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The Ward of King Canute

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




At the clatter the King looked around, and the tone in which he spoke his
friend's name had in it more of passion than all the lover's phrases he had
ever paid Elfgiva's ears. At the same time, he made a sharp sign to the two
sentinels. "Get back to your posts," he said.

Hesitating they saluted and unwilling they wheeled, while one spoke bluntly
over his shoulder. "It would be better to let us stay, King, if you please.
You are weaponless."

"Go," Canute repeated. In a moment the doors beyond the curtain had closed
behind them, and the two men were alone save for the girl hiding forgotten in
the shadow of the chair.

Rothgar laughed jarringly. "Whatever has been told about you, you have not yet
been accounted a coward. But I do not see how you know I shall not kill you. I
have dreamed of it not a few times."

Something like a veil seemed to fall over the King's face; from behind it he
spoke slowly as he moved away to the dais upon which his throne-chair stood,
and mounted the steps. "The same dream has come to me, but never has it
occurred to me to seek you out to tell you of it."

"No such purpose had I," the Jotun said with a touch of surliness. Pulling a
bag from under his belt, he shook out of it upon the floor a mane of matted
yellow hair. "If you want to know my errand, it is to bring you this.
Yesterday it came to my ears that one of my men was suspected of having tried
to give you poison through your wife's British thrall. I got them before me
and questioned them, and the Scar-Cheek boasted of having done it. This is his
hair. If you remember anything about the fellow, you understand that he was
not alive when I took it from him."

The King looked immovably at the yellow mass. "You have behaved in a
chieftain-like way and I thank you for it," he said. "But I would have liked
it better if you had come to me about the judgment that raised this wall
between us--"

Rothgar's throat gave out a savage sound. "Tempt me not! I am no sluggish
wolf."

But Canute spoke on: "What I expected that day was that you would come to me,
as friend comes to friend, and with my loose property I would redeem from you
every stick and stone which my kingship had forced me to hold back. Not more
than they have called me coward, have men ever called me stingy--"

"And when have men called me greedy?" the Jotun bellowed. "Your thoughts have
got a bad habit of lying about me if they say that it was greed for land which
made me take your judgment angrily. Except for the honor of my stock, what
want I with land while I have a ship to bear me? I tell you, now as
heretofore, that it was your treachery which unsheathed a sword between us."

"Rothgar my brother,--" the veil was rent from the King's face and he had
stepped from the dais and seized the other by the shoulders as though he would
wrestle bodily with him,--" by the Holy Ring, I swear that I have never
betrayed you! If you grudge not the land to the Englishman, you have no cause
to grudge him anything under Ymer's skull. Can a man change his blood?--for so
much a part of me is my friendship for you. Time never was when it was not
there, and it would be as possible to fill my veins with Thames water as to
put an Englishman into your place. Can you not understand--"

But Rothgar's hand had fallen upon the other's breast and pushed him backward
so that he was forced to catch at the chair-arm to save himself from falling.
"Never get afraid about that," he sneered. "Since we slept in one cradle, I
have been a thick-headed Thrym and your Loke's wit has fooled me into doing
your bidding and fighting your battles and giving you my toil and my limbs and
my faith, but wisdom has grown in me at last. You undertake too steep a climb
when you try to make me believe in your love while before my eyes you give to
the man I hate my lands and the woman you had promised me and my place above
your men--" His rage choked him so that he was obliged to break off and stand
drawing his sword from his sheath and slamming it back with a sharp sound. His
voice came back in a hoarse roar. "When I reckon up the debt against you, I
know that the only thing to wipe it out would be your life. Not taken by
poison nor underhandedly, but torn out of your deceitful body as we stand face
to face. If I could do that, it might be that my anger would be quenched."
Again he drew his blade half out,--and this time he did not shove it back. His
huge body seemed to draw itself together, crouching, as he leaned forward.
"Why do you stand there looking as though you thought you were Odin? Do you
think to blunt my weapon with your eyes? Why do you tempt me?"

The King had not moved away from the chair against which he had staggered, and
the prints of his nails were on its arm. He was as though he had hardened to
stone. "To show you that I am stronger than you, though I face you with bare
hands," he said. "To show you that you dare not kill me."

"Dare not!" Rothgar's laughter was a hideous thing as he cleared at a bound
the space between them. His sword was full-drawn now. "Shout for your guards!
It may be that they will get here in time."

But the King neither gave back nor raised his voice. "I will not," he said,
"nor will I lift hand against you. Never shall you have it to say that I
forgot you had endangered your life for mine. On your head it shall be to
break the blood-oath."

Now they were breast to breast. In her mind, the girl in the shadow flung open
the doors and shrieked to the sentinels and roused the Palace; in her body,
she stood spellbound, voiceless, breathless.

Still Rothgar did not strike. It was the King who spoke this time also. "Among
the sayings of men in Norway," he said coldly, "there is one they tell of a
traitor who carried a sword of death against his King, but lacked the boldness
to use it before the King's face. So he begged his lord to wrap a cloak around
his head that he might get the courage to ask a boon. When that had been done,
he stabbed. Do you want me to cover my eyes?"

With a hoarse cry, Rothgar flung his sword back to his sheath, recoiling,--
there was even a kind of fear in his manner: "A fool would I be, to set your
ghost free to follow me with that look on its face! Keep your life--and
instead I will torture every Angle I can get under my grip, for it is they who
have turned a great hero into a nithing--may they despise you as you have
despised your people for their sakes!" Invoking the curse with a sweep of his
handless arm, he strode from the room.

Randalin did not see when he passed her, for her eyes were on the King as he
stood looking after his foster-brother.

"Ah, God, what a terrible world hast Thou made!" she murmured, as she put up
her hands to ease the swelling agony in her throat. "No longer will I try to
live in it. I will go to the Sisters and remain with them always."

Through the doors opening before the Jotun there came in a sudden buzz of
laughing voices, while a breeze brought through the window a ringing of bells
and a clarioning of approaching horns. Upon the girl in the shadow and the
King on the dais, the sounds fell like the dissolving of a spell. She ran
swiftly to the little door behind the tapestry and let herself out unseen,
unheard. The King mounted the throne he had won and sat there in regal state,
facing the throng of splendid courtiers trooping in to give him their wedding
greetings.




Chapter XXXII

In Time's Morning


He wins who woos.
Ha'vama'l.

The hot glare of a July sun was on the stones of the Watling Street and July
winds were driving hosts of battling dust-clouds along the highway, but in the
herb garden of Saint Mildred's cool shadows lay over the dew-beaded grass and
all was restfulness and peace. The voice of the girl who was following Sister
Wynfreda from mint clump to parsley bed, from fennel to rue, was not much
louder than the droning of the bees in the lavender.

"If it be true as you say,--" she was speaking with the passionate bitterness
of wounded youth,--" if it be true that in his place anyone would have
believed what he believed, then is this a very hateful world and I want no
further part in it."

Over the fragrant leaves which she was touching as fondly as if they had been
children's faces, Sister Wynfreda gently shook her head. "Think not that it is
altogether through the world's evil-heartedness, dear child. Think rather that
it is because mankind is not always brave and shrinks from disappointment,
that it dares not believe in good until good is proved."

"I know that one dares not always believe in happiness," the girl conceded
slowly, "for when my happiness was like a green swelling wave, white fear
sprang from the crest of it and it fell--Sister, did that forebode my sorrow?"

Awhile, the nun's eyes widened and paled as eyes that see a vision, but at
last she bowed her head to trace a cross upon her breast. "Not so; it is God's
wisdom," she said, "else would the world be so beautiful that we would never
hunger after heaven."

Mechanically, Randalin's hands followed hers through the holy sign; then she
clasped them before her to wring them in impatient pain. "That is so long to
go hungry, Sister! I shall be past my appetite." Dropping down beside the
other, her slim young fingers began to imitate the gnarled old ones as they
weeded and straightened. "I wonder at it, Sister Wynfreda, that you do not
urge me to creep in with you. A year ago, you wanted it when I wanted it not;
but now when I am willing, you hold me off."

"Is it clear before your mind that you are willing, my daughter?" the nun
asked gently. As she drew herself to her feet with the aid of a bush, the
cramping of her feeble stiffened muscles contracted her face in momentary
pain, but her eyes were serene as the altar lamps. "It lies upon you to
remember, little sister, that those who would serve God around the altar must
not go thither only because the world has mistreated them and they would cast
it off to avenge the smart. She who puts on the yoke of Christ must needs do
so because it is the thing she would desire of all, were all precious things
spread out for her choosing. Can you look into my eyes and say that it would
be so with you?"

Where she knelt before her, the girl suddenly threw her arms around the woman
and hid her face in the faded robes. The frail hand stroked the dark hair
affectionately. "Think not that I would upbraid you with it, child as dear as
my own heart. When the Power that took you from me led you back again, and I
read what God's fingers had written on your face that before was like a
lineless parchment, I could not find it in my mind to wish you otherwise. I
felt only shame for the weakness of my faith, and joy past all telling."

Under the soothing hand, Randalin's sobs slowly ceased; when at last she
raised her wet eyes there was no longer rebellion in them but only youth's
measureless despair. "Sister, now as always, I want to do what you would have
me--but I am so full of grief! Must I go back to Avalcomb and begin all over
again? It seems to me that my life stretches before me no more alluringly than
yonder dusty road, that runs straight on, on, over vast spaces but always
empty."

The beauty that had been Sister Wynfreda's hovered now about her mouth as
fragrance around a dead rose. Her gaze was on a branch above them where a
little brown bird, calling plaintively, was slipping from her nest. Over the
wattled edge, two tiny brown heads were peeping like fuzzy beech-nut rinds. "I
wonder," she said, "what those little creatures up there will think when a few
months hence the blue sky becomes leaden, such that no one of them ever before
recollected it so dark, and the sun that is wont to creep to them through the
leaves has gone out like a candle before the winter winds? By reason of their
youth, I suppose they will judiciously conclude with themselves that there is
never going to be any blue sky again, that their lives will stretch before
them in a dark-hued stress of weather, empty of all save leafless trees and
frozen fields. My fledgeling, will they not be a little ashamed of their
short-sightedness when the spring has brought back the sun?"

The girl's lips parted before her quickening breath, and the old nun smiled at
her tenderly as she moved away with her hands full of the green symbols of
healing. "Settle not the whole day of your life at its morning, most dear
child, but live it hour by hour," she said. "If you would be of use now, go
gather the flowers for the Holy Table, and when themselves have drawn in
holiness from the spot, then shall you bring them to the sick woman over the
hill."

"Yes, Sister," the girl said submissively. But when she had crossed the
daisied grass and opened the wicket gate and came out into the fragrant lane,
something seemed to divide her mind with the roses, for though she sent one
glance toward the hedge, she sent another to the spot beyond--where the lane
gave out upon the great Street to the City--and after she had walked a little
way toward the flowers, she turned and walked a long way toward the road,
until she had come where her eyes could follow its white track far away over
the hills.

"I wonder if I shall ever hunger for heaven as I hunger for the sight of him,"
she murmured as she gazed.

But whatever the valleys might hold, the hillsides showed her nothing;
sighing, she turned back. "It seems to me," she said, "that if we could have
little tastes of heaven as we went along, then would there still be enough
left and the road would seem much shorter." Sighing, she set to work upon the
roses, that had twined themselves in a kindly veil over the bushes.

Standing so, it happened that she did not see the horseman who was just
gaining the crest of the nearest hill between her and the City. The wind being
from her, she did not even hear the hoof-beats until the horse had turned from
the glare of the sun into the shadow of the fern-bordered lane. The first she
knew of it, she glanced over her shoulder and saw the red-cloaked figure
riding toward her along the grass-grown path.

As naturally as a flower opens its heart at the coming of the sun, she leaned
toward him, breathing his name; then in an impulse equally natural, as he
leaped from his saddle before her, she drew back and half averted her face,
flickering red and white like the blossoms she was clasping to her breast.

He stopped abruptly, a short stretch of grass still between them, wand it
soothed her bruised pride a little that there was no longer any confident ease
in his manner but only hesitation and uncertainty. His voice was greatly
troubled as he spoke: "Never can I forgive myself for having wounded you,
sweetheart, yet had I hoped that you might forgive me, because I knew not what
I did and because I have suffered so sorely for it."

"_You_ have suffered," she repeated with a little accent of bitterness.

"I beseech you by my love that you do not doubt it!" Hesitation gave way
before a warmth of reproach. "For a man to know that he has wounded what he
would have died to shield --that he has wronged where he would have given his
life to honor--that it may be he has lost what is body and soul to him,--what
else is that but suffering?"

It was only a very little that her face turned toward him, and he could not
see how her downcast eyes were taking fire from his voice. He stood looking at
her in despair, until something in the poise of her head taught him a new rune
among love's spells. Drawing softly near her, he spoke in noblest
conciliation: "Is it your pride that cannot pardon me, Lady of Avalcomb? Do I
seem to sue for grace too boldly because I forget to make my body match the
humbleness of my heart? Except in prayer or courtesy, we are not loose of
knee, we Angles, but I would stoop as low as I lowest might if that could make
you kinder, dear one." Baring his head, he knelt down at her feet,--and the
difference between this and the time when he had bent before her in the Abbey,
was the difference between tender jest and tenderest earnest. "Thus then do I
ask you to give me back your love," he said gently,--and would have said more
but that she turned, stirred to a kind of generous shame.

"It needs not that, lord! I know you did not mean it. And they have told me
that--that I have no right to be angry with you --" She broke off, as looking
into his face she saw something that startled her into forgetfulness of all
else. "Why are your cheeks so hollow?" she demanded. "And so gray--as though
you had lost blood? Lord, what has come near you?"

He could not conceal the sudden pleasure he got out of her alarm for him, even
while he answered as lightly as he could that it was no more than the fatigue
of his three days in the saddle; and a lack of food, perhaps, as he had been
somewhat pressed for time; and a lack of sleep because of--

But she was a warrior's daughter, and she would not be put off. Coming close
to him, she pulled aside the dusty cloak, hot as a live coal in the glare of
the day, and there--behold!--there were blood stains on the breast of his blue
kirtle. Forgetful of everything else, she flung her arms around him as though
to shield him. "Sebert, you are wounded! What is it?"

Nothing that troubled him very much, apparently, for his haggard face had
grown radiant with gladness. Yet he was enough afraid of the reaction to
answer her as gravely as possible: "It is Rothgar Lodbroksson, whom I met
coming from the City as I was journeying back from my errand in Northampton.
Little affection has ever passed between us, and this time something more than
usual seemed to have stirred him against me, for--"

"He tried to kill you!" The words were not a question but a breathless
assertion as she remembered the Jotun's last threat.

"He tried to kill me," the Marshal assented quietly. "And his blade did manage
to pierce my mail; he is a giant in strength as in other things. But it cut no
more than flesh; and after that, Fortune wheeled not toward him."

"You slew him!" Her lips were white as she gasped it, but he knew now that it
was no love for the Jotun that moved her, and he answered promptly to her
unspoken thought: "No, sweet,--for the King's sake, I spared him. Before this,
his men have taken him aboard his ship and England is rid of him."

Murmuring broken phrases of thanksgiving, she stood holding the cloak she had
grasped, but he dreaded too much the moment of her awakening to await its
coming inactive. Slipping his arms around her, he began to speak swiftly, the
moment her silence gave him an opening.

"Never did I blame Rothgar much for his enmity against me, and now I thank him
for this cut as for a gift, for through it I know that at least you have not
outlawed me from your love. Dear one, as you are not unkind to so slight a
thing as this wound in my flesh, so neither be without pity for the one that
is so much deeper, in my heart! As the scratch stayed your anger for a while,
so, in the gentleness of love, let this which is mortal stay it for all time."

With his arms around her, she could not shrink very far away,--nor was it seen
that she tried to,--but all at once her words came in uneven rushes: "How can
I hold anger against you when, with every breath, my lips sigh for your
kisses? Yet let no one wonder at it that I am frightened... You cannot
conceive what a lurking place for terrors the world looks to me! Never, I
think, shall I see men sitting together that I shall not suspect them of
having murder in their hearts. Never shall I see two friends clasp hands but
my mind will run forward to a time when they shall part in wrath and
loneliness. Nay, even of the sound of my own voice I am afraid, lest
whomsoever is hearing it--for all that he speak me fair--be twisting the words
in his mind into evils I have not dreamed of. Sebert, I do not reproach you
with it! I think it all the fault of my own blunders, -- and therein I find a
new terror. That one should suffer for wrong-doing is to be looked for, but if
one is to be dealt with so unsparingly only for making mistakes, who knows
where his position is or what to expect? Oh, my best friend, make me brave or
I am likely to die only through fearing to live! With my ignorance my boldness
went from me, until now my courage is lowly as a willow leaf. Love, make me
brave again!" Trusting, in her very declaration of distrust, she clung to him
to save her from herself.

It was in the briar-pricked fingers, which he was pressing against his cheek,
that he found his answer. Suddenly he spread them out in his palm before her,
laughing with joyful lightness. "Randalin, the thorns wounded your hands the
while that you stripped yonder hedge, but did you stop for that? If I can
prove to you that all these dark days you have been but plucking roses, can
you not bravely bear with the pricks?"

Putting her gently from him, he gathered up the spoils she had let fall,
picking from among them with great care the fairest of either kind, while she,
catching his mood, watched him April-faced. "This," he said gaily, "is the red
rose of my heart. Battle-fields lay between us and tower walls, and the way
was long and hard to find, yet can you deny, my elf, that you came in and
plucked it and wore it away in your hair,--to keep or to cast aside as pleased
you?"

Smiles and tears growing together, she caught the blossom from him and pressed
it to her lips. "I will wear it in my bosom," she answered, "for my breast has
been empty--since the day I saw you first."

Smiling, he held out the white rose, but his mood had deepened until now he
looked down upon her as he had looked down upon her in the moonlit forest.
"This, beloved, is the symbol of my faith," he said. "Your eyes took it from
me that day at even-song. I hold it the dearer of the two, for with it goes my
honor that is as stainless as its petals. It is worth more than life to
me,--is it not worth some pricks to you?"

She took it from him reverently, to lay it beside the other, and as her face
was too proud for fear so was it too tender for jesting. "I am more honored,"
she told him, "than Canute by his crown; and I will live as bravely to defend
them."

But as he would have caught her to him, she leaned back suddenly to stretch a
hand toward a dark-robed figure standing under the moss-grown arch, and her
pride melted into a laugh of breathless happiness. "Sister Wynfreda, you were
very right," she called softly, "the world can be so beautiful that one has no
hunger for heaven."

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