Ekkehard Volume I Part 28

"I have brought you the veil of the martyr," said Sir Cralo, "consecrated by the blood of her wounds. You might hang it up, in the castle-church. Only Thieto, the blind one, had remained unharmed.

Undiscovered by the enemy, he was found soundly sleeping in the little hut by the rock. 'I have been dreaming that an eternal peace had come over the world,' said he to the brothers, when they awoke him. But even in our remote little valley, we were not to have peace much longer; as the Huns found their way to us also. That was a swarming, piping and snorting, such as had never been heard before in the quiet firwood. Our walls were strong, and our courage likewise; but hungry people soon get tired of being besieged. The day before yesterday our provisions were eaten up; and when the evening came, we saw a pillar of smoke rise from our monastery. So we broke through the enemy, in the middle of the night; the Lord being with us and our swords helping likewise. And so we have come to you,"--with a bow towards the d.u.c.h.ess, "homeless and orphaned, like birds whose nest has been struck by lightning; and bringing nothing with us, but the tidings that the Huns, whom the Lord destroy, are following on our heels." ...

"The sooner they come, the better," defiantly said the Abbot of the Reichenau, raising his goblet.

"Here's to the arms of G.o.d's own champions," said the d.u.c.h.ess, ringing her gla.s.s, against his.

"And revenge for the death of the brave Romeias," added Praxedis in a low voice and with tears in her eyes, when her gla.s.s vibrated against that of the gaunt Fridinger.

It was getting late. Wild songs and warlike cries, were still resounding in the hall on the first floor. The young monk who had come to the Reichenau from Mutina in Italy, had again struck up his sentinel's song.

The opportunity for valiant deeds, was no longer very far off.

CHAPTER XIII.

Heribald and his Guests.

On the little island of Reichenau, it was silent and lonely after the departure of the inhabitants of the cloister. The weak-minded Heribald was lord and master of the whole place, and was much pleased with his solitude. For hours he now sat on the sh.o.r.e, throwing smooth pebbles over the waves, so that they danced merrily along. When they sank at once, he scolded them loudly.

With the poultry in the yard, which he fed very regularly, he also talked a good deal. "If you are very good, and the brothers do not return," he once said, "Heribald will preach you a sermon."--In the monastery itself, he also found plenty of amus.e.m.e.nt, for in a single day of solitude, a man can hatch a good many useful ideas. The camerarius had angered him, by refusing to give him the necessary shoe-leather; so Heribald went up to the cell of the camerarius, smashed to pieces his large, stone water-jug, as well as his three flower-pots, and then opening the straw mattress, he took out some of the straw, and put in the broken crockery instead. Having achieved this feat, he lay down on it, and on feeling the hard and sharp-edged contents tolerably unpleasant, he smiled contentedly and betook himself to the Abbot's apartments.

Towards the Abbot he also bore a grudge, as he was indebted to him for many a sound whipping; but in his rooms, everything was locked up, and in excellent order. So nothing was left to him, but to cut off one of the legs of the cus.h.i.+oned easy-chair. Having done this, he cunningly placed it back in its old place, as if nothing whatever had happened.

"That will break down nicely with him, when he comes home, and sits comfortably on it. 'Thou shalt castigate the flesh,' says St. Benedict.

But Heribald has not cut off the chair's foot.--The Huns have done it."

The duty of prayer and psalm-singing he performed regularly, as the rules of the order prescribed. The seven times for prayer each day, the solitary man strictly adhered to, as if he could be punished for missing them; and he descended also every night into the cloister-church, there to hold the midnight vigil.

At the same hour, when his brothers were carousing in the hall of the ducal castle with the monks of St. Gall, Heribald was standing in the choir. The dark, dreary shadows of night enveloped the aisle, in which the everlasting lamp was dimly burning; but fearlessly and with a clear voice, Heribald intoned the first verse: "Oh Lord, deliver me from evil"--and then sang the third psalm, which David had once sung, when he fled before his son Absalon. When he came to the place where the antiphon was to fall in, according to custom, he stopped, waiting for the responses. Everything remained silent and still, however. Heribald pa.s.sed his hand over his forehead, and said: "Ah, I forgot! They are all gone, and Heribald is alone." Then he wanted to sing the forty-ninth psalm, as the nightly service required,--when the everlasting lamp went out, a bat having extinguished it with its wings.

Outside, storm and rain were raging. Heavy drops fell on the roof of the church, and beat against the windows. Heribald began to shudder.

"Holy Benedict," exclaimed he, "be pleased to see that it is not Heribald's fault, that the antiphon was not sung." He then rose and walked with careful steps through the dark aisle. A shrill wind whistled through a little window of the crypt under the high-altar, producing a howling sound; and as Heribald advanced, a draught caught his garment. "Art thou come back, thou h.e.l.lish tempter?" said he, "must I fight thee once more?"

Undauntedly he stepped back to the altar and seized a wooden crucifix, which the Abbot had not had taken away. "In the name of the Holy Trinity, I defy thee, Satanas. Come on, Heribald awaits thee!" With unabated courage he thus stood on the altar-steps; but though the wind continued to howl dismally, the Devil did not appear.

"He still remembers the last time," smilingly said the idiot. About a year ago the Evil One had appeared to him in the shape of a big dog, barking furiously at him; but Heribald had attacked him with a pole; and had aimed his blows so well, that the pole broke.

Then Heribald screamed out a number of choice invectives, in the direction where the wind was moaning; and when even after this, nothing came to tempt him, he replaced the crucifix on the altar, bent his knees before it, and then went back to his cell, murmuring the "_Kyrie eleison_." There he slept the sleep of the just until late in the morning. The sun was already high in the heavens, when Heribald was complacently walking up and down, before the monastery. Since the time, when he had enjoyed an occasional holiday at school, he had seldom had an opportunity of resting himself. "Idleness is the soul's worst enemy," St. Benedict had said, and in consequence strictly ordered his disciples, to fill up the time which was not claimed by devotional tasks, by the work of their hands. Heribald, not knowing any art or handicraft, had been employed in cutting wood and in rendering similar useful, but tiring services;--but now, he paced up and down with crossed arms before the heaped up log-wood; looking up smilingly at one of the cloister-windows.

"Why don't you come down, Father Rudimann, and make Heribald cut the wood? You, who used to keep such excellent watch over the brothers; and who so often called Heribald a useless servant of the Lord, when he looked at the clouds, instead of handling the axe. Why don't you attend to your duty?"

Not even an echo gave answer to the half-witted creature's query; so he drew out some of the under logs, thus making the whole pile fall noisily down. "Tumble down if you like," continued he in his soliloquy, "Heribald has got a holiday, and is not going to put you up again.--The Abbot has run away, and the brothers have run away also; so it serves them right, if everything tumbles down."

After these laudable achievements, Heribald directed his steps to the cloister-garden. Another project now occupied his mind. He intended to cut a few delicate lettuces for his dinner, and to dress them a good deal better than they would ever have been done, during the time of the father head-cook's superintendance. Temptingly the vision rose before him, how he would not spare the oil-jug, and would pitilessly cut to pieces some of the biggest onions; when a cloud of dust rose on the opposite sh.o.r.e and the forms of horses and riders became visible.

"Are you there, already?" said the monk, making the sign of the cross and then mumbling a hasty prayer; but a few moments later, his face had resumed its customary smile of contentment.

"Strange wanderers and pilgrims are to meet with a christian reception, at the gate of any house of the Lord," murmured he. "I will receive them."

A new idea now crossed his brain, and again pa.s.sing his hand over his forehead, he exclaimed: "Have I not studied the history of the ancients, in the cloister-school, and learned how the Roman Senators received the invading Gauls?--Dressed in their mantles, the ivory sceptre in their hands, the venerable men sat in their chairs, immovable like bronze idols. Ah well, the Latin teacher shall not have told us in vain, that this was a most worthy reception. Heribald can do the same!"

A mild imbecility may be an enviable dower, now and then in life. That, which appears black to others, seems to the half-witted, blue or green, and if his path be zig-zag, he does not notice the serpents hidden in the gra.s.s; and the precipice into which the wise man inevitably falls, he stumbles over, without even perceiving the threatening danger....

A curule chair not being just then in the monastery, Heribald pushed a huge oak stem towards the gate which led into the court-yard. "For what end have we studied secular history, if we cannot even take counsel by it?" said he, seating himself quietly on his block, in expectation of that which was to come.

Opposite on the near sh.o.r.e, a troop of hors.e.m.e.n had stopped. With their reins slung round their arms, and their arrows ready fastened on their bows, they had gone on ahead, to reconnoitre the land.' When no ambuscade came out from behind the willows bordering the lake, they stopped a while to rest their horses. Then the arrows were put back into their quivers; the crooked sabres taken between the teeth, and pressing the spurs into the horses sides, they went into the lake.

Quickly the horses crossed the blue waves. Now the foremost men had touched the land, and jumping from their saddles, shook themselves three times, like a poodle coming out of its bath, and then with piercing, triumphant shouts they approached the monastery.

Like an image of stone, Heribald sat at his post, gazing undauntedly at the strange figures before him. As yet he had never pa.s.sed a sleepless night, musing over the perfection of human beauty, but the faces which now met his view, struck him as being so very ugly, that he could not suppress a startled, "Have mercy upon us, oh Lord!"

Partly bent, the strange guests were sitting in their saddles; their shrunk, meagre little bodies dressed in beasts' skins. From their square-shaped skulls, black, s.h.a.ggy hair hung down in wild disorder; and their unshapely yellow faces, glistened as if they had been anointed with tallow. One of the foremost had enlarged his coa.r.s.e-lipped mouth considerably, by a voluntary cut at the corners, and from their small, deep-set eyes they looked out suspiciously at the world.

"To make a Hun, one need only give a square shape to a lump of clay, put on a smaller lump for a nose, and drive in the chin"--Heribald was just thinking, when they stood before him. He did not understand their hissing language, and smiled complacently, as if the whole gang did not regard him in the least. For a while they kept staring with unbounded astonishment, at this puzzling specimen of humanity,--as critics are apt to do at a new poet, of whom they do not as yet know, in what pigeonhole of ready made judgments they are to put him. At last one of them beheld the bald place on Heribald's pate, and pointing at it with his sabre,--upon which the others raised a hoa.r.s.e laugh,--he seized his bow and arrow to aim at the monk. But now Heribald's patience had come to an end, and a feeling of Allemannic pride coming over him as he confronted this rabble, he jumped up calling out: "By the tonsure of St. Benedict, the crown of my head shall not be mocked at, by any heathenish dog!" He had seized the reins of one of the foremost riders, and s.n.a.t.c.hing away his sabre, was just going to a.s.sume an aggressive att.i.tude, when quicker than lightning, one of the Huns threw a noose over his head and pulled him down. Then they tied his hands to his back, and were already raising their death-bringing arms, when a distant tramping was heard, like the approach of a mighty army. This occurrence for the moment completely drew off their attention from the idiot. They threw him like a sack against his oak-trunk, and quickly galloped back to the sh.o.r.e. The whole body of the Hunnic legion had now arrived on the opposite sh.o.r.e. The vanguard, by a shrill whistle, gave the signal that all was safe. At one of the extremities of the island, overgrown with reeds, they had spied a ford, which could be crossed on horseback with dry feet. This they showed to their friends, who now swarmed over like wild bees; many hundred hors.e.m.e.n. Their united forces had availed nothing against the walls of Augsburg and the Bishop's prayers; so, divided into several troops, they now ravaged the land.

Their faces, figures and manner of sitting on horseback were all alike, for with uncultivated races, the features are mostly cast in one mould; indicating that the vocation of the individual lies in conforming itself to the ma.s.s, instead of contrasting with it.

In the orchards and gardens, where the monks used to recite their breviaries, Hunnic arms now glistened for the first time. In serpentine lines, their armed ranks now came up towards the monastery; a wild din of music, a mixture of cymbals and violins, preceded them; but the sounds were shrill and sharp, as the ears of the Huns were large, but not sensitive, and only those, who from some reason or other were unfit for the duties of a warrior, became musicians.

High over their heads floated their standard, showing a green cat in a red field, around which some of the chieftains were gathered; Ellak's and Hornebog's tall figures towering above the rest.

Ellak, with clear features and a straight nose, very unlike that of a Hun, had had a Circa.s.sian mother, to whom he was indebted for his pale intelligent face with penetrating eyes. He represented the ruling intellect of the ma.s.s. That the old world must be ploughed afresh with fire and sword, and that it was better to be the plough-man, than to serve as manure, was his deep-rooted conviction. Hornebog, lean and lank of figure, wore his long black hair in two solitary curls, one at each side. Above these, rose the glittering helmet, adorned with two widely spread out eagles' wings, the emblem of Hunnic horsemans.h.i.+p. To him the saddle served as home, tent and palace. He shot the bird flying, and with his sabre could sever the head of an enemy from its trunk, while galloping past. At his side, hung the six-corded whip, an ingenious symbol of executive power.

On the backs of the horses belonging to the chieftains, beautifully woven carpets, as well as chasubles were hanging; a clear proof that they had already paid visits to other monasteries. The booty was transported in several waggons, and a considerable and motley crowd of followers closed the train.

In a cart drawn by mules, amongst copper camp-kettles and other kitchen-utensils, an old wrinkled woman was sitting. She was shading her eyes with her right hand, looking towards the sun, in the direction where the mountain peaks of the Hegau rose into the air. She knew them well, for the old hag, was the woman of the wood. Banished by Ekkehard, she had wandered away into stranger lands; vengeance being her first thought when she awoke in the morning, and her last before she fell asleep in the evening. Thus she came as far as Augsburg. At the foot of the hill on which the wooden temple of the Suabian G.o.ddess Zisa had once stood, the Huns' camp-fires were burning, and with them she remained.

On a prancing black steed, by the side of the old woman, a young maiden was gaily riding along. Her skirts were looped up, and she also, seemed to feel herself perfectly at home in the saddle. Under her short little nose, there was a lovely pair of red lips; her dark eyes were bright and sparkling, and her long raven hair hung down in wavy tresses, interwoven with red ribbons, which merrily floated in the air, like the streamers of a s.h.i.+p. Over her loose bodice, bow and arrow were hanging, and thus she managed her horse, a true Hunnic Artemis. This was Erica, the flower-of-the-heath. She was not of Hunnic origin, having been picked up as an abandoned child, by some Hunnic riders on the Pannonian heaths. Thus she had accompanied the Huns and had grown up, hardly knowing how. Those whom she liked, she caressed, and those who displeased her, she bit in the arm. Botund the old Hunnic chieftain had loved her, and was killed for this reason by Irkund the young one. But when Irkund wanted to enjoy the fruit of this deed, Zobolsus' sharp lance did him the same service which Irkund had rendered Botund, without the latter asking for it. Thus Erica's fate had been varied, new ways! new countries! and new loves!--and she had become part and parcel of her troop. She was its good spirit and was held in high veneration.

"As long as the flower-of-the-heath, blooms in our ranks, we shall conquer the world," said the Huns. "Forwards."

Meanwhile, poor Heribald was still lying in his fetters at the monastery gate. His meditations were very sad. A big gad-fly, which he could not drive away with his bound hands, was buzzing round his head.

"Heribald has behaved with dignity," thought he. "Like one of the old Romans he has sat at the gate to receive the enemy, and now he is lying bound on the stones, and the gad-fly may sit on his nose quite unmolested. That is the reward of dignified behaviour. Heribald will never again be dignified! Amongst hedgedogs, dignity is a most superfluous thing."

Like a mountain-torrent when the flood-gate has been removed, the Hunnic tide now streamed into the cloister-yard. At this spectacle, the good Heribald began to feel really uncomfortable. "Oh, Camerarius,"

continued he in his meditation, "and if thou wouldst refuse me the next time even the s.h.i.+rt and habit, besides the shoe-leather, then should I fly nevertheless, a naked man!"

Some of the vanguard then reported to Ellak in what state they had found the solitary monk. He made a sign for them to bring the prisoner up before him, upon which they loosened his cords, set him on his feet, and indicated the direction in which he was to go, by heavy blows.

Slowly the poor wretch advanced, emitting a complaining grunt.

An unspeakably satirical smile played round the Hunnic chieftain's lips, when the idiot at last stood before him. Negligently dropping his horse's reins on its neck, he turned round. "See, what a representative of German art and science looks like," called he out to Erica.

On his numerous piratical expeditions, Ellak had required a scanty knowledge of the German language. "Where are the inhabitants of this island?" asked he in a commanding voice.

Heribald pointed over to the distant Hegau.

"Are they armed?"

"The servants of G.o.d are always armed, for the Lord is their s.h.i.+eld and sword."