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

this land of quiet, civility, and books was a foretaste of Paradise to him after the hard living, barbarity, and coarse vices of his comrades, of whom he now and then disclosed traits that made his present pupils long to give battle to the big shaggy youths who used to send out the lesser lads to beg and steal for them, and cruelly maltreated such as failed in the quest.

Lessons in music and singing were gladly accepted by both lads, and from their uncle’s carving they could not keep their hands.  Ebbo had begun by enjoining Friedel to remember that the work that had been sport in the mountains would be basely mechanical in the city, and Friedel as usual yielded his private tastes; but on the second day Ebbo himself was discovered in the workshop, watching the magic touch of the deft workman, and he was soon so enticed by the perfect appliances as to take tool in hand and prove himself not unadroit in the craft.  Friedel however excelled in delicacy of touch and grace and originality of conception, and produced such workmanship that Master Gottfried could not help stroking his hair and telling him it was a pity he was not born to belong to the guild.

“I cannot spare him, sir,” cried Ebbo; “priest, scholar, minstrel, artist—all want him.”

“What, Hans of all streets, Ebbo?” interrupted Friedel.

“And guildmaster of none,” said Ebbo, “save as a warrior; the rest only enough for a gentleman!  For what I am thou must be!”

But Ebbo did not find fault with the skill Friedel was bestowing on his work—a carving in wood of a dove brooding over two young eagles—the device that both were resolved to assume.  When their mother asked what their lady-loves would say to this, Ebbo looked up, and with the fullest conviction in his lustrous eyes declared that no love should ever rival his motherling in his heart.  For truly her tender sweetness had given her sons’ affection a touch of romance, for which Master Gottfried liked them the better, though his wife thought their familiarity with her hardly accordant with the patriarchal discipline of the citizens.

The youths held aloof from these burghers, for Master Gottfried wisely desired to give them time to be tamed before running risk of offence, either to, or by, their wild shy pride; and their mother contrived to time her meetings with her old companions when her sons were otherwise occupied.  Master Gottfried made it known that the marriage portion he had designed for his niece had been intrusted to a merchant trading in peltry to Muscovy, and the sum thus realized was larger than any bride had yet brought to Adlerstein.  Master Gottfried would have liked to continue the same profitable speculations with it; but this would have been beyond the young Baron’s endurance, and his eyes sparkled when his mother spoke of repairing the castle, refitting the chapel, having a resident chaplain, cultivating more land, increasing the scanty stock of cattle, and attempting the improvements hitherto prevented by lack of means.  He fervently declared that the motherling was more than equal to the wise spinning Queen Bertha of legend and lay; and the first pleasant sense of wealth came in the acquisition of horses, weapons, and braveries.  In his original mood, Ebbo would rather have stood before the Diet in his home-spun blue than have figured in cloth of gold at a burgher’s expense; but he had learned to love his uncle, he regarded the marriage portion as family property, and moreover he sorely longed to feel himself and his brother well mounted, and scarcely less to see his mother in a velvet gown.

Here was his chief point of sympathy with the housemother, who, herself precluded from wearing miniver, velvet, or pearls, longed to deck her niece therewith, in time to receive Sir Kasimir of Adlerstein Wildschloss, as he had promised to meet his godsons at Ulm.  The knight’s marriage had lasted only a few years, and had left him no surviving children except one little daughter, whom he had placed in a nunnery at Ulm, under the care of her mother’s sister.  His lands lay higher up the Danube, and he was expected at Ulm shortly before the Emperor’s arrival.  He had been chiefly in Flanders with the King of the Romans, and had only returned to Germany when the Netherlanders had refused the regency of Maximilian, and driven him out of their country, depriving him of the custody of his children.

Pfingsttag, or Pentecost-day, was the occasion of Christina’s first full toilet, and never was bride more solicitously or exultingly arrayed than she, while one boy held the mirror and the other criticized and admired as the aunt adjusted the pearl-bordered coif, and long white veil floating over the long-desired black velvet dress.  How the two lads admired and gazed, caring far less for their own new and noble attire!  Friedel was indeed somewhat concerned that the sword by his side was so much handsomer than that which Ebbo wore, and which, for all its dinted scabbard and battered hilt, he was resolved never to discard.

It was a festival of brilliant joy.  Wreaths of flowers hung from the windows; rich tapestries decked the Dome Kirk, and the relics were displayed in shrines of wonderful costliness of material and beauty of workmanship; little birds, with thin cakes fastened to their feet, were let loose to fly about the church, in strange allusion to the event of the day; the clergy wore their most gorgeous robes; and the exulting music of the mass echoed from the vaults of the long-drawn aisles, and brought a rapt look of deep calm ecstasy over Friedel’s sensitive features.  The beggars evidently considered a festival as a harvest-day, and crowded round the doors of the cathedral.  As the Lady of Adlerstein came out leaning on Ebbo’s arm, with Friedel on her other side, they evidently attracted the notice of a woman whose thin brown face looked the darker for the striped red and yellow silk kerchief that bound the dark locks round her brow, as, holding out a beringed hand, she fastened her glittering jet black eyes on them, and exclaimed, “Alms! if the fair dame and knightly Junkern would hear what fate has in store for them.”

“We meddle not with the future, I thank thee,” said Christina, seeing that her sons, to whom gipsies were an amazing novelty, were in extreme surprise at the fortune-telling proposal.

“Yet could I tell much, lady,” said the woman, still standing in the way.  “What would some here present give to know that the locks that were shrouded by the widow’s veil ere ever they wore the matron’s coif shall yet return to the coif once more?”

Ebbo gave a sudden start of dismay and passion; his mother held him fast.  “Push on, Ebbo, mine; heed her not; she is a mere Bohemian.”

“But how knew she your history, mother?” asked Friedel, eagerly.

“That might be easily learnt at our Wake,” began Christina; but her steps were checked by a call from Master Gottfried just behind.  “Frau Freiherrinn, Junkern, not so fast.  Here is your noble kinsman.”

A tall, fine-looking person, in the long rich robe worn on peaceful occasions, stood forth, doffing his eagle-plumed bonnet, and, as the lady turned and curtsied low, he put his knee to the ground and kissed her hand, saying, “Well met, noble dame; I felt certain that I knew you when I beheld you in the Dome.”

“He was gazing at her all the time,” whispered Ebbo to his brother; while their mother, blushing, replied, “You do me too much honour, Herr Freiherr.”

“Once seen, never to be forgotten,” was the courteous answer: “and truly, but for the stately height of these my godsons I would not believe how long since our meeting was.”

Thereupon, in true German fashion, Sir Kasimir embraced each youth in the open street, and then, removing his long, embroidered Spanish glove, he offered his hand, or rather the tips of his fingers, to lead the Frau Christina home.

Master Sorel had invited him to become his guest at a very elaborate ornamental festival meal in honour of the great holiday, at which were to be present several wealthy citizens with their wives and families, old connections of the Sorel family.  Ebbo had resolved upon treating them with courteous reserve and distance; but he was surprised to find his cousin of Wildschloss comporting himself among the burgomasters and their dames as freely as though they had been his equals, and to see that they took such demeanour as perfectly natural.  Quick to perceive, the boy gathered that the gulf between noble and burgher was so great that no intimacy could bridge it over, no reserve widen it, and that his own bashful hauteur was almost a sign that he knew that the gulf had been passed by his own parents; but shame and consciousness did not enable him to alter his manner but rather added to its stiffness.

“The Junker is like an Englishman,” said Sir Kasimir, who had met many of the exiles of the Roses at the court of Mary of Burgundy; and then he turned to discuss with the guildmasters the interruption to trade caused by Flemish jealousies.

After the lengthy meal, the tables were removed, the long gallery was occupied by musicians, and Master Gottfried crossed the hall to tell his eldest grandnephew that to him he should depute the opening of the dance with the handsome bride of the Rathsherr, Ulrich Burger.  Ebbo blushed up to the eyes, and muttered that he prayed his uncle to excuse him.

“So!” said the old citizen, really displeased; “thy kinsman might have proved to thee that it is no derogation of thy lordly dignity.  I have been patient with thee, but thy pride passes—”

“Sir,” interposed Friedel hastily, raising his sweet candid face with a look between shame and merriment, “it is not that; but you forget what poor mountaineers we are.  Never did we tread a measure save now and then with our mother on a winter evening, and we know no more than a chamois of your intricate measures.”

Master Gottfried looked perplexed, for these dances were matters of great punctilio.  It was but seven years since the Lord of Praunstein had defied the whole city of Frankfort because a damsel of that place had refused to dance with one of his Cousins; and, though “Fistright” and letters of challenge had been made illegal, yet the whole city of Ulm would have resented the affront put on it by the young lord of Adlerstein.  Happily the Freiherr of Adlerstein Wildschloss was at hand.  “Herr Burgomaster,” he said, “let me commence the dance with your fair lady niece.  By your testimony,” he added, smiling to the youths, “she can tread a measure.  And, after marking us, you may try your success with the Rathsherrinn.”

Christina would gladly have transferred her noble partner to the Rathsherrinn, but she feared to mortify her good uncle and aunt further, and consented to figure alone with Sir Kasimir in one of the majestic, graceful dances performed by a single couple before a gazing assembly.  So she let him lead her to her place, and they bowed and bent, swept past one another, and moved in interlacing lines and curves, with a grand slow movement that displayed her quiet grace and his stately port and courtly air.

“Is it not beautiful to see the motherling?” said Friedel to his brother; “she sails like a white cloud in a soft wind.  And he stands grand as a stag at gaze.”

“Like a malapert peacock, say I,” returned Ebbo; “didst not see, Friedel, how he kept his eyes on her in church?  My uncle says the Bohemians are mere deceivers.  Depend on it the woman had spied his insolent looks when she made her ribald prediction.”

“See,” said Friedel, who had been watching the steps rather than attending, “it will be easy to dance it now.  It is a figure my mother once tried to teach us.  I remember it now.”

“Then go and do it, since better may not be.”

“Nay, but it should be thou.”

“Who will know which of us it is?  I hated his presumption too much to mark his antics.”

Friedel came forward, and the substitution was undetected by all save their mother and uncle; by the latter only because, addressing Ebbo, he received a reply in a tone such as Friedel never used.

Natural grace, quickness of ear and eye, and a skilful partner, rendered Friedel’s so fair a performance that he ventured on sending his brother to attend the councilloress with wine and comfits; while he in his own person performed another dance with the city dame next in pretension, and their mother was amused by Sir Kasimir’s remark, that her second son danced better than the elder, but both must learn.

The remark displeased Ebbo.  In his isolated castle he knew no superior, and his nature might yield willingly, but rebelled at being put down.  His brother was his perfect equal in all mental and bodily attributes, but it was the absence of all self-assertion that made Ebbo so often give him the preference; it was his mother’s tender meekness in