The Ward of King Canute Part 15

"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 Ess.e.x."

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 Ess.e.x 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 s.n.a.t.c.h the tongs from a serf who was spending an unnecessary f.a.got 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 ma.s.s 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."

But the page advanced with the old wilful shake of his curly head. "I also would rather walk, if you please." As he looked at him, compa.s.sion came into the Etheling's face. The hollowness of their sockets made the boy's large eyes look larger, and his fever-flush trebled their brightness. Sebert said, with a poor attempt at a smile, "Little did I think that my hospitality would ever produce such a guest. Poor youngling! You would better have crept out to your countrymen, as I bade you."

Again the dark head shook obstinately. "Rather would I starve with you than feast with them. I go not out till you go."

Something seemed to come into the young man's throat as he was about to speak, for he swallowed hard and was silent. Putting an arm about the slender figure, he drew it to his side; and so they left the room and began to climb the stairs.

As soon as the curtain fell at their heels a stifling mustiness came to their nostrils, and a chill that was like the flat of a knife-blade pressed against their cheeks. They drew breath thankfully when they had come up into the sweet freshness of the night air. Flashing on the weapons of the pacing sentinels, a glory of silver moonlight lay like a visible silence over the parapets. In the darkness below, a sea of forest trees was murmuring and splashing at the pa.s.sing of a wind. Yet deeper down in the dark glowed the fires of the Danish camp,--red eyes of the dragon that would rise ere long and crush them under his iron claws.

After they had twice made the round without speaking, the page said gravely, "I heard what Brithwald told you about the bread, lord. What will overtake us when that is gone? Shall we charge them, so that we may die fighting?" When the Etheling did not answer immediately, his companion looked up at him with loving reproach. "You forget that you need conceal nothing from me, dear lord. I am not as those clowns below.

You have even said that you found pleasure in telling me your mind."

Sebert's hand was lifted from the red cloak to touch the thin cheek caressingly. "I should be extreme ungrateful were I to say less, dear lad. There is a man's courage in your boy's body, and I think a woman could not be more faithful in her love--How! Are you cold that you shiver so? Pull the corner of my cloak about you."

But the page cast it off impatiently. "No, no, it is nothing; no more than that one of those men out there may have walked across the spot that is to be my grave. Sooner would I bite my tongue off than interrupt you. I ask you not to let it hinder your speech."

Again a kind of affectionate pity came into the young n.o.ble's face.

"Does it mean so much to you to hear that you have been faithful in your service?"

"It means--so much to me!" the boy repeated softly; and if the man's ear had not been far afield, he might have divined the secret of the green tunic only from the tenderness of the low voice. But when his mind came back to his companion again, the lad was looking at him with a little smile touching the curves of his wistful mouth.

"Do you know why this mishap which has occurred to you seems great luck for me? Because otherwise it is not likely that you would have found out how true a friend I could be. If it had happened that I had gone with Rothgar's messenger that night, you would have remembered me only as one who could entertain you when it was your wish to laugh. But now, since it has been allowed me to endure suffering with you and to share your mind when it was bitterest, you have given me a place in your heart.

And to-morrow, when we go forth together, and the Dane slays me with you because it will be open to him then that for your sake I have become unfaithful to him, you will remember our fellowship even to--"

But Sebert's hand silenced the tremulous lips. "No more, youngling! I adjure you by your gentleness," he whispered unsteadily. "You owe me no such love; and it makes my helplessness a thousand-fold more bitter. Say no more, little comrade, if you would not turn my heart into a woman's when it has need to be of flint. Sit you here on the ledge the while that I take one more turn. You will not? Then come with me, and we will make the round together, and apply our wits once more to the riddle.

Until swords have put an end to me, I shall not cease to believe that it has an answer."

Below, in the dense blackness of the forest, an occasional owl sounded his echoless cry. From still deeper in the dark, where the Danish camp-fires glowed, a harp-note floated up on the wind with a fragment of wild song. But it was many a long moment before the silence that hovered over the doomed Tower was broken by any sound but the measured tramp of the sentinels.

It was Sebert who brought the dragging pace finally to a halt, throwing himself upon a stone bench to hold his head in his hands. "We cannot drive them off; that needs no further proof. And I do not see how we can hold out till the time that chance entices them away, when but one meal stands between us and starvation, and already we are as weak as rabbits.

Naught can profit us save craft."

The dark head beside him shook hopelessly; but he repeated the verdict with additional emphasis. "I tell you, craft is our only hope; some artfulness that shall undermine their strength even as their tricks crept, snake-like, under our guard." Turning in his seat, he set his face toward the darkness, clutching his head in renewed effort.

No word came from the page, but a strange look was dawning in his upturned face. Whether it was a great terror that had shaken his soul or whether a joy had come to him that raised him to heaven itself, it was impossible to tell, for the signs of both were in his eyes. And when at last he spoke, both thrilled through his voice. "Lord," he said slowly, "I think I see where a trick is possible."

As Sebert turned from the darkness, the boy struggled up and stood before him. "If they could be made to believe a lie about the food? If they could be made to believe that you have enough to continue this for a long time? Their natures are such that already it must have become a hardship for them to remain quiet."

The Etheling's eyes were riveted on the other's lips; his every muscle strained toward him. Under the stimulus the page's words seemed to come a little less uncertainly, a little more quickly.

"I think I could manage it for you, lord. They think me your unwilling captive: you remember what the messenger said about freeing me? If I should go to Rothgar--" his voice broke and his eyes sought his friend's eyes as though they were wine-cups from which he would drink courage-- "if I should go to Rothgar, lord, I could declare myself escaped, and he would be likely to believe any story I told him."

Sebert leaped up and caught the lad by the shoulders, then hesitated, weighing it in his mind, half fearing to believe. "But are you sure that your tongue will not trip you? Or your face, poor mouse? What! Can you make them believe in abundance when your cheeks are like bowls for the catching of your tears?"

The boy seemed to gather strength from the caressing hands, as Thor from the touch of his magic belt. He even gave a little breathless laugh of elation. "As to that, I think he is not wise enough to guess the truth.

I will tell him that you have thought it revengeful toward him to starve your Danish captive; and because it is in every respect according to what he would do in your place, I think he will have no misgivings."

Pulling the soft curls with a suggestion of his old lightheartedness, the Etheling laughed with him. "You bantling! Who would have dreamed you to that degree artful? Are you certain your craft will bear you out?

I would not have you suffer their anger. Are you capable of so much feigning?"

For an instant the boy's eyes were even audacious; and all the hollowness of the cheeks could not hide a flashing dimple. "Oh, my dear lord, I am capable of so much more feigning than you guess!" he answered daringly.

"Nay, have I not been wont to call you elf?" Sebert returned. Then his voice deepened with feeling. "By the soul of my father, Fridtjof, if you bring me out of this snare, me and mine, I declare with truth that there will be no recompense you can ask at my hands which I shall not be glad to grant--" He paused in the wonder of seeing the sparkle in the blue eyes flee away like a flitting light.

The page turned from him almost with a sob. "Pray you, promise me nothing!" he said hastily. "If ever I see you again, and you have more to give me than pity--Nay, I shall lose my courage if I think of that part. Get me out quickly while the heart is firm within me. And give me a draught from your cup to warm my blood."

"Certainly it would be best for you to come to them while they are in such a state of feasting that their good-humor is keenest and their wits dullest," Sebert a.s.sented.

He spoke but with the matter-of-factness of a soldier reconnoitring a position, but on the girl in the page's dress the words fell like blows.

Then it was that she realized for the first time how ill a crumb can satisfy the hunger which asks for a loaf; that she knew that her body was not the only part of her which was starving. Somewhere on that dark stairway she lost the boyishness out of her nature forever. The thin cheeks were white under their tan when they came again into the light of the guard-room fire; and the blue eyes had in them a woman's reproach.

"It would show no more than friendship if you said that you were sorry to have me go," she told him with quivering lips. "Are you so eager in getting me off that you cannot say you will miss me?"

But the young lord only laughed good-humoredly as he poured the wine.

"What a child you are! Do you not know those things without my telling you? And as for missing you, I am not likely to have time. The first chance you get, you will slip back to me if you do not, I will come after you and flog you into the bargain; be there no forgetting!"

She could not laugh as she would once have done; instead she choked in the cup and pushed it from her. A pa.s.sionate yearning came over her for one such word, one such look, as he would give the dream-lady when she should come. With her secret on her lips, she lifted her eyes to his.

A little amused but more pitying, and withal very, very kind, his glance met hers; and her courage forsook her. Suppose the word she was about to speak should not make his face friendlier? Suppose his surprise should be succeeded by haughtiness, or, worse than all, by a touch of that gay scorn? Even at the memory of it she shrank. Better a crumb than no bread at all. Turning away, she followed him in silence down the dark pa.s.sage.

When the moment of parting arrived, and Sebert's hand lay on the last bolt, that mood was so strong upon her that it seemed to her as though she were pa.s.sing out of life into death. Clinging to his cloak, with her face buried in its folds, she wet it with far bitterer tears than any she had shed over her murdered kinsmen.

"I wish I had not thought of it! I wish I had not told you!" she sobbed into the soft m.u.f.fling. "Only to be near you I thought heaven; and now the Fates have cheated me even out of that."