A King's Comrade Part 15

Then we went from him, for state business called him, and I would take the queen across the garden to the bower door. There was little ceremony in this quiet court, and no waiting ladies were biding her return outside. And when we were alone there she turned to me, and her eyes were dim and pitiful.

"Friend," she said, "yon beam of light led to heaven. I do not know what it all means, but I fear--I fear terribly."

"Lady," I said, "many a time I have known men who thought they had ill dreams on the night before a battle, and naught came of them. I have forgotten to trouble myself much therewith."

"Nay, but they are sent at times for our warning."

"It may be so. I should be foolish if I did not believe what wiser men than I tell me of their messages. But if there is ill before the king, can it be anywise turned aside? What if he were persuaded not to go?"

"Oh," she said, with a little sob, "then his troth would be broken, and that in itself would bring ill. It seems dark all round me."

Then I said, for she was in sore distress:

"Lady, I am a stranger and hardly known to you, but I am to ride with your son. Will it be aught if I tell you that I will watch him as if he were my own atheling, and if need be die for him, with his own thanes?"

"It is much," she said eagerly, "much; for in that court where I fear for him you will be a stranger, and may hear and note more than our folk, for if ill is plotted they may be careless of you. I shall have less fear now that I may feel that one at least shares in my dread. I do not know how to thank you for the promise."

She set forth her hand to mine, and I bent and kissed it; but she pressed my great fingers as my own mother used to press them. Then she said in a low voice:

"I do not fear Offa, for he is n.o.ble in all he does. I fear Quendritha."

"I have heard that she is to be feared. Can you tell me more of her?"

"You will see her as the fairest woman in all the land, and will but know her as the softest spoken. Once or twice I have seen what looks may lie under that fair outward show, and I know that in her heart is the rage for power and ever more power, let it be what it may. It goes ill with the lady of her train who shares a secret with her, if the secret is the lady's. I cannot think how harm may come to Ethelbert from her; but none know how it may not. I pray you remember that."

I promised, and then she led me to her doorway; and there I left her, but not before she had thanked me again. I suppose that to share a burden even with me helped somewhat to lighten it. And in all truth I meant to do my part in watching, and if possible guarding, the king. Perhaps it would be as the queen said, that being in and yet not of his train I might be able to look on at all that went on more easily.

To that end I kept my Frankish dress, though I had meant to take to plain Saxon wear once more, with the knowledge that none would wonder that Carl's man was kept near the king, and that in Offa's court I should not be taken for an Anglian of his train.

Now the day came when we should set out on the long ride across England to the Welsh border, where Offa had set his throne for the time. As may be supposed, we went first of all on that morning to the church in the dim daybreak, and there heard ma.s.s and sought for blessing on our going and returning, and then I went and saw all ready for the ride. I had bought two more horses, good enough for change of mount now and then, one brown and the other black; and Erling was to lead them, with our belongings on a pack. The king would travel steadily, but no more slowly than might be managed, and we were to have no wagons or the like to hinder us, though there were three ladies besides the Lady Hilda who were to go with us.

It was past sunrise when I went to find Erling, but the morning was dull and dark. It was hot, too, for no breath of wind stirred the trees, and I seemed to notice a silence around me. That was because the thrushes and blackbirds were not singing after their wont in the dewy daybreak of May time, and I thought they waited for the sun to break out.

When I came to the stables there was bustle everywhere, of course; but the grooms seemed troubled in some way out of the common, and Erling himself came to meet me with a puzzled face which told me that all was not well.

"There is thunder in the air, thane," he said. "If I mistake not, we shall have somewhat out of the way, too. The horses are feeling it--unless some thrall has poisoned the whole stable."

Truly the horses were looking strangely. Their coats stared, and their ears were cold and damp, while they seemed glad of the company of the men, whinnying low and rubbing themselves against them as they came into the stalls. I heard one thrall say to another that the whole stable had surely been witch ridden in the night.

"Get the horses into the open," I said. "It is stifling in this stable. Maybe that is what is wrong."

My own horse was standing ready, and he greeted me, after his wont, with a little neigh; but he was wet, and his coat had lost the gloss of which Erling was so proud. I did not like it at all, but as every horse in the place seemed to be in the same way or worse, I put it down to the thundery feel in the air. I led him out myself, and there were two thanes of our party, who had come for their horses.

"Why, paladin," said one, "what is amiss with the skew-bald? You can't ride him today if he is as bad as he looks."

I told him that his own horse was much in the same case, and added that I thought with Erling that it was the thundery weather which upset the stable, though I had never known the like before.

"I suppose that the king will not start until it clears," I said.

"Ay, but he will," said the other thane, looking at the gray sky.

"Seldom does he put off a start, and today of all days there is a strong cable pulling him westward."

Now Erling came out with the other horses, and the thane and his comrade glanced at them, and hurried to see to their own steeds.

There was no sound of pawing hoofs and coaxing voices to be heard as one by one the horses were led out. It might have been the clearing of a sheep fold for all the spirit there was in the beasts.

I mounted, and rode with Erling after me out of the courtyard into the open. On the green were gathering the twenty thanes or so who made up the party, and across it was drawn up the mounted escort.

There was the usual gathering of onlookers, and by the gate stood the king's own huntsmen, with hawks and hounds.

The first thing I noticed was that the birds were dull and uneasy, and that the dogs were still more so. The hooded hawks sat with ruffled feathers, and one or two of the hounds lay on their backs, with paws drawn to them as if they feared a beating, while the rest whined, and had no eagerness in them. It seemed closer here than in the courtyard even, and every one was watching the sky and speaking in a low voice. Each sound seemed over loud, and overhead the hot haze brooded without sign of breaking.

The king's chaplain came out, and a lay brother brought him his mule. He looked at it as I had looked at my horse just now, and his brow knitted. He was rather a friend of mine.

"Father," I said, "there is somewhat strange in the air. Look at all the beasts; they feel more than we can."

He nodded to me gravely. Then he said, with his hand smoothing the wet coat of his mule, which at any other time would have resented the touch with a squeal, but now did not heed him:

"It minds me of one day in Rome when I was a lad there, at college, learning. There is a great burning mountain at Naples, and it was smoking at the time. Then there came--"

"Way for the king!" cried the marshal who waited at the gate, and the good father had to stand aside with his tale unfinished.

Ethelbert came forth with a smiling return to our salute, and with him came his mother and the four ladies who were to bear us company on the way. One of these was, of course, the Lady Hilda, and I dismounted and left my horse to a groom for the time, having promised myself the pleasure of helping her to mount.

At that moment the marshal, who was a thane set over all the ordering of the journey, went to the king and asked him if it might not be his pleasure to wait for an hour to see if the weather broke. I think that the king was so taken up with parting words to the queen that he had hardly noticed the gloom and heat, and certainly he had not noted the uneasiness of the horses, which was growing more and more. So he only turned for a moment to the thane, signing to the man to bring his horse.

"Nay, but a dull start often forebodes a bright ending to a journey. We will go," he said, laughing.

"Now farewell, mother, for the last time."

He bent his knee for her blessing, doffing his cap as he did so.

And even as he bent I was aware of a dull rumble, not loud or like thunder, but as if all the wains of the host of King Carl were pa.s.sing toward us from far off. Hilda stood by me at that moment, and she heard it.

For the life of me, though I knew that no wagons were near us, I could not help glancing round for them, and as I did so I saw the end of a thrall's mud hut across a field fall out. The king leaped up and set his foot in the stirrup, and at that moment the earth heaved and shook under us, and the whole oaken hall and buildings round us creaked and groaned like a ship in a ground swell, while Hilda clung to my arm in terror. Her horse, which the thane, her father, held, trembled and broke out into white foam all over, stumbling forward.

I do not think that the king felt it; indeed, as he was swinging himself into the saddle at the moment, he could not have done so.

But his horse reared almost on end with terror, and any less perfect rider must have had a heavy fall. All around us were plunging horses and shouting men, but he did not seem to heed them.

He had all he could do to get his horse in hand again, and I think his eyes were misty with that parting.

He gave the horse the rein, crying to us to follow, and so pa.s.sed down the dim street and out under the green arches of the lane beyond at a gallop, as gay and hopeful a lover as heart could wish.

Doubtless to him the shouts seemed but the cries of good speed, and the plunging of the maddened horses but the sounds of mounting; for the way had been left clear for him westward, and he did not look back.

Out of the houses of the town I saw the folk running and crying, not in farewell to him, but in wild terror of rattling roofs and crumbling walls. They did not heed him; but I saw him wave his hand to them, for he thought they cheered him, as he pa.s.sed too swiftly to note either pale faces or woeful cries.

Then after him rode their hardest the men of the escort and others who were already mounted, and the tumult stilled suddenly. They say that the queen swooned there on the pavement at the gate; and I do not doubt it, though her ladies took her so quickly away that I did not see her. Hilda was almost fainting on my arm, and I had to drag her away from the wild frenzy of her horse, which the thane could hardly hold.

I saw two or three men stand staring at Erling, who was in trouble with his charges, and then they went to his help. And next I was aware that somewhat soft rubbed my sleeve, and I started and turned. It was my own horse, who sought me in danger, and would tell me in his own way that he was there. In that glance I noted that his eye was bright again, and in a minute or two he shook himself heartily. Thereby I knew that there was no more of this terror to come, or he would have felt it yet.

"Thane," I said, "see. The skew-bald has not lost his senses like that beast. Let us set Hilda on him. The marshal will help to shift the saddle."