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The Ward of King Canute

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




In the midst of shaking her head, Randalin paused and her mouth became as
round as her eyes. "Foolishly do I recall it! As if he would! And yet--
Dearwyn, he has asked me four times if any Danes visit us here. Would you
think that he could be--"

"Jealous?" Dearwyn dropped her flowers to clap her hands softly. "Tata, I have
guessed his distemper rightly. Let no one say that I am not a witch for
cleverness! Ah, you can have the best fun that ever any maid could have! If
you could but make him believe something about that Danishman that Teboen saw
last winter!"

"Last winter?" Randalin repeated. "Oh! I had altogether forgotten him. It
seems that it has not been truthfully spoken when--"

The little Angle smothered the rest in her rapturous embrace. "The ring,
Tata,-- that would be the cream of all! Let him think that Rothgar gave it to
you, that he is your lover! I would give many kirtles to see his face."
"Rothgar?" Randalin's voice was light with scorn. "As likely would! be to
think him love-struck for the serving-wench who sparkled her eyes at him, as
he to think that Rothgar Lodbroksson could count for aught with me! Yet I say
nothing against the fun it would be. It may be that if he take notice of the
thing and question me--just to see how he would look--" She broke off
discreetly, but the one elf which the Abbot had not exorcised crept out and
danced in the dimple of her cheek.

Dearwyn shook her floral rod with an assumption of severity. "I trust he will
be sorely disquieted," she said. "He deserves no otherwise for his behavior
last winter. Are you so soft of heart, Tata, that you are never going to
reckon with him for that?"

The dimple-elf took wing and all the mischief in the girl's eyes seemed to go
with him. "Those days are buried," she said. "Let the earth grow green above
them." And suddenly she leaned forward and hid her face on the other's
shoulder. "Bring them not before me, Dearwyn, my friend, until I am a little
surer of my happiness. It is so new yet, Dearwyn, so new! And it came to me so
suddenly that sometimes it almost seems as if it might depart as suddenly from
me." A while they nestled together without speaking, the little maid's cheek
resting lovingly on her friend's dark hair.

It was a page thrusting aside the arras that broke the spell. Opening his
mouth to make a flourishing announcement, the words were checked on his tongue
by four white hands motioning stern commands for silence.

"It is the King's Marshal," he framed with protesting lips. But even that
failed to gain him admittance.

Rising, flushed and smiling, the girl with the blue lilies in her hair tiptoed
toward him. "I have orders to receive the Marshal," she whispered. "Where is
he?"

"He is in the Old Room," the page answered rather resentfully, but resigned
himself as he remembered that, however this curtailed his importance, it left
open a prompter return to his game of leap-frog along the passage.

In all probability his nimble departure saved him from a scolding for, as she
tripped after him down the corridor, a little frown was forming between
Randalin's brows. "I think it is not well-mannered of the fellow to say 'the
King's Marshal' as though my lord were Canute's thane," she was reflecting,
"and I shall put an end to it. Whatever others say, one never needs to tell me
that Sebert is not suffering in his service."

With this thought in her mind, she raised the moth-eaten tapestry and stood
looking at him with a face full of generous indignation. Except for the
noble's embroidered belt and gold-hilted sword, his dress now differed in no
way from that of the hundreds and hundreds of red-cloaked guards who were
spread over the country like sparks after a conflagration. As he turned at the
end of the beat he was pacing and came slowly toward her, she could see that
in its gravity his face was as soldier-like as his clothes. Always she found
it so when she came upon him unawares; and always, when she spoke to him-- She
held her breath as his eyes rose to her, and let it go with a little sigh of
happiness as she saw gloom drop from him like a mask at the sight of her.

"Randalin!" he cried joyously, and made a step toward her, then stopped to
laugh in gay wonder. "Now no poet would call you 'a weaver of peace' as you
stand there, for you look rather like an elf of battle. What is it, my raven?"

Her lips smiled back at him, but a mist was over her eyes. "It is your King
that I am angry with, lord. He is not worthy that a man like you should serve
him."

Moving toward her again, he held himself a little straighter. "I serve not the
King, dear heart," he said gently, "but the State of England, in whose service
the highest is none too good to bend."

She yielded him her hands but not her point. "That does not change the fact
that it is his overbearingness which makes your path as though you trod on
nettles,--for certainly I know it is so, though you will not say it!"

Neither would he admit it now, but laughed lightly as he drew her to him. "Now
may he not give me thorns who gives me also the sweetest rose in his king-dom?
I tell you he is the kingliest king ever I had to deal with, and the chief I
would soonest trust England to. Be no Danish rebel, shield-maiden, or as the
King's officer I will mulct your lips for every word of treason."

She showed no rebellion against his authority, at all events; and her hands
remained in his clasp until of his own accord he opened his fingers with an
exclamation. "Do you wear bracelets for rings, my fair, or what? _What_!" From
the monstrous bauble in his palm, he raised his eyes to hers, and if she had
seen their look she might have answered differently. But her gaze was still on
the ring; and as she felt him start, that impish dimple peeped out of her
cheek.

"Is it not a handsome thing?" she said. "It looks to be a ring to belong to a
giant."

"Is it--Rothgar's?"

The dimple deepened as she heard his tone. For all its absurdity, there must
be some truth in Dearwyn's witch-skill. She was obliged to droop her lashes
very low to hide the mischief in her eyes. "It is not his now," she murmured.
"It has been given me--to keep me in mind of something." But after that her
amusement grew too strong to be repressed, and she looked up at him with
over-brimming laughter. "There will soon be too much of this! Sweetheart mine,
are you in truth so easy to plague?"

Laughing she looked up at him, but, even as his face was clearing, something
in it struck her so strangely that her laughter died and she bent toward him
in sudden gravity. "Lord! It is not possible for you to believe that I could
love Rothgar!" Her manner of uttering that one word made it speak more scorn
than volumes might have done.

For a while he only looked at her, that strange radiance growing in his face;
but suddenly he caught her to him and kissed her so passionately that he hurt
her, and his voice was as passionate as his caress. "No," he told her over and
over. "Would I have offered you my love had I believed that? No! No!"

Satisfied, she made no more resistance but clung to him with her arms as she
had clung to him with her heart since the first hour he came into her life.
Only, when at last he released her, she took the ring from her finger and
thrust it into his hand with a little gesture of distaste. "I shall be
thankful if I do not have to see it again. It is Elfgiva's, that Canute gave
her after he had won it from Rothgar in some wager. It is her wish that you
bring it to the King again by slipping it into his broth or his wine where he
will come upon it after he has finished feeding and is therefore amiable--"
She stopped to laugh merrily in his face. "See how the very naming of the King
turns you grave again! When one gets a Marshalship, one becomes more and more
stark." Grown mischievous again in her happiness, she mocked him with
courtesies.

But it was only very faintly that he smiled at her fooling, as he held the
spiral against the light and shook it beside his ear. "Is there no more to the
message," he said slowly. "Am I to know nothing of her object? Or why I am
chosen of all others?"

"Easy is it to tell that," she laughed. "You were not chosen without a reason,
and that is because no one else is to be had, since the scullion who formerly
served her has gotten himself killed in some way and the man who stepped into
his shoes, out of some spite, has refused Teboen's gold. And as for her
object-- I wonder at you, lord of my heart! What kind of a lover are you that
you cannot guess that?" Feigning to flout him, she drew away; then feigning to
relent, turned back and laughed it into his ear. "It is a love-token! To hold
him to the fair promises he made at its giving, and to remind him of her, and
to win her a crown, and to do so many strange wonders that no tongue can
number them! Are you not ashamed to have failed on so easy a riddle?"

To her surprise, his gravity deepened almost to horror. "Love-token!" he
repeated; and suddenly he laid his hands on her shoulders and forced her
gently to give him eye for eye. "Randalin, if I comply with you in this
matter, will you answer me a question? Answer with such care as though your
life--nay, as though _my_ life depended on it?"

"Willingly; more than one," she consented; but forgot to wait for it as a
memory, wakened by his words, stirred in her. "Now it is time for me to
remember that there is one thing I have not been altogether truthful about,
through forgetting,--about the Danes we have seen. I recall now that last
winter Teboen often saw one when she was gathering herbs in the wood. She
spoke with him of the magic things she brews to make Elfgiva sleep, and he
gave her herbs which she thought so useful that she has been fretful because
she has not seen him since--"

Unconsciously, the young soldier's hands tightened on her shoulders until she
winced. "You know with certainty that she has never seen him since?" he
demanded,--" that Danes had naught to do with the last token Elfgiva sent
through the scullion? You can swear to it?"

"Certainly, if they speak the truth, I know it," she answered wonderingly.
"How should Danes--why, Sebert, what ails you?"

For he had let go her shoulders as abruptly as he had seized them, and walked
away to the window that looked out upon the rain-washed garden. After a
moment's hesitation, she stole after him. "Sebert, my love, what is it?
Trouble is in your mind, there is little use to deny it. Dearwyn says it
concerns me, but I know that it is no less than the King. Dear one, it seems
strange that you cannot disclose your mind to me as well as to--Fridtjof."

It was the first time, in their brief meetings together, that she had spoken
that name, and his smile answered. Even while his lips admitted a trouble, his
manner put it aside. "You are right that it concerns the King, my elf.
Sometimes the work he assigns me is neither easy nor pleasant to accomplish.
Yet without any blame to him, most warlike maiden, for--"

But she would not be prevented from saying stern things of her royal guardian,
so at last he let her finish the subject, and stood pressing her hands upon
his breast, his eyes resting dreamily on her face.

When she had finished, he said slowly, "Sweeting, because my mind is laboring
under so many burdens that my wits are even duller than they are wont, will
you not have the patience to answer one question that is not clear to me? Do
you think it troublesome to tell me why it was that you said, that day in the
garden--Now shake off that look, dearest; never will we speak of it again if
it is not to your wish! Tell me what you meant by saying that you came into
Canute's camp because you had too much faith in Rothgar, if you despise
him--since you despise him so?"

Her eyes met his wonderingly. "By no means could I have said that, lord. When
I left home, I knew not that Rothgar lived. The one in whom I had too much
faith was the King. Because I was young and little experienced, I thought him
a god; and when I came to his camp and found him a man, I thought only to
escape from him. That was why I wore those clothes, Sebert--not because I
liked so wild a life. That is clear to you, is it not?"

He did not appear to hear her last words at all. He was repeating over and
over, "The King, the King!" Suddenly he said, "Then I got that right, that it
was he who summoned me to Gloucester to make sure that you had kept your
secret from me also?--that he was angry with you for deceiving him?"

"Yes," she said. But as he opened his lips to put another question, she laid
her finger-tip beseechingly upon them, "Sebert, my love, I beg of you let us
talk no more of those days. Sometime, when we have a long time to be together,
I will tell you everything that I have had in my breast and you shall show me
everything that you have had in yours, but--but let us wait, sweetheart, until
our happiness seems more real than our sorrow. Even yet I do not like the
thought of the 'sun-browned boy-bred wench.'" She laughed a little unsteadily
at the sudden crimsoning of his face. "And I am still ashamed-- and ashamed of
being ashamed--that I showed you so plainly what my heart held for you...
Elfgiva's tongue has stabbed me sore... Beloved, can you not be content, for
now, with knowing that I have loved no man before you and shall love none
after you?"

Bending, he kissed her lips with the utmost tenderness. "I am well content,"
he said. And after that they spoke only of the future, when the first period
of his Marshalship should be over and he should be free to take his bride back
to the fields and woods of Ivarsdale, and the gray old Tower on the hill.




Chapter XXX

When The King Takes a Queen


Moderately wise Should each one be,
But never over-wise;
For a wise man's heart
Is seldom glad
If he is all-wise who owns it.
Ha'vama'l.

Out under the garden's spreading fruit trees, the little gentlewomen of
Elfgiva's household were amusing themselves with the flock of peacocks that
were the Abbey's pets. In a shifting dazzling mass of color--blended blue and
green and golden fire--all but one of the brilliant birds were pressing around
Candida, who scattered largess from a quaint bronze vase, while the one whose
vanity was greater even than its appetite was furnishing sport for Dearwyn as
she strutted after him in merry mimicry, lifting her satin-shod feet mincingly
and trailing her rosy robes far behind her on the grass. The old cellarer, to
whose care the birds fell except during those hours when the brethren were
free for such indulgences, watched the scene in grinning delight; and
Leonorine laughed gaily at them over the armful of tiny bobbing lap-dogs,
whose valiant charges she was engaged in restraining. The only person who
seemed out of tune with the chiming mirth was the Lady Elfgiva herself. Among
the blooming bushes she was moving listlessly and yet restlessly, and each
rose she plucked was speedily pulled to pieces in her nervous fingers. A
particularly furious outburst from the dogs, followed by peals of ringing
laughter, brought her foot down in a stamp of utter exasperation.

"Will you not observe my feelings, if you have none of your own?" she
demanded. "Leonorine, take those wretched dogs out of my hearing. Dearwyn, lay
aside your nonsense and go ask Gurth if he has heard anything yet of Teboen."
She stamped again, angrily, as her eye went from one to another of the
merry-makers. "I suppose it would gladden all of you to feel safe from her
hand, but I will plainly tell you that if harm has happened to her, you will
find a lair-bear pleasanter company than I shall be."

The dull red that mottled her face and neck was a danger signal whose warning
her attendants had learned to heed, and they scattered precipitately. Only the
old cellarer, herding his gorgeous flock with waving arms, ventured to address
her.

"Is it the British woman you are enquiring after, lady? The woman who comes to
the lane-gate, of a morning, to get new milk for your drinklng?"

Elfgiva turned quickly. "Yes,--Teboen my nurse. Have you seen her?" "I saw her
between cockcrowing and dawn, noble one, when I let down the bars for the
cattle to come in to the milking. The herd-boy who drives them said something
to her,--it seemed to me that he named a Danish name and said that person was
waiting in the wood to speak with her,--whereat she set down her pitcher and
went up the lane. I have not seen her since."

The lady's little white hands beat the air like a frightened child's. "Three
candles have burned out since then; it is certain that evil has befallen her.
Never since I was born has she left me for so long. I--" She paused to gaze
eagerly toward a figure that at this moment appeared in the low arch of the
door-way. "Tata! do you bring me news of her?"

Though she shook her head, Randalin's manner was full of suppressed excitement
as she advanced. "Not of her, lady, yet tidings, great tidings! The King has
sent--"

"His Marshal again? I will not see him."

"Nay, the Marshal but accompanies the messenger. In truth, lady, it is my
belief that the token has accomplished its mission. The message is brought by
Thorkel Jarl, as this has not been done before."

"Earl Thorkel?" Elfgiva cried. "By the Saints, it can be nothing less than the
token!" She dropped down upon the rustic seat that stood under the green
canopy of the old apple tree and sat there a long time, staring at the grass,
her cheeks paling and flushing by turns. Presently, she drew a deep breath of
relief. "I was foolish to fret myself over Teboen. Since she is clever enough
to bring this to pass, she is clever enough to take care of herself. Without
doubt it was the Danish wizard, and he informed her of some new herb, and she
has gone to fetch it."

After a while, an enchanting smile touched her lips. "Surely, a rose garden is
a fitting place to receive the ambassadors of a lover," she said, and
straightened herself on her rustic throne, sweeping her draperies into more
graceful folds. "Bring them to me here, ladybird. Candida, fetch hither the
lace veil from my bower, and call the other maids as you go, and all the pages
you can find. Since Teboen is not by, I want all of you behind me. I cannot
help it that the Tall One always gives me the feeling of a lamb before a
wolf."

Even had the likeness never occurred to her before, it would not have been
strange if she had thought of it to-day as, followed by the Marshal and
preceded by their fair usher, the old warrior came across the grass to the
little court under the apple tree. The keenness of the hooded eyes that looked
out at her from his grizzled locks, the gleam of the white teeth between his
bearded lips as he greeted her, was unmistakably wolfish. She relapsed into a
kind of lamb-like tremor as she invited them to be seated and commanded the
attendance of her cup-bearer. When she caught sight of the misery of
discomfort in Sebert's frank face, she lost her voice entirely and waited in
utter silence while they drank their wine.

Yet Thorkel's manner was unwontedly genial when at last he broached his
errand. "You lack the eagerness that is to be expected, lady," he said as he
gave his mouth a last polish with the delicate napkin. "How comes it that you
have not guessed I bring you a message from the King?"

She answered doubtfully that the King had not behaved to her so that his
messages were apt to be anticipated with much pleasure.

"But it has never occurred that I brought you this kind of news before," he
tempted her. "Will it not interest you to hear that at last the Palace is
ready for a Queen?"

That startled her a little out of her wariness, crying the last two words
after him with an eagerness of inflection that was as pathetic as though her
heart were concerned.

His lips gave out a flash as he nodded. "A Queen. Canute is going to give the
Angles a 'gift of the elves.'"

For an instant, she was betrayed into believing him, and bent forward, her
flushing face transfigured with delight. She was starting to speak when the
Etheling rose abruptly from his seat.

"Lord Thorkel," he said angrily, "this cat-play would bring you little thanks
from your King, nor will I longer endure it. I pray you to explain without
delay that the name of 'Elfgiva' is borne also by Emma of Normandy."

Then the old man snarled as a wolf does whose bone has been seized. "Lord of
Ivarsdale, you act in the thoughtless way of youth. I was bringing the matter
gently--"

But the young man accomplished his purpose in spite of the elder. He did not
address the King's wife--indeed, he refrained even from looking at her--but he
spoke swiftly to the dark-haired girl who stood beside the seat. "Randalin, I
beg you to tell your lady that Elfgiva Emma, who is Ethelred's widow and the
Lady of Normandy, arrives at Dover to-morrow to be made Queen of the English."

As all expected, the Lady of Northampton started up shrieking defiance,
screaming that it should not be so, that the King was her husband and the
soldiers would support her if the monks would not, that he was hers, hers,-
and more to that effect, until the plunging words ran into each other and
tears and laughter blotted out the last semblance of speech. That she would
end by swooning or attacking them with her hands those who knew her best felt
sure, and maids and pages crept out of her reach as hunters stand off from a
wounded boar. But at the point where her voice gave out and she whirled to do
one or perhaps both of these, her eyes fell on the house-door, and her
expression changed from rage to amazement and from amazement to horror.
Catching Randalin's arm in fear, not anger, she began to gasp over and over
the name of Teboen the nurse.

Those whose glance had not followed hers, thought her mad and shrank farther;
but the eyes of those who saw what she did reflected her look. In the doorway
the British woman was standing, wagging her head in time to a silly quavering
song that she was singing with lips so distorted as to be almost
unrecognizable. Her once florid face was ashen gray, and now as she quitted
the door post and came toward them she reeled in her \walk, stumbling over
stones and groping blindly with her huge bony hands. But still she kept on
singing, with twisted lips that strove to simper, and once she tried to sway
her ungainly body into an uncouth dancing-step that brought her floundering to
her knees.

"A devil has possession of her," Elfgiva shrieked. "Take her out of my sight,
or I shall go mad! Take her away--take her away!" Shrieking in wildest terror
she fled before her, and for a moment the garden seemed given over to a
grotesque game of blind-man's buff as women and boys scattered with renewed
screaming at each approach of the ghastly face. It did not stop until the two
soldiers who had been made keepers of the wretched creature came running out
of the house and led her away.

Then it was Thorkel's sardonic voice that brought the Lady of Northampton back
to herself. "Now, is this how you take the sight of your own handiwork? Or is
it because you regret that the King is not in this plight? One mouthful and no
more has she had of the blood of the coiled snake."

Stopping where she was, Elfgiva gazed at him, and with a dawning comprehension
came back her interrupted fury. "The coiled snake," she repeated slowly; and
after that, in a rush of words, "Then it was you who enticed her away and
mistreated her? But what does it concern _you_ that I sent a snake? Where saw
you it? How knew you it had blood?" Without waiting for an answer, she turned
upon the Marshal, her lids contracted into narrow slits behind which her eyes
raged like prisoned animals. "It is you who are to blame for this! You who
miscarried my message. You have betrayed me, and I tell you--" Hysterical
tears broke her voice, but she pieced it together with her temper and went on
telling him all the bitter things she could think of, while he stood before
her in the grim silence of one who has long foreseen the disagreeable aspects
of his undertaking and made up his mind to endurance.

When she stopped for breath, he said steadily, "I declare with truth that you
cannot dislike what I have done much more than I, Lady of Northampton. I hope
it will be an excuse with you, as it is a comfort to me, that instead of
fetching you into trouble--"

Thorkel took the words from his lips, and no longer with sinister deliberation
but with a ferocity that showed itself in the gathering swiftness of his
speech. "Trouble--yes! By the Hammer of Thor, I think you deserve to have
trouble! Had any of your witches' brew done harm to the King, I can tell you
that you would not have lived much longer. What! Are the plans of men to be
upset by your baby face, and a king-dom lost because a little fool chooses to
play with poison as a child with fire?"

"Poison?" she screamed. She had been facing him with whitening lips, and now
the little breath that she had left went from her in a sharp cry. "Not poison;
love-philtres! To win him back! Love-philtres,--can you not hear?"

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