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The Ward of King Canute

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




"You mad young one!" he gasped, as he wrenched the blade from her hold.

Voices rose in angry questioning, but Randalin was too fear-benumbed to
understand what they said. Norman's keen eyes were turned upon her, and
recognition was dawning in their gaze.

Suddenly, he snatched her from Sebert's grasp and held her down to the
firelight. Could she have seen the mask which dust and blood had made for her,
she would have been spared the terror-swoon that left her limp in his grasp.
But it only bewildered her when, after an instant's scrutiny, he let her fall
with an angry laugh.

"The boy from Avalcomb! Certainly these Danes are as hard to kill as cats! I
would have sworn to it that I had separated his life from his body not
eight-and-forty hours ago." A gleam of eagerness came into his face, and he
bent over her again. "You shall serve my purpose by your obstinacy," he said
under his breath. "You shall tell me where your sister is. You know, for you
escaped together. When I was restored to my senses, I found you both gone.
Tell me where she lies hidden, and it may he that I will grant to you a longer
life."

Her stiff lips could not have spoken an answer had her paralyzed brain been
able to frame one. She could only gaze back at him in helpless waiting. A
second time he was bending toward her, when something stopped him midway so
that he straightened and drew back with a bow. It came to her suddenly that
they were all bowing, and that the hubbub had died in mid-air. Through the
hush, a quiet voice spoke.

"You are eager in rising, my lords," it said. From the shelter, half cave,
half bower, which had been contrived amid the bushes, a warrior of mighty
frame had emerged and stood examining the scene. Though with soldierly
hardiness he had taken his rest in his war-harness, he was unhelmed, and the
light that revealed the protruding chin had no need to pick out the jewelled
diadem to mark him as Edmund Ironside. The irregularity was very slight--not
large enough to give him a combative look or to mar the fine proportions of
his face, but it did unquestionably add to his stately bearing an expression
of complacency that was unforgettable.

He repeated his inquiry: "What is the amusement, my thanes? From the clamor
which awakened me, I had some notion of an attack."

Norman of Baddeby bent in a second reverence. "Your expectations are to this
degree fulfilled, my royal lord," he made answer. "Behold the enemy!"
Stooping, he raised the red-cloaked figure by its collar and held it up in the
firelight. As a murmur of laughter went around, he lowered it again and spoke
more gravely. "A hand needs not be large to get a hilt under its gripe,
however. The young wolf is of northern breed,--how he penetrated to the heart
of an English camp, I cannot tell,--and there grows in his spirit a
bloodthirsty disposition. He seeks my life because in a skirmish, a few days
gone by, I had the good luck to kill his father. If it--"

He said more, but Randalin did not listen to him. All at once Sebert of
Ivarsdale reached out, and taking her by her cloak, drew her gently to his
side, interposing his sword-arm between her and the others. Though his hand
manacled her slim wrists securely, the clasp was more one of protection than
of restraint; and the warm human touch was like a talisman against the
haunting shadows. Suddenly it came over her, in a burst of heavenly relief,
that this hand had lifted the burden of vengeance forever. Even Fridtjof could
not be so unreasonable as to ask more of her, so plainly was it Odin's will
that justice should be left for Canute. She had done her duty, and yet she was
free of it free of it! Her heart burst out singing within her, and the eyes
she raised toward her captor were adoring in their gratitude.

The look she met in return was the same look of mingled strength and
gentleness which had come through the starlight to answer her question. Once
again that calm of weary trustfulness settled over her. Since he had saved her
from the dead, she had no doubt whatever of his ability to save her from the
living. Her head drooped against his arm, and her hands, ceasing their
struggles, rested in his grasp like folded wings.

It had not taken a moment; the instant Norman finished his explanation, the
Etheling was speaking quietly: "As the Lord of Baddeby says, King Edmund, it
was I who stayed the boy's hand, and it was I also who fetched him into camp.
I found him after the battle, bleeding his life out in the bushes, and I
brought him in my arms, like a kitten, and dropped him down by my fire. Waking
in the night and missing him, I traced him hither. As I have had all to do
with him in the past, so, if you will grant that I may keep him, will I take
his future upon me. With your consent, I will attend to it that he does no
more mischief."

A momentary cordiality came into the King's manner; as though recognizing it
for the first time, he turned to the figure across the fire with a courteous
gesture. "My lord of Ivarsdale! I am much beholden to you. Had any chance
wrought evil to the Lord of Baddeby while under my safeguard, my honor would
have been as deeply wounded as my feelings."

As he bowed in acknowledgment, some embarrassment was visible in Sebert's
manner; but he was spared a reply, for after a moment's rubbing of his chin,
the King continued,--

"As regards the boy, however, there is something besides his knife to be taken
into consideration. I think we run more risk from his tongue."

The words of the Earl's thane fairly grazed the heels of the King's words:
"The imp can do no otherwise than harm, my sovereign. Should he bring his
tongue to Danish ears, he could cause the utmost evil. For the safety of the
Earl of Mercia,--ay, for your own need,--I entreat you to deliver the boy up
to my keeping."

"I am no less able than the Lord of Baddeby to restrain him," the Etheling
said with some warmth. "If it be your pleasure, King Edmund, I will keep him
under my hand until the end of the war, and answer for his silence with my
life."

Then Norman's eagerness got the better of his discretion.

"Now, by Saint Dunstan," he cried, "you take too much upon you, Lord of
Ivarsdale! The boy's life is forfeit to me, against whom his crime was
directed." A grim look squared his mouth as suddenly he stretched his hand
past Sebert and caught the red cloak.

It may have been this which the Etheling had foreseen, for he was not taken by
surprise. Jerking up his sword-arm, he knocked the thane's hand loose with
scant ceremony. "You forget the law of the battle-field, Norman of Baddeby,"
he said swiftly. "The life of my captive is mine, and I am the last man to
permit it to be taken because he sought a just revenge. I know too well how it
feels to hate a father's murderer." He shot a baleful glance toward a
half-seen figure that all this time had stood motionless in the shadow behind
the King.

Probably this figure and the Earl's thane were the only hearers he was
conscious of, but his tone left the words open to all ears. There was a sudden
indrawing of many breaths, followed by a frightened silence. The only sound
that disturbed it was a growing rustle in the bush around them, which was
explained when the old cniht Morcard and some two-score armed henchmen and
yeoman-soldiers, singly and in groups, filtered quietly through the shadows
and placed themselves at their chief's back.

But though the King's brows had met for an instant in a lowering arch, some
second thought controlled him. When he spoke, his words were even gracious:

"I think the Lord of Ivarsdale has the right of it. The crime the boy purposed
was not carried out; and in each case, Lord Sebert was his captor. I am
content to trust to his wardership."

Sebert's frank face betrayed his surprise at the complaisance, but he gave his
pledge and his thanks with what courtliness he could muster, and releasing his
passive prisoner, pushed her gently into the safe-keeping of the old cniht.
Yet he was not so obtuse as to step back, as though the incident were closed;
he read the King's inflection more correctly than that. Holding himself
somewhat stiff in the tenseness of his feelings, he stood his ground in silent
alertness.

A rustle of uneasiness crept the round of the assembled nobles. Only the
monarch's bland composure remained unruffled. Advancing with the deliberate
grace that so well became his mighty person, he seated himself upon a
convenient boulder and signed the figure in the shadow to draw nearer.

As it obeyed, every one of the yeomen-soldiers strained his eyes in that
direction, as though hoping to surprise in the great traitor's face some
secret of his power, the power that had made three kings as wax between his
fingers! But just short of the fire-glow the Gainer paused, and the hooded
cloak which shrouded him merged him hopelessly into the shadow. Only the hand
that rested on his sword-hilt protruded into the light. It was a broad hand,
and thick-fingered as a butcher's, but it was milk-white and weighted with
massive rings.

Meanwhile, the King was speaking affably: "As you did not favor us with your
presence among the Wise Men, my lord, it is likely that you do not know of the
good luck which has befallen our cause. This prudent Earl, who before the
battle had concluded with himself that England had so little to hope for from
our reign that he was willing to throw his weight against us, has found his
victory so without relish that he has become our sworn ally."

As he paused,--perhaps to leave space for an answer,--the complacency of his
face was heightened by a smile, faintly shrewd, touching the corners of his
mouth. But when Sebert limited his reply to a respectful inclination of his
head, the smile vanished abruptly. Under the affability there became evident a
certain stern insistence.

"In former days, I think there was some hostile temper between the Earl and
you. But I expect you will see that under the stress of a foreign war all
lesser strife must give way. So I desire that you will repeat in my presence
the troth already plighted by these others."

He made a slight gesture, and the Gainer took a step forward. The light that
fell back from his hooded face played curiously about his jewelled hand; as it
rose from the gilded hilt, it could be seen that to remedy the bluntness of
the thick fingers the nails had been allowed to grow very long, which gave it
now, in its half-curve, the look of a claw, upon which the red gems shone like
blood-drops.

Hesitating, the Etheling went from red to white. Then, with a swift motion, he
unsheathed his sword and stretched it out, point-foremost.

"King Edmund," he said, "in no other way does my hand go forth toward a
traitor."

This time there was no sound of breaths drawn in; it was as though the whole
world had ceased breathing. The sternness that had underlain the King's manner
rose slowly and spread over the whole surface of his person, as he drew
himself up in towering offence.

"Lord of Ivarsdale, bethink yourself to whom you speak!"

He was royally imposing in his displeasure; the Etheling flushed like a boy
before his master; but he had his answer ready, and his head was steadily
erect as he gave it.

"King of the Angles, the right of open speech has belonged to my race as long
as the right to the crown has belonged to yours. So my father's fathers spoke
to yours under the council-tree, and so I shall speak to you while I live."

Back in the shadow, each yeoman laid one hand upon his weapon, and with the
other, thrust an exulting thumb into his neighbor's ribs. But they did not
turn to look at each other; every eye was fastened upon the two by the fire.
Freeman and his leader, or feudal lord and his dependant? For the moment they
stood forth as representatives of a mighty conflict, and every breath hung
upon their motions.

After a time the King made a slight movement with his shoulders.

"I should have remembered," he said, "that your father was ruined by
rebellion."

In a flash the rebel's son had forgotten boyish embarrassment. "Whoso told you
that, royal lord, told you lies. My father stood upon his right. Steel to turn
against the Danes, Ethelred had a right to require; and steel my father was
ready to pay. But Ethelred demanded gold, and the Lord of Ivarsdale would not
stoop to bribe. Nor has it been proven that his policy was wrong," he added
under his breath.

Then there was no longer any doubt concerning the position of Ethelred's son.
He said with deliberate emphasis, "The only policy which concerns those of
your station is obedience."

If there was enough of the old free blood left in the King's thanes to redden
their cheeks, that was all there was. But while they stood in silence, a
mutter ran like a growl through the ranks of yeomen; the gaze they bent upon
their leader had in it almost the force of a command.

He was young, their chief, too young for impassivity. Despite himself, his
hands trembled with excitement. But there was no tremor in his words.

"We of Ivarsdale do not profess such obedience, King Edmund. That is for
thanes and for the unfree, who owe their all to your generosity. Our land we
hold as our fathers held it--from God's bounty and the might of our swords.
When we have paid the three taxes of fort-building and bridge-building and
field-service, we have paid all that we owe to the State."

At last they stood defined, the first of the feudal lords and the last of the
odal-born men. Even through the King's loftiness it was suddenly borne in
that, behind the insignificance of the revolt, loomed a mighty principle,
mighty enough to merit force. For the first time he stooped to a threat,
though still it was tinged with scorn.

"I observe that the men of your race have not been of great importance in the
land. It appears that Ethelred was able to do without the rebel Lord of
Ivarsdale."

"I admit that he was able to lose his crown without him," the rebel's son
retorted swiftly.

The King's wounded dignity bled in his cheeks; he was stung into a movement
that brought him to his feet.

"This is insufferable!" he cried. It was evident that the crisis had come.
While the Etheling faced him with a defiance that in its utter abandon was a
little mad, a sensation as of bracing muscles and setting teeth went around
the group. Several of the thanes laid their hands upon their swords. And the
half-dozen ealdormen present bent toward one another in hasty consultation. At
an almost imperceptible sign from the old cniht, the henchmen made a noiseless
step nearer their master. There were not more than a dozen of them, but behind
them loomed some two-score yeomen-soldiers, with a score more in the brush at
their back; and the faces of all told more plainly than words what it would
mean to attack them.

But the blood of Cerdic, once fired, burned too rapidly for policy. Edmund's
jaw was set in savage menace as he turned and beckoned to his guard. Had he
spoken the words on his lips, there is little doubt what his order would have
been.

Interruption came from an unexpected quarter. Even as his lips were opening,
that white taloned hand reached out of the shadow and touched his arm.

"Most royal lord! If it may be permitted me?" Earl Edric said swiftly.

His voice was very low, and every roughness had been filed away until it
flowed like oil. Upon the King's wounded temper it appeared to fall as softly
as drops of healing balm. With his mouth still set, he paused and bent his
ear. There was a murmur of whispered words.

What they were no one ever knew, and each man had a different theory; but
their result was plain to all. Slowly Edmund's knitted brows unravelled;
slowly his mouth relaxed into its wonted curves. At last he had regained all
his lofty composure and turned back.

"Lord of Ivarsdale, I am not rich of time, and my present need is too great to
spare any of it to the chastising of rebellious boys. Go back to your toy
kingdom, and lord it over your serfs until I find leisure to teach you who is
master." Making a disdainful gesture of dismissal, he turned with deliberate
grace and entered into conversation with the Mercian.

At the moment, it is likely that the young noble would have preferred arrest.
The utter scorn of word and act lashed the blood to his cheeks and the tears
to his eyes. With boyish passion, he snatched the sword from its sheath, and
breaking it in pieces across his knee, flung the fragments clinking into the
dead embers.

But if he had hoped to provoke an answer, it was in vain; the King deigned him
no further notice. Resuming his seat, Edmund continued to talk quietly with
the Earl, a half-smile playing about his complacent chin.

The old cniht bent forward and whispered in his chief's ear: "Make haste, Lord
Sebert; they will be cheering in a moment, the churls; so pleased are they at
the thought of going home. Hasten with your retiring."

It was a clever appeal. Forgetting, for the moment, humiliation in
responsibility, the young leader whirled to his men. A gesture, a muttered
order, and they were drawing back among the trees in silent retreat. A few
steps more, and the bushes had blotted out the Ironside and his thanes.




Chapter XI

When My Lord Comes Home From War


One's own house is best,
Small though it be;
At home is every one his own master.
Bleeding at heart is he
Who has to ask
For food at every mealtide.
Ha'vama'l.

Slowly the bleak light warmed into golden radiance and the touch of dawn
strung the scattered bird-notes into a chain of joyous song. Passing at last
from the forest shades, the men of Ivarsdale came out into the grassy
lane-like road that wound away over the Middlesex hills.

The Destroyer had not passed this way, it seemed, for the oat-fields stretched
before them in unbroken silvery sheen; and the straight young corn dared to
rustle its green ribbons boastfully. Fowls still uncaptured crowed lustily in
adjacent barnyards; and now and again, sweet as echoes from elfin horns, came
the tinkling music of cow-bells. Here and there, the little shock-headed boys
who were driving their charges afield paused knee-deep in rosy clover to watch
the band ride by.

"Yon must be a mighty warrior," they whispered as they stared at the sober
young leader. "Take notice how his eyes gaze straight ahead, as though he were
seeking more people to overcome." And they spoke enviously of the red-cloaked
page who sat on the croup of the leader's white charger.

"See the sword he wears in his gay clothes. Likely he also has been in battle.
He must needs be happy who can strike out into the world like that." Envying,
they gazed after him until the horses' hoofs threw up a yellow wall between.

They would have opened their wide mouths wider had they known that the
red-cloaked page was looking wistfully at them and their kine and the nodding
clover.

"It must be very enjoyable to wander all day in the peace of the meadows and
hear nothing louder than cow-bells," she was thinking. "It is good to see
creatures that no man is stabbing or doing harm to."

Through warm sunshine, tempered by fresh breezes, they came yet deeper into
the drowsy farmland. Gradually the yeomen-soldiers, who had been wrangling
over the mystery of Edric's actions, dropped one by one into lazy silence, or
set their tongues to whistling cleverly turned answers to the bird-calls in
the hedges. Another mile, and from somewhere in the fields came the swinging
chant of a ploughman, as he turned the soil between the rows of rustling
corn,--

"Hail, Mother Earth, thou feeder of folk!
Be thou growing, by goodness of God,
Filled with fodder, the folk to feed."

Like the unbinding of a spell, the words fell upon the farmer-soldiers.
Dropping every other topic, they began to argue over the crops; and after that
they could not pass a harmless calf tethered to a crab-tree that they did not
quarrel over the breed, nor start a drove of grunting swine out of the mast
but they must lay wagers on the weight.

Running wild in the animation, it was not long before the clamor caught up
with the Etheling where he rode before them in sober reflection. He smiled
faintly as he caught the burden of the disjointed phrases.

"...Twelve stone; I will peril my head upon it!" ... "Yorkshire, I tell you,
Yorkshire." ... "A fortnight? It will be ready in a week, or I have never
grown barley corn!"

"I do not believe that a tree-toad can change color more easily," he observed
to the old cniht who rode at his side. "That Englishmen are not stout
fighters, no man can say, but the love of it is not in their breasts; while
with Northmen--"

"With Northmen," Morcard added, "to fight is to eat."

Another faint smile touched Sebert's mouth as he glanced over his shoulder at
the red-cloaked boy. "After seeing this sprout, that is easy to believe.
Except that time alone when a two-year-old colt kicked me on the head, I have
never had my life threatened by so young a thing."

He grew grave again as his glance rested on his captive. "I want you to tell
me something," he said presently. "You were Canute's page; I saw that you
accompanied him in battle. I want you to tell me what he is like in his
temper."

"It would be more easy to tell you what he is unlike," Randalin answered
slowly; "for in no way whatever is he like your King Edmund." She sat awhile
in silence, her eyes absently following the course of the wind over a slope of
bending grain. At the foot, it caught a clump of willow-trees so that they
flashed with hidden silver and tossed their slender arms like dancers. "I
think this is the difference, to tell it shortly," she said at last; "while it
sometimes happens that Canute is driven by necessity or evil counsels to act
deceitfully toward others, he is always honest in his own mind; while your
Edmund,--I think he lies to himself also."

Morcard gave out a dry chuckle. "By Saint Cuthbert," he muttered, "too much
has not been told concerning the sharpness of children!"

But the Etheling made no answer whatever. After he had ridden a long time
staring away across the fields, he met the old man's eyes gravely.

"It is not alone because I am sore under his tongue, Morcard. Were he what I
had thought him, I would remain quiet under harder words. But he is not worth
enduring from; there is not enough good in him to outweigh the evil."

Old Morcard said thoughtfully: "The tree of Cerdic has borne many nuts with
prickly rinds in former times, but there has been wont to be good meat inside.
Since Ethelred, I have been in fear that the tree is dying at the root."

They swung over another piece of the road in silence, when the young man
started up and shook himself impatiently. "Wel-a-way! What use to think of it?
For the present, at least, I am a lordless man. Let us speak of the defences
we must begin to raise against Edmund's coming."

While they discussed watch-towers and barriers, the horses took them along at
a swinging pace. The heath-clad upland over which they were passing sloped
into another fertile valley, through which a lily-padded stream ran between
rows of drooping willows. Suddenly the Lord of Ivarsdale broke off with an
exclamation.

"It was not in my mind that we could see the old forked elm from here. Hey,
comrades!" he called over his shoulder. "Yonder--to the left--the old
land-mark! Do you see?" His glance, as it came back, took in his captive. "The
first bar of your cage, my hawk. Yonder is the first boundary of Ivarsdale."

Every man started up in his saddle, and the cheers they had held back upon
leaving camp burst forth now with added zest. Peering over her captor's
shoulder, Randalin looked forward anxiously.

Below the plain in whose centre the old elm held up its blasted top to be
silvered by the sun, the land dipped abruptly toward the river, to rise beyond
in a long low hill. Rolling green meadows lay at its foot, and warm brown
fields dotted with thatched farm-houses; and its sides were checkered with
patches of woodland and stretches of golden barley. Just below the crest, the
tower of the Lords of Ivarsdale reared its gray walls above the surrounding
greenery. Far away, a speck through the dark foliage, the great London road
gleamed white; but wooded hills made a sheltering hedge between, and all
around spread the great beech forest that fostered the markmen's herds. It was
a kingdom to itself, with the light slanting warmly upon its fertile slopes
and the forest standing like a strong army at its back.

Because it was so peacefully lovely, and because of her utter weariness, tears
welled up under the girl's heavy lids as she looked. She said unsteadily, "Saw
I never a fairer cage, lord."

But the Etheling's eager glance had travelled on; for the first time the sun
was shining out brightly in his face.

"The sight has more cheer than has wine," he said. "I cannot comprehend my
folly in wanting to leave it. To live one's own master on one's own land, that
is the only life!" He looked back at the yeomen with a sudden smile. "Noise!"
he ordered. "Cheer again! it expresses the state of my feelings. And let your
horn sound merrily, Kendred, that they may know we are coming."

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