In The Blue Pike | Page 2

Augsburg, and
other South German cities, on their way to Frankfort and the Lower
Rhine, rested and exchanged the saddle for the ship. Just at the present
time many persons of high and low degree were on their way to
Cologne, whither the Emperor Maximilian, having been unable to
come in April to Trier on the Moselle, had summoned the Reichstag.
The opening would take place in a few days, and attracted not only
princes, counts, and knights, exalted leaders and more modest servants
of the Church, ambassadors from the cities, and other aristocrats, but
also honest tradesfolk, thriving money-lenders with the citizen's cloak
and the yellow cap of the Jew, vagrants and strollers of every
description, who hoped to practise their various feats to the best
advantage, or to fill their pockets by cheating and robbery.
This evening many had gathered in the spacious taproom of The Blue
Pike. Now those already present were to be joined by the late arrivals
whom Cyriax had seen ride up.
It was a stately band. Four aristocratic gentlemen at the head of the
troop were followed by an escort of twenty-five Nuremberg
mercenaries, a gay company whose crimson coats, with white slashes
on the puffed sleeves, presented a showy spectacle. Their helmets and
armour glittered in the bright light of the setting sun of the last day of
July, as they turned their horses in front of the wide gateway of The
Blue Pike to ride into Miltenberg and ask lodgings of the citizens.
The trampling of hoofs, the shouts of command, and the voices of the
gentlemen and their attendants outside attracted many guests to the
doors and windows of the long, whitewashed building.

The strollers, however, kept the place at theirs without difficulty; no
one desired to come near them.
The girl with the bandaged foot had now also turned her face toward
the street. As her gaze rested on the youngest of the Nuremberg
dignitaries, her pale cheeks flushed, and, as if unconsciously, the
exclamation: "It is he!" fell from her lips.
"Who?" asked red-haired Gitta, and was quickly answered in a low
tone
"I mean Lienhard, Herr Groland."
"The young one," stuttered Cyriax.
Then, raising the shawl, he continued inquisitively:
"Do you know him? For good or for evil?"
The girl, whose face, spite of its sunken cheeks and the dark rings
under the deep-set blue eyes, still bore distinct traces of former beauty,
started and answered sharply, though not very loudly, for speech was
difficult:
"Good is what you call evil, and evil is what you call good. My
acquaintance with Lienhard, Herr Groland, is my own affair, and, you
may be sure, will remain mine." She glanced contemptuously away
from the others out of doors, but Cyriax, spite of his mutilated tongue,
retorted quickly and harshly:
"I always said so. She'll die a saint yet." Then grasping Kuni's arm
roughly, he dragged her down to him, and whispered jeeringly:
"Ratz has a full purse and sticks to his offer for the cart. If you put on
airs long, he'll get it and the donkey, too, and you'll be left here. What
was it about Groland? You can try how you'll manage on your stump
without us, if we're too bad for you."
"We are not under eternal obligations to you on the child's account,"

added red-haired Gitta in a gentler tone. "Don't vex my husband, or
he'll keep his word about the cart, and who else will be bothered with a
useless creature like you?"
The girl lowered her eyes and looked at her crippled limb.
How would she get on without the cart, which received her when the
pain grew too sharp and the road was too hard and long?
So she turned to the others again, saying soothingly:
"It all happened in the time before I fell." Then she looked out of doors
once more, but she did not find what she sought. The Nuremberg
travellers had ridden through the broad gateway into the large square
courtyard, surrounded by stables on three sides. When Cyriax and his
wife again called to her, desiring to know what had passed between her
and Groland, she clasped her hands around her knees, fixed her eyes on
the gaystuffs wound around the stump where her foot had been
amputated, and in a low, reluctant tone, continued:
"You want to learn what I have to do with Herr Groland? It was about
six years ago, in front of St. Sebald's church, in Nuremberg. A wedding
was to take place. The bridegroom was one of the Council--Lienhard
Groland. The marriage was to be a very quiet one--the bridegroom's
father lay seriously ill. Yet there could have been no greater throng at
the Emperor's nuptials. I stood in the midst of the crowd.