The Siege of Norwich Castle Part 28

'What meanest thou, Emma? Jest not, I pray thee. These days are too terrible for jesting,' said Eadgyth, with distressed mien and paling cheeks.

Emma took both her slender wrists in hers and looked lovingly in her face. 'Nay, we must jest to keep our blood from curdling, Eadgyth. But I will not tease thee. Sweet, 'tis Sir Aimand de Sourdeval of whom I speak.'

Eadgyth said nothing, but met Emma's gaze with eyes in which joy and surprise, and doubt of herself that was almost terror, were struggling for mastery.

Emma drew her gently upon the seat beside her. 'Surely thou art glad to know that he is safe, if thou joyest not that he is near?'

'Ah yes! I am glad--glad indeed of his safety!' replied Eadgyth in a low, thrilling voice, and her hand sought the bracelet which she wore as ever.

'And not of his nearness?'

'I know not! I know not! It means but fresh struggle and misery!' The tears rolled down her cheeks.

'Why struggle, Eadgyth? Fate has united you when all pointed to separation. Eadgyth, he needs thee. I told thee sooth when I said he was in safety. But he has suffered much. He is ill. Be thou his leech.

Dame Amicia will attend thee--her motherly heart warms towards the youth.'

'Ill?' Eadgyth looked in the countess's eyes with almost fierce questioning.

'Ill,' repeated Emma, smiling. 'Not dying; not in danger; I said "safe." It is a long story, Eadgyth, but I must tell it thee.'

Then she told the history we already know; and how, after Eadgyth's remark about him on the battlements, it had entered her heart to have a ma.s.s said for him; how it had led to his discovery, and how she had visited him in his dungeon.

When she came to that point, and narrated her visit, describing his sorrowful aspect with unconscious pathos, Eadgyth sprang up and clasped her hands above her head. 'Oh, the terrible injustice of it!' she groaned, and afterwards she paced backwards and forwards, unable to control her emotion.

'But thy hero was shrewdly saucy, Eadgyth. Woebegone and desperate as he was,--I almost wish I had let thee see the figure he cut, with his unkempt beard and tangled locks, as long as those of thy Saxon champions,--natheless he would make no terms. I might free him, or leave him chained by the leg like a hobbled steed, as I found him. One might have thought he had pa.s.sed a pleasant time down there in the dark. He would not even give me his parole not to help our besiegers if I gave him the chance.'

Eadgyth's eyes lighted up with a proud joy. 'That was n.o.ble,' she said under her breath.

Emma laughed. 'He had come to a better mind this morning,' she said; 'I found means whereby to tame his proud spirit.'

Eadgyth turned to her with a start, and wild visions of racks and thumbscrews, and other fashionable instruments of the time, pa.s.sed through her mind. Her spirit was so torn with the terror of the day, and the excitement she had undergone, that she did not pause to consider probabilities. 'Emma! thou hadst not heart to crush one so unhappy?'

'I had!' said Emma.

Eadgyth's eyes looked dumb reproach more eloquent than words.

'Yes,' said Emma; 'I hold not the office of Castellan of Blauncheflour by halves! I made use of my power.'

'What didst thou do?' asked Eadgyth in a scarcely audible voice.

'I gave him his liberty without conditions, and had him lodged in one of the best apartments of the castle. _That_ touched my knight's pride; he would not have me outdo him in generosity, so he capitulated this morning, and offered me his parole without further asking!' and the countess broke into a silvery peal of laughter.

'Oh, Emma, that was like thy dear self!' cried Eadgyth, running to the countess, throwing herself on her knees before her, and hiding her head in Emma's robes like a repentant child.

Emma kissed her. 'Now, maiden, thy part must be done. The knight has promised neither to help the enemy nor to attempt escape. Be it for thee to persuade him to buckle on his harness and fight for us. He can scarce see thy sweet face, and know thou art in danger, and not lift his hand to help thee!'

'_I_ persuade him!--to break his knightly vows and fight against his lawful liege? Never!' cried Eadgyth, raising her head and throwing it back proudly. 'Strange,' she continued, more to herself than to the countess, indeed, scarce knowing that she spoke aloud, 'how thy haught courage and n.o.ble generosity are allied with so little sense of moral right!'

A flash of pain and some indignation crossed the countess's brow. 'I deny thy right to judge me,' she said coldly. 'There are some who strain after such high ideals, they fail to see the duties that lie near; grat.i.tude, for instance, and the welfare of their friends!'

Eadgyth was silent, for she felt that Emma was unjust; she would have given her life to serve her, though she would not go a step against her conscience.

'Sir Aimand has suffered much,' said the countess gently, after a pause. 'He is out of health and out of hope. A little happiness would serve him in better stead than an armful of herbs and simples. Go to him, Eadgyth! Encourage his contumacy if thou wilt, but go to him.'

And Eadgyth went.

CHAPTER XXI.

THE ORDEAL BY FIRE.

At the close of the day the barbican still remained in the keeping of the besieged.

It had not been retained without the loss of many a stout soldier, and the spital was crowded with patients, who occupied all the healing talents of the countess and her ladies.

When Emma at last retired to her chamber, with her Saxon bower-maiden in attendance, she was so weary and worn with the excitement and strain of the day, that she threw herself upon the bed, without even taking off her jewels, and fell asleep almost immediately; while Eadgyth, after softly laying a warm coverlet over her, lay down beside her.

But not to sleep. Her brain was full of dire and disturbing images, and even the face of Sourdeval, which it had been so great a joy to her to behold once more, came to her as she had seen it, wan and melancholy, when he turned to her as she entered his apartment, before it flashed with brightness on recognising who had come to him. The change in him had shocked her, and in her nervous and depressed mood she thought of him as one whom death had marked for his own, and his image was but as a pale spectre, round which the manifold forms of wounded and dying and tortured men, whom she had beheld during the day, grouped as a central point.

Her ears were full of the wild shouts of the besiegers and the shrieks of the injured, the awful clash of seax on helm, and hurtle and whiz of arrows. Again and again she woke from a fitful doze, thinking to hear the thunder of charging knights and the fierce 'Aoi!' of Leofric Ealdredsson and his carles, as they leaped forth from the cover of the palisades upon the foe.

At last from such an awakening she sprang from the bed; better, she thought, to wake all night than suffer such awful dreams.

But the awakening did not silence the cries. They were no dreams, those screams of terror, those head-rending shrieks for help, they were dreadful realities; and, rushing to the window, she gazed out with a beating heart at the western sky, which flickered and flared with strange and ghostly gleams.

She ran back to the sleeping countess, and by the lurid light saw that she was smiling in her sleep.

'Wake! wake! Oh, Emma! dear countess! this is no night for sleep.

Methinks the dawn is like to bring the last dread day! Alas! she sleeps like a young infant that knows not danger or woe. Wake, Emma! Thy life may hang on it!'

Then the countess, opening her eyes dreamily, murmured, 'Thou hast brought good succour, Ralph!' The next moment she started up. 'Mary Mother! what is it, child?'

'There is murder in the air, Emma! See, the very sky is full of tokens.

Listen! listen! Oh, saints in heaven! how they scream!'

They did indeed! The countess sprang from the bed and rushed to the window also.

'They have fired the town!' she cried; 'they have fired the town!--the Saxon quarter! Sir Hoel said they would!'

'The Saxon quarter! Oh, my home, my home!' cried Eadgyth, and, pressing her hands to her ears in a vain effort to shut out the shrieks of the sufferers, she cowered, with closed eyes, upon the floor.

'Let us go to the great portal of the keep, whence we can see it,' said the countess.

'See it!' cried Eadgyth. 'Ah, Emma, no! I could not look! It would kill me.'

But Emma went forth boldly, intent to know if anything could be done to rescue the victims.