The Dove in the Eagle's Nest Part 7

This was the time if ever to struggle against her destiny. The friar would probably have listened to her if she had made any vehement opposition to a forced marriage, and if not, a few shrieks would have brought perhaps Father Norbert, and certainly the whole population; but the horror and shame of being found in such a situation, even more than the probability that she might meet with vengeance rather than protection, withheld her. Even the friar could hardly have removed her, and this was her only chance of safety from the Baroness's fury. Had she hated and loathed Sir Eberhard, perhaps she had striven harder, but his whole demeanour constrained and quelled her, and the chief effort she made against yielding was the reply, "I am no cloister maid, holy father, but-"

The "but" was lost in the friar's jovial speech. "Oh, then, all is well! Take thy place, pretty one, there, by the door, thou know'st it should be in the porch, but-ach, I understand!" as Eberhard quietly drew the bolt within. "No, no, little one, I have no time for bride scruples and coyness; I have to train three dull-headed louts to be Shem, Ham, and j.a.phet before dark. Hast confessed of late?"

"This morning, but-" said Christina, and "This morning," to her great joy, said Eberhard, and, in her satisfaction thereat, her second "but" was not followed up.

The friar asked their names, and both gave the Christian name alone; then the brief and simple rite was solemnized in its shortest form. Christina had, by very force of surprise and dismay, gone through all without signs of agitation, except the quivering of her whole frame, and the icy coldness of the hand, where Eberhard had to place the ring on each finger in turn.

But each mutual vow was a strange relief to her long-tossed and divided mind, and it was rest indeed to let her affection have its will, and own him indeed as a protector to be loved instead of shunned. When all was over, and he gathered the two little cold hands into his large one, his arm supporting her trembling form, she felt for the moment, poor little thing, as if she could never be frightened again.

Parish registers were not, even had this been a parish church, but Brother Peter asked, when he had concluded, "Well, my son, which of his flock am I to report to your Pfarrer as linked together?"

"The less your tongue wags on that matter till I call on you, the better," was the stern reply. "Look you, no ill shall befall you if you are wise, but remember, against the day I call you to bear witness, that you have this day wedded Baron Eberhard von Adlerstein the younger, to Christina, the daughter of Hugh Sorel, the Esquire of Ulm."

"Thou hast played me a trick, Sir Baron!" said the friar, somewhat dismayed, but more amused, looking up at Eberhard, who, as Christina now saw, had divested himself of his gilt spurs, gold chain, silvered belt and horn, and eagle's plume, so as to have pa.s.sed for a simple lanzknecht. "I would have had no such gear as this!"

"So I supposed," said Eberhard coolly.

"Young folks! young folks!" laughed the friar, changing his tone, and holding up his finger slyly; "the little bird so cunningly nestled in the church to fly out my Lady Baroness! Well, so thou hast a pretty, timid lambkin there, Sir Baron. Take care you use her mildly."

Eberhard looked into Christina's face with a smile, that to her, at least, was answer enough; and he held out half a dozen links of his gold chain to the friar, and tossed a coin to each of the lay brethren.

"Not for the poor friar himself," explained Brother Peter, on receiving this marriage fee; "it all goes to the weal of the brotherhood."

"As you please," said Eberhard. "Silence, that is all! And thy friary-?"

"The poor house of St. Francis at Offingen for the present, n.o.ble sir," said the priest. "There will you hear of me, if you find me not. And now, fare thee well, my gracious lady. I hope one day thou wilt have more words to thank the poor brother who has made thee a n.o.ble Baroness."

"Ah, good father, pardon my fright and confusion," Christina tried to murmur, but at that moment a sudden glow and glare of light broke out on the eastern rock, illuminating the fast darkening little church with a flickering glare, that made her start in terror as if the fires of heaven were threatening this stolen marriage; but the friar and Eberhard both exclaimed, "The Needfire alight already!" And she recollected how often she had seen these bonfires on Midsummer night shining red on every hill around Ulm. Loud shouts were greeting the uprising flame, and the people gathering thicker and thicker on the slope. The friar undid the door to hasten out into the throng, and Eberhard said he had left his spurs and belt in the hermit's cell, and must return thither, after which he would walk home with his bride, moving at the same time towards the stair, and thereby causing a sudden scuffle and fall. "So, master hermit," quoth Eberhard, as the old man picked himself up, looking horribly frightened; "that's your hermit's abstraction, is it? No whining, old man, I am not going to hurt thee, so thou canst hold thy tongue. Otherwise I will smoke thee out of thy hole like a wild cat! What, thou aiding me with my belt, my lovely one? Thanks; the snap goes too hard for thy little hands. Now, then, the fire will light us gaily down the mountain side."

But it soon appeared that to depart was impossible, unless by forcing a way through the busy throng in the full red glare of the firelight, and they were forced to pause at the opening of the hermit's cave, Christina leaning on her husband's arm, and a fold of his mantle drawn round her to guard her from the night-breeze of the mountain, as they waited for a quiet s.p.a.ce in which to depart unnoticed. It was a strange, wild scene! The fire was on a bare, flat rock, which probably had been yearly so employed ever since the Kelts had brought from the East the rite that they had handed on to the Swabians-the Beltane fire, whose like was blazing everywhere in the Alps, in the Hartz, nay, even in England, Scotland, and on the granite points of Ireland. Heaped up for many previous days with f.a.ggots from the forest, then apparently inexhaustible, the fire roared and crackled, and rose high, red and smoky, into the air, paling the moon, and obscuring the stars. Round it, completely hiding the bonfire itself, were hosts of dark figures swarming to approach it-all with a purpose. All held old shoes or superannuated garments in their hands to feed the flame; for it was esteemed needful that every villager should contribute something from his house-once, no doubt, as an offering to Bel, but now as a mere unmeaning observance. And shrieks of merriment followed the contribution of each too well-known article of rubbish that had been in reserve for the Needfire! Girls and boys had nuts to throw in, in pairs, to judge by their bounces of future chances of matrimony. Then came a shouting, t.i.ttering, and falling back, as an old boor came forward like a priest with something heavy and ghastly in his arms, which was thrown on with a tremendous shout, darkened the glow for a moment, then hissed, cracked, and emitted a horrible odour.

It was a horse's head, the right owner of which had been carefully kept for the occasion, though long past work. Christina shuddered, and felt as if she had fallen upon a Pagan ceremony; as indeed was true enough, only that the Adlersteiners attached no meaning to the performance, except a vague notion of securing good luck.

With the same idea the f.a.ggots were pulled down, and arranged so as to form a sort of lane of fire. Young men rushed along it, and then bounded over the diminished pile, amid loud shouts of laughter and either admiration or derision; and, in the meantime, a variety of odd, recusant noises, grunts, squeaks, and lowings proceeding from the darkness were explained to the startled little bride by her husband to come from all the cattle of the mountain farms around, who were to have their weal secured by being driven through the Needfire.

It may well be imagined that the animals were less convinced of the necessity of this performance than their masters. Wonderful was the clatter and confusion, horrible the uproar raised behind to make the poor things proceed at all, desperate the shout when some half- frantic creature kicked or attempted a charge wild the glee when a persecuted goat or sheep took heart of grace, and flashed for one moment between the crackling, flaring, smoking walls. When one cow or sheep off a farm went, all the others were pretty sure to follow it, and the owner had then only to be on the watch at the other end to turn them back, with their flame-dazzled eyes, from going unawares down the precipice, a fate from which the pa.s.sing through the fire was evidently not supposed to ensure them. The swine, those special German delights, were of course the most refractory of all. Some, by dint of being pulled away from the lane of fire, were induced to rush through it; but about half-way they generally made a bolt, either sidelong through the flaming fence or backwards among the legs of their persecutors, who were upset amid loud imprecations. One huge, old, lean, high-backed sow, with a large family, truly feminine in her want of presence of mind, actually charged into the midst of the bonfire itself, scattering it to the right and left with her snout, and emitting so horrible a smell of singed bacon, that it might almost be feared that some of her progeny were antic.i.p.ating the invention of Chinese roasting-pigs. However, their proprietor, Jobst, counted them out all safe on the other side, and there only resulted some sighs and lamentations among the seniors, such as Hatto and Ursel, that it boded ill to have the Needfire trodden out by an old sow.

All the castle live-stock were undergoing the same ceremony. Eberhard concerned himself little about the vagaries of the sheep and pigs, and only laughed a little as the great black goat, who had seen several Midsummer nights, and stood on his guard, made a sudden short run and b.u.t.ted down old Hatto, then skipped off like a chamois into the darkness, unheeding, the old rogue, the whispers that connected his unlucky hue with the doings of the Walpurgisnacht. But when it came to the horses, Eberhard could not well endure the sight of the endeavours to force them, snorting, rearing, and struggling, through anything so abhorrent to them as the hedge of fire.

The Schneiderlein, with all the force of his powerful arm, had hold of Eberhard's own young white mare, who, with ears turned back, nostrils dilated, and wild eyes, her fore-feet firmly planted wide apart, was using her whole strength for resistance; and, when a heavy blow fell on her, only plunged backwards, and kicked without advancing. It was more than Eberhard could endure, and Christina's impulse was to murmur, "O do not let him do it;" but this he scarcely heard, as he exclaimed, "Wait for me here!" and, as he stepped forward, sent his voice before him, forbidding all blows to the mare.

The creature's extreme terror ceased at once upon hearing his voice, and there was an instant relaxation of all violence of resistance as he came up to her, took her halter from the Schneiderlein, patted her glossy neck, and spoke to her. But the tumult of warning voices around him a.s.sured him that it would be a fatal thing to spare the steed the pa.s.sage through the fire, and he strove by encouragements and caresses with voice and hand to get her forward, leading her himself; but the poor beast trembled so violently, and, though making a few steps forward, stopped again in such exceeding horror of the flame, that Eberhard had not the heart to compel her, turned her head away, and a.s.sured her that she should not be further tormented.

"The gracious lordship is wrong," said public opinion, by the voice of old Bauer Ulrich, the sacrificer of the horse's head. "Heaven forfend that evil befall him and that mare in the course of the year."

And the buzz of voices concurred in telling of the recusant pigs who had never developed into sausages, the sheep who had only escaped to be eaten by wolves, the mule whose bones had been found at the bottom of an abyss.

Old Ursel was seriously concerned, and would have laid hold on her young master to remonstrate, but a fresh notion had arisen-Would the gracious Freiherr set a-rolling the wheel, which was already being lighted in the fire, and was to conclude the festivities by being propelled down the hill-figuring, only that no one present knew it, the sun's declension from his solst.i.tial height? Eberhard made no objection; and Christina, in her shelter by the cave, felt no little dismay at being left alone there, and moreover had a strange, weird feeling at the wild, uncanny ceremony he was engaged in, not knowing indeed that it was sun-worship, but afraid that it could be no other than unholy sorcery.

The wheel, flaring or reddening in all its spokes, was raised from the bonfire, and was driven down the smoothest piece of green sward, which formed an inclined plane towards the stream. If its course was smooth, and it only became extinguished by leaping into the water, the village would flourish; and prosperity above all was expected if it should spring over the narrow channel, and attempt to run up the other side. Such things had happened in the days of the good Freiherren Ebbo and Friedel, though the wheel had never gone right since the present baron had been excommunicated; but his heir having been twice seen at ma.s.s in this last month great hopes were founded upon him.

There was a shout to clear the slope. Eberhard, in great earnest and some anxiety, accepted the gauntlet that he was offered to protect his hand, steadied the wheel therewith, and, with a vigorous impulse from hand and foot, sent it bounding down the slope, among loud cries and a general scattering of the idlers who had crowded full into the very path of the fiery circle, which flamed up brilliantly for the moment as it met the current of air. But either there was an obstacle in the way, or the young Baron's push had not been quite straight: the wheel suddenly swerved aside, its course swerved to the right, maugre all the objurgations addressed to it as if it had been a living thing, and the next moment it had disappeared, all but a smoky, smouldering spot of red, that told where it lay, charring and smoking on its side, without having fulfilled a quarter of its course.

People drew off gravely and silently, and Eberhard himself was strangely discomfited when he came back to the hermitage, and, wrapping Christina in his cloak, prepared to return, so soon as the glare of the fire should have faded from his eyesight enough to make it safe to tread so precipitous a path. He had indeed this day made a dangerous venture, and both he and Christina could not but feel disheartened by the issue of all the omens of the year, the more because she had a vague sense of wrong in consulting or trusting them. It seemed to her all one frightened, uncomprehended dream ever since her father had left her in the chapel; and, though conscious of her inability to have prevented her marriage, yet she blamed herself, felt despairing as she thought of the future, and, above all, dreaded the Baron and the Baroness and their anger. Eberhard, after his first few words, was silent, and seemed solely absorbed in leading her safely along the rocky path, sometimes lifting her when he thought her in danger of stumbling. It was one of the lightest, shortest nights of the year, and a young moon added to the brightness in open places, while in others it made the rocks and stones cast strange elvish shadows. The distance was not entirely lost; other Beltane fires could be seen, like beacons, on every hill, and the few lights in the castle shone out like red fiery eyes in its heavy dark pile of building.

Before entering, Eberhard paused, pulled off his own wedding-ring, and put it into his bosom, and taking his bride's hand in his, did the same for her, and bade her keep the ring till they could wear them openly.

"Alas! then," said Christina, "you would have this secret?"

"Unless I would have to seek thee down the oubliette, my little one," said Eberhard "or, what might even be worse, see thee burnt on the hillside for bewitching me with thine arts! No, indeed, my darling. Were it only my father, I could make him love thee; but my mother-I could not trust her where she thought the honour of our house concerned. It shall not be for long. Thou know'st we are to make peace with the Kaiser, and then will I get me employment among Kurfurst Albrecht's companies of troops, and then shalt thou prank it as my Lady Freiherrinn, and teach me the ways of cities."

"Alas! I fear me it has been a great sin!" sighed the poor little wife.

"For thee-thou couldst not help it," said Eberhard; "for me-who knows how many deadly ones it may hinder? Cheer up, little one; no one can harm thee while the secret is kept."

Poor Christina had no choice but submission; but it was a sorry bridal evening, to enter her husband's home in shrinking terror; with the threat of the oubliette before her, and with a sense of shame and deception hanging upon her, making the wonted scowl of the old baroness cut her both with remorse and dread.

She did indeed sit beside her bridegroom at the supper, but how little like a bride! even though he pushed the salt-cellar, as if by accident, below her place. She thought of her myrtle, tended in vain at home by Barbara Schmidt; she thought of Ulm courtships, and how all ought to have been; the solemn emba.s.sage to her uncle, the stately negotiations; the troth plight before the circle of ceremonious kindred and merry maidens, of whom she had often been one-the subsequent attentions of the betrothed on all festival days, the piles of linen and all plenishings acc.u.mulated since babyhood, and all reviewed and laid out for general admiration (Ah! poor Aunt Johanna still spinning away to add to the many webs in her walnut presses!)-then the grand procession to fetch home the bride, the splendid festival with the musicians, dishes, and guest-tables to the utmost limit that was allowed by the city laws, and the bride's hair so joyously covered by her matron's curch amid the merriment of her companion maidens.

Poor child! After she had crept away to her own room, glad that her father was not yet returned, she wept bitterly over the wrong that she felt she had done to the kind uncle and aunt, who must now look in vain for their little Christina, and would think her lost to them, and to all else that was good. At least she had had the Church's blessing-but that, strange to say, was regarded, in burgher life before the Reformation, as rather the ornament of a n.o.ble marriage than as essential to the civil contract; and a marriage by a priest was regarded by the citizens rather as a means of eluding the need of obtaining the parent's consent, than as a more regular and devout manner of wedding. However, Christina felt this the one drop of peace. The blessings and prayers were warm at her heart, and gave her hope. And as to drops of joy, of them there was no lack, for had not she now a right to love Eberhard with all her heart and conscience, and was not it a wonderful love on his part that had made him stoop to the little white-faced burgher maid, despised even by her own father? O better far to wear the maiden's uncovered head for him than the myrtle wreath for any one else!

CHAPTER VII: THE SCHNEIDERLEIN'S RETURN

The poor little unowned bride had more to undergo than her imagination had conceived at the first moment.

When she heard that the marriage was to be a secret, she had not understood that Eberhard was by no means disposed to observe much more caution than mere silence. A rough, though kindly man, he did not thoroughly comprehend the shame and confusion that he was bringing upon her by departing from his former demeanour. He knew that, so enormous was the distance then supposed to exist between the n.o.ble and the burgher, there was no chance of any one dreaming of the true state of the case, and that as long as Christina was not taken for his wife, there was no personal danger for her from his mother, who-so lax were the morals of the German n.o.bility with regard to all of inferior rank-would tolerate her with complacency as his favourite toy; and he was taken by surprise at the agony of grief and shame with which she slowly comprehended his a.s.surance that she had nothing to fear.

There was no help for it. The oubliette would probably be the portion of the low-born girl who had interfered with the sixteen quarterings of the Adlerstein shield, and poor Christina never stepped across its trap-door without a shudder lest it should open beneath her. And her father would probably have been hung from the highest tower, in spite of his shrewd care to be aware of nothing. Christina consoled herself with the hope that he knew all the time why he had been sent out of the way, for, with a broad grin that had made her blush painfully, he had said he knew she would be well taken care of, and that he hoped she was not breaking her heart for want of an escort. She tried to extort Eberhard's permission to let him at least know how it was; but Eberhard laughed, saying he believed the old fox knew just as much as he chose; and, in effect, Sorel, though now and then gratifying his daughter's scruples, by serving as a shield to her meetings with the young Baron, never allowed himself to hear a hint of the true state of affairs.

Eberhard's love and reverence were undiminished, and the time spent with him would have been perfectly happy could she ever have divested herself of anxiety and alarm; but the periods of his absence from the castle were very terrible to her, for the other women of the household, quick to perceive that she no longer repelled him, had lost that awe that had hitherto kept them at a distance from her, and treated her with a familiarity, sometimes coa.r.s.e, sometimes spiteful, always hateful and degrading. Even old Ursel had become half- pitying, half-patronizing; and the old Baroness, though not molesting her, took not the slightest notice of her.

This state of things lasted much longer than there had been reason to expect at the time of the marriage. The two Freiherren then intended to set out in a very short time to make their long talked-of submission to the Emperor at Ratisbon; but, partly from their German tardiness of movement, partly from the obstinate delays interposed by the proud old Freiherrinn, who was as averse as ever to the measure, partly from reports that the Court was not yet arrived at Ratisbon, the expedition was again and again deferred, and did not actually take place till September was far advanced.

Poor Christina would have given worlds to go with them, and even entreated to be sent to Ulm with an avowal of her marriage to her uncle and aunt, but of this Eberhard would not hear. He said the Ulmers would thus gain an hostage, and hamper his movements; and, if her wedding was not to be confessed-poor child!-she could better bear to remain where she was than to face Hausfrau Johanna. Eberhard was fully determined to enrol himself in some troop, either Imperial, or, if not, among the Free Companies, among whom men of rank were often found, and he would then fetch or send for his wife and avow her openly, so soon as she should be out of his mother's reach. He longed to leave her father at home, to be some protection to her, but Hugh Sorel was so much the most intelligent and skilful of the retainers as to be absolutely indispensable to the party-he was their only scribe; and moreover his new suit of buff rendered him a creditable member of a troop that had been very hard to equip. It numbered about ten men-at-arms, only three being left at home to garrison the castle-namely, Hatto, who was too old to take; Hans, who had been hopelessly lame and deformed since the old Baron had knocked him off a cliff in a pa.s.sion; and Squinting Matz, a runaway servant, who had murdered his master, the mayor of Strasburg, and might be caught and put to death if any one recognized him. If needful the villagers could always be called in to defend the castle: but of this there was little or no danger-the Eagle's Steps were defence enough in themselves, and the party were not likely to be absent more than a week or ten days-a grievous length of time, poor Christina thought, as she stood straining her eyes on the top of the watch-tower, to watch them as far as possible along the plain. Her heart was very sad, and the omen of the burning wheel so continually haunted her that even in her sleep that night she saw its brief course repeated, beheld its rapid fall and extinction, and then tracked the course of the sparks that darted from it, one rising and gleaming high in air till it shone like a star, another pursuing a fitful and irregular, but still bright course amid the dry gra.s.s on the hillside, just as she had indeed watched some of the sparks on that night, minding her of the words of the Allhallow-tide legend: "Fulgebunt justi et tanquam scintillae in arundinete discurrent"-a sentence which remained with her when awake, and led her to seek it out in her Latin Bible in the morning.

Reluctantly had she gone down to the noontide meal, feeling, though her husband and father were far less of guardians than they should have been, yet that there was absolute rest, peace, and protection in their presence compared with what it was to be alone with Freiherrinn Kunigunde and her rude women without them. A few sneers on her daintiness and uselessness had led her to make an offer of a.s.sisting in the grand chopping of sausage meat and preparation of winter stores, and she had been answered with contempt that my young lord would not have her soil her delicate hands, when one of the maids who had been sent to fetch beer from the cellar came back with startled looks, and the exclamation, "There is the Schneiderlein riding up the Eagle's Ladder upon Freiherr Ebbo's white mare!"

All the women sprang up together, and rushed to the window, whence they could indeed recognize both man and horse; and presently it became plain that both were stained with blood, weary, and spent; indeed, nothing but extreme exhaustion would have induced the man-at- arms to trust the tired, stumbling horse up such a perilous path.

Loud were the exclamations, "Ah! no good could come of not leading that mare through the Johannisfeuer."

"This shameful expedition! Only harm could befall. This is thy doing, thou mincing city-girl."

"All was certain to go wrong when a pale mist widow came into the place."

The angry and dismayed cries all blended themselves in confusion in the ears of the only silent woman present; the only one that sounded distinctly on her brain was that of the last speaker, "A pale, mist widow," as, holding herself a little in the rear of the struggling, jostling little mob of women, who hardly made way even for their acknowledged lady, she followed with failing limbs the universal rush to the entrance as soon as man and horse had mounted the slope and were lost sight of.