Part 18

The three contesting captains looked at one another in surprise.

"The quarry hath slipped," laughed Count Diephold. "By St. Nicholas of Myra, though, the lad is of the true Suabian eagle's brood. Try we the test, my lords."

There was a sudden mounting of steeds, a hurrying gallop after the flying king; but the Chancellor's band, being already in the saddle, had the advantage, and as young King Frederick and Walter the Chancellor passed under St. Agatha's pointed arch, the knights of the Crested Boar and of the Aloe-stalk saw in much disgust the great-gate close in their faces, and they were left on the wrong side of Palermo's walls,--outwitted by a boy.

But the baffled knights were not the men to give up the chase so easily. Twenty Pisan galleys, manned by Count Diephold's fighting men, lay in the Cala port of Palermo. That very night, they stormed under the walls of Castellamare, routed the Saracens of the royal guard, sent Walter the Chancellor flying for his life toward Messina; and, with young Frederick in his power, Diephold, the usurping Count of Acerra, ruled Sicily in the name of the poor little king.

In the royal palace at Palermo, grand and gorgeous with columns and mosaics and gilded walls, this boy of thirteen--Frederick of Hohenstaufen, Emperor-elect of Germany, King of Sicily, and "Lord of the World"--sat, the day after his capture by Count Diephold, sad, solitary, and forlorn.

The son of Henry the Sixth of Germany, the most victorious but most cruel of the Hohenstaufen emperors, and of Constance the Empress, daughter of Roger, the great Norman King of Sicily, Frederick had begun life on December the twenty-sixth, 1194, as heir to two powerful kingdoms. His birth had been the occasion of great rejoicings, and vassal princes and courtier poets had hailed him as "the Imperial Babe, the Glory of Italy, the Heir of the Cæsars, the Reformer of the World and the Empire!" When but two years old he had been proclaimed King of the Romans and Emperor-elect of Germany, and, when but three, he had, on the death of his father, been crowned King of Sicily and Apulia, in the great cathedral of Palermo.

But in all those two sovereignties, no sadder-hearted nor lonelier lad could have been found than this boy of thirteen, this solitary and friendless orphan, this Frederick of Hohenstaufen, the boy emperor. In Germany his uncle, Philip of Suabia, disputed with Otho of Brunswick for the imperial crown. And beautiful Sicily, the land of his birth, the land over which he was acknowledged as king, was filled with war and blood. From the lemon groves of Messina to the flowery slopes of Palermo, noble and priest, Christian and Saracen, French and German, strove for power and ravaged the land with fire and sword. Deprived sometimes of even the necessities of life, deserted by those who should have stood loyal to him, often hungry and always friendless, shielded from absolute want only by the pity of the good burghers of Palermo, used in turn by every faction and made the excuse for every feud, this heir to so great power was himself the most powerless of kings, the most unhappy of boys. And now, as he sits in his gleaming palace, uncertain where to turn for help, all his sad young heart goes into an appealing letter which has come down to us across the centuries, and a portion of which is here given to complete the dismal picture of this worried young monarch of long ago:

"To all the kings of the world and to all the princes of the universe, the innocent boy, King of Sicily, called Frederick: Greeting in God's name! Assemble yourselves, ye nations; draw nigh, ye princes, and see if any sorrow be like unto my sorrow! My parents died ere I could know their caresses, and I, a gentle lamb among wolves, fell into slavish dependence upon men of various tribes and tongues. My daily bread, my drink, my freedom, all are measured out to me in scanty proportion. No king am I. I am ruled, instead of ruling. I beg favors, instead of granting them. Again and again I beseech you, O ye princes of the earth, to aid me to withstand slaves, to set free the son of Cæsar, to raise up the crown of the kingdom, and to gather together again the scattered people!"

But it is a long lane that has no turning, and before many months another change came in the kaleidoscope of this young king's fortunes. Pope Innocent the Third had been named by the Empress Constance as guardian of her orphaned boy. To him Walter the Chancellor appealed for aid. Knights and galleys were soon in readiness. Palermo was stormed. Count Diephold was overthrown and imprisoned in the castle dungeon. Kapparon and his Pisan allies and Saracen serfs were driven out of Sicily, and the "Son of Cæsar" reigned as king once more. Then came a new alliance. Helped on by the Pope, a Spanish friendship ripened into a speedy marriage. Frederick was declared of age when he reached his fourteenth birthday, and a few months after, on the fifteenth of August, 1209, amid great rejoicings which filled Palermo with brilliancy and crowded its narrow and crooked streets with a glittering throng, the "Boy of Apulia," as he was called, was married to the wise and beautiful Constance, the daughter of Alfonso, King of Arragon. This alliance gave the young husband the desired opportunity; for, with five hundred foreign knights at his back he asserted his authority over his rebellious subjects as King of Sicily. The poor little prince, whose childhood had known only misfortune and unhappiness, became a prince indeed, and, boy though he was, took so manly and determined a stand that, ere the year was out, his authority was supreme from the walls of Palermo to the Straits of Messina.

Meantime, in Germany, affairs had been going from bad to worse. Frederick's uncle, Philip of Suabia, had been assassinated at Bamberg, and Otho of Brunswick, head of the House of Guelf, crossed the Alps, was crowned Emperor at Rome in defiance of young Frederick's claim to the Imperial throne, and marched into Southern Italy, threatening the conquest of his boy rival's Sicilian kingdom.

Again trouble threatened the youthful monarch. Anxious faces looked seaward from the castle towers; and, hopeless of withstanding any attack from Otho's hardy and victorious troops, Frederick made preparations for flight when once his gigantic rival should thunder at Palermo's gates.

"Tidings, my lord King; tidings from the north!" said Walter the Chancellor, entering the king's apartment one bright November day in the year 1211. "Here rides a galley from Gaeta in the Cala port, and in it comes the Suabian knight Anselm von Justingen, with a brave and trusty following. He beareth word to thee, my lord, from Frankfort and from Rome."

"How, then; has Otho some new design against our crown?" said Frederick. "I pray thee, good Chancellor, give the Knight of Suabia instant audience."

And soon, through the Gothic door-way of that gorgeous palace of the old Norman and older Saracen lords of Sicily, came the bluff German knight Anselm von Justingen, bringing into its perfumed air some of the strength and resoluteness of his sturdy Suabian breezes. With a deep salutation, he greeted the royal boy.

"Hail, O King!" he said. "I bring thee word of note. Otho, the Guelf, whom men now call Emperor, is speeding toward the north. Never more need Sicily fear his grip. The throne which he usurps is shaken and disturbed. The world needs an emperor who can check disorders and bring it life and strength. Whose hand may do this so surely as thine--the illustrious Lord Frederick of the grand old Hohenstaufen line, the elect King of the Romans, the Lord of Sicily?"

Frederick's eye flashed and his cheek flushed at the grand prospect thus suddenly opened before him. But he replied slowly and thoughtfully.

"By laws human and by right divine," he said, "the Holy Roman Empire is my inheritance. But canst thou speak for the princes of the empire?"

"Ay, that can I," said the knight; "I bear with me papers signed and sent by them. We have each of us examined as to our will. We have gone through all the customary rights. And we all in common, O King, turn our eyes to thee."

"I thank the princes for their faith and fealty," said Frederick; "but can they be trusty liegemen to a boy emperor?"

"Though young in years, O King," said the Suabian, "thou art old in character; though not fully grown in person, thy mind hath been by nature wonderfully endowed. Thou dost exceed the common measure of thine equals; thou art blest with virtues before thy day, as doth become one of the true blood of that august stock, the Cæsars of Germany. Thou wilt surely increase the honor and might of the empire and the happiness of us, thy loyal subjects."

"And the Pope?" queried the boy; for in those days the Pope of Rome was the "spiritual lord" of the Christian world. To him all emperors, kings, and princes owed allegiance as obedient vassals. To assume authority without the Pope's consent and blessing meant trouble and excommunication. Frederick knew this, and knew also that his former guardian, Pope Innocent, had, scarce two years before, himself crowned his rival Otho of Brunswick as Emperor of Germany.

"I am even now from Rome," replied Von Justingen; "and the Holy Father, provoked beyond all patience at the unrighteous ways of this emperor, falsely so called, hath excommunicated Otho, hath absolved the princes from their oath of fealty, and now sends to thee, Frederick of Hohenstaufen, his blessing and his bidding that thou go forward and enter upon thine inheritance."

The young Sicilian sat for some moments deep in thought. It was a tempting bait--this of an imperial crown--to one who felt it to be his by right, but who had never dared to expect nor aspire to it.

"Von Justingen," he said at last, "good knight and true I know thou art, loyal to the House of Staufen, and loyal to thy German fatherland. 'T is a royal offer and a danger-fraught attempt. But what man dares, that dare I! When duty calls, foul be his fame who shrinketh from the test. The blood of kings is mine; like a king, then, will I go forward to my heritage, and win or die in its achieving!"

"There flashed the Hohenstaufen fire," said the delighted Von Justingen; "there spoke the spirit of thy grandsire, the glorious old Kaiser Red Beard! Come thou with me to Germany, my prince. We will make thee Cæsar indeed, though the false Otho and all his legions are thundering at Frankfort gates."

So, in spite of the entreaties of his queen, and the protests of his Sicilian lords, who doubted the wisdom of the undertaking, the young monarch hurried forward the preparations for his perilous attempt. The love of adventure, which has impelled many another boy to face risk and danger, flamed high in the heart of this lad of seventeen, as, with undaunted spirit, he sought to press forward for the prize of an imperial throne. On March the eighteenth, 1212, the "Emperor of the Romans Elect," as he already styled himself, set out from orange-crowned Palermo on the "quest for his heritage" in the bleak and rugged north. The galley sped swiftly over the blue Mediterranean to the distant port of Gaeta, and upon its deck the four chosen comrades that formed his little band gathered around the fair-haired young prince, who, by the daring deeds that drew him from Palermo's sun-lit walls, was to make for himself a name and fame that should send him down to future ages as Stupor Mundi Fredericus--"Frederick, the Wonder of the World!" In all history there is scarcely to be found a more romantic tale of wandering than this story of the adventures of young Frederick of Hohenstaufen in search of his empire.

From Palermo to strong-walled Gaeta, the "Gibraltar of Italy," from Gaeta on to Rome, he sailed with few adventures, and here he knelt before the Pope, who, as he had crowned and discrowned Otho of Brunswick, the big and burly rival of his fair young ward, now blessed and aided the "Boy from Sicily," and helped him on his way with money and advice. From Rome to Genoa, under escort of four Genoese galleys, the boy next cautiously sailed; for all the coast swarmed with the armed galleys of Pisa, the staunch supporter of the discrowned Otho. With many a tack and many a turn the galleys headed north, while the watchful look-outs scanned the horizon for hostile prows. On the first of May, the peril of Pisa was past, and Genoa's gates were opened to receive him. Genoa was called the "door" to his empire, but foes and hardships lay in wait for him behind the friendly door. On the fifteenth of July, the boy and his escort of Genoese lancers climbed the steep slopes of the Ligurian hills and struck across the plains of Piedmont for the walls of Pavia, the "city of the hundred towers." The gates of the grand old Lombard capital flew open to welcome him, and royally attended, with a great crimson canopy held above his head, and knights and nobles following in his train, the "Child of Apulia" rode through the echoing streets.

But Milan lay to the north, and Piacenza to the south, both fiercely hostile cities, while the highway between Pavia and Cremona rang with the war-cries of the partisans of Otho, the Guelf. So, secretly, and at midnight, the Pavian escort rode with the boy out through their city gates, and moved cautiously along the valley of the Po, to where, at the ford of the Lambro, the knights of Cremona waited in the dark of an early Sunday morning to receive their precious charge. And none too soon did they reach the ford; for, scarcely was the young emperor spurring on toward Cremona, when the Milanese troops, in hot pursuit, dashed down upon the returning Pavian escort, and routed it with great loss. But the boy rode on unharmed; and soon Cremona, since famous for its wonderful violins, hailed the young adventurer, so says the record, "as if he were an angel of the Lord."