THE COMBAT ON DRACHENFELS
Not to earth was vouchsafed the honour of commencing the great battle of that night. By an expiring blue-shot beam of moonlight, Farina beheld a vast realm of gloom filling the hollow of the West, and the moon was soon extinguished behind sluggish scraps of iron scud detached from the swinging bulk of ruin, as heavily it ground on the atmosphere in the first thunder-launch of motion.
The heart of the youth was strong, but he could not view without quicker fawning throbs this manifestation of immeasurable power, which seemed as if with a stroke it was capable of destroying creation and the works of man. The bare aspect of the tempest lent terrors to the adventure he was engaged in, and of which he knew not the aim, nor might forecast the issue. Now there was nothing to illumine their path but such forked flashes as lightning threw them at intervals, touching here a hill with clustered cottages, striking into day there a May-blossom, a patch of weed, a single tree by the wayside. Suddenly a more vivid and continuous quiver of violet fire met its reflection on the landscape, and Farina saw the Rhine-stream beneath him.
‘On such a night,’ thought he, ‘Siegfried fought and slew the dragon!’
A blast of light, as from the jaws of the defeated dragon in his throes, made known to him the country he traversed. Crimsoned above the water glimmered the monster-haunted rock itself, and mid-channel beyond, flat and black to the stream, stretched the Nuns’ Isle in cloistral peace.
‘Halt!’ cried the Monk, and signalled with a peculiar whistle, to which he seemed breathlessly awaiting an answer. They were immediately surrounded by longrobed veiled figures.
‘Not too late?’ the Monk hoarsely asked of them.
‘Yet an hour!’ was the reply, in soft clear tones of a woman’s voice.
‘Great strength and valour more than human be mine,’ exclaimed the Monk, dismounting.
He passed apart from them; and they drew in a circle, while he prayed, kneeling.
Presently he returned, and led Farina to a bank, drawing from some hiding-place a book and a bell, which he gave into the hands of the youth.
‘For thy soul, no word!’ said the Monk, speaking down his throat as he took in breath. ‘Nay! not in answer to me! Be faithful, and more than earthly fortune is thine; for I say unto thee, I shall not fail, having grace to sustain this combat.’
Thereupon he commenced the ascent of Drachenfels.
Farina followed. He had no hint of the Monk’s mission, nor of the part himself was to play in it. Such a load of silence gathered on his questioning spirit, that the outcry of the rageing elements alone prevented him from arresting the Monk and demanding the end of his service there. That outcry was enough to freeze speech on the very lips of a mortal. For scarce had they got footing on the winding path of the crags, when the whole vengeance of the storm was hurled against the mountain. Huge boulders were loosened and came bowling from above: trees torn by their roots from the fissures whizzed on the eddies of the wind: torrents of rain foamed down the iron flanks of rock, and flew off in hoar feathers against the short pauses of darkness: the mountain heaved, and quaked, and yawned a succession of hideous chasms.
‘There’s a devil in this,’ thought Farina. He looked back and marked the river imaging lurid abysses of cloud above the mountain-summit—yea! and on the summit a flaming shape was mirrored.
Two nervous hands stayed the cry on his mouth.
‘Have I not warned thee?’ said the husky voice of the Monk. ‘I may well watch, and think for thee as for a dog. Be thou as faithful!’
He handed a flask to the youth, and bade him drink. Farina drank and felt richly invigorated. The Monk then took bell and book.
‘But half an hour,’ he muttered, ‘for this combat that is to ring through centuries.’
Crossing himself, he strode wildly upward. Farina saw him beckon back once, and the next instant he was lost round an incline of the highest peak.
The wind that had just screamed a thousand death-screams, was now awfully dumb, albeit Farina could feel it lifting hood and hair. In the unnatural stillness his ear received tones of a hymn chanted below; now sinking, now swelling; as though the voices faltered between prayer and inspiration. Farina caught on a projection of crag, and fixed his eyes on what was passing on the height.
There was the Monk in his brown hood and wrapper, confronting—if he might trust his balls of sight—the red-hot figure of the Prince of Darkness.
As yet no mortal tussle had taken place between them. They were arguing: angrily, it was true: yet with the first mutual deference of practised logicians. Latin and German was alternately employed by both. It thrilled Farina’s fervid love of fatherland to hear the German Satan spoke: but his Latin was good, and his command over that tongue remarkable; for, getting the worst of the argument, as usual, he revenged himself by parodying one of the Church canticles with a point that discomposed his adversary, and caused him to retreat a step, claiming support against such shrewd assault.
‘The use of an unexpected weapon in warfare is in itself half a victory. Induce your antagonist to employ it as a match for you, and reckon on completely routing him...’ says the old military chronicle.
‘Come!’ said the Demon with easy raillery. ‘You know your game—I mine! I really want the good people to be happy; dancing, kissing, propagating, what you will. We quite agree. You can have no objection to me, but a foolish old prejudice—not personal, but class; an antipathy of the cowl, for which I pardon you! What I should find in you to complain of—I have only to mention it, I am sure—is, that perhaps you do speak a little too much through your nose.’
The Monk did not fall into the jocular trap by retorting in the same strain.
‘Laugh with the Devil, and you won’t laugh longest,’ says the proverb.
Keeping to his own arms, the holy man frowned.
‘Avaunt, Fiend!’ he cried. ‘To thy kingdom below! Thou halt raged over earth a month, causing blights, hurricanes, and epidemics of the deadly sins. Parley no more! Begone!’
The Demon smiled: the corners of his mouth ran up to his ears, and his eyes slid down almost into one.
‘Still through the nose!’ said he reproachfully.
‘I give thee Five Minutes!’ cried the Monk.
‘I had hoped for a longer colloquy,’ sighed the Demon, jogging his left leg and trifling with his tail.
‘One Minute!’ exclaimed the Monk.
‘Truly so!’ said the Demon. ‘I know old Time and his habits better than you really can. We meet every Saturday night, and communicate our best jokes. I keep a book of them Down There!’
And as if he had reason to remember the pavement of his Halls, he stood tiptoe and whipped up his legs.
‘Two Minutes!’
The Demon waved perfect acquiescence, and continued:
‘We understand each other, he and I. All Old Ones do. As long as he lasts, I shall. The thing that surprises me is, that you and I cannot agree, similar as we are in temperament, and playing for the long odds, both of us. My failure is, perhaps, too great a passion for sport, aha! Well, ‘tis a pity you won’t try and live on the benevolent principle. I am indeed kind to them who commiserate my condition. I give them all they want, aha! Hem! Try and not believe in me now, aha! Ho!... Can’t you? What are eyes? Persuade yourself you’re dreaming. You can do anything with a mind like yours, Father Gregory! And consider the luxury of getting me out of the way so easily, as many do. It is my finest suggestion, aha! Generally I myself nudge their ribs with the capital idea—You’re above bribes? I was going to observe—’
‘Three!’
‘Observe, that if you care for worldly honours, I can smother you with that kind of thing. Several of your first-rate people made a bargain with me when they were in the fog, and owe me a trifle. Patronage they call it. I hook the high and the low. Too-little and too-much serve me better than Beelzebub. A weak stomach is certainly more carnally virtuous than a full one. Consequently my kingdom is becoming too respectable. They’ve all got titles, and object to being asked to poke the fire without—Honourable-and-with-Exceeding-Brightness-Beaming Baroness This! Admirably-Benignant-Down-looking Highness That! Interrupts business, especially when you have to ask them to fry themselves, according to the rules... Would you like Mainz and the Rheingau?... You don’t care for Beauty—Puella, Puellae? I have plenty of them, too, below. The Historical Beauties warmed up at a moment’s notice. Modern ones made famous between morning and night—Fame is the sauce of Beauty. Or, no—eh?’
‘Four!’
‘Not quite so fast, if you please. You want me gone. Now, where’s your charity? Do you ask me to be always raking up those poor devils underneath? While I’m here, they’ve a respite. They cannot think you kind, Father Gregory! As for the harm, you see, I’m not the more agreeable by being face to face with you—though some fair dames do take to my person monstrously. The secret is, the quantity of small talk I can command: that makes them forget my smell, which is, I confess, abominable, displeasing to myself, and my worst curse. Your sort, Father Gregory, are somewhat unpleasant in that particular—if I may judge by their Legate here. Well, try small talk. They would fall desperately in love with polecats and skunks if endowed with small talk. Why, they have become enamoured of monks before now! If skunks, why not monks? And again—’
‘Five!’
Having solemnly bellowed this tremendous number, the holy man lifted his arms to begin the combat.
Farina felt his nerves prick with admiration of the ghostly warrior daring the Second Power of Creation on that lonely mountain-top. He expected, and shuddered at thought of the most awful fight ever yet chronicled of those that have taken place between heroes and the hounds of evil: but his astonishment was great to hear the Demon, while Bell was in air and Book aloft, retreat, shouting, ‘Hold!’
‘I surrender,’ said he sullenly. ‘What terms?’
‘Instantaneous riddance of thee from face of earth.’
‘Good!—Now,’ said the Demon, ‘did you suppose I was to be trapped into a fight? No doubt you wish to become a saint, and have everybody talking of my last defeat.... Pictures, poems, processions, with the Devil downmost! No. You’re more than a match for me.’
‘Silence, Darkness!’ thundered the Monk, ‘and think not to vanquish thy victor by flatteries. Begone!’
And again he towered in his wrath.
The Demon drew his tail between his legs, and threw the forked, fleshy, quivering end over his shoulder. He then nodded cheerfully, pointed his feet, and finicked a few steps away, saying: ‘I hope we shall meet again.’
Upon that he shot out his wings, that were like the fins of the wyver-fish, sharpened in venomous points.
‘Commands for your people below?’ he inquired, leering with chin awry. ‘Desperate ruffians some of those cowls. You are right not to acknowledge them.’
Farina beheld the holy man in no mood to let the Enemy tamper with him longer.
The Demon was influenced by a like reflection; for, saying, ‘Cologne is the city your Holiness inhabits, I think?’ he shot up rocket-like over Rhineland, striking the entire length of the stream, and its rough-bearded castle-crests, slate-ledges, bramble-clefts, vine-slopes, and haunted valleys, with one brimstone flash. Frankfort and the far Main saw him and reddened. Ancient Trier and Mosel; Heidelberg and Neckar; Limberg and Lahn, ran guilty of him. And the swift artery of these shining veins, Rhine, from his snow cradle to his salt decease, glimmered Stygian horrors as the Infernal Comet, sprung over Bonn, sparkled a fiery minute along the face of the stream, and vanished, leaving a seam of ragged flame trailed on the midnight heavens.
Farina breathed hard through his teeth.
‘The last of him was awful,’ said he, coming forward to where the Monk knelt and grasped his breviary, ‘but he was vanquished easily.’
‘Easily?’ exclaimed the holy man, gasping satisfaction: ‘thou weakling! is it for thee to measure difficulties, or estimate powers? Easily? thou worldling! and so are great deeds judged when the danger’s past! And what am I but the humble instrument that brought about this wondrous conquest! the poor tool of this astounding triumph! Shall the sword say, This is the battle I won! Yonder the enemy I overthrow! Bow to me, ye lords of earth, and worshippers of mighty acts? Not so! Nay, but the sword is honoured in the hero’s grasp, and if it break not, it is accounted trusty. This, then, this little I may claim, that I was trusty! Trusty in a heroic encounter! Trusty in a battle with earth’s terror! Oh! but this must not be said. This is to think too much! This is to be more than aught yet achieved by man!’
The holy warrior crossed his arms, and gently bowed his head.
‘Take me to the Sisters,’ he said. ‘The spirit has gone out of me! I am faint, and as a child!’
Farina asked, and had, his blessing.
‘And with it my thanks!’ said the Monk. ‘Thou hast witnessed how he can be overcome! Thou hast looked upon a scene that will be the glory of Christendom! Thou hast beheld the discomfiture of Darkness before the voice of Light! Yet think not much of me: account me little in this matter! I am but an instrument! but an instrument!—and again, but an instrument!’
Farina drew the arms of the holy combatant across his shoulders and descended Drachenfels.
The tempest was as a forgotten anguish. Bright with maiden splendour shone the moon; and the old rocks, cherished in her beams, put up their horns to blue heaven once more. All the leafage of the land shook as to shake off a wicked dream, and shuddered from time to time, whispering of old fears quieted, and present peace. The heart of the river fondled with the image of the moon in its depths.
‘This is much to have won for earth,’ murmured the Monk. ‘And what is life, or who would not risk all, to snatch such loveliness from the talons of the Fiend, the Arch-foe? Yet, not I! not I! say not, ‘twas I did this!’
Soft praises of melody ascended to them on the moist fragrance of air. It was the hymn of the Sisters.
‘How sweet!’ murmured the Monk. ‘Put it from me! away with it!’
Rising on Farina’s back, and stirruping his feet on the thighs of the youth, he cried aloud: ‘I charge ye, whoso ye be, sing not this deed before the emperor! By the breath of your nostrils; pause! ere ye whisper aught of the combat of Saint Gregory with Satan, and his victory, and the marvel of it, while he liveth; for he would die the humble monk he is.’
He resumed his seat, and Farina brought him into the circle of the Sisters. Those pure women took him, and smoothed him, lamenting, and filling the night with triumphing tones.
Farina stood apart.
‘The breeze tells of dawn,’ said the Monk; ‘we must be in Cologne before broad day.’
They mounted horse, and the Sisters grouped and reverenced under the blessings of the Monk.
‘No word of it!’ said the Monk warningly. ‘We are silent, Father!’ they answered. ‘Cologne-ward!’ was then his cry, and away he and Farina, flew.
THE GOSHAWK LEADS
Morning was among the grey eastern clouds as they rode upon the camp hastily formed to meet the Kaiser. All there was in a wallow of confusion. Fierce struggles for precedence still went on in the neighbourhood of the imperial tent ground, where, under the standard of Germany, lounged some veterans of the Kaiser’s guard, calmly watching the scramble. Up to the edge of the cultivated land nothing was to be seen but brawling clumps of warriors asserting the superior claims of their respective lords. Variously and hotly disputed were these claims, as many red coxcombs testified. Across that point where the green field flourished, not a foot was set, for the Kaiser’s care of the farmer, and affection for good harvests, made itself respected even in the heat of those jealous rivalries. It was said of him, that he would have camped in a bog, or taken quarters in a cathedral, rather than trample down a green blade of wheat, or turn over one vine-pole in the empire. Hence the presence of Kaiser Heinrich was never hailed as Egypt’s plague by the peasantry, but welcome as the May month wherever he went.
Father Gregory and Farina found themselves in the centre of a group ere they drew rein, and a cry rose, ‘The good father shall decide, and all’s fair,’ followed by, ‘Agreed! Hail and tempest! he’s dropped down o’ purpose.’
‘Father,’ said one, ‘here it is! I say I saw the Devil himself fly off Drachenfels, and flop into Cologne. Fritz here, and Frankenbauch, saw him too. They’ll swear to him: so ‘ll I. Hell’s thunder! will we. Yonder fellows will have it ‘twas a flash o’ lightning, as if I didn’t see him, horns, tail, and claws, and a mighty sight ‘twas, as I’m a sinner.’
A clash of voices, for the Devil and against him, burst on this accurate description of the Evil spirit. The Monk sank his neck into his chest.
‘Gladly would I hold silence on this, my sons,’ said he, in a supplicating voice.
‘Speak, Father,’ cried the first spokesman, gathering courage from the looks of the Monk.
Father Gregory appeared to commune with himself deeply. At last, lifting his head, and murmuring, ‘It must be,’ he said aloud:
‘‘Twas verily Satan, O my sons! Him this night in mortal combat I encountered and overcame on the summit of Drachenfels, before the eyes of this youth; and from Satan I this night deliver ye! an instrument herein as in all other.’
Shouts, and a far-spreading buzz resounded in the camp. Hundreds had now seen Satan flying off the Drachenstein. Father Gregory could no longer hope to escape from the importunate crowds that beset him for particulars. The much-contested point now was, as to the exact position of Satan’s tail during his airy circuit, before descending into Cologne. It lashed like a lion’s. ‘Twas cocked, for certain! He sneaked it between his legs like a lurcher! He made it stumpy as a brown bear’s! He carried it upright as a pike!
‘O my sons! have I sown dissension? Have I not given ye peace?’ exclaimed the Monk.
But they continued to discuss it with increasing frenzy.
Farina cast a glance over the tumult, and beheld his friend Guy beckoning earnestly. He had no difficulty in getting away to him, as the fetters of all eyes were on the Monk alone.
The Goshawk was stamping with excitement.
‘Not a moment to be lost, my lad,’ said Guy, catching his arm. ‘Here, I’ve had half-a-dozen fights already for this bit of ground. Do you know that fellow squatting there?’
Farina beheld the Thier at the entrance of a tumbledown tent. He was ruefully rubbing a broken head.
‘Now,’ continued Guy, ‘to mount him is the thing; and then after the wolves of Werner as fast as horse-flesh can carry us. No questions! Bound, are you? And what am I? But this is life and death, lad! Hark!’
The Goshawk whispered something that sucked the blood out of Farina’s cheek.
‘Look you—what’s your lockjaw name? Keep good faith with me, and you shall have your revenge, and the shiners I promise, besides my lord’s interest for a better master: but, sharp! we won’t mount till we’re out of sight o’ the hell-scum you horde with.’
The Thier stood up and staggered after them through the camp. There was no difficulty in mounting him horses were loose, and scampering about the country, not yet delivered from their terrors of the last night’s tempest.
‘Here be we, three good men!’ exclaimed Guy, when they were started, and Farina had hurriedly given him the heads of his adventure with the Monk. ‘Three good men! One has helped to kick the devil: one has served an apprenticeship to his limb: and one is ready to meet him foot to foot any day, which last should be myself. Not a man more do we want, though it were to fish up that treasure you talk of being under the Rhine there, and guarded by I don’t know how many tricksy little villains. Horses can be ferried across at Linz, you say?’
‘Ay, thereabout,’ grunted the Thier.
‘We ‘re on the right road, then!’ said Guy. ‘Thanks to you both, I’ve had no sleep for two nights—not a wink, and must snatch it going—not the first time.’
The Goshawk bent his body, and spoke no more. Farina could not get a word further from him. By the mastery he still had over his rein, the Goshawk alone proved that he was of the world of the living. Schwartz Thier, rendered either sullen or stunned by the latest cracked crown he had received, held his jaws close as if they had been nailed.
At Linz the horses were well breathed. The Goshawk, who had been snoring an instant before, examined them keenly, and shook his calculating head.
‘Punch that beast of yours in the ribs,’ said he to Farina. ‘Ah! not a yard of wind in him. And there’s the coming back, when we shall have more to carry. Well: this is my lord’s money; but i’ faith, it’s going in a good cause, and Master Groschen will make it all right, no doubt; not a doubt of it.’
The Goshawk had seen some excellent beasts in the stables of the Kaiser’s Krone; but the landlord would make no exchange without an advance of silver. This done, the arrangement was prompt.
‘Schwartz Thier!—I’ve got your name now,’ said Guy, as they were ferrying across, ‘you’re stiff certain they left Cologne with the maiden yesternoon, now?’
‘Ah, did they! and she’s at the Eck safe enow by this time.’
‘And away from the Eck this night she shall come, trust me!’
‘Or there will I die with her!’ cried Farina.
‘Fifteen men at most, he has, you said,’ continued Guy.
‘Two not sound, five true as steel, and the rest shillyshally. ‘Slife, one lock loose serves us; but two saves us: five we’re a match for, throwing in bluff Baron; the remainder go with victory.’
‘Can we trust this fellow?’ whispered Farina.
‘Trust him!’ roared Guy. ‘Why, I’ve thumped him, lad; pegged and pardoned him. Trust him? trust me! If Werner catches a sight of that snout of his within half-a-mile of his hold, he’ll roast him alive.’
He lowered his voice: ‘Trust him? We can do nothing without him. I knocked the devil out of him early this morning. No chance for his Highness anywhere now. This Eck of Werner’s would stand a siege from the Kaiser in person, I hear. We must into it like weasels; and out as we can.’
Dismissing the ferry-barge with stern injunctions to be in waiting from noon to noon, the three leapt on their fresh nags.
‘Stop at the first village,’ said Guy; ‘we must lay in provision. As Master Groschen says, “Nothing’s to be done, Turpin, without provender.”’
‘Goshawk!’ cried Farina; ‘you have time; tell me how this business was done.’
The only reply was a soft but decided snore, that spoke, like a voluptuous trumpet, of dreamland and its visions.
At Sinzig, the Thier laid his hand on Guy’s bridle, with the words, ‘Feed here,’ a brief, but effective, form of signal, which aroused the Goshawk completely. The sign of the Trauben received them. Here, wurst reeking with garlic, eggs, black bread, and sour wine, was all they could procure. Farina refused to eat, and maintained his resolution, in spite of Guy’s sarcastic chiding.
‘Rub down the beasts, then, and water them,’ said the latter. ‘Made a vow, I suppose,’ muttered Guy.
‘That’s the way of those fellows. No upright manly take-the-thing-as-it-comes; but fly-sky-high whenever there’s a dash on their heaven. What has his belly done to offend him? It will be crying out just when we want all quiet. I wouldn’t pay Werner such a compliment as go without a breakfast for him. Not I! Would you, Schwartz Thier?’
‘Henker! not I!’ growled the Thier. ‘He’ll lose one sooner.’
‘First snatch his prey, or he’ll be making, God save us! a meal for a Kaiser, the brute.’
Guy called in the landlady, clapped down the score, and abused the wine.
‘Sir,’ said the landlady, ‘ours is but a poor inn, and we do our best.’
‘So you do,’ replied the Goshawk, softened; ‘and I say that a civil tongue and rosy smiles sweeten even sour wine.’
The landlady, a summer widow, blushed, and as he was stepping from the room, called him aside.
‘I thought you were one of that dreadful Werner’s band, and I hate him.’
Guy undeceived her.
‘He took my sister,’ she went on, ‘and his cruelty killed her. He persecuted me even in the lifetime of my good man. Last night he came here in the middle of the storm with a young creature bright as an angel, and sorrowful—’
‘He’s gone, you’re sure?’ broke in Guy.
‘Gone! Oh, yes! Soon as the storm abated he dragged her on. Oh! the way that young thing looked at me, and I able to do nothing for her.’
‘Now, the Lord bless you for a rosy Christian!’ cried Guy, and, in his admiration, he flung his arm round her and sealed a ringing kiss on each cheek.
‘No good man defrauded by that! and let me see the fellow that thinks evil of it. If I ever told a woman a secret, I ‘d tell you one now, trust me. But I never do, so farewell! Not another?’
Hasty times keep the feelings in a ferment, and the landlady was extremely angry with Guy and heartily forgave him, all within a minute.
‘No more,’ said she, laughing: ‘but wait; I have something for you.’
The Goshawk lingered on a fretting heel. She was quickly under his elbow again with two flasks leaning from her bosom to her arms.
‘There! I seldom meet a man like you; and, when I do, I like to be remembered. This is a true good wine, real Liebfrauenmilch, which I only give to choice customers.’
‘Welcome it is!’ sang Guy to her arch looks; ‘but I must pay for it.’
‘Not a pfennig!’ said the landlady.
‘Not one?’
‘Not one!’ she repeated, with a stamp of the foot.
‘In other coin, then,’ quoth Guy; and folding her waist, which did not this time back away, the favoured Goshawk registered rosy payment on a very fresh red mouth, receiving in return such lively discount, that he felt himself bound in conscience to make up the full sum a second time.
‘What a man!’ sighed the landlady, as she watched the Goshawk lead off along the banks; ‘courtly as a knight, open as a squire, and gentle as a page!’
WERNER’S ECK
A league behind Andernach, and more in the wintry circle of the sun than Laach, its convenient monastic neighbour, stood the castle of Werner, the Robber Baron. Far into the South, hazy with afternoon light, a yellow succession of sandhills stretched away, spouting fire against the blue sky of an elder world, but now dead and barren of herbage. Around is a dusty plain, where the green blades of spring no sooner peep than they become grimed with sand and take an aged look, in accordance with the ungenerous harvests they promise. The aridity of the prospect is relieved on one side by the lofty woods of Laach, through which the sun setting burns golden-red, and on the other by the silver sparkle of a narrow winding stream, bordered with poplars, and seen but a glistening mile of its length by all the thirsty hills. The Eck, or Corner, itself, is thick-set with wood, but of a stunted growth, and lying like a dark patch on the landscape. It served, however, entirely to conceal the castle, and mask every movement of the wary and terrible master. A trained eye advancing on the copse would hardly mark the glimmer of the turrets over the topmost leaves, but to every loophole of the walls lies bare the circuit of the land. Werner could rule with a glance the Rhine’s course down from the broad rock over Coblentz to the white tower of Andernach. He claimed that march as his right; but the Mosel was no hard ride’s distance, and he gratified his thirst for rapine chiefly on that river, delighting in it, consequently, as much as his robber nature boiled over the bound of his feudal privileges.
Often had the Baron held his own against sieges and restrictions, bans and impositions of all kinds. He boasted that there was never a knight within twenty miles of him that he had not beaten, nor monk of the same limit not in his pay. This braggadocio received some warrant from his yearly increase of licence; and his craft and his castle combined, made him a notable pest of the region, a scandal to the abbey whose countenance he had, and a frightful infliction on the poorer farmers and peasantry.
The sun was beginning to slope over Laach, and threw the shadows of the abbey towers half-way across the blue lake-waters, as two men in the garb of husbandmen emerged from the wood. Their feet plunged heavily and their heads hung down, as they strode beside a wain mounted with straw, whistling an air of stupid unconcern; but a close listener might have heard that the lumbering vehicle carried a human voice giving them directions as to the road they were to take, and what sort of behaviour to observe under certain events. The land was solitary. A boor passing asked whether toll or tribute they were conveying to Werner. Tribute, they were advised to reply, which caused him to shrug and curse as he jogged on. Hearing him, the voice in the wain chuckled grimly. Their next speech was with a trooper, who overtook them, and wanted to know what they had in the wain for Werner. Tribute, they replied, and won the title of ‘brave pigs’ for their trouble.
‘But what’s the dish made of?’ said the trooper, stirring the straw with his sword-point.
‘Tribute,’ came the answer.
‘Ha! You’ve not been to Werner’s school,’ and the trooper swung a sword-stroke at the taller of the two, sending a tremendous shudder throughout his frame; but he held his head to the ground, and only seemed to betray animal consciousness in leaning his ear closer to the wain.
‘Blood and storm! Will ye speak?’ cried the trooper.
‘Never talk much; but an ye say nothing to the Baron,’—thrusting his hand into the straw—‘here’s what’s better than speaking.’
‘Well said!—Eh? Liebfrauenmilch? Ho, ho! a rare bleed!’
Striking the neck of the flask on a wheel, the trooper applied it to his mouth, and ceased not deeply ingurgitating till his face was broad to the sky and the bottle reversed. He then dashed it down, sighed, and shook himself.
‘Rare news! the Kaiser’s come: he’ll be in Cologne by night; but first he must see the Baron, and I’m post with the order. That’s to show you how high he stands in the Kaiser’s grace. Don’t be thinking of upsetting Werner yet, any of you; mind, now!’
‘That’s Blass-Gesell,’ said the voice in the wain, as the trooper trotted on: adding, ‘‘gainst us.’
‘Makes six,’ responded the driver.
Within sight of the Eck, they descried another trooper coming toward them. This time the driver was first to speak.
‘Tribute! Provender! Bread and wine for the high Baron Werner from his vassals over Tonnistein.’
‘And I’m out of it! fasting like a winter wolf,’ howled the fellow.
He was in the act of addressing himself to an inspection of the wain’s contents, when a second flask lifted in air, gave a sop to his curiosity. This flask suffered the fate of the former.
‘A Swabian blockhead, aren’t you?’
‘Ay, that country,’ said the driver. ‘May be, Henker Rothhals happens to be with the Baron?’
‘To hell with him! I wish he had my job, and I his, of watching the yellow-bird in her new cage, till she’s taken out to-night, and then a jolly bumper to the Baron all round.’
The driver wished him a fortunate journey, strongly recommending him to skirt the abbey westward, and go by the Ahr valley, as there was something stirring that way, and mumbling, ‘Makes five again,’ as he put the wheels in motion.
‘Goshawk!’ said his visible companion; ‘what do you say now?’
‘I say, bless that widow!’
‘Oh! bring me face to face with this accursed Werner quickly, my God!’ gasped the youth.
‘Tusk! ‘tis not Werner we want—there’s the Thier speaking. No, no, Schwartz Thier! I trust you, no doubt; but the badger smells at a hole, before he goes inside it. We’re strangers, and are allowed to miss our way.’
Leaving the wain in Farina’s charge, he pushed through a dense growth of shrub and underwood, and came crouching on a precipitous edge of shrouded crag, which commanded a view of the stronghold, extending round it, as if scooped clean by some natural action, about a stone’sthrow distant, and nearly level with the look-out tower. Sheer from a deep circular basin clothed with wood, and bottomed with grass and bubbling water, rose a naked moss-stained rock, on whose peak the castle firmly perched, like a spying hawk. The only means of access was by a narrow natural bridge of rock flung from this insulated pinnacle across to the mainland. One man, well disposed, might have held it against forty.
‘Our way’s the best,’ thought Guy, as he meditated every mode of gaining admission. ‘A hundred men an hour might be lost cutting steps up that steep slate; and once at the top we should only have to be shoved down again.’
While thus engaged, he heard a summons sounded from the castle, and scrambled back to Farina.
‘The Thier leads now,’ said he, ‘and who leads is captain. It seems easier to get out of that than in. There’s a square tower, and a round. I guess the maiden to be in the round. Now, lad, no crying out—You don’t come in with us; but back you go for the horses, and have them ready and fresh in yon watered meadow under the castle. The path down winds easy.’
‘Man!’ cried Farina, ‘what do you take me for?—go you for the horses.’
‘Not for a fool,’ Guy rejoined, tightening his lip; ‘but now is your time to prove yourself one.’
‘With you, or without you, I enter that castle!’
‘Oh! if you want to be served up hot for the Baron’s supper-mess, by all means.’
‘Thunder!’ growled Schwartz Thier, ‘aren’t ye moving?’
The Goshawk beckoned Farina aside.
‘Act as I tell you, or I’m for Cologne.’
‘Traitor!’ muttered the youth.
‘Swearing this, that if we fail, the Baron shall need a leech sooner than a bride.’
‘That stroke must be mine!’
The Goshawk griped the muscle of Farina’s arm till the youth was compelled to slacken it with pain.
‘Could you drive a knife through a six-inch wood-wall? I doubt this wild boar wants a harder hit than many a best man could give. ‘Sblood! obey, sirrah. How shall we keep yon fellow true, if he sees we’re at points?’
‘I yield,’ exclaimed Farina with a fall of the chest; ‘but hear I nothing of you by midnight—Oh! then think not I shall leave another minute to chance. Farewell! haste! Heaven prosper you! You will see her, and die under her eyes. That may be denied to me. What have I done to be refused that last boon?’
‘Gone without breakfast and dinner,’ said Guy in abhorrent tones.
A whistle from the wain, following a noise of the castlegates being flung open, called the Goshawk away, and he slouched his shoulders and strode to do his part, without another word. Farina gazed after him, and dropped into the covert.
THE WATER-LADY
‘Bird of lovers! Voice of the passion of love! Sweet, deep, disaster-toning nightingale!’ sings the old minnesinger; ‘who that has not loved, hearing thee is touched with the wand of love’s mysteries, and yearneth to he knoweth not whom, humbled by overfulness of heart; but who, listening, already loveth, heareth the language he would speak, yet faileth in; feeleth the great tongueless sea of his infinite desires stirred beyond his narrow bosom; is as one stript of wings whom the angels beckon to their silver homes: and he leaneth forward to ascend to them, and is mocked by his effort: then is he of the fallen, and of the fallen would he remain, but that tears lighten him, and through the tears stream jewelled shafts dropt down to him from the sky, precious ladders inlaid with amethyst, sapphire, blended jasper, beryl, rose-ruby, ether of heaven flushed with softened bloom of the insufferable Presences: and lo, the ladders dance, and quiver, and waylay his eyelids, and a second time he is mocked, aspiring: and after the third swoon standeth Hope before him with folded arms, and eyes dry of the delusions of tears, saying, Thou hast seen! thou hast felt! thy strength hath reached in thee so far! now shall I never die in thee!’
‘For surely,’ says the minstrel, ‘Hope is not born of earth, or it were perishable. Rather know her the offspring of that embrace strong love straineth the heavens with. This owe we to thy music, bridal nightingale! And the difference of this celestial spirit from the smirking phantasy of whom all stand soon or late forsaken, is the difference between painted day with its poor ambitious snares, and night lifting its myriad tapers round the throne of the eternal, the prophet stars of everlasting time! And the one dieth, and the other liveth; and the one is unregretted, and the other walketh in thought-spun raiment of divine melancholy; her ears crowded with the pale surges that wrap this shifting shore; in her eyes a shape of beauty floating dimly, that she will not attain this side the water, but broodeth on evermore.
‘Therefore, hold on thy cherished four long notes, which are as the very edge where exultation and anguish melt, meet, and are sharpened to one ecstasy, death-dividing bird! Fill the woods with passionate chuckle and sob, sweet chaplain of the marriage service of a soul with heaven! Pour out thy holy wine of song upon the soft-footed darkness, till, like a priest of the inmost temple, ‘tis drunken with fair intelligences!’
Thus the old minstrels and minnesingers.
Strong and full sang the nightingales that night Farina held watch by the guilty castle that entombed his living beloved. The castle looked itself a denser shade among the moonthrown shadows of rock and tree. The meadow spread like a green courtyard at the castle’s foot. It was of lush deep emerald grass, softly mixed with grey in the moon’s light, and showing like jasper. Where the shadows fell thickest, there was yet a mist of colour. All about ran a brook, and babbled to itself. The spring crocus lifted its head in moist midgrasses of the meadow, rejoiced with freshness. The rugged heights seemed to clasp this one innocent spot as their only garden-treasure; and a bank of hazels hid it from the castle with a lover’s arm.
‘The moon will tell me,’ mused Farina; ‘the moon will signal me the hour! When the moon hangs over the round tower, I shall know ‘tis time to strike.’
The song of the nightingales was a full unceasing throb.
It went like the outcry of one heart from branch to branch. The four long notes, and the short fifth which leads off to that hurried gush of music, gurgling rich with passion, came thick and constant from under the tremulous leaves.
At first Farina had been deaf to them. His heart was in the dungeon with Margarita, or with the Goshawk in his dangers, forming a thousand desperate plans, among the red-hot ploughshares of desperate action. Finally, without a sense of being wooed, it was won. The tenderness of his love then mastered him.
‘God will not suffer that fair head to come to harm!’ he thought, and with the thought a load fell off his breast.
He paced the meadows, and patted the three pasturing steeds. Involuntarily his sight grew on the moon. She went so slowly. She seemed not to move at all. A little wing of vapour flew toward her; it whitened, passed, and the moon was slower than before. Oh! were the heavens delaying their march to look on this iniquity? Again and again he cried, ‘Patience, it is not time!’ He flung himself on the grass. The next moment he climbed the heights, and was peering at the mass of gloom that fronted the sky. It reared such a mailed head of menace, that his heart was seized with a quivering, as though it had been struck. Behind lay scattered some small faint-winkling stars on sapphire fields, and a stain of yellow light was in a breach of one wall.
He descended. What was the Goshawk doing? Was he betrayed? It was surely now time? No; the moon had not yet smitten the face of the castle. He made his way through the hazel-bank among flitting nightmoths, and glanced up to measure the moon’s distance. As he did so, a first touch of silver fell on the hoary flint.
‘Oh, young bird of heaven in that Devil’s clutch!’
Sounds like the baying of boar-hounds alarmed him. They whined into silence.
He fell back. The meadow breathed peace, and more and more the nightingales volumed their notes. As in a charmed circle of palpitating song, he succumbed to languor. The brook rolled beside him fresh as an infant, toying with the moonlight. He leaned over it, and thrice waywardly dipped his hand in the clear translucence.
Was it his own face imaged there?
Farina bent close above an eddy of the water. It whirled with a strange tumult, breaking into lines and lights a face not his own, nor the moon’s; nor was it a reflection. The agitation increased. Now a wreath of bubbles crowned the pool, and a pure water-lily, but larger, ascended wavering.
He started aside; and under him a bright head, garlanded with gemmed roses, appeared. No fairer figure of woman had Farina seen. Her visage had the lustrous white of moonlight, and all her shape undulated in a dress of flashing silver-white, wonderful to see. The Lady of the Water smiled on him, and ran over with ripples and dimples of limpid beauty. Then, as he retreated on the meadow grass, she swam toward him, and taking his hand, pressed it to her. After her touch the youth no longer feared. She curved her finger, and beckoned him on. All that she did was done flowingly. The youth was a shadow in her silver track as she passed like a harmless wave over the closed crocuses; but the crocuses shivered and swelled their throats of streaked purple and argent as at delicious rare sips of a wine. Breath of violet, and ladysmock, and valley-lily, mingled and fluttered about her. Farina was as a man working the day’s intent in a dream. He could see the heart in her translucent, hanging like a cold dingy ruby. By the purity of his nature he felt that such a presence must have come but to help. It might be Margarita’s guardian fairy!
They passed the hazel-bank, and rounded the castlecrag, washed by the brook and, beneath the advancing moon, standing in a ring of brawling silver. The youth with his fervid eyes marked the old weather-stains and scars of long defiance coming into colour. That mystery of wickedness which the towers had worn in the dusk, was dissolved, and he endured no more the almost abashed sensation of competing littleness that made him think there was nought to do, save die, combating single-handed such massive power. The moon shone calmly superior, like the prowess of maiden knights; and now the harsh frown of the walls struck resolution to his spirit, and nerved him with hate and the contempt true courage feels when matched against fraud and villany.
On a fallen block of slate, cushioned with rich brown moss and rusted weather-stains, the Water-Lady sat, and pointed to Farina the path of the moon toward the round tower. She did not speak, and if his lips parted, put her cold finger across them. Then she began to hum a soft sweet monotony of song, vague and careless, very witching to hear. Farina caught no words, nor whether the song was of days in dust or in flower, but his mind bloomed with legends and sad splendours of story, while she sang on the slate-block under sprinkled shadows by the water.
He had listened long in trance, when the Water-Lady hushed, and stretched forth a slender forefinger to the moon. It stood like a dot over the round tower. Farina rose in haste. She did not leave him to ask her aid, but took his hand and led him up the steep ascent. Halfway to the castle, she rested. There, concealed by bramble-tufts, she disclosed the low portal of a secret passage, and pushed it open without effort. She paused at the entrance, and he could see her trembling, seeming to wax taller, till she was like a fountain glittering in the cold light. Then she dropped, as drops a dying bet, and cowered into the passage.
Darkness, thick with earth-dews, oppressed his senses. He felt the clammy walls scraping close on him. Not the dimmest lamp, or guiding sound, was near; but the lady went on as one who knew her way. Passing a low-vaulted dungeon-room, they wound up stairs hewn in the rock, and came to a door, obedient to her touch, which displayed a chamber faintly misted by a solitary bar of moonlight. Farina perceived they were above the foundation of the castle. The walls gleamed pale with knightly harness, habergeons gaping for heads, breastplates of blue steel, halbert, and hand-axe, greaves, glaives, boar-spears, and polished spur-fixed heel-pieces. He seized a falchion hanging apart, but the lady stayed his arm, and led to another flight of stone ending in a kind of corridor. Noises of laughter and high feasting beset him at this point. The Lady of the Water sidled her head, as to note a familiar voice; and then drew him to a looped aperture.
Farina beheld a scene that first dazzled, but, as it grew into shape, sank him with dismay. Below, and level with the chamber he had left, a rude banqueting-hall glowed, under the light of a dozen flambeaux, with smoking boar’s flesh, deer’s flesh, stone-flagons, and horn-beakers. At the head of this board sat Werner, scarlet with furious feasting, and on his right hand, Margarita, bloodless as a beautiful martyr bound to the fire. Retainers of Werner occupied the length of the hall, chorusing the Baron’s speeches, and drinking their own healths when there was no call for another. Farina saw his beloved alone. She was dressed as when he parted with her last. The dear cameo lay on her bosom, but not heaving proudly as of old. Her shoulders were drooped forward, and contracted her bosom in its heaving. She would have had a humbled look, but for the marble sternness of her eyes. They were fixed as eyes that see the way of death through all earthly objects.
‘Now, dogs!’ cried the Baron, ‘the health of the night! and swell your lungs, for I’ll have no cat’s cry when Werner’s bride is the toast. Monk or no monk’s leave, she’s mine. Ay, my pretty one! it shall be made right in the morning, if I lead all the Laach rats here by the nose. Thunder! no disrespect to Werner’s bride from Pope or abbot. Now, sing out!—or wait! these fellows shall drink it first.’
He stretched and threw a beaker of wine right and left behind him, and Farina’s despair stiffened his limbs as he recognized the Goshawk and Schwartz Thier strapped to the floor. Their beards were already moist with previous libations similarly bestowed, and they received this in sullen stillness; but Farina thought he observed a rapid glance of encouragement dart from beneath the Goshawk’s bent brows, as Margarita momentarily turned her head half-way on him.
‘Lick your chaps, ye beasts, and don’t say Werner stints vermin good cheer his nuptial-night. Now,’ continued the Baron, growing huskier as he talked louder: ‘Short and ringing, my devil’s pups:—Werner and his Bride! and may she soon give you a young baron to keep you in better order than I can, as, if she does her duty, she will.’
The Baron stood up, and lifted his huge arm to lead the toast.
‘Werner and his Bride!’
Not a voice followed him. There was a sudden intimation of the call being echoed; but it snapped, and ended in shuffling tones, as if the hall-door had closed on the response.
‘What ‘s this?’ roared the Baron, in that caged wild beast voice Margarita remembered she had heard in the Cathedral Square.
No one replied.
‘Speak! or I’ll rot you a fathom in the rock, curs!’
‘Herr Baron!’ said Henker Rothhals impressively; ‘the matter is, that there’s something unholy among us.’
The Baron’s goblet flew at his head before the words were uttered.
‘I’ll make an unholy thing of him that says it,’ and Werner lowered at them one by one.
‘Then I say it, Herr Baron!’ pursued Henker Rothhals, wiping his frontispiece: ‘The Devil has turned against you at last. Look up there—Ah, it’s gone now; but where’s the man sitting this side saw it not?’
The Baron made one spring, and stood on the board.
‘Now! will any rascal here please to say so?’
Something in the cruel hang of his threatening hatchet jaw silenced many in the act of confirming the assertion.
‘Stand out, Henker Rotthals!’
Rotthals slid a hunting-knife up his wrist, and stepped back from the board.
‘Beast!’ roared the Baron, ‘I said I wouldn’t shed blood to-night. I spared a traitor, and an enemy——’
‘Look again!’ said Rothhals; ‘will any fellow say he saw nothing there.’
While all heads, including Werner’s, were directed to the aperture which surveyed them, Rothhals tossed his knife to the Goshawk unperceived.
This time answers came to his challenge, but not in confirmation. The Baron spoke with a gasping gentleness.
‘So you trifle with me? I’m dangerous for that game. Mind you of Blass-Gesell? I made a better beast of him by sending him three-quarters of the road to hell for trial.’ Bellowing, ‘Take that!’ he discharged a broad blade, hitherto concealed in his right hand, straight at Rothhals. It fixed in his cheek and jaw, wringing an awful breath of pain from him as he fell against the wall.
‘There’s a lesson for you not to cross me, children!’ said Werner, striding his stumpy legs up and down the crashing board, and puffing his monstrous girth of chest and midriff. ‘Let him stop there awhile, to show what comes of thwarting Werner!—Fire-devils! before the baroness, too!—Something unholy is there? Something unholy in his jaw, I think!—Leave it sticking! He’s against meat last, is he? I’ll teach you who he’s for!—Who speaks?’
All hung silent. These men were animals dominated by a mightier brute.
He clasped his throat, and shook the board with a jump, as he squeaked, rather than called, a second time ‘Who spoke?’
He had not again to ask. In this pause, as the Baron glared for his victim, a song, so softly sung that it sounded remote, but of which every syllable was clearly rounded, swelled into his ears, and froze him in his angry posture.