Edward Stratemeyer - "True to Himself"

Carolyn Wells - "Vicky Van"

Unknown - "The World English Bible (WEB): 1 Samuel"

John Masefield - "John M. Synge: A Few Personal Recollections, with Biographical Notes"

The Ward of King Canute

O >> Ottilie A Liljencrantz >> The Ward of King Canute




"Do not have me in contempt, Tata," she admonished with a laugh of some
unsteadiness. "It is not certain that I am going to belie you to the guards,
or that I have lost faith in your sign. Let me sharpen my weapon for some
space among these precious things, and it may be that I shall go hence panting
for the field."

"Ah, gracious lady, you must needs buy my whole stock," the merchant cried
with ingratiating smiles, "for I can never endure to sell to another what I
have once seen near your face."

Elfgiva laughed beautifully then, and the Danish girl took a fresh grip upon
her patience. Certainly the jewelled bugs, the golden snakes, the strands of
amber and jet and pearl, seemed to act as tonics upon the Northampton lady. If
she had not traded away, at the first two stalls, every ornament in her
possession, she would have investigated each booth in the square. She came out
in bubbling spirits to the waiting horses and the half-frozen guards.

"This Cheapside is a very fairy garden," she prattled, lingering with her foot
in the hand of the kneeling groom. "Everything in beds and rows as they were
herbs,--milk down this lane, soap down that, jewels, fabrics--" She turned
with a sudden inspiration. "Maidens, would not this be a merry thought? To
find out where the fabrics are kept and try some cloth of gold against these
pearls?"

As the servile murmur answered, Randalin's brow darkened. Cloth of gold and
pearls,--when a wolf was tearing at her heart! She spoke desperately, "I wish
that the way to the fabrics might lie past the King's House, lady."

The King's wife sent her a glance, half resentful, half questioning. "Why do
you say that?"

"Because if Canute could see you as you look now, with your cheeks a-flower
and that ermine, like snow, upon your hair, there is nothing in the world he
could refuse you."

Elfgiva's mouth curved bewitchingly. "You speak as though you had jewels to
sell. What fine manners they have, these London merchants! Tell me, Candida,
Leonorine, does she speak the truth? On your crosses, has not the cold
reddened my nose? Or pinched the bloom off my lips?"

If the murmur that answered lacked any heartiness, their mistress did not
perceive it, for every man within earshot swelled it with reassurance,--
thinking perhaps of the hot spiced wine in the King's cups.

After a moment of hesitation, she flew up to her saddle like a bird. "Do you
all think so?" she laughed. "Certainly I never felt in lustier spirits. I
declare that I will try it. Hasten, before the roses wilt in my cheeks.
Forward! To the Palace!"




Chapter XXVI

In The Judgment Hall


Strong is the bar
That must be raised
To admit all.
Ha'vama'l.

While he kept a firm hold upon the spear which he had dropped like a gilded
bar across the door, the English sentinel repeated for the tenth time his
respectful denial: "I will take it upon me to admit you to the gallery, noble
lady; but you were the Queen herself, I dare not let you in to the lower part.
There be none but men with the King, and it is not fitting--"

"And is the son of a Saxon serf to decide where it is fitting for me to go?"
the Lady of Northampton demanded, facing him in a tempest of angry beauty.
"Whatsoever you shall do by my direction, dog, will in all respects be
available to your credit. Let me through to my husband, or I can tell you that
you will find your wariness terribly misplaced!"

The guard discreetly held his tongue,--but he likewise held his position.
Elfgiva's bosom was beginning to heave in hysterical menace when a second
soldier, lounging against the wall behind the first, ventured a soothing word.

"For your own safety, noble one, ask it not. The King is listening to a
quarrel between an Englishman and a Dane; and by reason of it, there are many
in the room whose tempers may--"

Randalin, who alone of all the maidens had remained undauntedly at her
mistress' elbow, caught that elbow in a vice-like grip. "Take the gallery,
then, lady!" she urged in a piercing whisper. "The gallery, as quick as you
can."

As an angry cat wounds whoever is nearest, Elfgiva scratched her in the same
undertone. "Stupid! Do you imagine that the only Englishman who has part in
the world is the one you showed yourself a fool for? Do you not understand
that if I let them assign me to some dark gallery, Canute will not be able to
see me?"

It did not appear that the girl so much as felt the claws. Her eyes had a look
of strained listening as they gazed past the sentinel and across the ante-room
to the great curtained doorway. "He will succeed better in seeing you through
a dim light than through a stone wall," she returned.

Biting her lips, the fair Tyrant of Northampton measured the man through her
lashes. He might have been of the same material as his spear for all the sign
he showed of yielding. She could not understand such defiance, and, like
mysteries in general, it awed even while it angered her. Affecting to draw
herself up in disdain, she really gave back a step. "Perhaps it would be wise
to put off our visit until a day that there is a man at the door instead of a
blockhead--"

Randalin's arm was an iron barrier behind her. "Now I do not know where you
think the power to do that will come from!" she hissed in her ear. "Do you not
see that if you go back to your grooms and let them know that you have not got
enough honor with the King to gain an entrance, they will never dare do your
bidding again? Do you not see that you must do one of two things, or now win,
or now lose?"

Apparently Elfgiva saw. After a moment's bridling, she whirled back with an
angry flounce of her draperies. "The gallery, then, dog! I shall reach my
lord's ear from that, which will be an unlucky thing for you."

Saluting in silence, the guard drew back to let her pass, at the same time
signing to a row of men-at-arms standing motionless as pillars against the
stone wall of the ante-room. With a rattle and clank they came to life, and
the little band of five kirtles, surrounded and led, was marched to a low
side-door which gave in upon a short flight of stone steps, white-frosted now
with the dampness and their distance from the fire. At the head of the flight,
another door gave entrance to a narrow passage that probably reached the
length of the hall below, though it seemed to the shivering women to extend
the length of the Palace itself. A third door, ending this corridor, admitted
them to the gallery that ran across the upper end of the hall.

As she passed the threshold Elfgiva exclaimed in vexation, for the light of
the log fire, whose rudely carved chimney-piece broke the long side-wall,
succumbed at the balcony's lower edge to the shadows of the raftered ceiling,
and all above was wrapped in soft twilight. "He cannot tell me from a
monster," she fumed, letting herself sink into a faded tapestry chair,
standing forgotten amid a pile of mouldering cushions.

The three English girls, pressing timidly to her side, answered with
indistinct murmurs which she could interpret to suit her pleasure. The Danish
girl made her no reply whatever. Half kneeling, half sitting upon the
cushions, her head was already bent over the gallery's edge, and the scene
below had claimed her eye and ear to the exclusion of all else.

Whatever its shortcomings as a show-case, the balcony was excellently adapted
both for spectators and for eavesdroppers, its distance from the floor being
little more than twice a man's height, while the fire which doled its light so
stingily, lavished a glory of brightness on the spot where the King's massive
chair stood beside the chimney-piece. After one petulant glance, even
Elfgiva's pique gave way to a curiosity that gradually drew her forward to the
very edge of her seat and held her there, the three maids crouching at her
feet.

Encircled by a martial throng, so massed and indistinct that they made a
background like embroidered tapestry, three figures were the centre of
attention,--the figure of the young King in his raised chair, and the forms of
the Dane and the Angle who fronted each other before his footstool. Shielded
from the heat by his palm, Canute's face was in the shadow, and the giant
shape of the son of Lodbrok was a blot against the flames, but the glare lay
strong on Sebert of Ivarsdale, revealing a picture that caused one spectator
to catch her breath in a sob. Equally aloof from English thane and Danish
noble, the Etheling in the palace of his native king stood a stranger and
alone, while his swordless sheath showed him to be also a prisoner. He bore
himself proudly, one of his blood could scarcely have done otherwise, but his
fine face was white with misery, and despair darkened his eyes as they stared
unseeingly before him.

As well as though he had put his thoughts into words, the girl who loved him
knew that his mind was back in the peaceful manor between the hills,
foreseeing its desecration by barbarian hands, foretasting the ruin of those
who looked to him for protection. From the twilight of the balcony, she
stretched out her arms to him in a passion of yearning pity, and all of
selfishness that had been in her grief faded from it utterly, as her heart
sent forth a second prayer.

"Oh, Thou God, forget what I asked for myself! Think only of helping him, of
comforting him, and I will love Thee as though Thou hadst done it to me. Help
him! Help him!"

Answering a question from the King, Rothgar began to speak, his heavy voice
seeming to fill all the space from floor to ceiling: "By all the laws of war,
King Canute, the Odal of Ivarsdale should come to me. The first son of Lodbrok
took the land before ever this Angle's kin had seen it. He built the tower
that stands on it, and the name it bears to this day is the name of his
giving. Under Guthrum, a weak-kneed son of his lost it to the English Alfred,
and we fell out of our fortunes with the tipping of the scales, and Angles
have sat since then in the seat of Lodbrok's sons. But now the scales have
risen again. Under Canute, Ivarsdale, with all other English property, comes
back to Danish hands. By all the laws of war, my kinsman's inheritance should
be my share of the spoil."

Ending roundly, he drew himself up in an attitude of bold assurance. Wherever
a group of scarlet cloaks made a bright patch upon the human arras, there was
a flutter of approval. Even the braver of the English nobles, who for
race-pride alone might have supported Sebert in a valid claim, saw nothing to
do now but to draw away, with a silent interchange of shrugs and headshakes,
and leave him to his doom.

In the shadow of his hand, Canute nodded slowly. "By all the laws of war," he
affirmed, "your kinsman's inheritance should be your share of the spoil."

Again an approving murmur rose from Danish throats; and Rothgar was opening
his lips to voice a grateful answer, when a gesture of the royal hand checked
him.

"Recollect, however, that just now I am not only a war-chief, but also a
law-man. I think it right, therefore, to hear what the Englishman has to say
for his side. Sebert Oswaldsson, speak in your defence."

Not even a draft appeared to stir the human tapestry about them. Sebert
started like a man awakened from sleep, when he realized that every eye was
hanging upon him. Swiftly, his glance passed around the circle, from the
averted faces of his countrymen to the foreign master on the throne, then
bitterly he bent his head to his fate.

"I have nothing to say. Your justice may most rightly be meted out."

"Nothing to say?" The King's measured voice sounded sharply through the hush.
For the first time, he lowered his hand and bent forward where the fire-glow
could touch him.

As she caught sight of his face Elfgiva shrank and clutched at her women. "Ah,
Saints, I am thankful now that it is dark!" she murmured.

Sebert sustained the look with proud steadiness. "Nothing that would be of use
to me," he said; "and I do not choose to pleasure you by setting up a weak
plea for you to knock down again. The right which gave Britain to the Saxons
has given England to the Danes, and it is not by words that such a right can
be disputed. If your messengers had not taken me by surprise--" He paused,
with an odd curl to his lips that could hardly be called a smile; but Canute
gave him grim command to finish, and he obeyed with rising color. "If your
messengers had not come upon me as I was riding on the Watling Street and
brought me here, a prisoner, I would have argued the matter with arrows, and
you would needs have battered down the defence of stone walls to convince me."

Mutters of mingled admiration and censure buzzed around; and one English
noble, more daring and also more friendly than the others, drew near and spoke
a word of friendly warning in Sebert's ear. Through it all, Canute sat
motionless, studying the Etheling with his bright colorless eyes.

At last he said unexpectedly, "If you would not obey my summons until my men
had dealt with you by force, it cannot be said that you have much respect for
my authority. Do you not then acknowledge me as King of the English?"

Rothgar betrayed impatience at this branching aside. Sebert himself showed
surprise.

He said hesitatingly, "I--I cannot deny that. You have the same right that
Cerdic had over the Britons. Nay, you have more, for you are the formal choice
of the Witan. I cannot rightly deny that you are King of the Angles."

"If you acknowledge me to be that," Canute said, "I do not see why you have
not an argument for your defence."

While all stared at him, he rose slowly and stood before them, a dazzling
figure as the light caught the steel of his ring-mail and turned his polished
helm to a fiery dome.

"Sebert Oswaldsson," he said slowly, "I did not feel much love toward you the
first time I saw you, and it is hard for me not to hate you now, when I see
what you are going to be the cause of. If your case had come before Canute the
man, you would have received the answer you expect. But it is your luck that
Canute the man is dead, and you stand before Canute the King. Hear then my
answer: By all the laws of war, the land belongs to Ivar's son; and had he
regained it while war ruled, I had not taken it from him, though the Witan
itself commanded me. But instead of regaining it, he lost it." He stretched a
forbidding hand toward Rothgar, feeling without seeing his angry impulse. "By
what means matters not; battles have turned on a smaller thing, and the
loyalty of those we have protected is a lawful weapon to defend ourselves
with. The kinsman of Ivar a second time lost his inheritance, and the
opportunity passed--forever. For now it is time to remember that this is not
war, but peace; and in times of peace it is not allowed to take a man's land
from him unless he has broken the law or offended honor, which no one can say
this Englishman has done. What concerns war-time is a thing by itself; as
ruler over laws and land-rights, I cannot give one man's lands to another,
though the one be a man I care little for, and the other is my foster-brother.
Go back therefore, unhindered, Lord of Ivarsdale, and live in peace
henceforth. I do not think it probable that I shall ever call you to my
friendship, but when the time comes that there is need of a brave and honest
man to serve the English people in serving me, I shall send for you. Beware
you that you do not neglect the summons of one whom you have acknowledged to
be your rightful King! Orvar, I want you to restore to him his weapon and see
him on his way in safety. Your life shall answer for any harm that comes to
him."

With one hand, he struck down the murmur that was rising; with the other he
made an urgent gesture of haste, which Orvar seemed to understand. Even while
he was returning to the Lord of Ivarsdale his sword, he seized him by the arm
and hurried him down the room, the Etheling walking like a man in a dream.

From the dusk of the rafters, the girl who loved him stretched out her hands
to him in tender fare-well, but there was no more of anguish in the gesture.
Gazing after him, the tears rose slowly to her eyes and rolled slowly down her
cheeks, but on her mouth was a little smile whose wondering joy mounted to
exaltation.

No need was there for her to hide either tear or smile, for no one of the
women about her was so much as conscious of her existence. The murmur below
was growing, despite the King's restraining hand; and now, crashing through it
in hideous discord, came a burst of jeering laughter from the Jotun. What
words he also spoke they could not catch, but they heard the Danish cries sink
and die, aghast, and they saw a score of English thanes spring upon him and
drag him backwards. Above the noise of their scuffling, the King's voice
sounded stern and cold.

"While I act as law-man in my judgment hall, I will hear no disputing of my
judgments. Whoso comes to me in my private chamber, as friend to friend, may
tell his mind; but now I speak as King, and what I have spoken shall stand."

Struggling with those who would have forced him from the room, Rothgar had no
breath to retort with, but the words did not go unsaid because of that.
Wherever scarlet cloaks made a bright patch, the human arras swayed and shook
violently, and then fell apart into groups of angry men whose voices rose in
resentful chorus:

"Such judgment by a Danish King is unexampled!" "King, are we all to expect
this treatment?... This is the third time you have ruled against your own
men--" "Sven you punished for the murder of an Englishman--" "Because you
forced Gorm to pay his debt to an Englishman, he has lost all the property he
owns." "Now, as before, we want to know what this means." "You are our chief,
whose kingship we have held up with our lives--" "What are these English to
you?"... "They are the thralls your sword has laid-under, while we are of your
own blood--" "It is the strong will of us warriors to know what you mean--"
"Yes, tell it plainly!"... "We speak as we have a right." Snarling more and
more openly, they surged forward, closing around the dais in a fiery mass.

In the cushions of the balcony, Leonorine hid her face with a cry; "They will
murder him!" And Elfgiva rose slowly from her chair, her eyes dark with horror
yet unable to tear themselves from the scene below. The mail-clad King no
longer looked to her like a man of flesh and blood but like a figure of iron
and steel, that the firelight was wrapping in unendurable brightness. His
sword was no more brilliantly hard than his face, and his eyes were glittering
points. The ring of steel was in his voice as he answered:

"You speak as you have a right,--but you speak as men who have swines'
memories. Was it your support or your courage that won me the English crown?
It may be that if I had waited until pyre and fire you would have done so, but
it happened that before that time the English Witan gave it to me as a gift,
in return for my pledge to rule them justly. My meaning in this judgment, and
the others you dislike, is that I am going to keep that pledge. You are my
men, and as my men you have supported me, and as my men I have rewarded you,--
no chief was ever more open-handed with property toward his following,--but if
you think that on that account I will endure from you trouble and lawlessness,
you would better part from me and get into your boats and go back to my other
kingdom. For I tell you now, openly and without deceit, that here henceforth
there is to be but one rule for Angle and Dane alike; and I shall be as much
their King as yours; and they shall share equally in my justice. You may like
it or not, but that is what will take place."

How they liked it was suggested by a bursting roar, and the scuffling of many
feet as the English leaped forward to protect their new King and the Danes
whirled to meet them, but the women in the gallery did not wait to see the
outcome. In a frenzy of terror, Elfgiva dragged up the kneeling maids and
herded them through the door.

"Go,--before they get into the ante-room!" she gasped. "Do you not see that he
is no longer human? We should be pleading with iron. Go! Before they tear down
the walls!"




Chapter XXVII

Pixie-led



To a good friend's
The paths lie direct,
Though he be far away.
Ha'vama'l.

So Sebert of Ivarsdale went to his tower unhindered; and the rest of the
winter nights, while the winds of the Wolf Month howled about the palisades,
he listened undisturbed to his harper; and the rest of the winter days he trod
in peace the homely routine of his lordship,--in peace and in absent-eyed
silence.

"The old ways are clean fallen out of England, and it becomes a man to
consider diligently how he will order his future," he told Hildelitha and the
old cniht when they inquired the reason for his abstraction. Perhaps it was
the future that was engrossing his mind, but sometimes it came to him dimly as
a strange thing how so small a matter as a slip of a girl in a page's dress
could loom so large that there was no corner of manor or tower but recalled
some trick of her tossing curls, some echo of her ringing laughter. The
platform whereon they had walked in the moonlight, facing death together, he
shunned as he would have shunned a grave; and the postern where they had
parted was haunted ground. Did he tramp across the snow-crusted fields, memory
clothed them again in nodding grain, and between the golden walls a figure in
elfin green flitted like a will o' the wisp. Did he outsit the maids and men
around his hearth and watch the dying fire with no other companions than his
sleeping dogs, fancy placed a scar-let-cloaked figure on the cushion at his
feet and raised at his knee a face of sweetest friendliness, whose flower-blue
eyes brightened or gloomed in response to his lightest mood... Once more he
heard the harp-notes that told of the wood-nymph's sorrow;... once more he
heard his laughing denunciation;... again there looked back at him the wounded
eyes... Whenever this vision rose before him, he stirred in his chair and
turned his face from the light.

"May heaven grant that she is not remembering it!" he would murmur. And for a
while he would see her as he had left her in the garden, holding herself so
bravely erect in her shining robes, her white cheeks mocking at her smiling
lips. A great well of pity would spring in his breast, drowning his heart with
its pent-up gushing, and the waters would rise, rise, until they had touched
his eyes. But always before they brimmed over, another change would come.
Slowly, the rigid figure before him would relax into an attitude of idle
grace, the white cheeks would regain their color, the eyes their brightness,
and--presto! she stood before him as he had seen her from the passage, a
high-born maid among her kind, favored by the King, guarded by her lover. When
he reached this point, he always rose with an abruptness that swept his goblet
to the floor and awakened the sleeping dogs.

"Fool!" he would spurn himself. "Mad puffed-up fool! Keep in mind that she has
her consolers, while you have only your wound. If she could stake her all upon
the son of Lodbrok and then give him up at the turn of the wheel, is it in any
way likely that she is dead with tears for you? What? It may easily be that
she has had a new love for every month that has passed."

As the winter wore on, he grew restless in his solitude, restless and sullen
as the waters of the little stream in their prison of ice. He told himself
that when the spring came he would feel more settled; but when on one of his
morning rides he came upon the first crocus, lifting its golden cup toward the
sun, it only gave to his pointless restlessness a poisoned barb. Involuntarily
his first thought was, "It would look like a spark of fire in the dusk of her
hair." When he realized what he had said, he planted the great fore-foot of
his horse squarely on the innocent thing and crushed it back into the earth;
but it had done its work, for after that he knew that neither the promise of
the springtime nor the fullness of the harvest would bring him any pleasure,
since his eyes must see them alone.

"The next time they sing the 'Romance of King Offa,' before me, I will not
hold back my sympathy," he scorned himself, "for at last I understand how it
is possible for an elf to lure a man's reason off its seat and leave him a
dreaming dolt."

Like a new lease of life it came to him when the last of the April days
brought the long-delayed summons to the King. The old cniht, who considered
that a command to military service could be justified only by imminent
national destruction, was deeply incensed when he learned that the call was to
no more than an officership in the new body of Royal Guards, but the young
lord checked him with even a touch of impatience.

"What a throng of many words, my friend Morcard, have you spoken! Did you
learn naught from the palisade that gave way because churls paid me their
service when and how they would?" he demanded. "Now let me inform you that I
have got that lesson by heart, and hereafter no king shall have that trouble
about me. At sunrise, I ride back with the messenger." And he maintained this
view so firmly that his face was rather stern as he spent the night settling
matters of ploughing and planting and pasturage with the indignant old
servitor.

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