The Ward of King Canute Part 26

"It seems that the world has begun to fall to pieces everywhere,"

Randalin said wearily. The momentary forgetfulness which the happenings around her had created was beginning to give way before the weight in her breast. She drew herself up listlessly. "Is it of any use to remain up here, Dearwyn?"

But Dearwyn's grasp had tightened. "See! the King is beginning to speak."

Whom he was addressing was not quite clear even though he had turned back to the group of n.o.bles, for his eyes still gazed into s.p.a.ce, but his words sounded distinctly: "Heavy is it to lose faith in others, but heavier still to lose faith in one's self... I know that no word of mine urged Edric to this deed, but what my eyes may have said, or some trick of my voice or my face, is not so sure... It may be that I wanted this thing to happen without knowing it. When I see what it has brought me, I cannot understand how I could help wanting it... It is true that I do not always know for certain what I have at heart." His eyes came back from s.p.a.ce to rest musingly on Elfgiva. "When I began this feasting-time, I thought I had grasped heaven with my hands, but now--"

he spread out his fingers and released the little bunch of dead leaves that he had been rolling against his palm--"now I let not this go from me more easily... You see that a man is not sure even of his own mind."

Again his head was sinking on his breast, when he raised it with a fierceness that startled them. "One thing only I am sure of, and that is that I have done forever with craft. Hereafter, if a man is a hindrance to me, Rothgar's axe shall send him to Hel while it is broad daylight and all his friends are looking. Such is my luck with craft as though I had grasped a viper by the tail, in the belief that I had seized its snout... I have been finely treated... Not only have I been betrayed by all of you who have thought such thoughts of me, but now some troll has got into me and turned me false to myself so that I cannot give you punishment for your treason! Certainly the G.o.ds must think this crown of great value since, before they give it to me, they take from me all that I have thought my happiness, and rob me of my honor as well!"

He dashed his fist against the tree beside him and did not seem to feel it when his hand was bleeding. "Here I take oath that they shall cause their gift to prove its value! It shall be meat and drink to me, and honor and life itself. Many happenings shall spring from this gift, for I will put my whole strength into the holding of it; Odin himself shall not wrest it from me! I will be such a king that there will not be many to equal me; such a king that they will wish they had given me happiness and left me a man."

Whirling, he flung out his bleeding hand toward Elfgiva, and his mouth was distorted with its bitterness. "Hear that, you who were so mad to have your lord the King of England that you could not spend a thought on the love of Canute of Denmark! You have got your wish,--go back now to your Northamptonshire castle and think whether or not you are gladdened by it."

"Go back!" Elfgiva fell from her height of injured dignity with a piercing scream. "What is it you say, King? Now by the splendor of heaven, you depart not for London without me! Be it known to you that I am going to be your Queen."

At first he looked at her in genuine astonishment; after that he laughed, neither angrily nor bitterly, but with the quietness of utter contempt. "I will have the London goldsmiths send you a crown if you wish," he said. "That is all you understand about being a queen."

She tried to protest, to cajole, to threaten. She tried to do so many things at once that she accomplished none of them. Her speech became less and less intelligible until tears and hysterical laughter reduced it to mere mouthings, while her tiny hands beat the air with fingers bent hook-like.

But the young King did not look at her again. He had rejoined his n.o.bles and was leading them toward the door, giving rapid orders as he walked.

"Do you, Rothgar, see to it that the horses are saddled. Kinsman Ulf, it is my will that you join us some while later, when you have seen these women returned in safety. You, my chiefs, get you ready to ride to Oxford as quick as is possible." His voice was lost in the trampling as they stepped from the turf upon the flagging of the gallery.

When the echoing tread was gone at last from the cloister, the garden seemed strangely silent in spite of the hurrying servants,--silent and empty. In the stillness, it came slowly to Randalin that life was not so simple as she had supposed; that she was not going to die of her grief but to live with it,--live with this dead emptiness in her breast.

The years seemed to stretch before her like the snow wastes of the North,--white, white, white, without a break of living green.

Chapter XXIV. On The Road to London

Hotter than fire Love for five days burns Between false friends; But is quenched When the sixth day comes, And friendship is all impaired.

Ha'vama'l.

From Edgeware, where the Watling Street left the Middles.e.x Forest to cross the barren heath known as Tyburn Lane, the great road was crowded with travellers. A small portion of them--messengers, soldiers, and hunting parties--were riding northward, but the great ma.s.s was facing the City whither they were pressing to warm themselves in the glow of the Coronation. On foot, on horseback, in wagons and on crutches, they were as motley a throng as had ever trod the Roman stones; and the respectable element among them was by no means large enough to leaven the lump. Sometimes a group of merchants was to be seen, conducting loaded wagons; sometimes, a thane's pompous thane, ensheathed in his retinue; while occasionally, as they neared the New Gate, the crowd was swelled by squads of the lesser Cheapside dealers making the daily pilgrimage from their country dwellings to their stalls in the City. But these were as scattered islands in the stream of half drunken seamen, masterless thralls, wolf-eyed beggars, paupers, vagabonds and criminals, who were pushing toward London in hopes of pleasure or gain or for want of another goal.

Amid such a rabble, and as out of place as a swarm of b.u.t.terflies in frost-silvered air, a band of high-born women was to be seen approaching the City this early December morning. Gorgeously attired pages, hardly more warlike than the women, made a blooming hedge around them, while a sufficiently strong guard of men-at-arms protected them from actual harm, but from impudent comment and ribald jest there was no defence.

Their hoods were pulled down as before a storm, their mantles drawn up above their chins; and all but two of them appeared to be trying to shrink into their gilded saddles.

The two who rode at their head, however, looked to be of a different mettle. Indeed, in the quality of her courage, each appeared to differ from the other, though m.u.f.fling folds blotted out anything like individuality. The shorter of the two, while she rode with gracefully drooping head, had left her face practically uncovered, seemingly unconscious of the half slighting, half pitying admiration elicited by its pathetic beauty. The other, who showed no more than the tip of her nose, held her head bravely erect, while, even through her wrappings, the straightness of her back breathed haughtiness.

Yet it was not to the pensive fair one that a timid companion appealed for comfort, when a temporary damming of the stream pressed those who led, back upon those who followed. She stretched out an en-treating hand toward the girl with the haughtily carried head.

"Randalin! What will he do--the King--when he finds that we have fooled Ulf Jarl, and come hither against his command?"

The Danish girl laughed recklessly. "Little do I care, Candida, to tell it truthfully. Nothing can be worse than sitting in that Abbey. Here at least there is a chance that something may happen to help us to forget that we are alive."

Candida shook the cloak she had grasped. "But you expect that he will be angry! You told Elfgiva not to undertake the journey because of it. And you were able to say the soothest about his temper."

"I was obliged to tell her that to be honest," Randalin answered, and again there was a little wildness in her laugh, "but I should have gone stone-mad if she had not come." Yet, as her horse commenced to bear her forward once more, she consented to speak more encouragingly across the widening s.p.a.ce. "If his humor is right, it may be that nothing disagreeable will happen. She is very fair to look at,--it may be that his mind will change at the sight of her. Think that you will sleep in the Palace to-night."

Catching this last phrase, as her Valkyria came abreast of her, Elfgiva spoke pettishly: "You see fit to sing a different tune from what you did when you tried to hinder me from this undertaking. I should have brighter hopes if I had not given ear to your advice to send a messenger ahead. If I could have come upon him before he had time to work himself into a hostile temper--"

Her attention wandered as a couple of tipsy soldiers elbowed themselves between the guards only to catch a nearer glimpse of her face, after which they allowed themselves to be thrust back, shouting drunken toasts to her beauty.

"Is it your wish that I help you to lower your hood, lady?" the Danish girl made offer.

Elfgiva's half smile deepened into a laugh. "Not so, not so!" she said. "What! Have you seen so much of war and battle axes that you have forgotten the ways that are pleasing to men? Yet methinks you must needs have taken notice that, always before he goes into battle, a soldier tests the sharpness of his weapon. It is to that end that I endure the gaze of these serfs,--to test the power of my face."

"It would not be unadvisable for you to whet your wits as well," Frode's daughter muttered scornfully, and somewhat rashly, since Elfgiva's wits had been sharp enough to guess the significance of her hand-maiden's interview with the young English n.o.ble, and the knowledge had given her a weapon which she was skilful in using.

"Has the sharpness of your mind brought you so much success then, my sweet?" she inquired with her faultless smile; and had the satisfaction of seeing her rebel shrink into silence like a child before a rod.

The crowding of the highway became more noticeable as they neared the point where the Watling Street swerved from its old course, toward the ford and the little Isle of Thorns, to bend eastward toward the New Gate. Some obstruction at the forking of the roads impeded their progress almost to a walk. After a brief experience of it, Elfgiva spoke impatiently to the nearest soldier.

"Why does it become more crowded when two paths open before us? Why does it not happen that some of these cattle turn down the old way?"

The man shook his head. "I do not think there is much likelihood of that, lady; since the Bridge was built, no one has wanted to use the ford; and there is little else to take that way for, unless you are going to service in the West Minster or to the Monastery."

"Wanted!" the Lady of Northampton repeated in the extremity of scorn.

"Bid them turn into that road at once. They stand some chance of their faces getting clean if they take the ford,--if they also get drowned matters very little. Tell them, seek what they may seek, to take that way instantly, or the King shall punish them for interfering with their betters."

The man pushed up his leather cap to scratch his head. He was not unacquainted with her custom of sweeping the Northamptonshire serfs off any road she wished to possess, but that struck him as being somewhat easier than dispersing a Coronation mob at the gates of London; and yet to defy her--that was harder than either of them! It was an interposition of his good angel that at this moment provided a diversion.

Randalin broke from her silence with an exclamation: "Thorkel! Yonder!"

Less than fifty paces ahead of them, the grizzled head of the King's foster-father rose steeple-like above the crowd, while the mighty shoulders of the King's foster-brother made a bulwark beside it, and the gilded helms of the King's guard formed a palisade around them. The obstacle in the way was nothing less than a royal detachment drawn up in waiting beside the road.

Elfgiva's frown relaxed; for the first time in many days she let the liquid music of her laughter trickle forth. "Be blithesome in your minds, maidens!" she called gayly over her shoulder. "Friends are at hand to take charge of us."

Taking into consideration what they had expected, the attention was so flattering that at first they scarcely dared believe it; but its truth was proved the moment Thorkel turned his head and saw them coming. At his command, the line of gilded helms quickly drew out across the road in a barrier which once more dammed the human stream to overflowing. A break in the middle allowed the party from Gloucester to filter through; then the opening closed behind them; the line bent at either end, and they moved as between walls, guarded against any further jostling or rude contact. Elfgiva sparkled with delight and greeted the Tall One with more affability than she had ever before deigned his gruffness.

"Since my royal lord came not himself to meet us," she said graciously,--and pushing her hood entirely back so that he might get the full benefit of her face, "he has well honored us in his messengers, than whom no persons could be more welcome. I pray you, tell me without delay how it stands with his health and his fortunes."

Turning from a muttered word to the soldier at his side, Thorkel answered her with his usual curtness. "He thrives well, but his time is full of great matters. To-day he is with the English Witan. Yesterday they chose him to be their king. To-morrow he is to be crowned."

"To-morrow? And he would have let me remain in ignorance!" The Lady of Northampton was unable to repress a start of anger, though she turned it as soon as possible into a plaintive sigh. "Let me be thankful that my arrival is not too late. I cannot tell you how we have been beset with hardships!" Whereupon, she instantly began telling him, giving free rein to eyes and lips and all the graceful tricks of her hands. It did not disturb her in the least that he rode beside her in silence, when she had observed that from under the bristling thatch of his brows his gaze never left her face.

So complete was her preoccupation that she dis-regarded another thing,--the highway along which they were travelling. It was Randalin who first awoke to a consciousness that the noise of the rabble had become very faint behind them, that no sounds at all broke the stillness ahead of them, that the uneven weed-grown path they were treading was very different from the smooth hardness of the Watling Street. Fens on either side of them, a low hill to the front--was this the way to London? For the first time, she spoke to the son of Lodbrok, who had silently taken his place at her side.

"This is not the Watling Street! Yet we have not turned--Where are we?" Rothgar gnawed at his heavy moustache as though the answer were difficult to frame; and before he had time to evolve it, Elfgiva, who had caught the exclamation, had broken off her prattle.

"That is true! The crowd has disappeared--the stones are overlaid with weeds--" In her bewilderment, she reined in her horse and would have stopped to look about her, if Thorkel's hand upon her bridle had not compelled her to remain in motion.

"You are still on the Watling Street," he said harshly. "It is only that this is the old bed of it that has not been used much since the Bridge was built. Besides the ford, it leads also to Saint Peter's Monastery on Thorney--"