The Ward of King Canute Part 33

"Poison?" she screamed. She had been facing him with whitening lips, and now the little breath that she had left went from her in a sharp cry.

"Not poison; love-philtres! To win him back! Love-philtres,--can you not hear?"

"Love-philtres!" The old warrior's voice made the words bite with contempt. "Did the mouthful she swallowed have that effect upon your woman? Or do you think you planted love in the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of the dead scullions? Had you seen their writhings I think you would have called it by another name."

He was standing over her now, and she was cowering before him, her shaking hands rising as though to ward off his eyes. "I meant no harm,"

she was wailing with stiff lips. "The scroll said not a word that it was hurtful. Do not kill me. I meant no--" The word ended in an inarticulate sound and she swayed backward.

It was Randalin who caught and eased her down upon the rustic chair, and Randalin who turned upon the Tall One. "Saw I never a meaner man!" she cried. "Certainly I think Loke was less wolf-minded than you. You know very well that if Teboen had thought it would become a cause of harm to her, she would have refused to swallow it. I will go to the King myself and tell him how despisable you are." She stamped her foot at the united ministry of the Kingdom as she turned her back upon its representatives to speak rea.s.suringly to her mistress.

Her lover did not blame her that her flashing eyes seemed to include him among the objects of their wrath. He said fiercely to the Jarl, "For G.o.d's sake, tell her that no one suspects her of seeking his life, and give her his true message, or I will go and hang myself for loathing."

"Tell her yourself!" the old Dane snapped. "It is seen that you are as rabbit-hearted as the boy who makes her such an offer. Were I in his place, I would have them all drowned for a litter of wauling kittens."

He looked very much indeed like a wolf in a sheepfold as he stamped to and fro, grinding his spurred heels into the patches of clover and growling in his beard.

The young soldier had been known to ride into battle with a happier face, but the sudden gritting of his teeth implied that he would do anything to get the matter over with; and having braved the outburst of hysterics that redoubled at his approach, he managed to slip a soothing word into the lull.

"Lady, the King sends you none but good greetings. It would make you feel better if you would listen to them."

"Then he--he does not blame me for this?" Elfgiva quavered at last.

"He does not blame you," the Marshal hastened to rea.s.sure her. "And in token thereof he sends you your heart's desire."

Plainly, the elves had endowed their "gift" with a wit to match her soul. Her beautiful eyes were simple as an injured child's as she raised them to his, "can that be, lord, when Emma of Normandy is to get the crown of England? A woman ten years older than he, to put the best face on it! Who can expect me to bear with this insult?" Her scorn went so far toward reviving her that for the first time she drew herself away from the support of her women, and even made one of them a sign to rearrange the locks she had disturbed.

Lest it revive her beyond the point of docility, Sebert spoke the rest of his message in some haste. "It is true, n.o.ble one, that for state reasons the King has consented to this union with Emma of Normandy, who will bring him the friendship of Duke Richard besides causing pleasure to the English. But the crown of Denmark is also at his disposal, lady, and this he purposes to bestow upon your son Sven, for whom he has much love. And it is his will and pleasure that you accompany the boy across the sea and, together with the earls of his guardianship, hold the power for him until his hands shall be big enough to grasp it alone. For this he gives you the name of 'queen' and all the honor you shall desire."

He paused, more at the wonder of watching her face than because he had finished.

It was as though a rainbow had been set in her showery eyes. "He purposes this?" she murmured; and rose out of her seat in a kind of ecstasy,--then caught at its back, glooming with doubt. "I cannot believe it,--it is too beautiful. Swear that you are not mocking me."

"I swear it," he said gravely, but his lips curled a little as he watched her delight bring back her color, her smiles, her every fairy charm.

Throwing her arms about Dearwyn, who chanced to be nearest, she kissed her repeatedly. "Think, mouse,--a queen! a queen! It was not for naught that I dreamed an eagle flew over my head. Ah, how I shall cherish the dear little one who has brought me this!" With her pleasure overflowing as of old in rippling laughter, she turned to greet the King's foster-father who came stalking toward her. "Now your ill humor no longer appears strange to me, n.o.ble wolf, than which no better proof could be had that I have come into good fortune! I pray you tell me when I am to leave, and who goes with me, and every word of the plan, for I could eat them like sweets."

"Ulf Jarl will feed your ears later," Thorkel said gruffly. "Your safety on the road is the charge of this battle-sapling." He jerked his head toward the young Marshal. "You will leave for Northampton this afternoon, to get the boy--and to get rid of you before the Lady of Normandy arrives."

The shaft fell pointless as she turned her sparkling face toward her women. "You hear that, my lambs? This afternoon,--not one more night in this prison! You cannot apply yourselves too soon to the packing, Candida, Leonorine. And I must see if Teboen's wits have come back to her. If she should not be restored to them, that would be one bee in the honey. Randalin, learn what disposal is to be made of you, and that, quickly. n.o.bles, if I am not yet enough queen to dismiss you, still am I queen enough to depart without your leave. I desire you will thank your King as is becoming; and tell him that I am right glad he was not poisoned,--and I trust he will not wish he had been, after he has seen his ancient bride." Chiming the sweet bells of her laughter, she glided away among her excited attendants, the silver mockery reaching them after she had vanished into the house.

Randalin awoke to a sense of bewilderment. "It is true that I do not know where to go, now that this place is upset."

The question was repeated in her lover's att.i.tude; but Thorkel Jarl answered it, coming between them and drawing her aside.

"I will remedy that," he said. "My men are to fetch you to the Palace so soon as ever your lady has left. The King has a use for you." The rest he spoke into her ear, but its effect was to blanch her cheeks and cause her hands to clasp each other in terror as she started back.

"I cannot!" she cried. "I cannot." "You must," he said harshly. "Or you will do little credit to the blood that is in you. Do you no longer think your father and brother of any importance?"

"They are pitiless to demand it of me," she murmured, and buried her face in her hands.

Anger leaped from the young n.o.ble's eyes as, in his turn, he came between her and the Jarl. He said forcefully, "No one shall ask anything of you that you do not want, nor shall any king compel you. Yet I think I have a right to know what his will is with you."

"You have not," the Dane contradicted. "Do you think the King's purposes are to be opened to the sight of every Angle who becomes his man? Nor have you ally right soever over her who is the King's ward. End this talk, maiden, and give me your promise to be obedient."

She gave it in a cry of despair, "I must--I know I must!" then sought to make peace with her lover by laying caressing hands on his breast. "And he is right, love, that I ought not to tell any one. It is another one of those things that you must trust."

But for once the Etheling's will did not bend to her coaxing; his mouth was doggedly set as he looked down upon her. "I trust no man I do not know," he answered, "and I do not know Canute the man,--nor do I greatly like what I have heard of him, or this plan of sending me from the City at this time. You have no cause to reproach me with lack of faith in you, Randalin, for when every happening--even your own words--made it appear as if it were love for Rothgar Lodbroksson which brought you into the camp, I looked into your eyes and believed them against all else."

In the intensity of the living present he forgot the dead past--until he saw its ghosts troop like gray shadows across her face.

"Love for Rothgar Lodbroksson?" she repeated, drawing back. "Then you did believe that I could love Rothgar?" Her voice rose sharply. "You believed that I followed him!"

Too late he saw what he had done. "I said that I did not believe it," he cried hastily. "What I thought at first in my bewilderment,--that could not be called belief." Now it was the present that he had forgotten in the past, as he strove desperately to recapture the phantoms and thrust them back into their graves.

But she did not seem to hear his explanation as she stood there gazing at him, her mind leaping lightning-like from point to point. "It was that which made you behave so strangely in the garden," she said, and she spoke each phrase with a kind of breathless finality. "You thought that I--I was like those--those other women in the camp." As he tried to take her hand she drew farther away, and stood looking at him out of eyes that were like purple shadows in her white face. It was with a little movement of anger that she came to herself at last. "And what are you thinking of me now? Do you clare to dream that the King--" Turning, she confronted the old warrior fiercely. "Thorkel Jarl, I ask you to tell the Lord of Ivarsdale as quick as you can what the King wants with me."

"That I will not do," the Jarl said quickly. "You know no prudence, maiden. The Lord of Ivarsdale is also English; a mishap might occur if--"

She flung the words at him; "I care not if it lose Canute his crown!

If you will not risk it, I will tell him that the King settles to-night with Edric of Mercia and his men, and that it is to witness the punishment of my kinsmen's murderer that he has sent for me. As for my camp-life, ask Rothgar himself, or Elfgiva, or the King--or any soldier of the host! Of them all, you alone have thought such thoughts of me."

She flung up her hands against him in a kind of heart-broken rage. "You!

To whose high-mindedness I trusted everything I have!" Hiding her face, she ran from them, sobbing, into the house.

Chapter x.x.xI. The Twilight of The G.o.ds

Circ.u.mspect and reserved Every man should be, And wary in trusting friends; Of the words That a man says to another He often pays the penalty.

Ha'vama'l.

Waking to tapestried walls and jewelled lanterns and a strange splendor of furnishings, Randalin experienced a moment of wild bewilderment.

What had happened to the low-ceiled dormitory with its bare wall-s.p.a.ces splotched with dampness? What had become of the row of white beds, with Dearwyn's rosy face on the next pillow? And she herself--why was she lying on the outside of the covers, with all her clothes on, a cramped aching heap? Rising on her elbow, she gazed wonderingly at the frowzy woman stretched near her on a pallet. It was not until the woman turned over, puffing out her fat cheeks in a long breath, that the girl on the bed recognized her and knew what room this was and remembered what had happened to separate to-day from all the yesterdays of her life. Falling down upon the pillows, she lay with her face hidden among them, living over with the swift sharpness of a renewed brain the scenes of the previous night.

As she had seen it from the gallery where the King's soldiers had hidden her, she saw again the great stone hail, enshrining a feasting-table around which a throng of n.o.bles in their gorgeous dresses and their jewels and their diadems made a glittering halo. At the farther end, the King sat in his shining gilded chair. Just below her, was Edric of Mercia with Norman Leofwinesson beside him. She could not see their faces for their backs were toward her, but now and again the Gainer's velvet voice rose blandly, and each time she was seized with shuddering.

How was it possible that he did not feel disaster in the air? To her it seemed that the very torch-flames hissed warnings above the merriment, while the occasional pauses were so heavy with doom that their weight was well-nigh unendurable; at each, she was forced to fight down a mad impulse to scream and scatter the hush.

Then the light from the taper which a page was holding behind Norman of Baddeby fell upon the gemmed collar that was his princ.i.p.al ornament, and the sight wrought a subtle change in her mood. The collar had been her father's; she could not look at it without seeing again his ruddy old face with its grim mouth and faded kindly eyes. Beside this vision rose another,--the vision of this beloved face dead in the moonlight, with Fridtjof's near it, his brave smile frozen on his young lips. From that moment, softness and shrinking died out in her bearing as out of her heart, and her blood was turned to fire within her,--the liquid fire of the North. Hour after hour, she sat in rigid waiting while the endless line of servants ran to and fro with their silver dishes and the merriment grew and spread and the clinking came faster and louder and the voices grew thicker and wilder.

When the wave of good-will and fellowship had reached its height, like one who would ride in upon its crest the Gainer rose to his feet and began speaking to the King. His manner was less smoothly deferential than when addressing Edmund, she noticed, affecting more the air of bluff frankness which one might who wished to disarm any suspicion of flattering; but she could not hear what he said because of the noise around him. The first words she heard distinctly were Canute's, as he paused with upraised goblet to look at the Mercian. Like an arrow his voice cleft the uproar, so that here and there men checked the speech on their lips to look at him, and their neighbors, observing them, paused also, until the lull extended from corner to corner.

"Strangely do you ask," he said. "Why should I give you more than Edmund gave you?"

She had no difficulty in hearing Edric this time. Aggressively honest, his words rang out with startling sharpness: "Because it was for you that I went against Edmund, and from faithfulness to you that I afterwards destroyed him."

Out of the stillness that followed, a voice cried, "Are you mad?" and there was the grating of chairs thrust hastily back. But, after a great wrench, her heart stood still within her as through the madness she perceived the purpose. As well as Edric of Mercia she knew that the young Viking's vulnerable point was his longing for his own self-esteem, a craving so unreckoning in its fervor that--should he have the guilty consciousness the traitor counted on--rather than endure his own reproach for cowardice he would be equal to the wild brazenness of flinging the avowal in the teeth of his a.s.sembled court. Her pulses began to pound in a furious dance as the same flash of intuition showed her the rock upon which the Gainer's audacious steering was going to wreck him.

For no skulking guilt was in the face of the new King of England as he met the startled glances, but instead a kind of savage joy that widened his nostrils and drew his lips away from his teeth in a terrible smile.

"Now much do I thank whatever G.o.d has moved you to open speech," he said, "for with every fibre of my body have I long wanted to requite you for that faithfulness. Knowing that you were coming to-night to ask it, I have the reward ready. Never was recompense given with a better will." Leaping to his feet, he hurled the goblet in his hand against the opposite wall so that it was shattered on the stone behind the embroidered hangings. At the signal the tapestry was lifted, and in the light stood Eric of Norway, leaning on a mighty battle-axe. To him the King cried in a loud voice, all the irony gone from it, leaving it awful as the voice of Thor at Ragnarok. "Do your work where all can see you, Eric Jarl, that no man shall accuse me of being afraid to bear my deeds.

And let Norman Leofwinesson die with his lord for the slaying of Frode of Avalcomb."