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

sense of the kind of protection she would require, and she kept out of earshot.  It was enough for her to see her uncle still, and feel that his tenderness was with her, and around her.  But at last he drew his rein.  “And now, my little one, the daughter of my heart, I must bid thee farewell,” he said.

Christina could not be restrained from springing from her mule, and kneeling on the grass to receive his blessing, her face hidden in her hands, that her father might not see her tears.

“The good God bless thee, my child,” said Gottfried, who seldom invoked the saints; “bless thee, and bring thee back in His own good time.  Thou hast been a good child to us; be so to thine own father.  Do thy work, and come back to us again.”

The tears rained down his cheeks, as Christina’s head lay on his bosom, and then with a last kiss he lifted her again on her mule, mounted his horse, and turned back to the city, with his servant.

Hugh was merciful enough to let his daughter gaze long after the retreating figure ere he summoned her on.  All day they rode, at first through meadow lands and then through more broken, open ground, where at mid-day they halted, and dined upon the plentiful fare with which the housemother had provided them, over which Hugh smacked his lips, and owned that they did live well in the old town!  Could Christina make such sausages?

“Not as well as my aunt.”

“Well, do thy best, and thou wilt win favour with the baron.”

The evening began to advance, and Christina was very weary, as the purple mountains that she had long watched with a mixture of fear and hope began to look more distinct, and the ground was often in abrupt ascents.  Her father, without giving space for complaints, hurried her on.  He must reach the Debateable Ford ere dark.  It was, however, twilight when they came to an open space, where, at the foot of thickly forest-clad rising ground, lay an expanse of turf and rich grass, through which a stream made its way, standing in a wide tranquil pool as if to rest after its rough course from the mountains.  Above rose, like a dark wall, crag upon crag, peak on peak, in purple masses, blending with the sky; and Hugh, pointing upwards to a turreted point, apparently close above their heads, where a star of light was burning, told her that there was Adlerstein, and this was the Debateable Ford.

In fact, as he explained, while splashing through the shallow expanse, the stream had changed its course.  It was the boundary between the lands of Schlangenwald and Adlerstein, but it had within the last sixty years burst forth in a flood, and had then declined to return to its own bed, but had flowed in a fresh channel to the right of the former one.  The Freiherren von Adlerstein claimed the ground to the old channel, the Graffen von Schlangenwald held that the river was the landmark; and the dispute had a greater importance than seemed explained from the worth of the rushy space of ground in question, for this was the passage of the Italian merchants on their way from Constance, and every load that was overthrown in the river was regarded as the lawful prey of the noble on whose banks the catastrophe befell.

Any freight of goods was anxiously watched by both nobles, and it was not their fault if no disaster befell the travellers.  Hugh talked of the Schlangenwald marauders with the bitterness of a deadly feud, but manifestly did not breathe freely till his whole convoy were safe across both the wet and the dry channel.

Christina supposed they should now ascend to the castle; but her father laughed, saying that the castle was not such a step off as she fancied, and that they must have daylight for the Eagle’s Stairs.  He led the way through the trees, up ground that she thought mountain already, and finally arrived at a miserable little hut, which served the purpose of an inn.

He was received there with much obsequiousness, and was plainly a great authority there.  Christina, weary and frightened, descended from her mule, and was put under the protection of a wild, rough-looking peasant woman, who stared at her like something from another world, but at length showed her a nook behind a mud partition, where she could spread her mantle, and at least lie down, and tell her beads unseen, if she could not sleep in the stifling, smoky atmosphere, amid the sounds of carousal among her father and his fellows.

The great hound came up and smelt to her.  His outline was so-wolfish, that she had nearly screamed: but, more in terror at the men who might have helped her than even at the beast, she tried to smooth him with her trembling hand, whispered his name of “Festhold,” and found him licking her hand, and wagging his long rough tail.  And he finally lay down at her feet, as though to protect her.

“Is it a sign that good angels will not let me be hurt?” she thought, and, wearied out, she slept.

CHAPTER II
THE EYRIE

Christina Sorel awoke to a scene most unlike that which had been wont to meet her eyes in her own little wainscoted chamber high in the gabled front of her uncle’s house.  It was a time when the imperial free towns of Germany had advanced nearly as far as those of Italy in civilization, and had reached a point whence they retrograded grievously during the Thirty Years’ War, even to an extent that they have never entirely recovered.  The country immediately around them shared the benefits of their civilization, and the free peasant-proprietors lived in great ease and prosperity, in beautiful and picturesque farmsteads, enjoying a careless abundance, and keeping numerous rural or religious feasts, where old Teutonic mythological observances had received a Christian colouring and adaptation.

In the mountains, or around the castles, it was usually very different.  The elective constitution of the empire, the frequent change of dynasty, the many disputed successions, had combined to render the sovereign authority uncertain and feeble, and it was seldom really felt save in the hereditary dominions of the Kaiser for the time being.  Thus, while the cities advanced in the power of self-government, and the education it conveyed, the nobles, especially those whose abodes were not easily accessible, were often practically under no government at all, and felt themselves accountable to no man.  The old wild freedom of the Suevi, and other Teutonic tribes, still technically, and in many cases practically, existed.  The Heretogen, Heerzogen, or, as we call them, Dukes, had indeed accepted employment from the Kaiser as his generals, and had received rewards from him; the Gerefen, or Graffen, of all kinds were his judges, the titles of both being proofs of their holding commissions from, and being thus dependent on, the court.  But the Freiherren, a word very inadequately represented by our French term of baron, were absolutely free, “never in bondage to any man,” holding their own, and owing no duty, no office; poorer, because unendowed by the royal authority, but holding themselves infinitely higher, than the pensioners of the court.  Left behind, however, by their neighbours, who did their part by society, and advanced with it, the Freiherren had been for the most part obliged to give up their independence and fall into the system, but so far in the rear, that they ranked, like the barons of France and England, as the last order of nobility.

Still, however, in the wilder and more mountainous parts of the country, some of the old families of unreduced, truly free Freiherren lingered, their hand against every man, every man’s hand against them, and ever becoming more savage, both positively and still more proportionately, as their isolation and the general progress around them became greater.  The House of Austria, by gradually absorbing hereditary states into its own possessions, was, however, in the fifteenth century, acquiring a preponderance that rendered its possession of the imperial throne almost a matter of inheritance, and moreover rendered the supreme power far more effective than it had ever previously been.  Freidrich III. a man still in full vigour, and with an able and enterprising son already elected to the succession, was making his rule felt, and it was fast becoming apparent that the days of the independent baronies were numbered, and that the only choice that would soon be left them would be between making terms and being forcibly reduced.  Von Adlerstein was one of the oldest of these free families.  If the lords of the Eagle’s Stone had ever followed the great Konrads and Freidrichs of Swabia in their imperial days, their descendants had taken care to forget the weakness, and believed themselves absolutely free from all allegiance.

And the wildness of their territory was what might be expected from their hostility to all outward influences.  The hostel, if it deserved the name, was little more than a charcoal-burner’s hut, hidden in the woods at the foot of the mountain, serving as a halting-place for the Freiherren’s retainers ere they attempted the ascent.  The inhabitants were allowed to ply their trade of charring wood in the forest on condition of supplying the castle with charcoal, and of affording a lodging to the followers on occasions like the present.

Grimy, half-clad, and brawny, with the whites of his eyes gleaming out of his black face, Jobst the Kohler startled Christina terribly when she came into the outer room, and met him returning from his night’s work, with his long stoking-pole in his hand.  Her father shouted with laughter at her alarm.

“Thou thinkest thyself in the land of the kobolds and dwarfs, my girl!  Never mind, thou wilt see worse than honest Jobst before thou hast done.  Now, eat a morsel and be ready—mountain air will make thee hungry ere thou art at the castle.  And, hark thee, Jobst, thou must give stable-room to yon sumpter-mule for the present, and let some of my daughter’s gear lie in the shed.”

“O father!” exclaimed Christina, in dismay.

“We’ll bring it up, child, by piecemeal,” he said in a low voice, “as we can; but if such a freight came to the castle at once, my lady would have her claws on it, and little more wouldst thou ever see thereof.  Moreover, I shall have enough to do to look after thee up the ascent, without another of these city-bred beasts.”

“I hope the poor mule will be well cared for.  I can pay for—” began Christina; but her father squeezed her arm, and drowned her soft voice in his loud tones.

“Jobst will take care of the beast, as belonging to me.  Woe betide him, if I find it the worse!”—and his added imprecations seemed unnecessary, so earnest were the asseverations of both the man and his wife that the animal should be well cared for.

“Look you, Christina,” said Hugh Sorel, as soon as he had placed her on her mule, and led her out of hearing, “if thou hast any gold about thee, let it be the last thing thou ownest to any living creature up there.”  Then, as she was about to speak—“Do not even tell me.  I will not know.”  The caution did not add much to Christina’s comfort; but she presently asked, “Where is thy steed, father?”

“I sent him up to the castle with the Schneiderlein and Yellow Lorentz,” answered the father.  “I shall have ado enough on foot with thee before we are up the Ladder.”

The father and daughter were meantime proceeding along a dark path through oak and birch woods, constantly ascending, until the oak grew stunted and disappeared, and the opening glades showed steep, stony, torrent-furrowed ramparts of hillside above them, looking to Christina’s eyes as if she were set to climb up the cathedral side like a snail or a fly.  She quite gasped for breath at the very sight, and was told in return to wait and see what she would yet say to the Adlerstreppe, or Eagle’s Ladder.  Poor child! she had no raptures for romantic scenery; she knew that jagged peaks made very pretty backgrounds in illuminations, but she had much rather have been in the smooth meadows of the environs of Ulm.  The Danube looked much more agreeable to her, silver-winding between its green banks, than did the same waters leaping down with noisy voices in their stony, worn beds to feed the river that she only knew in his grave breadth and majesty.  Yet, alarmed as she was, there was something in the exhilaration and elasticity of the mountain air that gave her an entirely new sensation of enjoyment and life, and seemed to brace her limbs and spirits for whatever might be before her; and, willing to show herself ready to be gratified, she observed on the freshness and sweetness of the air.

“Thou find’st it out, child?  Ay, ’tis worth all the feather-beds and pouncet-boxes in Ulm; is it not?  That accursed Italian fever never left me till I came up here.  A man can scarce draw