The Ward of King Canute Part 14

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 m.u.f.fled 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 e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. "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 a.s.surance 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 pa.s.sed 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.