Page:The Nibelungenlied - tr. Shumway - 1909.pdf/245



great worship of a truth they lived together until the seventh year. In this time the queen was delivered of a son, at which King Etzel could not have been more joyful. She would not turn back, until she brought it to pass that Etzel’s child was christened after the Christian rite. Men named it Ortlieb; at this great joy arose over all of Etzel’s lands. Whatever courtly breeding Lady Helca had possessed, Dame Kriemhild practiced this full many a day. Herrat, the exiled maid, who in secret grieved full sore for Helca, taught her the customs. Well was she known to the strangers and the home-folk. They vowed that never had a kingdom had a better or more bounteous queen. This they held for true. She bare this praise among the Huns until the thirteenth year. Now wot she well, that none would thwart her, as royal men-at-arms still do to a prince’s wife, and that all time she saw twelve kings stand before her. Over many a wrong she brooded, that had happed to her at home. She thought likewise on the many honors in the Nibelung land, which she had there enjoyed and of which Hagen’s hand had quite bereft her at Siegfried’s death, and if perchance she might not make him suffer for his deed. “That would hap, if I might but bring him to this land.” She dreamed that Giselher, her brother, walked often with her hand in hand. Alway she kissed him in her gentle