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

“But let me go, ere I bring evil on you all.  I can pray up there, and save my soul, but I cannot see it all.”

“See what?” said Ebbo, again trying to see his guest’s face.  “There may be changes, but an old faithful follower of my father’s must ever be welcome.”

“Not when his wife has taken a new lord,” growled the stranger, bitterly, “and he a Wildschloss!  Young man, I could have pardoned aught else!”

“I know not who you may be who talk of pardoning my lady-mother,” said Ebbo, “but new lord she has neither taken nor will take.  She has refused every offer; and, now that Schlangenwald with his last breath confessed that he slew not my father, but sold him to the Turks, I have been only awaiting recovery from my wound to go in search of him.”

“Who then is yonder child, who told me she was Wildschloss?”

“That child,” said Ebbo, with half a smile and half a blush, “is my wife, the daughter of Wildschloss, who prayed me to espouse her thus early, that so my mother might bring her up.”

By this time they had reached the castle court, now a well-kept, lordly-looking enclosure, where the pilgrim looked about him as one bewildered.  He was so infirm that Ebbo carefully helped him up the stone stairs to the hall, where he already saw his mother prepared for the hospitable reception of the palmer.  Leaving him at the entrance, Ebbo crossed the hall to say to her in a low voice, “This pilgrim is one of the old lanzknechts of my grandfather’s time.  I wonder whether you or Heinz will know him.  One of the old sort—supremely discontented at change.”

“And thou hast walked up, and wearied thyself!” exclaimed Christina, grieved to see her son’s halting step.

“A rest will soon cure that,” said Ebbo, seating himself as he spoke on a settle near the hall fire; but the next moment a strange wild low shriek from his mother made him start up and spring to her side.  She stood with hands clasped, and wondering eyes.  The pilgrim—his hat on the ground, his white head and rugged face displayed—was gazing as though devouring her with his eyes, murmuring, “Unchanged! unchanged!”

“What is this!” thundered the young Baron.  “What are you doing to the lady?”

“Hush! hush, Ebbo!” exclaimed Christina.  “It is thy father!  On thy knees!  Thy father is come!  It is our son, my own lord.  Oh, embrace him!  Kneel to him, Ebbo!” she wildly cried.

“Hold, mother,” said Ebbo, keeping his arm round her, though she struggled against him, for he felt some doubts as he looked back at his walk with the stranger, and remembered Heinz’s want of recognition.  “Is it certain that this is indeed my father?”

“Oh, Ebbo,” was the cry of poor Christina, almost beside herself, “how could I not be sure?  I know him!  I feel it!  Oh, my lord, bear with him.  It is his wont to be so loving!  Ebbo, cannot you see it is himself?”

“The young fellow is right,” said the stranger, slowly.  “I will answer all he may demand.”

“Forgive me,” said Ebbo, abashed, “forgive me;” and, as his mother broke from him, he fell upon his knee; but he only heard his father’s cry, “Ah!  Stine, Stine, thou alone art the same,” and, looking up, saw her, with her face hidden in the white beard, quivering with a rapture such as he had never seen in her before.  It seemed long to him ere she looked up again in her husband’s face to sob on: “My son!  Oh! my beautiful twins!  Our son!  Oh, see him, dear lord!”  And the pilgrim turned to hear Ebbo’s “Pardon, honoured father, and your blessing.”

Almost bashfully the pilgrim laid his hand on the dark head, and murmured something; then said, “Up, then!  The slayer of Schlangenwald kneeling!  Ah!  Stine, I knew thy little head was wondrous wise, but I little thought thou wouldst breed him up to avenge us on old Wolfgang!  So slender a lad too!  Ha!  Schneiderlein, old rogue, I knew thee,” holding out his hand.  “So thou didst get home safe?”

“Ay, my lord; though, if I left you alive, never more will I call a man dead,” said Heinz.

“Worse luck for me—till now,” said Sir Eberhard, whose tones, rather than his looks, carried perfect conviction of his identity.  It was the old homely accent, and gruff good-humoured voice, but with something subdued and broken in the tone.  His features had grown like his father’s, but he looked much older than ever the hale old mountaineer had done, or than his real age; so worn and lined was his face, his skin tanned, his eyelids and temples puckered by burning sun, his hair and beard white as the inane of his old mare, the proud Adlerstein port entirely gone.  He stooped even more without his staff than with it; and, when he yielded himself with a sigh of repose to his wife’s tendance, she found that he had not merely the ordinary hurts of travelling, but that there were old festering scars on his ankles.  “The gyves,” he said, as she looked up at him, with startled, pitying eyes.  “Little deemed I that they would ever come under thy tender hands.”  As he almost timidly smoothed the braid of dark hair on her brow—“So they never burnt thee for a witch after all, little one?  I thought my mother would never keep her hands off thee, and used to fancy I heard the crackling of the flame.”

“She spared me for my children’s sake,” said Christina; “and truly Heaven has been very good to us, but never so much as now.  My dear lord, will it weary thee too much to come to the castle chapel and give thanks?” she said, timidly.

“With all my heart,” he answered, earnestly.  “I would go even on my knees.  We were not without masses even in Tunis; but, when Italian and Spaniard would be ransomed, and there was no mind of the German, I little thought I should ever sing Brother Lambert’s psalm about turning our captivity as rivers in the south.”

Ebbo was hovering round, supplying all that was needed for his father’s comfort; but his parents were so completely absorbed in one another that he was scarcely noticed, and, what perhaps pained him more, there was no word about Friedel.  He felt this almost an injustice to the brother who had been foremost in embracing the idea of the unknown father, and scarcely understood how his parents shrank from any sorrowful thought that might break in on their new-found joy, nor that he himself was so strange and new a being in his father’s eyes, that to imagine him doubled was hardly possible to the tardy, dulled capacity, which as yet seemed unable to feel anything but that here was home, and Christina.

When the chapel bell rang, and the pair rose to offer their thanksgiving, Ebbo dutifully offered his support, but was absolutely unseen, so fondly was Sir Eberhard leaning on his wife; and her bright exulting smile and shake of the head gave an absolute pang to the son who had hitherto been all in all to her.

He followed, and, as they passed Friedmund’s coffin, he thought his mother pointed to it, but even of this he was uncertain.  The pair knelt side by side with hands locked together, while notes of praise rose from all voices; and meantime Ebbo, close to that coffin, strove to share the joy, and to lift up a heart that would sink in the midst of self-reproach for undutifulness, and would dislike the thought of the rude untaught man, holding aloof from him, likely to view him with distrust and jealousy, and to undo all he had achieved, and further absorbing the mother, the mother who was to him all the world, and for whose sake he had given his best years to the child-wife, as yet nothing to him.

It was reversing the natural order of things that, after reigning from infancy, he should have to give up at eighteen to one of the last generation; and some such thought rankled in his mind when the whole household trooped joyfully out of the chapel to prepare a banquet for their old new lord, and their young old lord was left alone.

Alone with the coffin where the armour lay upon the white cross, Ebbo threw himself on his knees, and laid his head upon it, murmuring, “Ah, Friedel!  Friedel!  Would that we had changed places!  Thou wouldst brook it better.  At least thou didst never know what it is to be lonely.”

“Herr Baron!” said a little voice.

p. 269His first movement was impatient.  Thekla was apt to pursue him wherever he did not want her; but here he had least expected her, for she had a great fear of that coffin, and could hardly be brought to the chapel at prayer times, when she generally occupied herself with fancies that the empty helmet glared at her.  But now Ebbo saw her standing as near as she durst, with a sweet wistfulness in her eyes, such as he had never seen there before.

“What is it, Thekla?” he said.  “Art sent to call me?”

“No; only I saw that you stayed here all alone,” she said, clasping her hands.

“Must I not be alone, child?” he said, bitterly.  “Here lies my brother.  My mother has her husband again!”

“But you have me!” cried Thekla; and, as he looked up between amusement and melancholy, he met such a loving eager little face, that he could not help holding out his arms, and letting her cling to him.  “Indeed,” she said, “I’ll never be afraid of the helmet again, if only you will not lay down your head there, and say you are alone.”

“Never, Thekla! while you are my little wife,” said he; and, child as she was, there was strange solace to his heart in the eyes that, once vacant and wondering, had now gained a look of love and intelligence.

“What are you going to do?” she said, shuddering a little, as he rose and laid his hand on Friedel’s sword.

“To make thee gird on thine own knight’s sword,” said Ebbo, unbuckling that which he had so long worn.  “Friedel,” he added, “thou wouldst give me thine.  Let me take up thy temper with it, thine open-hearted love and humility.”

He guided Thekla’s happy little fingers to the fastening of the belt, and then, laying his hand on hers, said gravely, “Thekla, never speak of what I said just now—not even to the mother.  Remember, it is thy husband’s first secret.”

And feeling no longer solitary when his hand was in the clasp of hers, he returned to the hall, where his father was installed in the baronial chair, in which Ebbo had been at home from babyhood.  His mother’s exclamation showed that her son had been wanting to her; and she looked fuller than ever of bliss when Ebbo gravely stood before his father, and presented him with the good old sword that he had sent to his unborn son.

“You are like to use it more than I,—nay, you have used it to some purpose,” said he.  “Yet must I keep mine old comrade at least a little while.  Wife, son, sword, should make one feel the same man again, but it is all too wonderful!”

All that evening, and long after, his hand from time to time sought the hilt of his sword, as if that touch above all proved to him that he was again a free noble in his own castle.

The story he told was thus.  The swoon in which Heinz had left him had probably saved his life by checking the gush of blood, and he had known no more till he found himself in a rough cart among the corpses.  At Schlangenwald’s castle he had been found still breathing, and had been flung into a dungeon, where he lay unattended, for how long he never knew, since all the early part of the time was lost in the clouds of fever.  On coarse fare and scanty drink, in that dark vault, he had struggled by sheer obstinacy of vitality into recovery.  In the very height of midsummer alone did the sun peep through the grating of his cell, and he had newly hailed this cheerful visitor when he was roughly summoned, placed on horseback with eyes and hands bound, and only allowed sight again to find himself among a herd of his fellow Germans in the Turkish camp.  They were the prisoners of the terrible Turkish raid of 1475, when Georg von Schenk and fourteen other noblemen of Austria and Styria were all taken in one unhappy fight, and dragged away into captivity, with hundreds of lower rank.

To Sir Eberhard the change had been greatly for the better.  The Turk had treated him much