The Dove in the Eagle's Nest by Charlotte M. Yonge (best book club books TXT) 📕

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 embassage 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 accumulated 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 noble 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 noble 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 nobility 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 assurance 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 coarse, 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 passion; 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 grass 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