“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.