affability in consequence. He had affairs on his hands too, and felt more than one year older.
The two guilds agreed to build the bridge, and share the toll with the Baron in return for the ground and materials; but they preferred the plan that placed one pier on the Schlangenwald bank, and proposed to write to the Count an offer to include him in the scheme, awarding him a share of the profits in proportion to his contribution. However vexed at the turn affairs had taken, Ebbo could offer no valid objection, and was obliged to affix his signature to the letter in company with the guildmasters.
It was despatched by the city pursuivants -
The only men who safe might ride;
Their errands on the border side and a meeting was appointed in the Rathhaus for the day of their expected return. The higher burghers sat on their carved chairs in the grand old hall, the lesser magnates on benches, and Ebbo, in an elbowed seat far too spacious for his slender proportions, met a glance from Friedel that told him his merry brother was thinking of the frog and the ox. The pursuivants entered--hardy, shrewd-looking men, with the city arms decking them wherever there was room for them.
'Honour-worthy sirs,' they said, 'no letter did the Graf von Schlangenwald return.'
'Sent he no message?' demanded Moritz Schleiermacher.
'Yea, worthy sir, but scarce befitting this reverend assembly.' On being pressed, however, it was repeated: 'The Lord Count was pleased to swear at what he termed the insolence of the city in sending him heralds, 'as if,' said he, 'the dogs,' your worships, 'were his equals.' Then having cursed your worships, he reviled the crooked writing of Herr Clerk Diedrichson, and called his chaplain to read it to him. Herr Priest could scarce read three lines for his foul language about the ford. 'Never,' said he, 'would he consent to raising a bridge--a mean trick,' so said he, 'for defrauding him of his rights to what the flood sent him.''
'But,' asked Ebbo, 'took he no note of our explanation, that if he give not the upper bank, we will build lower, where both sides are my own?'
'He passed it not entirely over,' replied the messenger.
'What said he--the very words?' demanded Ebbo, with the paling cheek and low voice that made his passion often seem like patience.
'He said--(the Herr Freiherr will pardon me for repeating the words)- -he said, 'Tell the misproud mongrel of Adlerstein that he had best sit firm in his own saddle ere meddling with his betters, and if he touch one pebble of the Braunwasser, he will rue it. And before your city-folk take up with him or his, they had best learn whether he have any right at all in the case.''
'His right is plain,' said Master Gottfried; 'full proofs were given in, and his investiture by the Kaisar forms a title in itself. It is mere bravado, and an endeavour to make mischief between the Baron and the city.'
'Even so did I explain, Herr Guildmaster,' said the pursuivant; 'but, pardon me, the Count laughed me to scorn, and quoth he, 'asked the Kaisar for proof of his father's death!''
'Mere mischief-making, as before,' said Master Gottfried, while his nephews started with amaze. 'His father's death was proved by an eye-witness, whom you still have in your train, have you not, Herr Freiherr?'
'Yea,' replied Ebbo, 'he is at Adlerstein now, Heinrich Bauermann, called the Schneiderlein, a lanzknecht, who alone escaped the slaughter, and from whom we have often heard how my father died, choked in his own blood, from a deep breast-wound, immediately after he had sent home his last greetings to my lady mother.'
'Was the corpse restored?' asked the able Rathsherr Ulrich.
'No,' said Ebbo. 'Almost all our retainers had perished, and when a friar was sent to the hostel to bring home the remains, it appeared that the treacherous foe had borne them off--nay, my grandfather's head was sent to the Diet!'
The whole assembly agreed that the Count could only mean to make the absence of direct evidence about a murder committed eighteen years ago tell in sowing distrust between the allies. The suggestion was not worth a thought, and it was plain that no site would be available except the Debateable Strand. To this, however, Ebbo's title was assailable, both on account of his minority, as well as his father's unproved death, and of the disputed claim to the ground. The Rathsherr, Master Gottfried, and others, therefore recommended deferring the work till the Baron should be of age, when, on again tendering his allegiance, he might obtain a distinct recognition of his marches. But this policy did not consort with the quick spirit of Moritz Schleiermacher, nor with the convenience of the mercers and wine-merchants, who were constant sufferers by the want of a bridge, and afraid of waiting four years, in which a lad like the Baron might return to the nominal instincts of his class, or the Braunwasser might take back the land it had given; whilst Ebbo himself was urgent, with all the defiant fire of youth, to begin building at once in spite of all gainsayers.
'Strife and blood will it cost,' said Master Sorel, gravely.
'What can be had worth the having save at cost of strife and blood?' said Ebbo, with a glance of fire.
'Youth speaks of counting the cost. Little knows it what it saith,' sighed Master Gottfried.
'Nay,' returned the Rathsherr, 'were it otherwise, who would have the heart for enterprise?'
So the young knights mounted, and had ridden about half the way in silence, when Ebbo exclaimed, 'Friedel'-- and as his brother started, 'What art musing on?'
'What thou art thinking of,' said Friedel, turning on him an eye that had not only something of the brightness but of the penetration of a sunbeam.
'I do not think thereon at all,' said Ebbo, gloomily. 'It is a figment of the old serpent to hinder us from snatching his prey from him.'
'Nevertheless,' said Friedel, 'I cannot but remember that the Genoese merchant of old told us of a German noble sold by his foes to the Moors.'
'Folly! That tale was too recent to concern my father.'
'I did not think it did,' said Friedel; 'but mayhap that noble's family rest equally certain of his death.'
'Pfui!' said Ebbo, hotly; 'hast not heard fifty times how he died even in speaking, and how Heinz crossed his hands on his breast? What wouldst have more?'
'Hardly even that,' said Friedel, slightly smiling.
'Tush!' hastily returned his brother, 'I meant only by way of proof. Would an honest old fellow like Heinz be a deceiver?'
'Not wittingly. Yet I would fain ride to that hostel and make inquiries!'
'The traitor host met his deserts, and was broken on the wheel for murdering a pedlar a year ago,' said Ebbo. 'I would I knew where my father was buried, for then would I bring his corpse honourably back; but as to his being a living man, I will not have it spoken of to trouble my mother.'
'To trouble her?' exclaimed Friedel.
'To trouble her,' repeated Ebbo. 'Long since hath passed the pang of his loss, and there is reason in what old Sorel says, that he must have been a rugged, untaught savage, with little in common with the gentle one, and that tender memory hath decked him out as he never could have been. Nay, Friedel, it is but sense. What could a man have been under the granddame's breeding?'
'It becomes not thee to say so!' returned Friedel. 'Nay, he could learn to love our mother.'
'One sign of grace, but doubtless she loved him the better for their having been so little together. Her heart is at peace, believing him in his grave; but let her imagine him in Schlangenwald's dungeon, or some Moorish galley, if thou likest it better, and how will her mild spirit be rent!'
'It might be so,' said Friedel, thoughtfully. 'It may be best to keep this secret from her till we have fuller certainty.'
'Agreed then,' said Ebbo, 'unless the Wildschloss fellow should again molest us, when his answer is ready.'
'Is this just towards my mother?' said Friedel.
'Just! What mean'st thou? Is it not our office and our dearest right to shield our mother from care? And is not her chief wish to be rid of the Wildschloss suit?'
Nevertheless Ebbo was moody all the way home, but when there he devoted himself in his most eager and winning way to his mother, telling her of Master Gottfried's woodcuts, and Hausfrau Johanna's rheumatism, and of all the news of the country, in especial that the Kaisar was at Lintz, very ill with a gangrene in his leg, said to have been caused by his habit of always kicking doors open, and that his doctors thought of amputation, a horrible idea in the fifteenth century. The young baron was evidently bent on proving that no one could make his mother so happy as he could; and he was not far wrong there.
