains that she had long watched with a mixture of fear and hope began to look more distinct, and the ground was often in abrupt ascents.  Her father, without giving space for complaints, hurried her on.  He must reach the Debateable Ford ere dark.  It was, however, twilight when they came to an open space, where, at the foot of thickly forest-clad rising ground, lay an expanse of turf and rich grass, through which a stream made its way, standing in a wide tranquil pool as if to rest after its rough course from the mountains.  Above rose, like a dark wall, crag upon crag, peak on peak, in purple masses, blending with the sky; and Hugh, pointing upwards to a turreted point, apparently close above their heads, where a star of light was burning, told her that there was Adlerstein, and this was the Debateable Ford.

In fact, as he explained, while splashing through the shallow expanse, the stream had changed its course.  It was the boundary between the lands of Schlangenwald and Adlerstein, but it had within the last sixty years burst forth in a flood, and had then declined to return to its own bed, but had flowed in a fresh channel to the right of the former one.  The Freiherren von Adlerstein claimed the ground to the old channel, the Graffen von Schlangenwald held that the river was the landmark; and the dispute had a greater importance than seemed explained from the worth of the rushy space of ground in question, for this was the passage of the Italian merchants on their way from Constance, and every load that was overthrown in the river was regarded as the lawful prey of the noble on whose banks the catastrophe befell.

Any freight of goods was anxiously watched by both nobles, and it was not their fault if no disaster befell the travellers.  Hugh talked of the Schlangenwald marauders with the bitterness of a deadly feud, but manifestly did not breathe freely till his whole convoy were safe across both the wet and the dry channel.

Christina supposed they should now ascend to the castle; but her father laughed, saying that the castle was not such a step off as she fancied, and that they must have daylight for the Eagle’s Stairs.  He led the way through the trees, up ground that she thought mountain already, and finally arrived at a miserable little hut, which served the purpose of an inn.

He was received there with much obsequiousness, and was plainly a great authority there.  Christina, weary and frightened, descended from her mule, and was put under the protection of a wild, rough-looking peasant woman, who stared at her like something from another world, but at length showed her a nook behind a mud partition, where she could spread her mantle, and at least lie down, and tell her beads unseen, if she could not sleep in the stifling, smoky atmosphere, amid the sounds of carousal among her father and his fellows.

The great hound came up and smelt to her.  His outline was so-wolfish, that she had nearly screamed: but, more in terror at the men who might have helped her than even at the beast, she tried to smooth him with her trembling hand, whispered his name of “Festhold,” and found him licking her hand, and wagging his long rough tail.  And he finally lay down at her feet, as though to protect her.

“Is it a sign that good angels will not let me be hurt?” she thought, and, wearied out, she slept.