Christina prayed long that night, her heart full of dread of the consequence of this transgression. Rumours of freebooting castles destroyed by the Swabian League had reached her every wake day, and, if this outrage were once known, the sufferance that left Adlerstein unmolested must be over. There was hope indeed in the weakness and uncertainty of the Government; but present safety would in reality be the ruin of Ebbo, since he would be encouraged to persist in the career of violence now unhappily begun. She knew not what to ask, save that her sons might be shielded from evil, and might fulfil that promise of her dream, the star in heaven, the light on earth. And for the present!-the good G.o.d guide her and her sons through the difficult morrow, and turn the heart of the unhappy old woman below!

When, exhausted with weeping and watching, she rose from her knees, she stole softly into her sons" turret for a last look at them. Generally they were so much alike in their sleep that even she was at fault between them; but that night there was no doubt. Friedel, pale after the day"s hunger and fatigue, slept with relaxed features in the most complete calm; but though Ebbo"s eyes were closed, there was no repose in his face-his hair was tossed, his colour flushed, his brow contracted, the arm flung across his brother had none of the ease of sleep. She doubted whether he were not awake; but, knowing that he would not brook any endeavour to force confidence he did not offer, she merely hung over them both, murmured a prayer and blessing, and left them.

CHAPTER XI: THE CHOICE IN LIFE

"Friedel, wake!"

"Is it day?" said Friedel, slowly wakening, and crossing himself as he opened his eyes. "Surely the sun is not up-?"

"We must be before the sun!" said Ebbo, who was on his feet, beginning to dress himself. "Hush, and come! Do not wake the mother. It must be ere she or aught else be astir! Thy prayers-I tell thee this is a work as good as prayer."

Half awake, and entirely bewildered, Friedel dipped his finger in the pearl mussel sh.e.l.l of holy water over their bed, and crossed his own brow and his brother"s; then, carrying their shoes, they crossed their mother"s chamber, and crept down stairs. Ebbo muttered to his brother, "Stand thou still there, and pray the saints to keep her asleep;" and then, with bare feet, moved noiselessly behind the wooden part.i.tion that shut off his grandmother"s box-bedstead from the rest of the hall. She lay asleep with open mouth, snoring loudly, and on her pillow lay the bunch of castle keys, that was always carried to her at night. It was a moment of peril when Ebbo touched it; but he had nerved himself to be both steady and dexterous, and he secured it without a jingle, and then, without entering the hall, descended into a pa.s.sage lit by a rough opening cut in the rock. Friedel, who began to comprehend, followed him close and joyfully, and at the first door he fitted in, and with some difficulty turned, a key, and pushed open the door of a vault, where morning light, streaming through the grated window, showed two captives, who had started to their feet, and now stood regarding the pair in the doorway as if they thought their dreams were multiplying the young Baron who had led the attack.

"Signori-" began the princ.i.p.al of the two; but Ebbo spoke.

"Sir, you have been brought here by a mistake in the absence of my mother, the lady of the castle. If you will follow me, I will restore all that is within my reach, and put you on your way."

The merchant"s knowledge of German was small, but the purport of the words was plain, and he gladly left the damp, chilly vault. Ebbo pointed to the bales that strewed the hall. "Take all that can be carried," he said. "Here is your sword, and your purse," he said, for these had been given to him in the moment of victory. "I will bring out your horse and lead you to the pa.s.s."

"Give him food," whispered Friedel; but the merchant was too anxious to have any appet.i.te. Only he faltered in broken German a proposal to pay his respects to the Signora Castellana, to whom he owed so much.

"No! Dormit in lecto," said Ebbo, with a sudden inspiration caught from the Latinized sound of some of the Italian words, but colouring desperately as he spoke.

The Latin proved most serviceable, and the merchant understood that his property was restored, and made all speed to gather it together, and transport it to the stable. One or two of his beasts of burden had been lost in the fray, and there were more packages than could well be carried by the merchant, his servant, and his horse. Ebbo gave the aid of the old white mare-now very white indeed-and in truth the boys pitied the merchant"s fine young bay for being put to base trading uses, and were rather shocked to hear that it had been taken in payment for a knight"s branched velvet gown, and would be sold again at Ulm.

"What a poor c.o.xcomb of a knight!" said they to one another, as they patted the creature"s neck with such fervent admiration that the merchant longed to present it to them, when he saw that the old white mare was the sole steed they possessed, and watched their tender guidance both of her and of the bay up the rocky path so familiar to them.

"But ah, signorini miei, I am an infelice infelicissimo, ever persecuted by le Fate."

"By whom? A count like Schlangenwald?" asked Ebbo.

"Das Schicksal," whispered Friedel.

"Three long miserable years did I spend as a captive among the Moors, having lost all, my ships and all I had, and being forced to row their galleys, gli scomunicati."

"Galleys!" exclaimed Ebbo; "there are some pictured in our World History before Carthage. Would that I could see one!"

"The signorino would soon have seen his fill, were he between the decks, chained to the bench for weeks together, without ceasing to row for twenty-four hours together, with a renegade standing over to lash us, or to put a morsel into our mouths if we were fainting."

"The dogs! Do they thus use Christian men?" cried Friedel.

"Si, si-ja wohl. There were a good fourscore of us, and among them a Tedesco, a good man and true, from whom I learnt la lingua loro."

"Our tongue!-from whom?" asked one twin of the other.

"A Tedesco, a fellow-countryman of sue eccellenze."

"Deutscher!" cried both boys, turning in horror, "our Germans so treated by the pagan villains?"

"Yea, truly, signorini miei. This fellow-captive of mine was a cavaliere in his own land, but he had been betrayed and sold by his enemies, and he mourned piteously for la sposa sua-his bride, as they say here. A goodly man and a tall, piteously cramped in the narrow deck, I grieved to leave him there when the good confraternita at Genoa paid my ransom. Having learnt to speak il Tedesco, and being no longer able to fit out a vessel, I made my venture beyond the Alps; but, alas! till this moment fortune has still been adverse. My mules died of the toil of crossing the mountains; and, when with reduced baggage I came to the river beneath there-when my horses fell and my servants fled, and the peasants came down with their hayforks-I thought myself in hands no better than those of the Moors themselves."

"It was wrongly done," said Ebbo, in an honest, open tone, though blushing. "I have indeed a right to what may be stranded on the bank, but never more shall foul means be employed for the overthrow."

The boys had by this time led the traveller through the Gemsbock"s Pa.s.s, within sight of the convent. "There," said Ebbo, "will they give you harbourage, food, a guide, and a beast to carry the rest of your goods. We are now upon convent land, and none will dare to touch your bales; so I will unload old Schimmel."

"Ah, signorino, if I might offer any token of grat.i.tude-"

"Nay," said Ebbo, with boyish lordliness, "make me not a spoiler."

"If the signorini should ever come to Genoa," continued the trader, "and would honour Gian Battista dei Battiste with a call, his whole house would be at their feet."

"Thanks; I would that we could see strange lands!" said Ebbo. "But come, Friedel, the sun is high, and I locked them all into the castle to make matters safe."

"May the liberated captive know the name of his deliverers, that he may commend it to the saints?" asked the merchant.

"I am Eberhard, Freiherr von Adlerstein, and this is Freiherr Friedmund, my brother. Farewell, sir."

"Strange," muttered the merchant, as he watched the two boys turn down the pa.s.s, "strange how like one barbarous name is to another. Eberardo! That was what we called il Tedesco, and, when he once told me his family name, it ended in stino; but all these foreign names sound alike. Let us speed on, lest these accursed peasants should wake, and be beyond the control of the signorino."

"Ah!" sighed Ebbo, as soon as he had hurried out of reach of the temptation, "small use in being a baron if one is to be no better mounted!"

"Thou art glad to have let that fair creature go free, though," said Friedel.

"Nay, my mother"s eyes would let me have no rest in keeping him. Otherwise-Talk not to me of gladness, Friedel! Thou shouldst know better. How is one to be a knight with nothing to ride but a beast old enough to be his grandmother?"

"Knighthood of the heart may be content to go afoot," said Friedel.

"Oh, Ebbo, what a brother thou art! How happy the mother will be!"

"Pfui, Friedel; what boots heart without spur? I am sick of being mewed up here within these walls of rock! No sport, not even with falling on a traveller. I am worse off than ever were my forefathers!"

"But how is it? I cannot understand," asked Friedel. "What has changed thy mind?"

"Thou, and the mother, and, more than all, the grandame. Listen, Friedel: when thou camest up, in all the whirl of eagerness and glad preparation, with thy grave face and murmur that Jobst had put forked stakes in the stream, it was past man"s endurance to be baulked of the fray. Thou hast forgotten what I said to thee then, good Friedel?"

"Long since. No doubt I thrust in vexatiously."

"Not so," said Ebbo; "and I saw thou hadst reason, for the stakes were most maliciously planted, with long branches hid by the current; but the fellows were showing fight, and I could not stay to think then, or I should have seemed to fear them! I can tell you we made them run! But I never meant the grandmother to put yon poor fellow in the dungeon, and use him worse than a dog. I wot that he was my captive, and none of hers. And then came the mother; and oh, Friedel, she looked as if I were slaying her when she saw the spoil; and, ere I had made her see right and reason, the old lady came swooping down in full malice and spite, and actually came to blows. She struck the motherling-struck her on the face, Friedel!"

"I fear me it has so been before," said Friedel, sadly.

"Never will it be so again," said Ebbo, standing still. "I took the old hag by the hands, and told her she had ruled long enough! My father"s wife is as good a lady of the castle as my grandfather"s, and I myself am lord thereof; and, since my Lady Kunigunde chooses to cross me and beat my mother about this capture, why she has seen the last of it, and may learn who is master, and who is mistress!"

"Oh, Ebbo! I would I had seen it! But was not she outrageous? Was not the mother shrinking and ready to give back all her claims at once?"

"Perhaps she would have been, but just then she found thou wast not with me, and I found thou wast not with her, and we thought of nought else. But thou must stand by me, Friedel, and help to keep the grandmother in her place, and the mother in hers."

"If the mother WILL be kept," said Friedel. "I fear me she will only plead to be left to the grandame"s treatment, as before."

"Never, Friedel! I will never see her so used again. I released this man solely to show that she is to rule here.-Yes, I know all about freebooting being a deadly sin, and moreover that it will bring the League about our ears; and it was a cowardly trick of Jobst to put those branches in the stream. Did I not go over it last night till my brain was dizzy? But still, it is but living and dying like our fathers, and I hate tameness or dullness, and it is like a fool to go back from what one has once begun."