The Dove in the Eagle's Nest by Charlotte M. Yonge (e novels for free .txt) 📖

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 Japhet 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 passed 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, noble 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 noble 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 space 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 faggots 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, tittering, 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 faggots 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 passing 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 anticipating 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 butted 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 assured him that it would be a fatal thing to spare the steed the passage 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 assured 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 solstitial 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