CHAPTER V
HOW WULF WENT TO THE SWARTZBURG, AND OF HIS BEGINNING THERE
It was maybe a week after Wulf’s visit to the Swartzburg that Herr Banf rode through the forest to the smithy. He was mounted upon the great stallion that had been so wild that day, and as he drew rein before the shop the horse gave a shrill neigh, for he smelled Wulf. Karl’s foot was by so far recovered that he was able to limp about the forge, and he and the boy were busy mending a wrought hauberk of fine chain mail which the lady superior of St. Ursula had sent to them that morning.
“A fair day, friend Karl,” the knight called out as he sat his horse under the big oak-tree. “Here am I come for that youngster of thine. He is too useful a scamp to be let spend his days tinkering here. Haply he has told ye how this big Siegfried of mine took to him. I’ faith, not a groom at the castle can handle the horse!”
“Ay?” said Karl, and he said no more, but stood with hands folded upon the top of his hammer and looked steadily at Herr Banf. Wulf, meanwhile, had dropped the tongs that he held, and run out to the horse, who now stood nuzzling his neck and face in great delight.
“By th’ rood,” cried Herr Banf, “’tis plain love at first sight! Came another so near Siegfried’s teeth, and I’d look to see him eaten. I must have the boy, Karl!”
Now, that great horse was none other than the one which the shining knight had bestrode on the day of his meeting with Herr Banf. The Crusader had taken the beast for his own charger, and a rare war-horse he was, but getting on in years by now, and turning wild at times, after the manner of his kind. Not a groom or stable-lad about the castle but had reason to know his temper; so that, because of their fear of him, the horse often lacked for care.
When Herr Banf had said that Wulf must come with him, Karl stood silent for a moment, watching the lad at Siegfried’s head; then, turning to the knight, he said:
“In truth, they seem fast friends. Well, it shall be as the boy shall choose.”
“For what he says I will undertake,” the knight said, laughing. “Wilt come to the castle, lad?”
Wulf looked from the horse to Karl and back again. ’Twere easy to see where his desire lay.
“Shall I be able to see Grandsire Karl now and then?” he asked.
“As often as need be,” said Herr Banf.
“What shall I say?” Wulf turned to Karl.
“What thou wilt,” the armorer nodded. “We have talked o’ that.”
So had they, and Wulf’s question was but the last wavering of the boy’s heart, loath to leave all it had yet known. In another moment his will regained its strength, and the matter ended in his taking again the climbing road up the Swartzburg pass, this time with a hand clinging to Herr Banf’s stirrup-leather, while the great horse stepped gently, keeping pace with the boy’s stride.
“Where didst learn to bewitch a horse, lad?” the knight asked as they journeyed. “What is thy ‘horseman’s word’?”
“I have none,” was the reply. “The horse seemed to know me, and I him. I cannot tell how or other.”
“By my forefathers, but beasts be hard to understand as men! What was’t thou didst, by the way, to the little crooked cock at the castle?”
“Him they call Conradt, Herr Knight? I did naught.”
“Well, he means to fight thee for it.”
“Nay,” replied Wulf, “that he’ll not.”
“How is that?”
“It would not be becoming for me to fight him.”
“So,” Herr Banf said grimly. “Thou’st a good idea of what is due thy betters.”
“It is not that,” explained Wulf, simply. “I am the better of us two; a whole man goes not against a weakling.”
The knight looked keenly down at the lad, noting as he had not done before the easy movement of his body as he stepped lightly along, more like a soldier than like a peasant. He was alert and trim, with shapely shoulders and the head carried well up.
“A queer armorer’s lad, this,” thought Herr Banf, in some wonder. But by now they were before the castle watch-tower, and in a moment more, still with one hand at the knight’s stirrup, Wulf again entered at the castle gate. There, in the outer bailey, Herr Banf lighted down, and bade Wulf take Siegfried to the stables for the night.
A crowd of grooms were about the gates of the stable-yard as the boy came up, for the word had spread that the tinker had returned to take charge of the big horse, and dark looks were bent upon the newcomer.
“Shall I do with him as before?” Wulf asked of one of the loungers.
“That thou ’lt find out for thyself,” was the surly answer, whereupon the other fellows laughed jeeringly.
Nothing daunted, Wulf proceeded to do off Siegfried’s harness, amid the rude comments of the grooms, and by dint of using all his wit he managed to get the horse haltered and in stall.
Then he climbed to the loft and threw down some hay into the manger, as Karl had been mindful to tell him how, after which he found a measure and started in quest of the corn-house. The boys followed at his heels, helping none, but getting great sport out of his hunt.
He found the place at last, and climbed the steps, still pursued by the jeering grooms. Heeding them naught, he walked along the corn-house floor, peering into the different bins, wondering from which to take the horse’s feed. At last he came to one about half full, and this he deemed to be the one he sought; so he sprang upon the edge and leaned forward to fill his measure.
No sooner had he done so than he felt himself pushed from behind, and over he shot, head foremost, into the grain. Turning about in the yielding stuff, he rose to his feet just in time to be struck full in the forehead by the heavy lid of the bin; for the cowardly varlets slammed it down upon him and ran off to the horse-barn.
Not one of them turned back, and for any effort of theirs it might have gone hard with Wulf; for he lay stunned and helpless, slowly smothering in the tight bin. Nor did he know when the lid was suddenly thrown back and a stern, wrathful man leaned over the edge to lift him out into the air. Then the man took him over his shoulder as if he had been a sack of meal, and carried him down the corn-house steps.
Into the horse-barn he bore him, and laid him upon the floor. The stable-boys were still there, and then the newcomer proceeded to score as one in authority, as indeed he was; for this was the master of the horse himself who now bent over Wulf, chafing his hands and doing what he could to bring him back to life; and so well did he work that ere long the boy sat up and looked about him until he presently remembered what was toward.
“Siegfried has not had his corn,” he said faintly; but the master of horse bade him be quiet.
“Thou, Hansei,” he said to the youngest of the boys who stood about, “get the measure and give the stallion his feed; and mind how thou goest about him. As for ye others, get to work for a set of black imps as ye are; and be thankful that ye hang not, every rapscallion of ye, for this foul trick.”
Picking up a billet of oak from where it lay on the floor, he hurled it among the group, who scattered, dodging this way and that, as every boy went to his own neglected task.
As for Wulf, he lay upon the barn floor and watched Hansei care for Siegfried, who was quiet enough now that the armorer’s lad was with him. The lad Hansei was the same who had played with the others on the plateau on that day when the shining knight rode up the pass. Well was it for our boy that the honest young peasant took a liking to him, and was minded to stand his friend, for he had else scarce found comfort at the castle.
It was Hansei who at supper-time took him into the great hall where the household and its hangers-on gathered for meals, and got for him a trencher and food; though little cared Wulf for eating on that first night when all was new and strange to him.
The hall was very large, and Wulf, looking up toward its lofty roof, could not see its timbers for the deep shadows there. At either end was a great fireplace, but the one at the upper end was the larger and finer. Near it, on a platform raised above the earthen floor, Baron Everhardt sat at board, with the knights of his train. Below them were the men-at-arms and lower officers of the castle; and seated upon benches about the walls were the fighting-men and general hangers-on of the place.
These sat not at board, but helped themselves to the food that was passed about among them after the tables were served, and ate, some from their hands, others from wooden trenchers which they had secured. Wulf and Hansei were among the lowliest of the lot, and the stable-boys did not sit down at all, but took their supper standing, leaning against the wall just inside the door and farthest from the hearth, and they were among the last served.
But, as we have seen, Wulf cared little, that night, for food or drink, though his new friend pressed him to eat. He was sore-hearted and weary, what with the strangeness and the hardness of it all. Soon the great tankards began to pass from hand to hand; and the men drank long and deep, while jests and mighty laughter filled all the place, until only Wulf’s sturdy boy’s pride kept him from stealing out, through the darkness, back to Karl at the forge.
Presently, however, he began to notice faces among the company at the upper end of the hall. Two or three ladies were present, having come in by another door when the meal was well over, and these were sitting with the baron and Herr Banf. One of the ladies, Hansei told him, was the baron’s lady, and with her, Wulf noticed, was the little girl whom he had seen at the time of his first visit to the castle.
“Who is she?” he asked.
“A ward of our baron’s,” Hansei answered, “and she is the Fräulein Elise von Hofenhoer. They say she is to be married, in good time, to young Conradt; and that be a sorry weird for any maiden.”
“Conradt?”
“Yea; the crooked stick yonder, the baron’s precious nephew.”
Following Hansei’s glance, Wulf descried the hunchback boy of his adventure seated at board, drinking from a great mug of ale. With him was the other boy, who, Hansei told him, was Waldemar Guelder, and some kin to Herr Banf, in whose charge he was, to be trained as a knight.
“He’s not such a bad one,” the stable-boy said, “an it were not for Master Conradt, who would drag down the best that had to do with him.”
Thus, one by one, Hansei pointed out knights and followers, squires and men, until in Wulf’s tired brain all was a jumble of names and faces that he knew not. Glad indeed was he when at last his companion nodded to him, and slipping out from the hall, they made their way to the horse-barn, where, up under the rafters of a great hay-filled loft, the pair made their beds in the fragrant grasses, and slept soundly until the stamping of horses below them, and the sunlight streaming into their faces through an open loft door, awakened them.