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The Ward of King Canute

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




As she yielded reluctantly to the pressure, Randalin even showed surprise at
the question. "By no means. My errand hither was only to ask for bread. I
thought it unadvisable to venture into the castle kitchen, yet it is needful
that I keep up my strength. I go direct to the Danish camp to get justice from
King Canute."

The nun reached out and caught the gay cloak, gasping. "The Danish camp? You
speak in a raving fit! Better you thrust yourself into a den of ravenous
beasts. You know not what you say."

Offense stiffened the figure under the cloak. "It is you who do not know. Now,
as always, you think about Canute what lying English mouths have told of him.
I know him from my father's lips. No man on the Island is so true as he, or so
generous to those who ask of him. Time and again have I heard my father bid
Fridtjof to imitate him. He is the highest-minded man in the world." Her voice
as she ended was a stone wall of defiance. Sister Wynfreda made a desperate
dash down another road.

"My daughter, I entreat that you will not despise my offer. The yoke is not so
heavy here. Here is no strict convent rule; how could there be? We are but a
handful of feeble old women left living after those who led us are gone, to
the end that heathen fog smother not utterly the light which once was so
bright. In truth, most dear child, you would have no hard lot among us. A few
hours' work in the garden,--surely that is a pleasure, watching the fair green
things spring and thrive under your care. And when the tenderness of the birds
and the content of the little creeping creatures have filled your heart to
bursting with a sense of God's goodness, to come and stand before the Holy
Table and pour out your joys in sweet melody--"

But Randalin's head was shaking too decidedly, though she was not ungentle in
her answering. "I give you thanks, Sister Wynfreda, but such a life is not for
me. My nature is such that I do not like the gloomy songs you sing; nor do I
care for green things, except to wear in my hair. And it seems to me that I
should be spiritless and a coward if I should like such a life. I am no
English girl, to tremble and hide under a mean kirtle. I am a Norse maiden,
the kinswoman of warriors. I think I should not show much honor to my father
and my brother were I to leave them unavenged and sit down here with you. No,
I will go to my King and get justice. When he has slain the murderer and given
me the castle again, I will come back; and you shall come and live with me,
and eat meat instead of herbs, and--"

In her desperation, Sister Wynfreda caught her by the wrists and held her. "My
daughter, my daughter, shake off this sleep of your wits, I entreat you! The
men you are trusting in are dreams which you have dreamed in the safety of
your father's arms. They among whom you are going are barbarians,--yea,
devils! It were even better had you married the son of Leofwine. Think you I
know nothing of the Pagans, that you set my words at naught? Who but
Danish-men laid low these walls, and slaughtered the holy nuns as lambs are
torn by wild beasts? Have I not seen their horrid wickedness? You think a nun
a coward? Know you how these scars came on my face? Three times, with my own
hands, I pressed a red-hot iron there to destroy the beauty that allured, else
had the Pagans dragged me with them. Was I a coward?"

Randalin's eyes were very wide. "It seems to me that you were simple-minded,"
she breathed. "Why did you not thrust the iron in _his_ face?"

But Sister Wynfreda's expression changed so strangely that the girl foresaw an
attack along another line, and hastened to forestall it. "It is not worth
while to tell me further about the matter. Do you not see that it is by no
means the same? I shall be a Danish woman among Danish men. I shall not be a
captive, to be made a drudge of and beaten. It is altogether different. I
shall be with my own people, my own King. Let us end this talk. Give me the
bread and let me go. The sun is getting high."

She glanced at it as she spoke, and found it so much higher than she had
realized that her haste increased.

"No, I dare not wait for it. It is necessary that I get a good start, or they
will overtake me. They are to join Canute near Scoerstan; I heard it talked
among them. My horse is somewhat heavy in his movements, for he is the one
Gram rode yesterday; I found him grazing by the road. Let me go, Sister
Wynfreda. Bid me farewell and let me go."

Clutching at her belt, her arm, her cloak, the nun strove desperately to
detain her. "Randalin! Listen! Alas! how you grieve me by talking after this
manner! Wait, you do not understand. It is not their cruelty I fear for you.
Child, listen! It is not their blows--"

But Randalin had wrenched herself free. "Oh, fear, fear, fear!" she cried
impatiently. "Fear your enemies; fear your friends; fear your shadow! Old
women are afraid of everything! You will see when I come back. No, no, do not
look at me like that; I do not mean to behave badly toward you, but it will
become a great misfortune to me ii I am hindered; it will, in truth. See now;
I will kiss you--here where your cheek is softest. I cannot allow you to take
hold of my cloak again. There! Now lay your hand upon my head, as you do with
the children when you wish them good luck."

Because there was nothing else to do, and because the thought of doing this
gave her some comfort, Sister Wynfreda complied. Laying her trembling hands
upon the bared black head, she raised her despairing face to heaven and prayed
with all the earnestness that was hers. Then she stood at the gate in silence
and watched the girl set forth. As Randalin turned into the sunny highway, she
looked back with a brave smile and waved her cap at the faded figure under the
arch. But the nun, left in the moss-grown garden, wrapped in the peace of the
grave, saw her through a blur of tears.

"God guard you, my fledgeling," she whispered over and over. "My prayers be as
a wall around you. My love go with you as a warm hand in your loneliness. God
keep you in safety, my most beloved daughter!"




Chapter III

Where War-dogs Kennel


Openly I now speak
Because I both sexes know:
Unstable are men's minds toward women;
'T is when we speak most fair,
When we most falsely think:
That deceives even the cautious.
Ha'vama'l.

This morning there were few travellers upon the Street. South of the highway
the land was held by English farmers, who would naturally remain under cover
while a Danish host was in the neighborhood; while north of the great dividing
line lay Danish freeholds whose masters might be equally likely to see the
prudence of being in their watch-towers when the English allies were passing.
Barred across by the shadows of its mighty trees, the great road stretched
away mile after mile in cool emptiness. At rare intervals, a mounted messenger
clattered over the stones, his hand upon his weapon, his eyes rolling sharply
in a keen watch of the thicket on either side. Still more rarely, foraging
parties swept through the morning stillness, lowing cows pricked to a sharp
trot before them, and squawking fowls slung over their broad shoulders.
Captured pigs gave back squeal for squawk, and the voices of the riders rose
in uproarious laughter until the very echoes revolted and cast back the
hideous din.

The approach of the first of these bands caused Randalin's heart to leap and
sink under her brave green tunic. For all that she could tell from their
dress, they might as well be English as Danish. If her disguise should fail!
As they bore down upon her, she drew her horse to the extreme edge of the road
and turned upon them a pale defiant face.

On they came. When they caught sight of a sprig of a boy drawn up beside the
way with his hand resting sternly on his knife, they sent up a shout of
boisterous merriment. The blood roared so loudly in Randalin's ears that she
could not understand what they said. She jerked her horse's head toward the
trees and drove her spur deep into his side. Only as he leaped forward and
they swept past her, shouting, did the words reach home.

"Look at the warrior, comrades!" "Hail, Berserker!" "Scamper, cub, or your
nurse will catch you!" "Tie some of your hair on your chin, little one!"

As the sound of hoof-beats died away, and the nag settled back to his steady
jog-trot, the girl unclenched her hands and drew a long breath.

"Though it seems a strange wonder that they should not know me for a woman, I
think I need give myself no further uneasiness. It must be that I am very like
Fridtjof in looks. It may be that it would not be unadvisable now for me to
ask advice of the next person how I can come to the camp."

The asking had become a matter of necessity by the time she found anyone
capable of answering the question. Three foreign merchants whom she overtook
near noon could give her no information, and she covered the next five miles
without seeing a living creature; then it was only a beggar, who crawled out
of the bushes to offer to sell the child beside him for a crust of bread. The
petition brought back to Randalin her own famished condition so sharply that
her answer was unnecessarily petulant, and the man disappeared before the
question could even be put to him. Two miles more, and nothing was in front of
her but a flock of ragged blackbirds circling over a trampled wheat-field.
Already the sun's round chin rested on the crest of the farthest hill. In
desperation, she turned aside and galloped after a mailed horseman who was
trotting down a clover-sweet lane with a rattle and clank that frightened the
robins from the hedges. He reined in with a guffaw when he saw what mettle of
blade it was that had accosted him.

"Is it your intention to join the army?" he inquired. "Canute will consider
himself in great luck."

"I am desirous to--to tell him something," Red Cloak faltered.

His grin vanishing, the man leaned forward alertly. "Is it war news? Of Edric
Jarl's men?"

Before her tongue could move, Randalin's surprised face had answered. The
warrior smote his thigh resoundingly.

"You will be able to tell us tidings we wish to know. Since the fight this
morning we have been allowed to do no more than growl at the English dogs
across the plain, because it was held unadvisable to make an onset until the
Jarl's men should increase our strength. It is to be hoped they are not far
behind?"

"You make a mistake," Randalin began hesitatingly. "My news does not concern
the doings of Edric Jarl, but the actions of his man Norman--"

A blow across her lips silenced her.

"Hold your tongue until you come in to the Chief," the man admonished her,
with good-humored severity. "Have you not learned that babbling turns to ill,
you sprouting twig? And waste no more time upon the road, either. Yonder is
your shortest way, up that lane between the barley. When you come to a burned
barn, do you turn to the left and ride straight toward the woods; it should
happen that an old beech stock stands where you come out. Take then the path
that winds up-hill, and it will bring you to the war booths before you can
open your foolish mouth thrice. Trolls! what a cub to send a message by! But
get along, now; you will suffer from their temper if they think it likely that
you have kept them waiting." He gave the horse a stinging slap upon the flank,
that sent him forward like a shaft from a bow.

Snatching up her slackened rein with one hand, his rider managed to secure her
leaping cap with the other; and after the first bounce, she caught the jerky
gait instinctively and swayed her body into its uneven swing. But her heart
was all at once a-throb in a wild panic. Was this what a boy must expect? This
challenging brutal downrightness, which made one seem to have become a dog
that must prove his usefulness or be kicked aside? Her spirit felt as bruised
as a fledgeling fallen upon stony ground. She shivered as the old beech stock
loomed up before her.

"If these other men behave so, it is in my mind to tell them that I am a
woman," she decided. "Since they are my own people, no evil can come of their
knowing; and I dislike the other feeling."

The recollection that she had always this escape open gave her a new lease of
boldness. Her courage rose as fast as her body when they began to climb the
hillside toward the ruddy light that slanted down between the tree-trunks.
When a sentinel stopped her near the top, she faced him with a fairly firm
front.

"I have war news for King Canute," she told him haughtily; and he let her pass
with no more than a grin.

The camp appeared to be strung through the whole beech grove that covered the
crest of the hill. The first sign of it began less than ten yards beyond the
sentry, where a couple of squatting thralls were skinning a slain deer; and as
far as eye could swim in the flood of sunset light, the green aisles were
dotted with scattered groups. Every flat rock had a ring of dice-throwers
bending over it; every fallen trunk its row of idlers. Wherever a cluster of
boulders made a passable smithy, crowds of sweating giants plied hammer and
sharpening-stone. The edges of the little stream that trickled down to the
valley were thronged with men bathing gaping wounds and tearing up the cool
moss to staunch their flowing blood. Never had the girl dreamed of such chaos.
It gave her the feeling of having plunged into a whirlpool. She threaded her
way among the groups as silently as the leaf-padded ground would permit.

She had come in by the back door, but now she began to reach the better
quarters. Her nose reported sooner than her eyes that a meal was in making;
and a glow of anticipation braced her famished body. Here, in this green
alcove, preparations were just beginning; a white-robed slave knelt by the
curling thread of smoke and nursed the flickering flame with his breath, while
his circle of hungry masters pelted him with woolly beech-nuts and cursed his
slowness. There, a dozen yards to the left, the meal was nearly over; between
the gnarled trunks the fire shone like a red eye; and bursts of merriment and
snatches of boisterous song marked the beginning of the drinking.

Sometimes a woman's lighter laughter would mingle with the peal. Sometimes,
through the sway-ing branches, Randalin caught sight of the flower-fair face
of an English girl, bending between the shaggy yellow heads of the captors.
Once she came upon a brawny Viking employing his huge fingers to twine a
golden chain around a white throat. The girl's face was dimpling bewitchingly
as she held aside her shining hair. Randalin had an impulse of triumph.

"I wish that Sister Wynfreda could see that, now, since it is her belief that
Danes are always overbearing toward their captives," she told herself. "This
one has no appearance of having felt blows or known hard labor. She could not
have been entertained with greater liberality in her father's house--"

She broke off suddenly, as the words suggested a new train of thought. This
girl must have been driven from her father's house by Danes, even as she
herself had been driven forth by the English. Yet here was she eating with her
foes, taking gold from their hands! Could she have honor who would thus make
friends with the slayers of her kin? Randalin watched her wonderingly until
leaves shut out the picture.

Another sentinel hailed her, and she gave him absently her customary answer.
He pointed to a great striped tent of red and white linen, adorned with
fluttering streamers and guarded by more sentries in shining mail; and she
rode toward it in a daze.

More revellers sprawled under these trees, and she looked at them curiously.
The women here did not seem to be amusing themselves so well. One was weeping;
and one--a slip of a girl with a face like a rose--was trying vainly to rise
from her place beside a drunken warrior, who held her hands and strove to pull
her lips down to his wine-stained mouth. In imagination Randalin felt again
Norman's arm around her waist, and a wild pity was quickened in her. This was
worse than drudgery, worse than blows! For the credit of Danish warriors, it
was well that Sister Wynfreda could not see this.

Again her own words raised a startling apparition. What had been the Sister's
last cry of warning? "It is not their cruelty I fear for you. Child, listen!
It is not their blows--" Could it be possible that this was what--

Like a merciless answer came a scream from the girl,--a short piercing cry of
horror and loathing and agonized appeal as she was drawn down upon the leering
face. At that cry, childhood's blind trust died forever in Randalin. As she
rode past the pair, with clenched hands and flashing eyes, she knew without
reasoning that tortures would not tear from her the secret of her disguise.

When the sentinel before the tent challenged her roughly, it was her tongue,
not her brain, that answered him.

"I have war news for the King."

In a twinkling he had dropped his spear, plucked her from her saddle, and was
marching her toward the entrance by her collar.

"In the Troll's name, get in to the Chief, and let nothing hinder you!" he
growled. "From your snail's pace I got the idea that you had come a-begging.
Get in, and set your tongue wagging as speedily as you can! Why do you draw
back? I tell you to make haste!"

Before she could so much as catch her breath, he had raised the tent-flap,
pushed her bodily through the entrance, and dropped the linen door behind her.





Chapter IV

When Royal Blood Is Young Blood



The mind only knows
What lies near the heart;
That alone is conscious of our affections.
No disease is worse
To a sensible man
Than not to be content with himself.
Ha'vama'l.


Three richly dressed warriors, clinking golden goblets across a table,--so
much Randalin caught in her first glance. On the spot where the sentinel had
released her she stopped, stock-still, and with eyes bent on the ground
tremblingly awaited the royal attention.

Clink-clank,--the golden goblet lips continued their noisy kissing. The hum of
the low-toned voices droned on without interruption. Minute after minute
dragged by. She ventured to shift her weight and steal an upward glance.

Her first thought was that a king's tent was very like a trader's booth.
Spears and banners and gold-bossed shields decorated the walls, while the
reed-strewn ground was littered with furs and armor, with jewelled
altar-cloths and embroidered palls and wonder-ful gold-laced garments. The
rude temporary benches were spread with splendid covers of purple and green,
upon which silver lilies and gold-eyed peacocks had been wrought with
exquisite skill. And the rough-hewn table bore such treasures as plunderers
dream of when their sleeping-bags are lying the most comfortably,--ivory
relique caskets, out of which the sacred bones had been unceremoniously
turned, gemmed chalices from earls' feasting-halls, and amber chains and
silver mirrors and strings of pearls from their ladies' bowers. Randalin's
gaze lingered, dazzled, then slowly rose to examine the master of all this
wealth.

He was not so easy to pick out. Of the three men around the table, only one
was a graybeard; and of the two striplings left, either might have been the
son of Sven of Denmark. Both were finely formed; both were dressed with royal
splendor, and the hair of each fell from under a jewelled circlet in uncut
lengths of shining fairness. The hair of the shorter one, though, was finer;
and no red tainted the purity of its gold. When one came to look at it, it was
like a royal cloak. Perhaps he might be the King! She wished he would raise
his face from his hands, that she might see it. Then she noticed that his
shoulders lacked the breadth of his companion's by as much as a palm's width;
and her mind wavered. Surely so great a king as Canute must be broader-
shouldered than any of his subjects! This youth was hardly brawny at all; as
Vikings went, he was even slender. She turned her attention to the other man.
He was big enough, certainly; the fist that he was waving in the air was like
nothing so much as a sledge-hammer, and there was a likeness to the Jotuns in
his florid coarse-featured face.

As she watched it, Randalin felt a coldness creep over her. His great jaws
were like the jowl of a mastiff. His thick-lipped mouth--what was it that made
that so terrible, even in smiling? Watching it with the fascination of terror,
it occurred to her to endow him with the appetite of the drunken warrior at
the table outside the tent. Suppose, just as they stood now, he should take
the fancy to turn and kiss her lips; would anything stop him? In the drawing
of a breath, her overwrought nerves had painted the picture so clearly that
she was sick with horror. Sister Wynfreda's red-hot iron would not keep him
back, instinct told her. That sacrifice of beauty had not been simple-minded;
it had been the one alternative. The girl's light-hearted boldness went from
her in a gasp. Her shaking limbs gave way beneath her, so that she sank on the
nearest bench and cowered there, panting.

Though the men were too intent to notice her, in some sub-conscious way her
moving seemed to rouse them. Their discussion had been growing gradually
louder; now the bearded man and the young Jotun rose suddenly and faced their
companion, whose voice became audible in an obstinate mutter,--

"Nevertheless, I doubt that it was wise to join hands with an English
traitor."

The older man said in a tone of slowly gathering anger, "I told you to make
the bargain, and I stand at the back of my counsels. Have you become like the
wind, which tries every quarter of the sky because it knows not its own mind?"

While the young man warned in his heavy voice, "You will have your will in
this as in everything, King Canute; but I tell you that if you keep the
bargain, you will act against my advice."

Randalin had been mistaken in her deductions. It was not the brawny body that
was King of the Danes; the leader's spirit lodged in the slender frame of the
youth with the cloak of yellow hair.

He raised from his hands now a face of boyish sullenness, and sat glaring over
his clenched fists at his counsellors.

"Certainly it would become a great misfortune to me if I should act against
the advice of Rothgar Lodbroksson," he made stinging answer. "He is as wise
and long-sighted as though he had eaten a dragon's heart. It was he who gave
me the advice, when the English broke faith, to vent my rage upon the
hostages. Men have not yet ceased to lift their noses at me for the
unkingliness of the deed." His eyes blazed at the memory. They were not
pleasant eyes when he was angry; the blue seemed to fade from them until they
were two shining colorless pools in his brown face.

The son of Lodbrok shrugged his huge shoulders in stolid resignation; but the
wrinkled forehead of the older man became somewhat smoother. There was nothing
Jotun-like about his long, lean features, yet his expression was little
pleasanter on that account. From under his lowering shaggy brows he appeared
to see without being seen; and one distrusted his hidden eyes as a traveller
in the open distrusts a skulker in the thicket.

He said in his measured voice, "In that matter my opinion stands with Canute.
When bloodshed is unnecessary, it becomes a drawback. Craft is greatly to be
preferred. One does not cross deep snow by stamping through it on iron-shod
feet; one slides over it on skees."

Over the brown fists, the fierce bright eyes bent themselves upon him in his
turn. The biting young voice said, "It is likely that Thorkel the Tall speaks
from experience. It stands in my memory how well craft served him when he had
deserted my father for Ethelred and then became tired of the Englishman. To
procure himself peace, he was forced to creep back to my feet like a dog that
has been kicked. Was there gold enough in his bribe to regild his fame?"

The gnarled old face of Thorkel the Tall grew livid; growling in his grizzled
beard, his hand moved instinctively toward his sword. But Rothgar caught his
arm with a boisterous laugh.

"Slowly, old wolf!" he admonished. "Never snarl at the snapping of the cub you
have raised."

The King had not moved at the threatening gesture, and he did not move now,
but he echoed the laugh bitterly. "In that, you say more truth than you know,
foster-brother. He is a wolf, and I am a wolf's cub, and you are no better. We
are all a pack of ravening beasts, we Northmen, that have no higher ambition
than to claw and use our teeth. Talk of high-mindedness to such--bah!" He
flung his arms apart in loathing; then, in a motion as boyishly weary as it
was boyishly petulant, crossed them on the table before him and pillowed his
head upon them.

His companions did not seem to be unused to such outbursts. Rothgar appeared
to find it more amusing than anything else, for his mouth expanded slowly in a
grin. A snort of impatience distended the nostrils of Thorkel the Tall. "At
such times as these," he said, "are brought to my mind the words of Ulf Jarl,
that a man does not really stand well upon his legs until he has lived
twenty-five winters."

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