The Dove in the Eagle's Nest by Charlotte M. Yonge (i read book TXT) 📕

good,” she said, but without thanks; and, feeling the soft lambswool: “Is that what you burgher-women wear?  Father is to give me a furred mantle, if only some court dame would pass the Debateable Ford.  But the Schlangenwaldern got the last before ever we could get down.  Jobst was so stupid.  He did not give us warning in time; but he is to be hanged next time if he does not.”

Christina’s blood curdled as she heard this speech in a weak little complaining tone, that otherwise put her sadly in mind of Barbara Schmidt’s little sister, who had pined and wasted to death.  “Never mind, Trudchen,” answered the brother kindly; “meantime I have kept all the wild catskins for thee, and may be this—this—she could sew them up into a mantle for thee.”

“O let me see,” cried the young lady eagerly; and Sir Eberhard, walking off, presently returned with an armful of the beautiful brindled furs of the mountain cat, reminding Christina of her aunt’s gentle domestic favourite.  Ermentrude sat up, and regarded the placing out of them with great interest; and thus her brother left her employed, and so much delighted that she had not flagged, when a great bell proclaimed that it was the time for the noontide meal, for which Christina, in spite of all her fears of the company below stairs, had been constrained by mountain air to look forward with satisfaction.

Ermentrude, she found, meant to go down, but with no notion of the personal arrangements that Christina had been wont to think a needful preliminary.  With all her hair streaming, down she went, and was so gladly welcomed by her father that it was plain that her presence was regarded as an unusual advance towards recovery, and Christina feared lest he might already be looking out for the stout husband.  She had much to tell him about the catskin cloak, and then she was seized with eager curiosity at the sight of Christina’s bundles, and especially at her lute, which she must hear at once.

“Not now,” said her mother, “there will be jangling and jingling enough by and by—meat now.”

The whole establishment were taking their places—or rather tumbling into them.  A battered, shapeless metal vessel seemed to represent the salt-cellar, and next to it Hugh Sorel seated himself, and kept a place for her beside him.  Otherwise she would hardly have had seat or food.’ She was now able to survey the inmates of the castle.  Besides the family themselves, there were about a dozen men, all ruffianly-looking, and of much lower grade than her father, and three women.  One, old Ursel, the wife of Hatto the forester, was a bent, worn, but not ill-looking woman, with a motherly face; the younger ones were hard, bold creatures, from whom Christina felt a shrinking recoil.  The meal was dressed by Ursel and her kitchen boy.  From a great cauldron, goat’s flesh and broth together were ladled out into wooden bowls.  That every one provided their own spoon and knife—no fork—was only what Christina was used to in the most refined society, and she had the implements in a pouch hanging to her girdle; but she was not prepared for the unwashed condition of the bowls, nor for being obliged to share that of her father—far less for the absence of all blessing on the meal, and the coarse boisterousness of manners prevailing thereat.  Hungry as she was, she did not find it easy to take food under these circumstances, and she was relieved when Ermentrude, overcome by the turmoil, grew giddy, and was carried upstairs by her father, who laid her down upon her great bed, and left her to the attendance of Christina.  Ursel had followed, but was petulantly repulsed by her young lady in favour of the newcomer, and went away grumbling.

Nestled on her bed, Ermentrude insisted on hearing the lute, and Christina had to creep down to fetch it, with some other of her goods, in trembling haste, and redoubled disgust at the aspect of the meal, which looked even more repulsive in this later stage, and to one who was no longer partaking of it.

Low and softly, with a voice whence she could scarcely banish tears, and in dread of attracting attention, Christina sung to the sick girl, who listened with a sort of rude wonder, and finally was lulled to sleep.  Christina ventured to lay down her instrument and move towards the window, heavily mullioned with stone, barred with iron, and glazed with thick glass; being in fact the only glazed window in the castle.  To her great satisfaction it did not look out over the loathsome court, but over the opening of the ravine.  The apartment occupied the whole floor of the keep; it was stone-paved, but the roof was boarded, and there was a round turret at each angle.  One contained the staircase, and was that which ran up above the keep, served as a watch-tower, and supported the Eagle banner.  The other three were empty, and one of these, which had a strong door, and a long loophole window looking out over the open country, Christina hoped that she might appropriate.  The turret was immediately over the perpendicular cliff that descended into the plain.  A stone thrown from the window would have gone straight down, she knew not where.  Close to her ears rushed the descending waterfall in its leap over the rock side, and her eyes could rest themselves on the green meadow land below, and the smooth water of the Debateable Ford; nay—far, far away beyond retreating ridges of wood and field—she thought she could track a silver line and, guided by it, a something that might be a city.  Her heart leapt towards it, but she was recalled by Ermentrude’s fretfully imperious voice.

“I was only looking forth from the window, lady,” she said, returning.

“Ah! thou saw’st no travellers at the Ford?” cried Ermentrude, starting up with lively interest.

“No, lady; I was gazing at the far distance.  Know you if it be indeed Ulm that we see from these windows?”

“Ulm?  That is where thou comest from?” said Ermentrude languidly.

“My happy home, with my dear uncle and aunt!  O, if I can but see it hence, it will be joy!”

“I do not know.  Let me see,” said Ermentrude, rising; but at the window her pale blue eyes gazed vacantly as if she did not know what she was looking at or for.

“Ah! if the steeple of the Dome Kirk were but finished, I could not mistake it,” said Christina.  “How beauteous the white spire will look from hence!”

“Dome Kirk?” repeated Ermentrude; “what is that?”

Such an entire blank as the poor child’s mind seemed to be was inconceivable to the maiden, who had been bred up in the busy hum of men, where the constant resort of strange merchants, the daily interests of a self-governing municipality, and the numerous festivals, both secular and religious, were an unconscious education, even without that which had been bestowed upon her by teachers, as well as by her companionship with her uncle, and participation in his studies, taste and arts.

Ermentrude von Adlerstein had, on the contrary, not only never gone beyond the Kohler’s hut on the one side, and the mountain village on the other, but she never seen more of life than the festival at the wake the hermitage chapel there on Midsummer-day.  The only strangers who ever came to the castle were disbanded lanzknechts who took service with her father, or now and then a captive whom he put to ransom.  She knew absolutely nothing of the world, except for a general belief that Freiherren lived there to do what they chose with other people, and that the House of Adlerstein was the freest and noblest in existence.  Also there was a very positive hatred to the house of Schlangenwald, and no less to that of Adlerstein Wildschloss, for no reason that Christina could discover save that, being a younger branch of the family, they had submitted to the Emperor.  To destroy either the Graf von Schlangenwald, or her Wildschloss cousin, was evidently the highest gratification Ermentrude could conceive; and, for the rest, that her father and brother should make successful captures at the Debateable Ford was the more abiding, because more practicable hope.  She had no further ideas, except perhaps to elude her mother’s severity, and to desire her brother’s success in chamois-hunting.  The only mental culture she had ever received was that old Ursel had taught her the Credo, Pater Noster, and Ave, as correctly as might be expected from a long course of traditionary repetitions of an incomprehensible language.  And she knew besides a few German rhymes and jingles, half Christian, half heathen, with a legend or two which, if the names were Christian, ran grossly wild from all Christian meaning or morality.  As to the amenities, nay, almost the proprieties, of life, they were less known in that baronial castle than in any artisan’s house at Ulm.  So little had the sick girl figured them to herself, that she did not even desire any greater means of ease than she possessed.  She moaned and fretted indeed, with aching limbs and blank weariness, but without the slightest formed desire for anything to remove her discomfort, except the few ameliorations she knew, such as sitting on her brother’s knee, with her head on his shoulder, or tasting the mountain berries that he gathered for her.  Any other desire she exerted herself to frame was for finery to be gained from the spoils of travellers.

And this was Christina’s charge, whom she must look upon as the least alien spirit in this dreadful castle of banishment!  The young and old lords seemed to her savage bandits, who frightened her only less than did the proud sinister expression of the old lady, for she had not even the merit of showing any tenderness towards the sickly girl, of whom she was ashamed, and evidently regarded the town-bred attendant as a contemptible interloper.

Long, long did the maiden weep and pray that night after Ermentrude had sunk to sleep.  She strained her eyes with home-sick longings to detect lights where she thought Ulm might be; and, as she thought of her uncle and aunt, the poodle and the cat round the stove, the maids spinning and the prentices knitting as her uncle read aloud some grave good book, most probably the legend of the saint of the day, and contrasted it with the rude gruff sounds of revelry that found their way up the turret stairs, she could hardly restrain her sobs from awakening the young lady whose bed she was to share.  She thought almost with envy of her own patroness, who was cast into the lake of Bolsena with a millstone about her neck—a better fate, thought she, than to live on in such an abode of loathsomeness and peril.

But then had not St. Christina floated up alive, bearing up her millstone with her?  And had not she been put into a dungeon full of venomous reptiles who, when they approached her, had all been changed to harmless doves?  Christina had once asked Father Balthazar how this could be; and had he not replied that the Church did not teach these miracles as matters of faith, but that she might there discern in figure how meek Christian holiness rose above all crushing burthens, and transformed the rudest natures.  This poor maiden-dying, perhaps; and oh! how unfit to live or die!—might it be her part to do some good work by her, and infuse some Christian hope, some godly fear?  Could it be for this that the saints had led her hither?

CHAPTER III
THE FLOTSAM AND JETSAM OF THE DEBATEABLE FORD

Life in Schloss Adlerstein was little less intolerable than Christina’s imagination had depicted it.  It was entirely devoid of all the graces of chivalry, and its squalor and coarseness, magnified into absurdity by haughtiness and violence, were almost inconceivable.  Fortunately for her, the inmates of the castle resided almost wholly below stairs in the hall and kitchen, and in some dismal dens in the thickness of their walls.  The height of the keep was intended for dignity and defence, rather than for habitation; and the upper chamber, with its great state-bed, where everybody of the house of Adlerstein was born and died, was not otherwise used, except when Ermentrude, unable to bear the oppressive confusion below stairs, had escaped thither for quietness’ sake.  No one else wished to inhabit it.  The chamber above was filled with the various appliances for the defence of the castle; and no one would have ever gone up the turret stairs had not a warder been usually kept on the roof to watch the roads leading to the Ford.  Otherwise the Adlersteiners had all the savage instinct of herding together in as small a space as possible.

Freiherrin Kunigunde hardly ever mounted to her daughter’s chamber.  All her affection was centred on the strong and manly son, of whom she was proud, while the sickly pining girl, who would hardly find a mate of her own rank, and who had not even dowry enough for a convent, was such a shame and burthen