released him because he was foully taken. I have chosen my lot in life,' he added; and, standing in the middle of the hall, he took off his cap, and spoke gravely:- 'I will not be a treacherous robber-outlaw, but, so help me God, a faithful, loyal, godly nobleman.'
His mother and Friedel breathed an 'Amen' with all their hearts; and he continued,
'And thou, grandame, peace! Such reverence shalt thou have as befits my father's mother; but henceforth mine own lady-mother is the mistress of this castle, and whoever speaks a rude word to her offends the Freiherr von Adlerstein.'
That last day's work had made a great step in Ebbo's life, and there he stood, grave and firm, ready for the assault; for, in effect, he and all besides expected that the old lady would fly at him or at his mother like a wild cat, as she would assuredly have done in a like case a year earlier; but she took them all by surprise by collapsing into her chair and sobbing piteously. Ebbo, much distressed, tried to make her understand that she was to have all care and honour; but she muttered something about ingratitude, and continued to exhaust herself with weeping, spurning away all who approached her; and thenceforth she lived in a gloomy, sullen acquiescence in her deposition.
Christina inclined to the opinion that she must have had some slight stroke in the night, for she was never the same woman again; her vigour had passed away, and she would sit spinning, or rocking herself in her chair, scarcely alive to what passed, or scolding and fretting like a shadow of her old violence. Nothing pleased her but the attentions of her grandsons, and happily she soon ceased to know them apart, and gave Ebbo credit for all that was done for her by Friedel, whose separate existence she seemed to have forgotten.
As long as her old spirit remained she would not suffer the approach of her daughter-in-law, and Christina could only make suggestions for her comfort to be acted on by Ursel; and though the reins of government fast dropped from the aged hands, they were but gradually and cautiously assumed by the younger Baroness.
Only Elsie remained of the rude, demoralized girls whom she had found in the castle, and their successors, though dull and uncouth, were meek and manageable; the men of the castle had all, except Matz, been always devoted to the Frau Christina; and Matz, to her great relief, ran away so soon as he found that decency and honesty were to be the rule. Old Hatto, humpbacked Hans, and Heinz the Schneiderlein, were the whole male establishment, and had at least the merit of attachment to herself and her sons; and in time there was a shade of greater civilization about the castle, though impeded both by dire poverty and the doggedness of the old retainers. At least the court was cleared of the swine, and, within doors, the table was spread with dainty linen out of the parcels from Ulm, and the meals served with orderliness that annoyed the boys at first, but soon became a subject of pride and pleasure.
Frau Kunigunde lingered long, with increasing infirmities. After the winter day, when, running down at a sudden noise, Friedel picked her up from the hearthstone, scorched, bruised, almost senseless, she accepted Christina's care with nothing worse than a snarl, and gradually seemed to forget the identity of her nurse with the interloping burgher girl. Thanks or courtesy had been no part of her nature, least of all towards her own sex, and she did little but grumble, fret, and revile her attendant; but she soon depended so much on Christina's care, that it was hardly possible to leave her. At her best and strongest, her talk was maundering abuse of her son's low-born wife; but at times her wanderings showed black gulfs of iniquity and coarseness of soul that would make the gentle listener tremble, and be thankful that her sons were out of hearing. And thus did Christina von Adlerstein requite fifteen years of persecution.
The old lady's first failure had been in the summer of 1488; it was the Advent season of 1489, when the snow was at the deepest, and the frost at the hardest, that the two hardy mountaineer grandsons fetched over the pass Father Norbert, and a still sturdier, stronger monk, to the dying woman.
'Are we in time, mother?' asked Ebbo, from the door of the upper chamber, where the Adlersteins began and ended life, shaking the snow from his mufflings. Ruddy with exertion in the sharp wind, what a contrast he was to all within the room!
'Who is that?' said a thin, feeble voice.
'It is Ebbo. It is the Baron,' said Christina. 'Come in, Ebbo. She is somewhat revived.'
'Will she be able to speak to the priest?' asked Ebbo.
'Priest!' feebly screamed the old woman. 'No priest for me! My lord died unshriven, unassoilzied. Where he is, there will I be. Let a priest approach me at his peril!'
Stony insensibility ensued; nor did she speak again, though life lasted many hours longer. The priests did their office; for, impenitent as the life and frantic as the words had been, the opinions of the time deemed that their rites might yet give the departing soul a chance, though the body was unconscious.
When all was over, snow was again falling, shifting and drifting, so that it was impossible to leave the castle, and the two monks were kept there for a full fortnight, during which Christmas solemnities were observed in the chapel, for the first time since the days of Friedmund the Good. The corpse of Kunigunde, preserved--we must say the word--salted, was placed in a coffin, and laid in that chapel to await the melting of the snows, when the vault at the Hermitage could be opened. And this could not be effected till Easter had nearly come round again, and it was within a week of their sixteenth birthday that the two young Barons stood together at the coffin's head, serious indeed, but more with the thought of life than of death.
CHAPTER XII: BACK TO THE DOVECOTE
For the first time in her residence at Adlerstein, now full half her life, the Freiherrinn Christina ventured to send a messenger to Ulm, namely, a lay brother of the convent of St. Ruprecht, who undertook to convey to Master Gottfried Sorel her letter, informing him of the death of her mother-in-law, and requesting him to send the same tidings to the Freiherr von Adlerstein Wildschloss, the kinsman and godfather of her sons.
She was used to wait fifty-two weeks for answers to her letters, and was amazed when, at the end of three, two stout serving-men were guided by Jobst up the pass; but her heart warmed to their flat caps and round jerkins, they looked so like home. They bore a letter of invitation to her and her sons to come at once to her uncle's house. The King of the Romans, and perhaps the Emperor, were to come to the city early in the summer, and there could be no better opportunity of presenting the young Barons to their sovereign. Sir Kasimir of Adlerstein Wildschloss would meet them there for the purpose, and would obtain their admission to the League, in which all Swabian nobles had bound themselves to put down robbery and oppression, and outside which there was nothing but outlawry and danger.
'So must it be?' said Ebbo, between his teeth, as he leant moodily against the wall, while his mother was gone to attend to the fare to be set before the messengers.
'What! art not glad to take wing at last?' exclaimed Friedel, cut short in an exclamation of delight.
'Take wing, forsooth! To be guest of a greasy burgher, and call cousin with him! Fear not, Friedel; I'll not vex the motherling. Heaven knows she has had pain, grief, and subjection enough in her lifetime, and I would not hinder her visit to her home; but I would she could go alone, nor make us show our poverty to the swollen city folk, and listen to their endearments. I charge thee, Friedel, do as I do; be not too familiar with them. Could we but sprain an ankle over the crag--'
'Nay, she would stay to nurse us,' said Friedel, laughing; 'besides, thou art needed for the matter of homage.'
'Look, Friedel,' said Ebbo, sinking his voice, 'I shall not lightly yield my freedom to king or Kaiser. Maybe, there is no help for it; but it irks me to think that I should be the last Lord of Adlerstein to whom the title of Freiherr is not a mockery. Why dost bend thy brow, brother? What art thinking of?'
'Only a saying in my mother's book, that well-ordered service is true freedom,' said Friedel. 'And methinks there will be freedom in rushing at last into the great far-off!'--the boy's eye expanded and glistened with eagerness. 'Here are we prisoners--to ourselves, if you like--but prisoners still, pent up in the rocks, seeing no one, hearing scarce an echo from the knightly or the poet world, nor from all the wonders that pass. And the world has a history going on still, like the Chronicle. Oh, Ebbo, think of being in the midst of life, with lance and sword, and seeing the Kaiser--the Kaiser of the holy Roman Empire!'
'With lance and sword, well and good; but would it were not at the cost of liberty!'
However Ebbo forbore to damp his mother's joy, save by the one warning--'Understand, mother, that I will not be pledged to anything. I will not bend to the yoke ere I have seen and judged for myself.'
The manly sound of the words gave a sweet sense of exultation to the mother, even while she dreaded the
