Unkown - "Miscellaneous Mathematical Constants, Equations, Derivations..."

Thomas Babington Macaulay - "Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1"

Margaret Penrose - "The Motor Girls On Cedar Lake"

Thomas Hardy - "The Trumpet Major"

The Ward of King Canute

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




The moment that he had complied, laughter banished the Etheling's meditations.
Cozily ensconced in the soft side of a haycock was Father Ingulph, a couple of
jovial harvesters sprawled beside him, a fat skin of ale in his hands on its
way to his mouth. As the pair on the hilltop looked down, one of the trio
began to bellow out a song that bore no resemblance whatever to a hymn.
Keeping under cover of the bushes, the eavesdroppers laughed with malicious
enjoyment.

"But I will make him squirm for that!" the Etheling vowed. "I will tell him
that your paganism has made spells over me so that I cannot tell a holy
relique from an ale-skin; and a bedridden woman looks to me like two strapping
yeomen. I will, I swear it!"

"And I shall be able to hold it against him as a shield, the next time he is
desirous to fret me about taking a new belief," the boy rejoiced.

But presently Sebert's remarks began to take a new tone. "They have the
appearance of relishing what they have in that skin," he observed first. And
then, "I should not mind putting my own teeth into that bread-and-cheese." And
at last, "By Saint Swithin, lad, I think they have more sense than we, that
linger a half-hour's ride from food with a noonday sun standing in the sky! It
is borne in upon me that I am starving."

Backing his horse out of the brush, he was putting him about in great haste,
when the boy leaped in his stirrups and clapped his hands.

"Lord, we need not be a half-hour from food! Yonder, across the stubble, is a
farmhouse. If you would consent that I might use your name, then would I ride
thither and get their best, and serve it to you here in the elves' own
feast-hall."

The answer was a slap on the green shoulders that nearly tumbled their owner
from the saddle. "Now, I was right to call you elf, for you have more than
human cleverness!" the Etheling cried gayly. "Do so, by all means, dear lad;
and I promise in return that I will tell every puffed-up dolt at home that you
are the blithest comrade who ever fitted himself to man's moods. There, if
that contents you, give wings to your heels!"




Chapter XIII

When Might Made Right


Now may we understand
That men's wisdom
And their devices
And their councils
Are like naught
'Gainst God's resolve.
Saxon Chronicle.

What difference that, somewhere beyond the hills, men were fighting and
castles were burning? At Ivarsdale in the shelter and cheer of the lord's
great hall, the feast of the barley beer was at its height. While one set of
serfs bore away the remnants of roast and loaf and sweetmeat, another carried
around the brimming horns; and to the sound of cheers and hand-clapping, the
gleeman moved forward toward the harp that awaited him by the fireside.

Where the glow lay rosiest, the young lord sat in the great raised chair,
jesting with his Danish page who knelt on the step at his side. Now the boy's
answering provoked him to laughter, and he put out a hand and tousled the
thick curls in his favorite caress. One of the tresses caught in his jewelled
ring; and as he bent to unfasten it, he stared at the wavy mass in lazy
surprise. It was as soft and rich as the breast of a blackbird, and the fire
had laid over it a sheen of rainbow lights.

"Never did I think there could be any black hair so alluring," he said
involuntarily.

He could not see how the face under the clark veil grew suddenly as bright as
though the sun had risen in it. And the lad said, rather breathlessly, "I
wonder at your words, lord. You know that such hair is the curse of black
elves."

Leaning back in his chair, the Etheling shook his head in whimsical obstinacy.
"Not so, not so," he persisted. "It has to it more lustre than has yellow. My
lady-love shall have just such locks."

He had a glimpse like the flash of a bluebird's wing in the sun, as the page
glanced up at him, and the sight of a face grown suddenly rose-red. Then the
boy turned shyly, and slipping back to his cushion on the step, nestled
himself against the chair-arm with a sigh that was almost pathetic in its
happiness.

Like a quieting hand, the first of the mellow chords fell upon the noise of
the revel. The servants bearing away the dishes began to tread the rushes on
tiptoe, and a dozen frowns rebuked any clatter. Through the hush, the gleeman
began to sing the "Romance of King Offa," the king who married a wood nymph
for dear love's sake. It began with the wooing and the winning, out in the
leafy greenwood amid bird-voices and murmuring brooks; but before long the
enmity of the queen-mother entered, with jarring discords, to send the lovers
through bitter trials. Lord and page, man and maid and serf, strained eye and
ear toward the harper's tattered figure. So breathless grew the listening
stillness that the crackling of the fire became an annoyance. What matter that
outside an autumn wind was howling through the forest and stripping the leaves
through the vines? Within sound of the mellow harp-music it was balmiest
spring-time, as the castlefolk followed the gleeman over the hills and dales
of a flowering dream-world.

For a space after he had finished, the silence remained unbroken, then gave
way only to an outburst of applause. And one did even better than applaud.
Bending forward, his beautiful face quite radiant with his pleasure, the
curly-headed page pulled a golden ring from his pouch and tossed it into the
harper's lap.

As he caught the largess, the man's mouth broadened. "I thank you for your
good-will, fair stripling," he returned. "May you find as true a love when
your time comes to go a-wooing."

The maids tittered, while the men guffawed, and a richer glow came into the
cheeks of Fridtjof the page. Suddenly his iris-blue eyes were daringly
a-sparkle.

"The spirits will have forgot your wish before that time comes," he laughed,
"for I vow that I will raise a beard or ever I woo a maiden."

Above the mirth that followed rose the voice of the brawniest of the henchmen,
passing his judgment on the ballad. "Now that is my own desire of songs," he
declared. "That was worth possessing,--the love of that lass. A sweetheart who
will cleave to your side when your fortune is most severe, and despise every
good because she has not you also, she is the filly to yoke with. Drink to the
wood maiden, comrades, bare feet and wild ways and all!" Swinging up his horn,
he drained off the toast at a draught. "Give us a mistress like that, my
lord," he cried merrily, "and we will hold Ivarsdale for her though all of
Edmund's men batter at the doors."

Laughing, they all looked up where the young master leaned in his chair,
watching the revels with a smile of idle good-humor. All except the blue-eyed
page; he bent forward instead, so that his long locks fell softly about his
face.

The Lord of Ivarsdale shook his head indolently against the cushion. "No wood
lass for me, friend Celric," he said. "The lady of my love shall be a
high-born maid who knows no more of the world's roughness than I of woman's
ways. Nor shall she follow me at all, but stay modestly at home with her maids
and keep herself gentle and fair against my return. Deliver me from your
sun-browned, boy-bred wenches!"

"I am consenting to that, lord!" a voice cried from the benches; and a hubbub
of conflicting opinions arose. Only the page neither spoke or moved.

The henchman would not be downed; again his voice rose above the others. "In
soft days, my lord, in soft days, it might easily be so. But bear in mind such
times as these, when grief happens to a man oftener than joy. Methinks your
lily-fair lady would swoon at the sight of your blood; and tears would be the
best answer you would get, should you seek to draw comfort out of her."

White as a star at dawn, the page's face was raised while his wide eyes hung
on his master's; and from the little reed wound between his brown fingers, the
juice began to ooze slowly as though some silent force were crushing the life
out of its green heart.

But the young noble laughed with gay scorn: "Tears would be in all respects a
better answer than I should deserve, should I whimper faint-hearted words into
a maiden's ear. What folly-fit do you speak in, fellow? What! Do you think I
would wed another comrade like yourself, or a playfellow like this youngster?"
Ever so gently his foot touched the boyish form on the step. "It is something
quite different from either of you that is my desire; something that is as
much higher as the stars are above these candles."

Disputing and agreeing, the clamor rose anew, and the Etheling turned to his
favorite with a jest. But the page was no longer in his place. He had risen to
his feet and was standing with his head flung back like one in pain, both
hands up tearing the tunic away from his throat. Sebert bent toward him with a
question on his lips.

He forgot the query before he could speak it, however, for at that moment
there was a sound of hurried steps on the stone stairs, and one of the armed
watchmen from the top of the Tower burst into the room.

"Lord," he gasped, "some one is upon us! We thought first it was naught but
the noise of the wind--then Elward saw a light. We swear they came not over
the bridge, yet--"

His words were cut short by a horn-blast from the darkness, loud and clear
above the whistling wind. Though only one woman screamed out Edmund's name, it
is probable that the same thought was in every mind. Jests and laughter died
on the lips that bore them, and with one accord the men turned in their seats
to watch their master.

His face had sobered as he listened; before the first echo had died away he
had spoken swiftly to the fellow at his side. "Celric, get you down to the
guard at the gate and inquire into the meaning of that."

When the henchman had left, he began a sharp questioning of the sentinel, and
the noise did not begin again. Whispering, the women drew together like herded
sheep; and the men left their barley beer, to stand in little groups,
muttering in one another's ears. An old bowman took his weapon down from the
wall and set silently to work to restring it.

In the quiet, the tap of the man's feet upon the steps was audible long before
he reached the waiting roomful. Every eye fastened itself upon the curtained
doorway.

Swinging back, the arras disclosed a face full of amazement. "Lord," the man
said, "it is Danes! None know how many or how they came there. And their chief
has sent you a messenger."

"Danes!" For the first time in the history of Ivarsdale, the word was spoken
with an accent of relief.

The page turned from the fire with a cry of bitter rejoicing: "If it is
Canute, I will go to him!"

In the revulsion of his feelings, the Etheling laughed outright. "Since it is
not Edmund, I care not if it be the Evil One himself; and it cannot be he, for
Canute is in Mercia." He rose and faced them cheerily. "Lay aside your
uneasiness, friends; it is likely only such another band as we put to flight
last month, that hopes to surprise us into some weakness. Let the signal fires
blaze to warn the churls, while we amuse ourselves with the messenger.
To-morrow we will chase them so far over the hills that they will never find
their way back again."

Beckoning to Morcard, he began to consult him concerning the most effective
arrangement of the sentinels; and there was a muffled clatter of weapons as
men went to and fro with hasty steps. At a word from the steward, the women
went softly from the room and up the winding stairs to their quarters, the
rustling of their dresses coming back with ghostly stealthiness.

When all was ready the messenger was brought in between guards. Wrapped in
dirty sheepskins, he swaggered to the centre of the room, and the light that
fell on his tanned face showed a scar running the full length of his cheek.
With his first glance, the Lord of Ivarsdale uttered an exclamation.

"Now, by Saint Mary, I have seen you before, fellow! Were you not the leader
of the band we drove away last month?"

The Scar-Cheek laughed impudently. "I will not conceal it; yet I did not know
that my beauty was so showy. The chief was wise to send Brown-Cloak to do the
spying."

"Brown-Cloak! The beggar?" was cried all down the hall.

But the messenger's eyes had fallen on the black-haired boy, who stood staring
at him from the fireside. His wide mouth opened in astonishment. "The King's
ward? Here is a happening!" he ejaculated. "If I am not much mistaken, Canute
will be glad to find this out. It was his belief that you had got your
death-blow at Scoerstan, and he took it ill."

The King's ward made no other answer than to regard him with a strange mixture
of attention and aversion; but the Etheling reached out and pushed the boy
farther behind the great chair.

"Fridtjof Frodesson is my captive and no longer concerns you," he said
briefly. "Give him no further thought, but come to your message."

The swaggering assurance of the man's laugh was more offensive than rudeness
would have been. "If I say that we will shortly set him free, I shall not be
going very wide from my message. My errand hither is that I bring word from
Rothgar Lodbroksson to surrender the Tower."

The page uttered a little cry, and his lord raised a hand mechanically to
impose silence; but no one else seemed able to speak or to move. From the
master in his chair to the serf by the door, they stared dumb-founded at the
messenger.

He, on his part, appeared to realize all at once that the time for formality
had come. Pitching his cloak higher on his shoulders, he fastened his eyes on
a hole in the tapestry behind the Etheling's chair and began monotonously to
recite his lesson: "Rothgar, the son of Lodbrok, sends you greeting, Sebert
Oswaldsson; and it is his will that you surrender to him the odal and Tower of
Ivarsdale; as is right, because the odal was created and the Tower was built
by Ivar Vidfadmi, who was the first son of Lodbrok and the father's father's
father of my chief---" In spite of himself, he was obliged to stop to take in
breath.

In the pause, the page bent toward his master, his face alight with a sudden
fierce triumph. "Lord," he whispered, "you can never get out! You are caught
as though they had you in a trap!"

Astounded, Sebert drew back to stare at him. "Fridtjof! It is not possible
that you are unfaithful to me!"

The boy's only answer was to drop down upon the step and bury his face in his
hands. And nov: the messenger had recovered his wind and his place.

"Since the time of Alfred," he went on, "my chief and his kin have been kept
out of the property by your stock and you; yet because he does not wish to
look mean, he offers you to go out in safety with all of your housefolk, both
men and women, and as much property as you can walk under,--if you go quietly
and in peace." This time his inflection showed that he had finished. He turned
his eyes from the hole and fastened them on the Lord of Ivarsdale, in the
confidence of invincible power.

The room was so still that when a gust came in around the ill-fitting windows,
the flare of the torch-flames sounded loud as the hiss of serpents.

The Etheling's voice was very deep and quiet. "If we go in peace," he repeated
slowly. "And if we do not?"

The Dane shrugged his burly shoulders. "There are no terms for that. You will
find it necessary to take what comes."

Again there was silence.

Sebert put his last question: "How long does the son of Lodbrok give me to
consider how I am to order things?" The man shattered the silence with his
boisterous laughter. "It is not a lie about you English that you never do
aught that you do not sit down first and consider, till the crews have eaten
all your provisions and the timbers of your boats are rotting. When a Dane
strikes, it is like the striking of lightning. So soon as you hear the thunder
of his coming, that instant you see the flashing of his weapon. My chief gives
you no time at all. So long a time, he has studied out, will it take me to
come in to you; so much longer to do my errand; and so much longer to get
back. At the end of that time he will blow his horn, and if your gates do not
fly open in obedience, he will take that for your answer."

Either the Lord of Ivarsdale had been doing some rapid thinking during the
long speech, or else he was too incensed to think. Now he rose with sparks
flashing from the steel of his eyes. "By Peter, he is right! I do not need
even that long," he cried. "Since the Wide-Fathomer began the game, the Tower
has been the prize of the strongest. Shall I flinch from a challenge? Our
rights are equal; our luck shall decide. For his answer, be he reminded of his
own Danish saying, that 'It is a strong bird that can take what an eagle has
in his claws,' and let him get what comfort he can from that."

After his ringing tones, the unmoved voice of the messenger fell flat on the
ear. "It has happened as we supposed, that you would answer unfavorably," he
said as he turned. "It was seen in battle that you are a brave man. Otherwise
the chief would not have thought it necessary to hew a path through the forest
in order to take you by surprise." Saluting with some appearance of respect,
he joined his conductors at the door and passed out of sight down the stair.

Like smoke in the wake of a firebrand, confusion rose behind him; a din of
exclamations loosed on the air and the clangor of weapons caught down from the
wall. Through it, the Etheling's voice sounded strongly. "To the palisade, all
of you! They may not wait till morning. To the forest side; and keep them from
it as you would keep off death!" He bent and shook the crouching page. "My
armor, boy! How! Would you have me read treason in your sluggishness? My
armor!"

The page started up, but it was only to stare past him and fling out his hand
toward a window, where a bright light had suddenly shot athwart the darkness:
"Lord, they have set fire to something!"

The voice of old Morcard rose shrill: "To the storehouses! Save the grain!"

There was a wild rush for the door; but on the threshold they were met by the
shouts of watchmen hurrying from the parapets.

"Lord, the court is swarming with them!"... "They have cut through the
palisade on the forest side!"... "They had brush laid ready--"... "Waited only
for him--"... "Holy saints, what is the meaning of that?"..."Something else
has taken!"

From the stairway above them came a piercing cry: "The storehouses! They have
fired them from inside! The lead is melting like ice!"... "The grain!"... "The
grain!"

In their midst the young lord stood in helpless fury; and the hand he had
grasped around his sword-hilt gripped it so hard that blood started under each
nail. But his page bent and kissed the clenched fist with a cry of fierce
exulting.

"You will never get out to find your lily-fair lady. You will never have a
lady wife, lord! We shall die together."




Chapter XIV

How The Fates Cheated Randalin


There is a mingling of affection
Where one can tell
Another all his mind.
Ha'vama'l.

After that night the deep-set windows of Ivarsdale looked out upon some grim
sights. The first morning it was a skirmish in the meadow beyond the
foot-bridge, when the three-score farmer-soldiers came loyally to their
leader's aid. Though Kendred of Hazelford marched bravely at their head, they
were practically uncaptained; with any kind of weapon in their hands and no
kind of armor over their home-spun. What chance had they against sixty picked
warriors, led by the fiercest chief of a race of chieftains? They met, and
there was a moment of clash and of clangor, a moment of awful commotion; and
when the whirling dust-clouds settled, the only homespun that was moving was
that which was flying, sped by Danish arrows. All the rest of the day the
Tower windows looked out upon a litter of brown heaps, here and there a white
face upturned or a scarf-end fluttering in the autumn wind.

Wild with helpless misery, the Lord of Ivarsdale would have charged the
Berserkers with his handful of armed servants if the old cniht had not
restrained him almost by force; when he spent his breath in railing at
everything between earth and sky.

"It is the folly of it that maddens me," he cried over and over, "the needless
folly! Had I but used my mind to think with, instead of to plan feasts-- I am
moved to dash my brains out when I remember it!"

"Nay, it is my judgment that was lacking," Morcard said bitterly. "I was an
old dog that could not learn a new trick. I should have seen that the old ways
no longer avail. The fault was mine." His wrinkled old face was so haggard
with self-reproach that the Etheling hastily recanted.

"Now I bethink me, I am wrong, and it is no one's fault. It comes of the curse
that lies over the Island. Was there not something rotten in all English
palisades, it would never have happened that the pirates got their first
foothold. But we have shaken off the spell, and they have not mastered us yet.
To-night we will try to get a messenger out to my kinsman in Yorkshire, and
another to my father's friend in Essex."

The next day, and for many days thereafter, the Tower windows stared out like
expectant eyes. But no delivering bands ever came over the hills to reward
their watching. From the moment that he was swallowed by the outer darkness,
the messenger for Yorkshire was as lost to their sight and their knowledge as
though he had plunged into the ocean. And a week later, the man who had been
sent into Essex crept back with a dejection that foretold his ill success. The
ealdorman was taxed, might and main, to protect his own lands. He regretted
it, to his innermost vitals, but these were days when each must stand or fall
for himself. He could only send his sympathy and the counsel to hold out
unflinchingly in the hope that some fortune of war would call the besiegers
away.

When he heard that, Father Ingulph forgot his robes to indulge in a curse.
"Does he think we have possession of the widow's blessed oil-cruse? If the
larder had not been stocked for a week's feasting, we must needs have been
starved under ere this. How much longer can we endure, even at one meal a
day?" He sighed as he drew his belt in another notch.

When the beginning of the Wine Month came, the bitterest sight that the Tower
windows gave out upon was the band of foragers that every morning went forth
from the Danish camp-fires. Every noon they returned, amid a taunting racket,
with armfuls of ale-skins, back-loads of salted meats, and bags bulging with
the bread which they had forced the terrorized farm-women into baking for
them. "They have the ingenuity of fiends!" Father Ingulph was wont to groan
after each of these spectacles.

At last the time arrived when it looked as though these visions were to be the
only glimpses of food vouchsafed to them.

"Bread for one more meal; and the last ale-cask has been broached," the
steward answered in a very faint voice when Morcard put the nightly question.

Because it was not possible for the old man's face to record more misery, the
light of the guard-room fire over which he crouched showed no change whatever
in his expression.

It was the young lord, who sat beside him, that answered. After a pause he
said gently, "Go and try to get some sleep. At least you can dream of food."

"I have done no otherwise for a sennight," the man sighed as he hurried away
to snatch the tongs from a serf who was spending an unnecessary fagot upon the
fire. At any other time he would have shouted at him, but it was little loud
talking that was done within the walls these days.

When they were left alone, the old cniht threw himself back upon the bench and
covered his face with his mantle. "I have outlived my usefulness," he moaned.
"I have lived to bring ruin on the house that has sheltered me. What guilt I
lie under!" For a time he lay as stark and rigid under his cloak as though
death had already closed about him. The guard-room seemed to become a funeral
chamber, with a mass of hovering shadows for a pall. The fire held up funeral
tapers of flickering flame, and the whispers of the starving men who warmed
themselves in its heat broke the silence as dismally as the voices of
mourners.

But the Lord of Ivarsdale said steadily, "Not so, good friend; and it hurts my
pride sorely that you should speak as if I were still of no importance in my
father's house. That which I call myself lord of, it behooved me to rule over.
If ever I get out of this--" checking himself, he rose to his feet. "The smoke
makes my wits heavy. Methinks I will go up into the air a while."

He took a step toward the door, but halted when the red-cloaked page, who had
been stretched near him on the bench, started up as though preparing to
accompany him. "Stay where you are, lad. These fasts from sleep will parch
your young brains. I go up to the platform because I would rather walk than
rest; but do you remain here by the fire and try to catch a drowsiness from
its heat."

Copyright (c) 2007. topbookz.net. All rights reserved.