Books: Otto of the Silver Hand
H >>
Howard Pyle >> Otto of the Silver Hand
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 Otto
Of the Silver Hand
by Howard Pyle
CONTENTS
I. The Dragon's House,
II. How the Baron Went Forth to Shear,
III. How the Baron Came Home Shorn,
IV. The White Cross on the Hill,
V. How Otto Dwelt at St. Michaelsburg,
VI. How Otto Lived in the Dragon's House,
VII. The Red Cock Crows on Drachenhausen,
VIII. In the House of the Dragon Scorner,
IX. How One-eyed Hans Came to Trutz-Drachen,
X. How Hans Brought Terror to the Kitchen,
XI. How Otto was Saved,
XII. A Ride for Life,
XIII. How Baron Conrad Held the Bridge,
XIV. How Otto Saw the Great Emperor,
FOREWORD.
Between the far away past history of the world, and that which
lies near to us; in the time when the wisdom of the ancient
times was dead and had passed away, and our own days of light
had not yet come, there lay a great black gulf in human history,
a gulf of ignorance, of superstition, of cruelty, and of
wickedness.
That time we call the dark or middle ages.
Few records remain to us of that dreadful period in our world's
history, and we only know of it through broken and disjointed
fragments that have been handed down to us through the
generations.
Yet, though the world's life then was so wicked and black, there
yet remained a few good men and women here and there (mostly in
peaceful and quiet monasteries, far from the thunder and the
glare of the worlds bloody battle), who knew the right and the
truth and lived according to what they knew; who preserved and
tenderly cared for the truths that the dear Christ taught, and
lived and died for in Palestine so long ago.
This tale that I am about to tell is of a little boy who lived
and suffered in those dark middle ages; of how he saw both the
good and the bad of men, and of how, by gentleness and love and
not by strife and hatred, he came at last to stand above other
men and to be looked up to by all. And should you follow the
story to the end, I hope you may find it a pleasure, as I have
done, to ramble through those dark ancient castles, to lie with
little Otto and Brother John in the high belfry-tower, or to sit
with them in the peaceful quiet of the sunny old monastery
garden, for, of all the story, I love best those early peaceful
years that little Otto spent in the dear old White Cross on the
Hill.
Poor little Otto's life was a stony and a thorny pathway, and it
is well for all of us nowadays that we walk it in fancy and not
in truth.
I.
The Dragon's House.
Up from the gray rocks, rising sheer and bold and bare, stood
the walls and towers of Castle Drachenhausen. A great gate-way,
with a heavy iron-pointed portcullis hanging suspended in the
dim arch above, yawned blackly upon the bascule or falling
drawbridge that spanned a chasm between the blank stone walls
and the roadway that winding down the steep rocky slope to the
little valley just beneath. There in the lap of the hills around
stood the wretched straw-thatched huts of the peasants belonging
to the castle - miserable serfs who, half timid, half fierce,
tilled their poor patches of ground, wrenching from the hard
soil barely enough to keep body and soul together. Among those
vile hovels played the little children like foxes about their
dens, their wild, fierce eyes peering out from under a mat of
tangled yellow hair.
Beyond these squalid huts lay the rushing, foaming river,
spanned by a high, rude, stone bridge where the road from the
castle crossed it, and beyond the river stretched the great,
black forest, within whose gloomy depths the savage wild beasts
made their lair, and where in winter time the howling wolves
coursed their flying prey across the moonlit snow and under the
net-work of the black shadows from the naked boughs above.
The watchman in the cold, windy bartizan or watch-tower that
clung to the gray walls above the castle gateway, looked from
his narrow window, where the wind piped and hummed, across the
tree-tops that rolled in endless billows of green, over hill and
over valley to the blue and distant slope of the Keiserberg,
where, on the mountain side, glimmered far away the walls of
Castle Trutz-Drachen.
Within the massive stone walls through which the gaping gateway
led, three great cheerless brick buildings, so forbidding that
even the yellow sunlight could not light them into brightness,
looked down, with row upon row of windows, upon three sides of
the bleak, stone courtyard. Back of and above them clustered a
jumble of other buildings, tower and turret, one high-peaked
roof overtopping another.
The great house in the centre was the Baron's Hall, the part to
the left was called the Roderhausen; between the two stood a
huge square pile, rising dizzily up into the clear air high
above the rest - the great Melchior Tower.
At the top clustered a jumble of buildings hanging high aloft in
the windy space a crooked wooden belfry, a tall, narrow watch-
tower, and a rude wooden house that clung partly to the roof of
the great tower and partly to the walls.
>From the chimney of this crazy hut a thin thread of smoke would
now and then rise into the air, for there were folk living far
up in that empty, airy desert, and oftentimes wild, uncouth
little children were seen playing on the edge of the dizzy
height, or sitting with their bare legs hanging down over the
sheer depths, as they gazed below at what was going on in the
court-yard. There they sat, just as little children in the town
might sit upon their father's door-step; and as the sparrows
might fly around the feet of the little town children, so the
circling flocks of rooks and daws flew around the feet of these
air-born creatures.
It was Schwartz Carl and his wife and little ones who lived far
up there in the Melchior Tower, for it overlooked the top of the
hill behind the castle and so down into the valley upon the
further side. There, day after day, Schwartz Carl kept watch
upon the gray road that ran like a ribbon through the valley,
from the rich town of Gruenstaldt to the rich town of
Staffenburgen, where passed merchant caravans from the one to
the other - for the lord of Drachenhausen was a robber baron.
Dong! Dong! The great alarm bell would suddenly ring out from
the belfry high up upon the Melchior Tower. Dong! Dong! Till the
rooks and daws whirled clamoring and screaming. Dong! Dong! Till
the fierce wolf-hounds in the rocky kennels behind the castle
stables howled dismally in answer. Dong! Dong! - Dong! Dong!
Then would follow a great noise and uproar and hurry in the
castle court-yard below; men shouting and calling to one
another, the ringing of armor, and the clatter of horses' hoofs
upon the hard stone. With the creaking and groaning of the
windlass the iron-pointed portcullis would be slowly raised, and
with a clank and rattle and clash of iron chains the drawbridge
would fall crashing. Then over it would thunder horse and man,
clattering away down the winding, stony pathway, until the great
forest would swallow them, and they would be gone.
Then for a while peace would fall upon the castle courtyard, the
cock would crow, the cook would scold a lazy maid, and Gretchen,
leaning out of a window, would sing a snatch of a song, just as
though it were a peaceful farm-house, instead of a den of
robbers.
Maybe it would be evening before the men would return once more.
Perhaps one would have a bloody cloth bound about his head,
perhaps one would carry his arm in a sling; perhaps one - maybe
more than one - would be left behind, never to return again, and
soon forgotten by all excepting some poor woman who would weep
silently in the loneliness of her daily work.
Nearly always the adventurers would bring back with them pack-
horses laden with bales of goods. Sometimes, besides these, they
would return with a poor soul, his hands tied behind his back
and his feet beneath the horse's body, his fur cloak and his
flat cap wofully awry. A while he would disappear in some gloomy
cell of the dungeon-keep, until an envoy would come from the
town with a fat purse, when his ransom would be paid, the
dungeon would disgorge him, and he would be allowed to go upon
his way again.
One man always rode beside Baron Conrad in his expeditions and
adventures a short, deep-chested, broad-shouldered man, with
sinewy arms so long that when he stood his hands hung nearly to
his knees.
His coarse, close-clipped hair came so low upon his brow that
only a strip of forehead showed between it and his bushy, black
eyebrows. One eye was blind; the other twinkled and gleamed like
a spark under the penthouse of his brows. Many folk said that
the one-eyed Hans had drunk beer with the Hill-man, who had
given him the strength of ten, for he could bend an iron spit
like a hazel twig, and could lift a barrel of wine from the
floor to his head as easily as though it were a basket of eggs.
As for the one-eyed Hans he never said that he had not drunk
beer with the Hill-man, for he liked the credit that such
reports gave him with the other folk. And so, like a half savage
mastiff, faithful to death to his master, but to him alone, he
went his sullen way and lived his sullen life within the castle
walls, half respected, half feared by the other inmates, for it
was dangerous trifling with the one-eyed Hans.
II.
How the Baron went Forth to Shear.
Baron Conrad and Baroness Matilda sat together at their morning
meal below their raised seats stretched the long, heavy wooden
table, loaded with coarse food - black bread, boiled cabbage,
bacon, eggs, a great chine from a wild boar, sausages, such as
we eat nowadays, and flagons and jars of beer and wine, Along
the board sat ranged in the order of the household the followers
and retainers. Four or five slatternly women and girls served
the others as they fed noisily at the table, moving here and
there behind the men with wooden or pewter dishes of food, now
and then laughing at the jests that passed or joining in the
talk. A huge fire blazed and crackled and roared in the great
open fireplace, before which were stretched two fierce, shaggy,
wolfish-looking hounds. Outside, the rain beat upon the roof or
ran trickling from the eaves, and every now and then a chill
draught of wind would breathe through the open windows of the
great black dining-hall and set the fire roaring.
Along the dull-gray wall of stone hung pieces of armor, and
swords and lances, and great branching antlers of the stag.
Overhead arched the rude, heavy, oaken beams, blackened with age
and smoke, and underfoot was a chill pavement of stone.
Upon Baron Conrad's shoulder leaned the pale, slender, yellow-
haired Baroness, the only one in all the world with whom the
fierce lord of Drachenhausen softened to gentleness, the only
one upon whom his savage brows looked kindly, and to whom his
harsh voice softened with love.
The Baroness was talking to her husband in a low voice, as he
looked down into her pale face, with its gentle blue eyes.
"And wilt thou not, then," said she, "do that one thing for me?"
"Nay," he growled, in his deep voice, "I cannot promise thee
never more to attack the towns-people in the valley over yonder.
How else could I live an' I did not take from the fat town hogs
to fill our own larder?"
"Nay," said the Baroness, "thou couldst live as some others do,
for all do not rob the burgher folk as thou dost. Alas! mishap
will come upon thee some day, and if thou shouldst be slain,
what then would come of me?"
"Prut," said the Baron, "thy foolish fears" But he laid his rough,
hairy hand softly upon the Baroness' head and stroked her
yellow hair.
"For my sake, Conrad," whispered the Baroness.
A pause followed. The Baron sat looking thoughtfully down into
the Baroness' face. A moment more, and he might have promised
what she besought; a moment more, and he might have been saved
all the bitter trouble that was to follow. But it was not to be.
Suddenly a harsh sound broke the quietness of all into a
confusion of noises. Dong! Dong! - it was the great alarm-bell
from Melchior's Tower.
The Baron started at the sound. He sat for a moment or two with
his hand clinched upon the arm of his seat as though about to
rise, then he sunk back into his chair again.
All the others had risen tumultuously from the table, and now
stood looking at him, awaiting his orders.
"For my sake, Conrad," said the Baroness again.
Dong! Dong! rang the alarm-bell. The Baron sat with his eyes
bent upon the floor, scowling blackly.
The Baroness took his hand in both of hers. "For my sake," she
pleaded, and the tears filled her blue eyes as she looked up at
him, "do not go this time."
>From the courtyard without came the sound of horses' hoofs
clashing against the stone pavement, and those in the hall stood
watching and wondering at this strange delay of the Lord Baron.
Just then the door opened and one came pushing past the rest; it
was the one-eyed Hans. He came straight to where the Baron sat,
and, leaning over, whispered something into his master's ear.
"For my sake," implored the Baroness again; but the scale was
turned. The Baron pushed back his chair heavily and rose to his
feet. "Forward!" he roared, in a voice of thunder, and a great
shout went up in answer as he strode clanking down the hall and
out of the open door.
The Baroness covered her face with her hands and wept.
"Never mind, little bird," said old Ursela, the nurse,
soothingly; "he will come back to thee again as he has come back
to thee before."
But the poor young Baroness continued weeping with her face
buried in her hands, because he had not done that thing she had
asked.
A white young face framed in yellow hair looked out into the
courtyard from a window above; but if Baron Conrad of
Drachenhausen saw it from beneath the bars of his shining
helmet, he made no sign.
"Forward" he cried again.
Down thundered the drawbridge, and away they rode with clashing
hoofs and ringing armor through the gray shroud of drilling
rain.
The day had passed and the evening had come, and the Baroness
and her women sat beside a roaring fire. All were chattering and
talking and laughing but two - the fair young Baroness and old
Ursela; the one sat listening, listening, listening, the other
sat with her chin resting in the palm of her hand, silently
watching her young mistress. The night was falling gray and
chill, when suddenly the clear notes of a bugle rang from
without the castle walls. The young Baroness started, and the
rosy light flashed up into her pale cheeks.
"Yes, good," said old Ursela; "the red fox has come back to his
den again, and I warrant he brings a fat town goose in his
mouth; now we'll have fine clothes to wear, and thou another
gold chain to hang about thy pretty neck."
The young Baroness laughed merrily at the old woman's speech.
"This time," said she, "I will choose a string of pearls like
that one my aunt used to wear, and which I had about my neck
when Conrad first saw me."
Minute after minute passed; the Baroness sat nervously playing
with a bracelet of golden beads about her wrist. "How long he
stays," said she.
"Yes," said Ursela; "but it is not cousin wish that holds him by
the coat."
As she spoke, a door banged in the passageway without, and the
ring of iron footsteps sounded upon the stone floor. Clank!
Clank! Clank!
The Baroness rose to her feet, her face all alight. The door
opened; then the flush of joy faded away and the face grew
white, white, white. One hand clutched the back of the bench
whereon she had been sitting, the other hand pressed tightly
against her side.
It was Hans the one-eyed who stood in the doorway, and black
trouble sat on his brow; all were looking at him waiting.
"Conrad," whispered the Baroness, at last. "Where is Conrad?
Where is your master?" and even her lips were white as she
spoke.
The one-eyed Hans said nothing.
Just then came the noise of men s voices in the corridor and the
shuffle and scuffle of feet carrying a heavy load. Nearer and
nearer they came, and one-eyed Hans stood aside. Six men came
struggling through the doorway, carrying a litter, and on the
litter lay the great Baron Conrad. The flaming torch thrust into
the iron bracket against the wall flashed up with the draught of
air from the open door, and the light fell upon the white face
and the closed eyes, and showed upon his body armor a great red
stain that was not the stain of rust.
Suddenly Ursela cried out in a sharp, shrill voice, "Catch her,
she falls!"
It was the Baroness.
Then the old crone turned fiercely upon the one-eyed Hans. "Thou
fool!" she cried, "why didst thou bring him here? Thou hast
killed thy lady!"
"I did not know," said the one-eyed Hans, stupidly.
III.
How the Baron came Home Shorn.
But Baron Conrad was not dead. For days he lay upon his hard
bed, now muttering incoherent words beneath his red beard, now
raving fiercely with the fever of his wound. But one day he woke
again to the things about him.
He turned his head first to the one side and then to the other;
there sat Schwartz Carl and the one-eyed Hans. Two or three
other retainers stood by a great window that looked out into the
courtyard beneath, jesting and laughing together in low tones,
and one lay upon the heavy oaken bench that stood along by the
wall snoring in his sleep.
"Where is your lady?" said the Baron, presently; "and why is she
not with me at this time?"
The man that lay upon the bench started up at the sound of his
voice, and those at the window came hurrying to his bedside. But
Schwartz Carl and the one-eyed Hans looked at one another, and
neither of them spoke. The Baron saw the look and in it read a
certain meaning that brought him to his elbow, though only to
sink back upon his pillow again with a groan.
"Why do you not answer me?" said he at last, in a hollow voice;
then to the one-eyed Hans, "Hast no tongue, fool, that thou
standest gaping there like a fish? Answer me, where is thy
mistress?"
"I - I do not know," stammered poor Hans.
For a while the Baron lay silently looking from one face to the
other, then he spoke again. "How long have I been lying here?"
said he.
"A sennight, my lord," said Master Rudolph, the steward, who had
come into the room and who now stood among the others at the
bedside.
"A sennight," repeated the Baron, in a low voice, and then to
Master Rudolph, "And has the Baroness been often beside me in
that time?" Master Rudolph hesitated. "Answer me," said the
Baron, harshly.
"Not - not often," said Master Rudolph, hesitatingly.
The Baron lay silent for a long time. At last he passed his
hands over his face and held them there for a minute, then of a
sudden, before anyone knew what he was about to do, he rose upon
his elbow and then sat upright upon the bed. The green wound
broke out afresh and a dark red spot grew and spread upon the
linen wrappings; his face was drawn and haggard with the pain of
his moving, and his eyes wild and bloodshot. Great drops of
sweat gathered and stood upon his forehead as he sat there
swaying slightly from side to side.
"My shoes," said he, hoarsely.
Master Rudolph stepped forward. "But, my Lord Baron," he began
and then stopped short, for the Baron shot him such a look that
his tongue stood still in his head.
Hans saw that look out of his one eye. Down he dropped upon his
knees and, fumbling under the bed, brought forth a pair of soft
leathern shoes, which he slipped upon the Baron's feet and then
laced the thongs above the instep.
"Your shoulder," said the Baron. He rose slowly to his feet,
gripping Hans in the stress of his agony until the fellow winced
again. For a moment he stood as though gathering strength, then
doggedly started forth upon that quest which he had set upon
himself.
At the door he stopped for a moment as though overcome by his
weakness, and there Master Nicholas, his cousin, met him; for
the steward had sent one of the retainers to tell the old man
what the Baron was about to do.
"Thou must go back again, Conrad," said Master Nicholas; "thou
art not fit to be abroad."
The Baron answered him never a word, but he glared at him from
out of his bloodshot eyes and ground his teeth together. Then he
started forth again upon his way.
Down the long hall he went, slowly and laboriously, the others
following silently behind him, then up the steep winding stairs,
step by step, now and then stopping to lean against the wall. So
he reached a long and gloomy passageway lit only by the light of
a little window at the further end.
He stopped at the door of one of the rooms that opened into this
passage-way, stood for a moment, then he pushed it open.
No one was within but old Ursela, who sat crooning over a fire
with a bundle upon her knees. She did not see the Baron or know
that he was there.
"Where is your lady?" said he, in a hollow voice.
Then the old nurse looked up with a start. "Jesu bless us,"
cried she, and crossed herself.
"Where is your lady?" said the Baron again, in the same hoarse
voice; and then, not waiting for an answer, "Is she dead?"
The old woman looked at him for a minute blinking her watery
eyes, and then suddenly broke into a shrill, long-drawn wail.
The Baron needed to hear no more.
As though in answer to the old woman's cry, a thin piping
complaint came from the bundle in her lap.
At the sound the red blood flashed up into the Baron's face.
"What is that you have there?" said he, pointing to the bundle
upon the old woman's knees.
She drew back the coverings and there lay a poor, weak, little
baby, that once again raised its faint reedy pipe.
"It is your son," said Ursela, "that the dear Baroness left
behind her when the holy angels took her to Paradise. She
blessed him and called him Otto before she left us."
IV.
The White Cross on the Hill.
Here the glassy waters of the River Rhine, holding upon its
bosom a mimic picture of the blue sky and white clouds floating
above, runs smoothly around a jutting point of land, St.
Michaelsburg, rising from the reedy banks of the stream, sweeps
up with a smooth swell until it cuts sharp and clear against the
sky. Stubby vineyards covered its earthy breast, and field and
garden and orchard crowned its brow, where lay the Monastery of
St. Michaelsburg - "The White Cross on the Hill." There within
the white walls, where the warm yellow sunlight slept, all was
peaceful quietness, broken only now and then by the crowing of
the cock or the clamorous cackle of a hen, the lowing of kine or
the bleating of goats, a solitary voice in prayer, the faint
accord of distant singing, or the resonant toll of the monastery
bell from the high-peaked belfry that overlooked the hill and
valley and the smooth, far-winding stream. No other sounds broke
the stillness, for in this peaceful haven was never heard the
clash of armor, the ring of iron-shod hoofs, or the hoarse call
to arms.
All men were not wicked and cruel and fierce in that dark, far-
away age; all were not robbers and terror-spreading tyrants,
even in that time when men's hands were against their neighbors,
and war and rapine dwelt in place of peace and justice.
Abbot Otto, of St. Michaelsburg, was a gentle, patient, pale.
faced old man; his white hands were soft and smooth, and no one
would have thought that they could have known the harsh touch of
sword-hilt and lance. And yet, in the days of the Emperor
Frederick - the grandson of the great Red-beard - no one stood
higher in the prowess of arms than he. But all at once - for why,
no man could tell - a change came over him, and in the flower of
his youth and fame and growing power he gave up everything in
life and entered the quiet sanctuary of that white monastery on
the hill-side, so far away from the tumult and the conflict of
the world in which he had lived.
Some said that it was because the lady he had loved had loved
his brother, and that when they were married Otto of Wolbergen
had left the church with a broken heart.
But such stories are old songs that have been sung before.
Clatter! clatter! Jingle! jingle! It was a full-armed knight
that came riding up the steep hill road that wound from left to
right and right to left amid the vineyards on the slopes of St.
Michaelsburg. Polished helm and corselet blazed in the noon
sunlight, for no knight in those days dared to ride the roads
except in full armor. In front of him the solitary knight
carried a bundle wrapped in the folds of his coarse gray cloak.
It was a sorely sick man that rode up the heights of St.
Michaelsburg. His head hung upon his breast through the
faintness of weariness and pain; for it was the Baron Conrad.
He had left his bed of sickness that morning, had saddled his
horse in the gray dawn with his own hands, and had ridden away
into the misty twilight of the forest without the knowledge of
anyone excepting the porter, who, winking and blinking in the
bewilderment of his broken slumber, had opened the gates to the
sick man, hardly knowing what he was doing, until he beheld his
master far away, clattering down the steep bridle-path.
Eight leagues had he ridden that day with neither a stop nor a
stay; but now at last the end of his journey had come, and he
drew rein under the shade of the great wooden gateway of St.
Michaelsburg.
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6