"You shall find all ready ere it rings to high mass," answered the commandant, with calm determination. "But your wound, Sir Drost! Can you yourself ride forth without danger? Otherwise the task is mine?"
"With or without danger I must--I will onward," answered Aagé. "When it rings for high mass, then; and secrecy is expedient--Let it concern a hunt after the outlaws--Understand you?"
"Right! that shall be the belief in the castle here within the half hour." So saying, Sir Ribolt hasted into the castle-yard, and Drost Aagé went with Master Petrus into the ladies' apartment.
CHAP. XI.
The state of feverish anxiety into which Aagé had been thrown, had called the colour into his cheek, and restored the appearance of health to his countenance. In the spacious apartment appropriated to the female inmates of the castle, where strangers were received, and where the household assembled on holidays before divine service, Aagé and Master Petrus were received by the aged mistress of the castle, who herself presented the guests their warm morning drink in cups of polished silver. At a large round table in the middle of the apartment, which was covered with a white fringed woollen table-cloth, sat the two German minstrels, with the smoking cups before them, in pleasant converse with the ladies. Ulrica questioned them, with curiosity, of their visits to foreign princes, in whose praise and exaltation Master Rumelant was as inexhaustible as he was unwearied in reckoning up all the honour he had gained by his lays with these "excellent lords, his august and most gracious patrons."
Margaretha also took part in the conversation with the strangers; but she was more modest in her queries. She was much more interested in their art than in the good fortune they had sought and obtained by it from the great. The solemn Master Poppé favoured her with a detailed account of the genius and lays of the famous Minnésingers, whose most flourishing period Master Poppé asserted could only be supposed by the ignorant to have passed away. He affirmed, on the contrary, that the noble art of minstrelsy had only now for the first time fully developed itself on higher themes,--in the praise of moral truth and seraphic beauty. Minstrels no longer repeated the monotonous praises of verdant May, or of the beauty of earthly females and vain loves, but now in the same, or even in a more regular measure, sang moral or religious themes and important theological dogmas. He could not, however, deny that the ancient love songs possessed a degree of pathos and animation which even his good friends Master Henrick Frauenlob and a certain Master Regenbogen, as well as the famous schoolmaster of Esslingen, with all their learning, vainly strove to attain. Meanwhile he deemed it very fortunate that, as princes and emperors no longer, as in former times, devoted themselves to the noble art of minstrelsy, now cultivated chiefly by the honest burgher class, there still were lords and princes, like the King of Denmark, to honour and encourage the art, and that the minstrel's lay yet resounded in knightly halls and in the apartments of noble ladies. He lauded the poetic spirit of the chivalrous poetry of Denmark, but still considered it, as well as the love songs, too vain and worldly; a charge which Margaretha took much to heart, although she readily admitted to the learned minstrel, that all the Danish ballads she knew and admired treated of love adventures; not a single one on scriptural or theological subjects.
When Drost Aagé entered the ladies' apartment, Margaretha rose to return his greeting, and observed, with some uneasiness, that he had thrown aside his sling. Her attention to Master Poppé's discourse was at an end, and she entreated him to excuse, that she, as an attendant on a wounded patient, had an occupation which could not be postponed. "Pardon me, Sir Drost!" she said to Aagé, and pointed to his unswathed arm. "This is not according to agreement; yet you seem to have the use of your arm," she added, when she perceived how easily he moved it. "The wound is healed in some sort. With caution you may use it, in moderation. But the stiff neck bandage----"
"That I shall wear in remembrance of you, until we meet again, noble maiden!" answered Aagé; "although I almost think it might be dispensed with. Within an hour I must leave the castle. That I am able to do so I owe to your skill and unwearied care. I think soon to see my noble master the king," he added, in a low voice, as he drew her to a recess in the window fronting the castle garden; "but the suitable time for effecting any thing towards your liberation is, alas! hardly come as yet."
"We ask no clemency from our earthly judges, but only that which is just and reasonable," answered Margaretha, with calm seriousness. "I should have thought all times were equally convenient to a good sovereign for hearing the justification of the innocent."
"It would grieve me deeply, noble Lady Margaretha!" said Aagé, "if my just-intentioned sovereign were for a moment to seem unjust in your eyes; but your case now appears dark and intricate to those who are not, as I am, acquainted with your pious sentiments and admirable conduct. It is known that the traitorous squire Kaggé was in your company--your unfortunate confidence in that miscreant brought suspicion on your innocence, and places you under a cloud; but, by the living Lord! I will justify you. If earthly justice is blind, the judgment of Heaven and my knightly sword shall surely open her eyes!"