A King's Comrade Part 23

"I am afraid of her," she said at last. "She is terrible to me, and why I cannot tell. She is naught but kind to me. All the ladies fear her but one or two who are her close friends."

"Well, you will soon be away from her," I said.

"I do not know," she answered, glancing round her. "She has said that she would fain keep me here. What she says she means, mostly."

"Then," said I boldly, "I shall have to come and take you away myself."

Whereon she laughed a little, but did not seem displeased at the thought.

"Stay," I said. "You have that arrowhead I gave you?"

"An I have not lost it. I will search."

"Send it me if you need my help," I said; "then naught shall hinder me from coming to you."

"Spoken paladin-wise," she answered, laughing at me. "Mayhap that bit of flint shall chase you round Wess.e.x in vain, and meanwhile the ogre will have devoured me."

But she set her white hand on my arm for a moment, as if in thanks.

Then she started and looked at me in the face wonderingly. She felt the steel.

"Wilfrid," she whispered, "why do you wear mail under your tunic?"

I told her plainly; otherwise it would have surely seemed that it was a niddering sort of habit of mine, and unworthy of a warrior in a king's friendly hall. And there was no laughter in her fair face as she heard, but fear for me. Like Erling, she seemed to see peril around us.

"Listen," she said. "The princess dreams that she is to be wedded, and that even before the altar her bridal robes grow black and the flowers of her wreath fall withered, while the strown blooms under her feet turn to ashes on her path."

"More dreams!" I said bitterly. "We are beset with them, and they are all ill!"

"Have you also visions?" she asked, almost faintly.

"No; unless you are one, and I must wake to find myself back in bleak Flanders, or fighting for my life in Portland race again. And I pray that so it may not be; for if I must lose the sight of you, I am lonely indeed."

"Nay, hush," she said; "not now. Wait till all is well for you and for the king--and then, maybe; but I pray you have a care of Gymbert."

Now I would have told her that I had no fear of him, and mayhap I should have heeded her other words little enough. But at that moment Father Selred came back and beckoned to us, and silently we went after him. The king had seen him and called to him.

Then and there I was made known to the princess, and I thought her strangely sad for one so fair, when she was not speaking. She looked wistfully on Hilda and on me, as if she knew how we had spoken, and smiled; and then her face was as the face of a saint in some painted evangel, such as Carl had in his churches, still and sweet.

But Ethelbert was bright and cheerful as ever; and he bade me see him home to his apartment, for he would talk with me. And I thought rightly that as he had spoken in the Thetford garden of Etheldrida, and as he had also spoken with me more than once on the road hither, so he had much to say of her now.

So across the glades pa.s.sed the princess and Hilda with the priest, and with them the brightness went from the sunset for us two, I think. We waited for a few minutes, and then followed slowly, saying little. We had each our own thoughts.

CHAPTER XI. HOW ETHELBERT THE KING WENT TO HIS REST.

Now it becomes needful that I should tell where Ethelbert was lodged, for I had not been to his apartments yet.

Across the upper end of the great hall there was a long building set, and this was divided into three uneven parts. From the hall one entered it by the door behind the king's high seat on the dais, whence I had seen Offa and his guest come last night; and then one found that the midmost of these divisions was a sort of council chamber, lighted by a window in the opposite wall, and with a door on the right and left at either end. That on the right led to the largest division, where were the king's own chamber and the queen's bower. Other buildings had been added to this end; and it had its own entrance for the queen from the courtyards, as I knew, for it was behind the church and priest's lodging where they had bestowed me.

The door from the council chamber to the left led to the smallest division of the cross building, and there were two chambers for such honoured guest as Ethelbert. One could only reach these chambers from the council room, and they had no private way into the courtyard. It seemed that the guest hall, which was built against the great hall to its left, ran back to the walls of this end of the cross building, for there was a heavily-barred low doorway, which could lead nowhere else, in the wall of the outer living room. The only other door was that of the bedchamber, and that was opposite the entrance.

Pleasant and quiet chambers these were; for the noise of the hall could not reach them and their windows were set to the westward, looking out toward the Welsh hills beyond the Wye, which showed above the rampart and stockading.

So with much ceremony, which was wearisome to Ethelbert--and need not be set down, for it would weary any one, and was of no use--we reached those chambers, and there, being ready for the feast myself, I helped to array the king, and so pa.s.sed with the royal party to the high place when the time came.

"Come back presently with me when the meal is over," the king said; "I have somewhat to ask you."

Then I found my way to the place which had been given me last night, and so had Hilda for neighbour again, to my much content; for the order of sitting had been little changed, save down the hall below the salt, where some fifty more men from the forest had been made room for. It was a great feast and merry, and it seemed the more so to me after the rough camp life across the sea, or the rare state banquets which I had seen in Carl's court. There was none of our hearty fellowship there, and there was more feeling of difference between men of high and low rank, which made a feast go stiffly to an English mind.

Presently I saw Gymbert across the hall, and I thought he looked uneasy. As he had fairly spoiled his name as a good huntsman, I was not surprised, nor did it trouble me. I missed him toward the end of the feast; but no doubt he had his duties about the place as when I spoke to him last night, and that was nothing to wonder at.

I did not see him go.

It was a long feast. We began by daylight, and ended in the red blaze of torches set in sconces all down the hall, and in the whiter shine of great wax tapers which armed housecarls held behind us on the high place. I had never seen such waste of wax before; but Offa was magnificent in all he did, in a rougher way than that of Carl.

When the time of eating was ended and the toasts were to go round, the queen came with a wonderful golden cup which even the Frankish treasury could not match, and standing beside Ethelbert filled it with the red wine and pledged him. Very beautiful did she look as she held the cup to the young king, and her words were soft and full of kindness. She seemed well-nigh as young as the stately and pale Etheldrida, her daughter.

After that she and the other ladies left the hall after the custom, and we sat on telling tales and listening to the gleemen and harpers, and taking each our turn in singing. The East Anglian thanes had a way of singing together which was new to me and pleased me well. The hall grew hot and full of the smoke from the pine-knot torches before the kings rose up to go. By that time, too, the foresters seemed to be singing against one another, and the noise grew great with their mirth.

I rose and followed Ethelbert as I had been bidden, and pa.s.sed into the council chamber, where Offa and his guest parted for the night, each going his own way. I thought Offa seemed heavy and moody, but in every wise friendly. Tired he was, methought, for it had been a long day.

Ethelbert signed to me, Father Selred, and Sighard to follow him, and we went into his apartment, closing the door after us. Out in the council chamber we left three of the Anglian thanes and three Mercian, who would act as guards for the night.

It was very pleasant in the silence of this cool chamber after the din and glare of the great hall. The moonlight came in at the western window; and though there were torches ready, the king would not have us light them, for he said we would sit in the dim light awhile till he grew sleepy. And so at first we spoke of the day's hunting, and, of course, Sighard had his say on the matter of Gymbert's carelessness.

Seeing that neither he nor the king had any doubt that carelessness it was, and naught else, I did not think it worth while to say anything of my own suspicions. I do not think that they could have believed that any harm was meant me had I told of the arrow. It seemed impossible, and if it were not that, it was a private matter of my own.

Presently that matter dropped, and there was a short silence. I heard then the sounds of shuffling feet plainly enough from somewhere close at hand, and thought that the wall between us and the guest hall must be somewhat thinner than it would seem, so that the sound came through thence. Sighard heard it also, and rose up quietly and looked into the inner chamber.

"What is it?" asked Ethelbert, as he came back and sat down again.

"Naught, lord. I thought I heard footsteps in your bedchamber; but there is nothing there. A strange house has strange sounds, and it takes time to get used to them."

"Some one pa.s.sing under the window," said Selred the chaplain, laughing.

The little noise ceased, and we forgot it. Today I can seem to hear it as if it had thundered in our ears, for I know what it was and what it meant. Yet at the time there was no reason to think aught of it.

Then Ethelbert asked us somewhat which seemed strange.

"Have any of you noted aught in the look or way of King Offa which would make you think that he has not long to live?"

With one accord we said that we certainly had not done so, and that in some surprise. Sighard asked plainly what had put such a thought into his head.

"I will tell you," said Ethelbert in a low voice. "Between ourselves, here it is of no use to pretend that one does not know the name for ambition which Quendritha the queen has. Tell me what you make of this. Today I had a little private speech with her, and she would have me put off the wedding. She more than hinted that I might make a higher match, and that angered me. Whereon she told me that Offa might not have long to live; that Mercia and East Anglia would be a mighty realm if united. And, on my word, it seemed to me that she would bid me wait till she was a widow."

He laughed uneasily, as if he thought himself foolish; but we knew that unless he had full reason for that belief he would not have told us. That must have been a strange talk between this honest young king and Quendritha, if he deemed it best to speak to us of it.

Sighard frowned, and said: