The elder Baroness had, at
least, the merit of a stout heart, and, even with her sadly-reduced
garrison, feared none of them. She had been brought up in the faith
that Adlerstein was impregnable, and so she still believed; and, if
the disaster that had cut off her husband and son was to happen at
all, she was glad that it had befallen before the homage had been
paid. Probably the Schlangenwald Count knew how tough a morsel the
castle was like to prove, and Wildschloss was serving at a distance,
for nothing was heard of either during the short interval while the
roads were still open. During this time an attempt had been made
through Father Norbert to ascertain what had become of the corpses of
the two Barons and their followers, and it had appeared that the
Count had carried them all off from the inn, no doubt to adorn his
castle with their limbs, or to present them to the Emperor in
evidence of his zeal for order. The old Baron could not indeed have
been buried in consecrated ground, nor have masses said for him; but
for the weal of her son's soul Dame Kunigunde gave some of her few
ornaments, and Christina added her gold earrings, and all her scanty
purse, that both her husband and father might be joined in the
prayers of the Church--trying with all her might to put confidence in
Hugh Sorel's Loretto relic, and the Indulgence he had bought, and
trusting with more consolatory thoughts to the ever stronger dawnings
of good she had watched in her own Eberhard.
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