The prelude to the third act starts with a tune, in the folk-song
manner, sung by the wood-winds:
[Music]
As the curtain rises we find Ase, Aelfrida’s serving maid, singing
while she spins in the hall of Ordgar’s house, where Aethelwold is
living with his bride. Then comes a tense scene between Aelfrida
and Aethelwold, for she is fretted by her preoccupation with the
cares of the household, and not wholly content with a husband whose
unconfessed treachery must have caused him many sleepless nights.
Aethelwold accordingly plans that they shall leave Devon immediately,
and go to Ghent in Flanders where Aelfrida would henceforth go “in
sighing silk and gossamer and hooded in beaver-fell.” As they sing
farewell to Devon the orchestra commences a theme which is heard at
different times throughout the act, a melody of great beauty and
pathos:
[Music]
But it is too late, for the King is at that moment at the gates, come
on a friendly visit. Aethelwold confesses his deception to his wife:
“Yea, my child, ’tis true enough.
I lied to Eadgar,
Saying thou were little fair.
Oh, the good smack of truth on the tongue again,
After a winter of lies.”
He then bids Aelfrida help him keep up his deception to the King, and
to retire and dim her beauty:
“Go now, and darken thy cheek with the sap of the walnut,
And dust thy hair with the meal of the wheat,—
Be foul, be bent, be weatherèd,
And keep thy bower, that none may see thee,
But myself and the King!”
Aelfrida departs to do his bidding—or so Aethelwold thinks.
Eadgar and his men enter singing the folk-song of the first act. As
he greets Aethelwold, and asks to be taken to the bride, Aelfrida
suddenly appears in the doorway, in all her jewels, proud, beautiful
and splendid. Eadgar’s arm slowly drops from Aethelwold’s shoulders,
and the orchestra in a discordant crash sounds the pledge motive.
After Eadgar’s sorrowful rebuke, Aethelwold plunges his dagger into
his breast, and a brief threnody is spoken by the King. Then follows
the choral ending of the opera, with the King intoning his lament
against the chorus of retainers and woodsmen, and the orchestra
playing a passage, reminiscent of the “farewell to Devon” theme!—
[Music]
As the retainers lift the body of Aethelwold and bear it away, the
orchestra again plays the pledge motive, and the curtain falls.
[Music: Facsimile page from the manuscript orchestra score
“The King’s Henchman”—Act III]