CHAPTER I.

HAROLD

by Edward Bulwer Lytton

DEDICATORY EPISTLE

TO THE RIGHT HON. C. T. D’EYNCOURT, M.P.

I dedicate to you, my dear friend, a work, principally composed under

your hospitable roof; and to the materials of which your library, rich in

the authorities I most needed, largely contributed.

The idea of founding an historical romance on an event so important and

so national as the Norman Invasion, I had long entertained, and the

chronicles of that time had long been familiar to me. But it is an old

habit of mine, to linger over the plan and subject of a work, for years,

perhaps, before the work has, in truth, advanced a sentence; “busying

myself,” as old Burton saith, “with this playing labour--otiosaque

diligentia ut vitarem torporen feriendi.”

The main consideration which long withheld me from the task, was in my

sense of the unfamiliarity of the ordinary reader with the characters,

events, and, so to speak, with the very physiognomy of a period ante

Agamemnona; before the brilliant age of matured chivalry, which has given

to song and romance the deeds of the later knighthood, and the glorious

frenzy of the Crusades. The Norman Conquest was our Trojan War; an epoch

beyond which our learning seldom induces our imagination to ascend.

In venturing on ground so new to fiction, I saw before me the option of

apparent pedantry, in the obtrusion of such research as might carry the

reader along with the Author, fairly and truly into the real records of

the time; or of throwing aside pretensions to accuracy altogether;--and

so rest contented to turn history into flagrant romance, rather than

pursue my own conception of extracting its natural romance from the

actual history. Finally, not without some encouragement from you,

(whereof take your due share of blame!) I decided to hazard the attempt,

and to adopt that mode of treatment which, if making larger demand on the

attention of the reader, seemed the more complimentary to his judgment.

The age itself, once duly examined, is full of those elements which

should awaken interest, and appeal to the imagination. Not untruly has

Sismondi said, that the “Eleventh Century has a right to be considered a

great age. It was a period of life and of creation; all that there was

of noble, heroic, and vigorous in the Middle Ages commenced at that

epoch.” [1] But to us Englishmen in especial, besides the more animated

interest in that spirit of adventure, enterprise, and improvement, of

which the Norman chivalry was the noblest type, there is an interest more

touching and deep in those last glimpses of the old Saxon monarchy, which

open upon us in the mournful pages of our chroniclers.

I have sought in this work, less to portray mere manners, which modern

researches have rendered familiar to ordinary students in our history,

than to bring forward the great characters, so carelessly dismissed in

the long and loose record of centuries; to show more clearly the motives

and policy of the agents in an event the most memorable in Europe; and to

convey a definite, if general, notion of the human beings, whose brains

schemed, and whose hearts beat, in that realm of shadows which lies

behind the Norman Conquest;

“Spes hominum caecos, morbos, votumque, labores,

Et passim toto volitantes aethere curas.” [2]

I have thus been faithful to the leading historical incidents in the

grand tragedy of Harold, and as careful as contradictory evidences will

permit, both as to accuracy in the delineation of character, and

correctness in that chronological chain of dates without which there can

be no historical philosophy; that is, no tangible link between the cause

and the effect. The fictitious part of my narrative is, as in “Rienzi,”

and the “Last of the Barons,” confined chiefly to the private life, with

its domain of incident and passion, which is the legitimate appanage of

novelist or poet. The love story of Harold and Edith is told differently

from the well-known legend, which implies a less pure connection. But

the whole legend respecting the Edeva faira (Edith the fair) whose name

meets us in the “Domesday” roll, rests upon very slight authority

considering its popular acceptance [3]; and the reasons for my

alterations will be sufficiently obvious in a work intended not only for

general perusal, but which on many accounts, I hope, may be entrusted

fearlessly to the young; while those alterations are in strict accordance

with the spirit of the time, and tend to illustrate one of its most

marked peculiarities.

More apology is perhaps due for the liberal use to which I have applied

the superstitions of the age. But with the age itself those

superstitions are so interwoven--they meet us so constantly, whether in

the pages of our own chroniclers, or the records of the kindred

Scandinavians--they are so intruded into the very laws, so blended with

the very life, of our Saxon forefathers, that without employing them, in

somewhat of the same credulous spirit with which they were originally

conceived, no vivid impression of the People they influenced can be

conveyed. Not without truth has an Italian writer remarked, “that he who

would depict philosophically an unphilosophical age, should remember

that, to be familiar with children, one must sometimes think and feel as

a child.”

Yet it has not been my main endeavour to make these ghostly agencies

conducive to the ordinary poetical purposes of terror, and if that effect

be at all created by them, it will be, I apprehend, rather subsidiary to

the more historical sources of interest than, in itself, a leading or

popular characteristic of the work. My object, indeed, in the

introduction of the Danish Vala especially, has been perhaps as much

addressed to the reason as to the fancy, in showing what large, if dim,

remains of the ancient “heathenesse” still kept their ground on the Saxon

soil, contending with and contrasting the monkish superstitions, by which

they were ultimately replaced. Hilda is not in history; but without the

romantic impersonation of that which Hilda represents, the history of the

time would be imperfectly understood.

In the character of Harold--while I have carefully examined and weighed

the scanty evidences of its distinguishing attributes which are yet

preserved to us--and, in spite of no unnatural partiality, have not

concealed what appear to me its deficiencies, and still less the great

error of the life it illustrates,--I have attempted, somewhat and

slightly, to shadow out the ideal of the pure Saxon character, such as it

was then, with its large qualities undeveloped, but marked already by

patient endurance, love of justice, and freedom--the manly sense of duty

rather than the chivalric sentiment of honour--and that indestructible

element of practical purpose and courageous will, which, defying all

conquest, and steadfast in all peril, was ordained to achieve so vast an

influence over the destinies of the world.

To the Norman Duke, I believe, I have been as lenient as justice will

permit, though it is as impossible to deny his craft as to dispute his

genius; and so far as the scope of my work would allow, I trust that I

have indicated fairly the grand characteristics of his countrymen, more

truly chivalric than their lord. It has happened, unfortunately for that

illustrious race of men, that they have seemed to us, in England,

represented by the Anglo-Norman kings. The fierce and plotting William,

the vain and worthless Rufus, the cold-blooded and relentless Henry, are

no adequate representatives of the far nobler Norman vavasours, whom even

the English Chronicler admits to have been “kind masters,” and to whom,

in spite of their kings, the after liberties of England were so largely

indebted. But this work closes on the Field of Hastings; and in that

noble struggle for national independence, the sympathies of every true

son of the land, even if tracing his lineage back to the Norman victor,

must be on the side of the patriot Harold.

In the notes, which I have thought necessary aids to the better

comprehension of these volumes, my only wish has been to convey to the

general reader such illustrative information as may familiarise him more

easily with the subject-matter of the book, or refresh his memory on

incidental details not without a national interest. In the mere

references to authorities I do not pretend to arrogate to a fiction the

proper character of a history; the references are chiefly used either

where wishing pointedly to distinguish from invention what was borrowed

from a chronicle, or when differing from some popular historian to whom

the reader might be likely to refer, it seemed well to state the

authority upon which the difference was founded. [4]

In fact, my main object has been one that compelled me to admit graver

matter than is common in romance, but which I would fain hope may be

saved from the charge of dulness by some national sympathy between author

and reader; my object is attained, and attained only, if, in closing the

last page of this work, the reader shall find that, in spite of the

fictitious materials admitted, he has formed a clearer and more intimate

acquaintance with a time, heroic though remote, and characters which

ought to have a household interest to Englishmen, than the succinct

accounts of the mere historian could possibly afford him.

Thus, my dear D’Eyncourt, under cover of an address to yourself, have I

made to the Public those explanations which authors in general (and I not

the least so) are often overanxious to render.

This task done, my thoughts naturally fly back to the associations I

connected with your name when I placed it at the head of this epistle.

Again I seem to find myself under your friendly roof; again to greet my

provident host entering that gothic chamber in which I had been permitted

to establish my unsocial study, heralding the advent of majestic folios,

and heaping libraries round the unworthy work. Again, pausing from my

labour, I look through that castle casement, and beyond that feudal moat,

over the broad landscapes which, if I err not, took their name from the

proud brother of the Conqueror himself; or when, in those winter nights,

the grim old tapestry waved in the dim recesses, I hear again the Saxon

thegn winding his horn at the turret door, and demanding admittance to

the halls from which the prelate of Bayeux had so unrighteously expelled

him [5]--what marvel, that I lived in the times of which I wrote, Saxon

with the Saxon, Norman with the Norman--that I entered into no gossip

less venerable than that current at the Court of the Confessor, or

startled my fellow-guests (when I deigned to meet them) with the last

news which Harold’s spies had brought over from the Camp at St. Valery?

With all those folios, giants of the gone world, rising around me daily,

more and more, higher and higher--Ossa upon Pelion--on chair and table,

hearth and floor; invasive as Normans, indomitable as Saxons, and tall as

the tallest Danes (ruthless host, I behold them still!)--with all those

disburied spectres rampant in the chamber, all the armour rusting in thy

galleries, all those mutilated statues of early English kings (including

St. Edward himself)--niched into thy grey, ivied walls--say in thy

conscience, O host, (if indeed that conscience be not wholly callous!)

shall I ever return to the nineteenth century again?

But far beyond these recent associations of a single winter (for which

heaven assoil thee!) goes the memory of a friendship of many winters, and

proof to the storms of all. Often have I come for advice to your wisdom,

and sympathy to your heart, bearing back with me, in all such seasons,

new increase to that pleasurable gratitude which is, perhaps, the rarest,

nor the least happy sentiment, that experience leaves to man. Some

differences, it may be,--whether on those public questions which we see,

every day, alienating friendships that should have been beyond the reach

of laws and kings;--or on the more scholastic controversies which as

keenly interest the minds of educated men,--may at times deny to us the

idem velle, atque idem nolle; but the firma amicitia needs not those

common links; the sunshine does not leave the wave for the slight ripple

which the casual stone brings a moment to the surface.

Accept, in this dedication of a work which has lain so long on my mind,

and been endeared to me from many causes, the token of an affection for

you and yours, strong as the ties of kindred, and lasting as the belief

in truth. E. B. L.

PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION.

The author of an able and learned article on MABILLON [6] in the

“Edinburgh Review,” has accurately described my aim in this work;

although, with that generous courtesy which characterises the true

scholar, in referring to the labours of a contemporary, he has overrated

my success. It was indeed my aim “to solve the problem how to produce

the greatest amount of dramatic effect at the least expense of historical

truth”--I borrow the words of the Reviewer, since none other could so

tersely express my design, or so clearly account for the leading

characteristics in its conduct and completion.

There are two ways of employing the materials of History in the service

of Romance: the one consists in lending to ideal personages, and to an

imaginary fable, the additional interest to be derived from historical

groupings: the other, in extracting the main interest of romantic

narrative from History itself. Those who adopt the former mode are at

liberty to exclude all that does not contribute to theatrical effect or

picturesque composition; their fidelity to the period they select is

towards the manners and costume, not towards the precise order of events,

the moral causes from which the events proceeded, and the physical

agencies by which they were influenced and controlled. The plan thus

adopted is unquestionably the more popular and attractive, and, being

favoured by the most illustrious writers of historical romance, there is

presumptive reason for supposing it to be also that which is the more

agreeable to the art of fiction.

But he who wishes to avoid the ground pre-occupied by others, and claim

in the world of literature some spot, however humble, which he may

“plough with his own heifer,” will seek to establish himself not where

the land is the most fertile, but where it is the least enclosed. So,

when I first turned my attention to Historical Romance, my main aim was

to avoid as much as possible those fairer portions of the soil that had

been appropriated by the first discoverers. The great author of Ivanhoe,

and those amongst whom, abroad and at home, his mantle was divided, had

employed History to aid Romance; I contented myself with the humbler task

to employ Romance in the aid of History,--to extract from authentic but

neglected chronicles, and the unfrequented storehouse of Archaeology, the

incidents and details that enliven the dry narrative of facts to which

the general historian is confined,--construct my plot from the actual

events themselves, and place the staple of such interest as I could

create in reciting the struggles, and delineating the characters, of

those who had been the living actors in the real drama. For the main

materials of the three Historical Romances I have composed, I consulted

the original authorities of the time with a care as scrupulous, as if

intending to write, not a fiction but a history. And having formed the

best judgment I could of the events and characters of the age, I adhered

faithfully to what, as an Historian, I should have held to be the true

course and true causes of the great political events, and the essential

attributes of the principal agents. Solely in that inward life which,

not only as apart from the more public and historical, but which, as

almost wholly unknown, becomes the fair domain of the poet, did I claim

the legitimate privileges of fiction, and even here I employed the agency

of the passions only so far as they served to illustrate what I believed

to be the genuine natures of the beings who had actually lived, and to

restore the warmth of the human heart to the images recalled from the

grave.

Thus, even had I the gifts of my most illustrious predecessors, I should

be precluded the use of many of the more brilliant. I shut myself out

from the wider scope permitted to their fancy, and denied myself the

license to choose or select materials, alter dates, vary causes and

effects according to the convenience of that more imperial fiction which

invents the Probable where it discards the Real. The mode I have adopted

has perhaps only this merit, that it is my own--mine by discovery and

mine by labour. And if I can raise not the spirits that obeyed the great

master of romance, nor gain the key to the fairyland that opened to his

spell,--at least I have not rifled the tomb of the wizard to steal my art

from the book that lies clasped on his breast.

In treating of an age with which the general reader is so unfamiliar as

that preceding the Norman Conquest, it is impossible to avoid (especially

in the earlier portions of my tale) those explanations of the very

character of the time which would have been unnecessary if I had only

sought in History the picturesque accompaniments to Romance. I have to do

more than present an amusing picture of national manners--detail the

dress, and describe the banquet. According to the plan I adopt, I have

to make the reader acquainted with the imperfect fusion of races in Saxon

England, familiarise him with the contests of parties and the ambition of

chiefs, show him the strength and the weakness of a kindly but ignorant

church; of a brave but turbulent aristocracy; of a people partially free,

and naturally energetic, but disunited by successive immigrations, and

having lost much of the proud jealousies of national liberty by

submission to the preceding conquests of the Dane; acquiescent in the

sway of foreign kings, and with that bulwark against invasion which an

hereditary order of aristocracy usually erects, loosened to its very

foundations by the copious admixture of foreign nobles. I have to

present to the reader, here, the imbecile priestcraft of the illiterate

monk, there, the dark superstition that still consulted the deities of

the North by runes on the elm bark and adjurations of the dead. And in

contrast to those pictures of a decrepit monarchy and a fated race, I

have to bring forcibly before the reader the vigorous attributes of the

coming conquerors,--the stern will and deep guile of the Norman

chief--the comparative knowledge of the rising Norman Church--the nascent

spirit of chivalry in the Norman vavasours; a spirit destined to

emancipate the very people it contributed to enslave, associated, as it

imperfectly was, with the sense of freedom: disdainful, it is true, of

the villein, but proudly curbing, though into feudal limits, the

domination of the liege. In a word, I must place fully before the

reader, if I would be faithful to the plan of my work, the political and

moral features of the age, as well as its lighter and livelier

attributes, and so lead him to perceive, when he has closed the book, why

England was conquered, and how England survived the Conquest.

In accomplishing this task, I inevitably incur the objections which the

task itself raises up,--objections to the labour it has cost; to the

information which the labour was undertaken in order to bestow;

objections to passages which seem to interrupt the narrative, but which

in reality prepare for the incidents it embraces, or explain the position

of the persons whose characters it illustrates,--whose fate it involves;

objections to the reference to authorities, where a fact might be

disputed, or mistaken for fiction; objections to the use of Saxon words,

for which no accurate synonyms could be exchanged; objections, in short,

to the colouring, conduct, and composition of the whole work; objections

to all that separate it from the common crowd of Romances, and stamp on

it, for good or for bad, a character peculiarly its own. Objections of

this kind I cannot remove, though I have carefully weighed them all. And

with regard to the objection most important to story-teller and novel

reader--viz., the dryness of some of the earlier portions, though I have

thrice gone over those passages, with the stern determination to inflict

summary justice upon every unnecessary line, I must own to my regret that

I have found but little which it was possible to omit without rendering

the after narrative obscure, and without injuring whatever of more

stirring interest the story, as it opens, may afford to the general

reader of Romance.

As to the Saxon words used, an explanation of all those that can be

presumed unintelligible to a person of ordinary education, is given

either in the text or a foot-note. Such archaisms are much less numerous

than certain critics would fain represent them to be: and they have

rarely indeed been admitted where other words could have been employed

without a glaring anachronism, or a tedious periphrase. Would it indeed

be possible, for instance, to convey a notion of the customs and manners

of our Saxon forefathers without employing words so mixed up with their

daily usages and modes of thinking as “weregeld” and “niddering”? Would

any words from the modern vocabulary suggest the same idea, or embody the

same meaning?

One critic good-humouredly exclaims, “We have a full attendance of thegns

and cnehts, but we should have liked much better our old friends and

approved good masters thanes and knights.” Nothing could be more

apposite for my justification than the instances here quoted in censure;

nothing could more plainly vindicate the necessity of employing the Saxon

words. For I should sadly indeed have misled the reader if I had used

the word knight in an age when knights were wholly unknown to the

Anglo-Saxon and cneht no more means what we understand by knight, than a

templar in modern phrase means a man in chain mail vowed to celibacy, and

the redemption of the Holy Sepulchre from the hands of the Mussulman.

While, since thegn and thane are both archaisms, I prefer the former; not

only for the same reason that induces Sir Francis Palgrave to prefer it,

viz., because it is the more etymologically correct; but because we take

from our neighbours the Scotch, not only the word thane, but the sense in

which we apply it; and that sense is not the same that we ought to attach

to the various and complicated notions of nobility which the Anglo-Saxon

comprehended in the title of thegn. It has been peremptorily said by

more than one writer in periodicals, that I have overrated the erudition

of William, in permitting him to know Latin; nay, to have read the

Comments of Caesar at the age of eight.--Where these gentlemen find the

authorities to confute my statement I know not; all I know is, that in

the statement I have followed the original authorities usually deemed the

best. And I content myself with referring the disputants to a work not

so difficult to procure as (and certainly more pleasant to read than) the

old Chronicles. In Miss Strickland’s “Lives of the Queens of England,”

(Matilda of Flanders,) the same statement is made, and no doubt upon the

same authorities.

More surprised should I be (if modern criticism had not taught me in all

matter’s of assumption the nil admirari), to find it alleged that I have

overstated not only the learning of the Norman duke, but that which

flourished in Normandy under his reign; for I should have thought that

the fact of the learning which sprung up in the most thriving period of

that principality; the rapidity of its growth; the benefits it derived

from Lanfranc; the encouragement it received from William, had been

phenomena too remarkable in the annals of the age, and in the history of

literature, to have met with an incredulity which the most moderate

amount of information would have sufficed to dispel. Not to refer such

sceptics to graver authorities, historical and ecclesiastical, in order

to justify my representations of that learning which, under William the

Bastard, made the schools of Normandy the popular academies of Europe, a

page or two in a book so accessible as Villemain’s “Tableau du Moyen

Age,” will perhaps suffice to convince them of the hastiness of their

censure, and the error of their impressions.

It is stated in the Athenaeum, and, I believe, by a writer whose

authority on the merits of opera singers I am far from contesting but of

whose competence to instruct the world in any other department of human

industry or knowledge I am less persuaded, “that I am much mistaken when

I represent not merely the clergy but the young soldiers and courtiers of

the reign of the Confessor, as well acquainted with the literature of

Greece and Rome.”

The remark, to say the least of it, is disingenuous. I have done no such

thing. This general animadversion is only justified by a reference to

the pedantry of the Norman Mallet de Graville--and it is expressly stated

in the text that Mallet de Graville was originally intended for the

Church, and that it was the peculiarity of his literary information, rare

in a soldier (but for which his earlier studies for the ecclesiastical

calling readily account, at a time when the Norman convent of Bec was

already so famous for the erudition of its teachers, and the number of

its scholars,) that attracted towards him the notice of Lanfranc, and

founded his fortunes. Pedantry is made one of his characteristics (as it

generally was the characteristic of any man with some pretensions to

scholarship, in the earlier ages;) and if he indulges in a classical

allusion, whether in taunting a courtier or conversing with a “Saxon from

the wealds of Kent,” it is no more out of keeping with the pedantry

ascribed to him, than it is unnatural in Dominie Sampson to rail at Meg

Merrilies in Latin, or James the First to examine a young courtier in the

same unfamiliar language. Nor should the critic in question, when

inviting his readers to condemn me for making Mallet de Graville quote

Horace, have omitted to state that de Graville expressly laments that he

had never read, nor could even procure, a copy of the Roman poet--judging

only of the merits of Horace by an extract in some monkish author, who

was equally likely to have picked up his quotation second-hand.

So, when a reference is made either by Graville, or by any one else in

the romance, to Homeric fables and personages, a critic who had gone

through the ordinary education of an English gentleman would never

thereby have assumed that the person so referring had read the poems of

Homer themselves--he would have known that Homeric fables, or personages,

though not the Homeric poems, were made familiar, by quaint travesties

[7], even to the most illiterate audience of the gothic age. It was

scarcely more necessary to know Homer then than now, in order to have

heard of Ulysses. The writer in the Athenaeum is acquainted with Homeric

personages, but who on earth would ever presume to assert that he is

acquainted with Homer?

Some doubt has been thrown upon my accuracy in ascribing to the

Anglo-Saxon the enjoyments of certain luxuries (gold and silver

plate--the use of glass, etc.), which were extremely rare in an age much

more recent. There is no ground for that doubt; nor is there a single

article of such luxury named in the text, for the mention of which I have

not ample authority.

I have indeed devoted to this work a degree of research which, if unusual

to romance, I cannot consider superfluous when illustrating an age so

remote, and events unparalleled in their influence over the destinies of

England. Nor am I without the hope, that what the romance-reader at

first regards as a defect, he may ultimately acknowledge as a

merit;--forgiving me that strain on his attention by which alone I could

leave distinct in his memory the action and the actors in that solemn

tragedy which closed on the field of Hastings, over the corpse of the

Last Saxon King.

CONTENTS

BOOK FIRST

The Norman Visitor, the Saxon King, and the Danish Prophetess

BOOK SECOND

Lanfranc the Scholar

BOOK THIRD

The House of Godwin

BOOK FOURTH

The Heathen Altar and the Saxon Church

BOOK FIFTH

Death and Love

BOOK SIXTH

Ambition

BOOK SEVENTH

The Welch King

BOOK EIGHTH

Fate

BOOK NINTH

The Bones of the Dead

BOOK TENTH

The Sacrifice on the Altar

BOOK ELEVENTH

The Norman Schemer, and the Norwegian Sea-king

BOOK TWELFTH

The Battle of Hastings

HAROLD, THE LAST OF THE SAXON KINGS

by Edward Bulwer Lytton

BOOK I.

THE NORMAN VISITOR, THE SAXON KING, AND THE DANISH PROPHETESS.

CHAPTER I.

Merry was the month of May in the year of our Lord 1052. Few were the

boys, and few the lasses, who overslept themselves on the first of that

buxom month. Long ere the dawn, the crowds had sought mead and woodland,

to cut poles and wreathe flowers. Many a mead then lay fair and green

beyond the village of Charing, and behind the isle of Thorney, (amidst

the brakes and briars of which were then rising fast and fair the Hall

and Abbey of Westminster;) many a wood lay dark in the starlight, along

the higher ground that sloped from the dank Strand, with its numerous

canals or dykes;--and on either side of the great road into Kent:--flutes

and horns sounded far and near through the green places, and laughter and

song, and the crash of breaking boughs.

As the dawn came grey up the east, arch and blooming faces bowed down to

bathe in the May dew. Patient oxen stood dozing by the hedge-rows, all

fragrant with blossoms, till the gay spoilers of the May came forth from

the woods with lusty poles, followed by girls with laps full of flowers,

which they had caught asleep. The poles were pranked with nosegays, and

a chaplet was hung round the horns of every ox. Then towards daybreak,

the processions streamed back into the city, through all its gates; boys

with their May-gads (peeled willow wands twined with cowslips) going

before; and clear through the lively din of the horns and flutes, and

amidst the moving grove of branches, choral voices, singing some early

Saxon stave, precursor of the later song--

“We have brought the summer home.”

Often in the good old days before the Monk-king reigned, kings and

ealdermen had thus gone forth a-maying; but these merriments, savouring

of heathenesse, that good prince misliked: nevertheless the song was as

blithe, and the boughs were as green, as if king and ealderman had walked

in the train.

On the great Kent road, the fairest meads for the cowslip, and the

greenest woods for the bough, surrounded a large building that once had

belonged to some voluptuous Roman, now all defaced and despoiled; but the

boys and the lasses shunned those demesnes; and even in their mirth, as

they passed homeward along the road, and saw near the ruined walls, and

timbered outbuildings, grey Druid stones (that spoke of an age before

either Saxon or Roman invader) gleaming through the dawn--the song was

hushed--the very youngest crossed themselves; and the elder, in solemn

whispers, suggested the precaution of changing the song into a psalm.

For in that old building dwelt Hilda, of famous and dark repute; Hilda,

who, despite all law and canon, was still believed to practise the dismal

arts of the Wicca and Morthwyrtha (the witch and worshipper of the dead).

But once out of sight of those fearful precincts, the psalm was

forgotten, and again broke, loud, clear, and silvery, the joyous chorus.

So, entering London about sunrise, doors and windows were duly wreathed

with garlands; and every village in the suburbs had its May-pole, which

stood in its place all the year. On that happy day labour rested; ceorl

and theowe had alike a holiday to dance, and tumble round the May-pole;

and thus, on the first of May--Youth, and Mirth, and Music, “brought the

summer home.”

The next day you might still see where the buxom bands had been; you

might track their way by fallen flowers, and green leaves, and the deep

ruts made by oxen (yoked often in teams from twenty to forty, in the

wains that carried home the poles); and fair and frequent throughout the

land, from any eminence, you might behold the hamlet swards still crowned

with the May trees, and air still seemed fragrant with their garlands.

It is on that second day of May, 1052, that my story opens, at the House

of Hilda, the reputed Morthwyrtha. It stood upon a gentle and verdant

height; and, even through all the barbarous mutilation it had undergone

from barbarian hands, enough was left strikingly to contrast the ordinary

abodes of the Saxon.

The remains of Roman art were indeed still numerous throughout England,

but it happened rarely that the Saxon had chosen his home amidst the

villas of those noble and primal conquerors. Our first forefathers were

more inclined to destroy than to adapt.

By what chance this building became an exception to the ordinary rule, it

is now impossible to conjecture, but from a very remote period it had

sheltered successive races of Teuton lords.

The changes wrought in the edifice were mournful and grotesque. What was

now the Hall, had evidently been the atrium; the round shield, with its

pointed boss, the spear, sword, and small curved saex of the early

Teuton, were suspended from the columns on which once had been wreathed

the flowers; in the centre of the floor, where fragments of the old

mosaic still glistened from the hard-pressed paving of clay and lime,

what now was the fire-place had been the impluvium, and the smoke went

sullenly through the aperture in the roof, made of old to receive the

rains of heaven. Around the Hall were still left the old cubicula or

dormitories, (small, high, and lighted but from the doors,) which now

served for the sleeping-rooms of the humbler guest or the household

servant; while at the farther end of the Hall, the wide space between the

columns, which had once given ample vista from graceful awnings into

tablinum and viridarium, was filled up with rude rubble and Roman bricks,

leaving but a low, round, arched door, that still led into the tablinum.

But that tablinum, formerly the gayest state-room of the Roman lord, was

now filled with various lumber, piles of faggots, and farming utensils.

On either side of this desecrated apartment, stretched, to the right, the

old lararium, stripped of its ancient images of ancestor and god; to the

left, what had been the gynoecium (women’s apartment).

One side of the ancient peristyle, which was of vast extent, was now

converted into stabling, sties for swine, and stalls for oxen. On the

other side was constructed a Christian chapel, made of rough oak planks,

fastened by plates at the top, and with a roof of thatched reeds. The

columns and wall at the extreme end of the peristyle were a mass of

ruins, through the gigantic rents of which loomed a grassy hillock, its

sides partially covered with clumps of furze. On this hillock were the

mutilated remains of an ancient Druidical crommel, in the centre of which

(near a funeral mound, or barrow, with the bautastean, or gravestone, of

some early Saxon chief at one end) had been sacrilegiously placed an

altar to Thor, as was apparent both from the shape, from a rude,

half-obliterated, sculptured relief of the god, with his lifted hammer,

and a few Runic letters. Amidst the temple of the Briton the Saxon had

reared the shrine of his triumphant war-god.

Now still, amidst the ruins of that extreme side of the peristyle which

opened to this hillock were left, first, an ancient Roman fountain, that

now served to water the swine, and next, a small sacellum, or fane to

Bacchus (as relief and frieze, yet spared, betokened): thus the eye, at

one survey, beheld the shrines of four creeds: the Druid, mystical and

symbolical; the Roman, sensual, but humane; the Teutonic, ruthless and

destroying; and, latest riser and surviving all, though as yet with but

little of its gentler influence over the deeds of men, the edifice of the

Faith of Peace.

Across the peristyle, theowes and swineherds passed to and fro:--in the

atrium, men of a higher class, half-armed, were, some drinking, some at

dice, some playing with huge hounds, or caressing the hawks that stood

grave and solemn on their perches.

The lararium was deserted; the gynoecium was still, as in the Roman time,

the favoured apartment of the female portion of the household, and indeed

bore the same name [8], and with the group there assembled we have now to

do.

The appliances of the chamber showed the rank and wealth of the owner. At

that period the domestic luxury of the rich was infinitely greater than

has been generally supposed. The industry of the women decorated wall

and furniture with needlework and hangings: and as a thegn forfeited his

rank if he lost his lands, so the higher orders of an aristocracy rather

of wealth than birth had, usually, a certain portion of superfluous

riches, which served to flow towards the bazaars of the East and the

nearer markets of Flanders and Saracenic Spain.

In this room the walls were draped with silken hangings richly

embroidered. The single window was glazed with a dull grey glass [9]. On

a beaufet were ranged horns tipped with silver, and a few vessels of pure

gold. A small circular table in the centre was supported by symbolical

monsters quaintly carved. At one side of the wall, on a long settle,

some half-a-dozen handmaids were employed in spinning; remote from them,

and near the window, sat a woman advanced in years, and of a mien and

aspect singularly majestic. Upon a small tripod before her was a Runic

manuscript, and an inkstand of elegant form, with a silver graphium, or

pen. At her feet reclined a girl somewhat about the age of sixteen, her

long hair parted across her forehead and falling far down her shoulders.

Her dress was a linen under-tunic, with long sleeves, rising high to the

throat, and without one of the modern artificial restraints of the shape,

the simple belt sufficed to show the slender proportions and delicate

outline of the wearer. The colour of the dress was of the purest white,

but its hems, or borders, were richly embroidered. This girl’s beauty

was something marvellous. In a land proverbial for fair women, it had

already obtained her the name of “the fair.” In that beauty were

blended, not as yet without a struggle for mastery, the two expressions

seldom united in one countenance, the soft and the noble; indeed in the

whole aspect there was the evidence of some internal struggle; the

intelligence was not yet complete; the soul and heart were not yet

united: and Edith the Christian maid dwelt in the home of Hilda the

heathen prophetess. The girl’s blue eyes, rendered dark by the shade of

their long lashes, were fixed intently upon the stern and troubled

countenance which was bent upon her own, but bent with that abstract gaze

which shows that the soul is absent from the sight. So sate Hilda, and

so reclined her grandchild Edith.

“Grandam,” said the girl in a low voice and after a long pause; and the

sound of her voice so startled the handmaids, that every spindle stopped

for a moment and then plied with renewed activity; “Grandam, what

troubles you--are you not thinking of the great Earl and his fair sons,

now outlawed far over the wide seas?”

As the girl spoke, Hilda started slightly, like one awakened from a

dream; and when Edith had concluded her question, she rose slowly to the

height of a statue, unbowed by her years, and far towering above even the

ordinary standard of men; and turning from the child, her eye fell upon

the row of silent maids, each at her rapid, noiseless, stealthy work.

“Ho!” said she; her cold and haughty eye gleaming as she spoke;

“yesterday they brought home the summer--to-day, ye aid to bring home the

winter. Weave well--heed well warf and woof; Skulda [10] is amongst ye,

and her pale fingers guide the web!”

The maidens lifted not their eyes, though in every cheek the colour paled

at the words of the mistress. The spindles revolved, the thread shot,

and again there was silence more freezing than before.

“Askest thou,” said Hilda at length, passing to the child, as if the

question so long addressed to her ear had only just reached her mind;

“askest thou if I thought of the Earl and his fair sons?--yea, I heard

the smith welding arms on the anvil, and the hammer of the shipwright

shaping strong ribs for the horses of the sea. Ere the reaper has bound

his sheaves, Earl Godwin will scare the Normans in the halls of the

Monk-king, as the hawk scares the brood in the dovecot. Weave well, heed

well warf and woof, nimble maidens--strong be the texture, for biting is

the worm.”

“What weave they, then, good grandmother?” asked the girl, with wonder

and awe in her soft mild eyes.

“The winding-sheet of the great!”

Hilda’s lips closed, but her eyes, yet brighter than before, gazed upon

space, and her pale hand seemed tracing letters, like runes, in the air.

Then slowly she turned, and looked forth through the dull window. “Give

me my coverchief and my staff,” said she quickly.

Every one of the handmaids, blithe for excuse to quit a task which seemed

recently commenced, and was certainly not endeared to them by the

knowledge of its purpose communicated to them by the lady, rose to obey.

Unheeding the hands that vied with each other, Hilda took the hood, and

drew it partially over her brow. Leaning lightly on a long staff, the

head of which formed a raven, carved from some wood stained black, she

passed into the hall, and thence through the desecrated tablinum, into

the mighty court formed by the shattered peristyle; there she stopped,

mused a moment, and called on Edith. The girl was soon by her side.

“Come with me.--There is a face you shall see but twice in life;--this

day,”--and Hilda paused, and the rigid and almost colossal beauty of her

countenance softened.

“And when again, my grandmother?”

“Child, put thy warm hand in mine. So! the vision darkens from me.--when

again, saidst thou, Edith?--alas, I know not.”

While thus speaking, Hilda passed slowly by the Roman fountain and the

heathen fane, and ascended the little hillock. There on the opposite

side of the summit, backed by the Druid crommel and the Teuton altar, she

seated herself deliberately on the sward.

A few daisies, primroses, and cowslips, grew around; these Edith began to

pluck. Singing, as she wove, a simple song, that, not more by the

dialect than the sentiment, betrayed its origin in the ballad of the

Norse [11], which had, in its more careless composition, a character

quite distinct from the artificial poetry of the Saxons. The song may be

thus imperfectly rendered:

“Merrily the throstle sings

Amid the merry May;

The throstle signs but to my ear;

My heart is far away!

Blithely bloometh mead and bank;

And blithely buds the tree;

And hark!--they bring the Summer home;

It has no home with me!

They have outlawed him--my Summer!

An outlaw far away!

The birds may sing, the flowers may bloom,

O, give me back my May!”

As she came to the last line, her soft low voice seemed to awaken a

chorus of sprightly horns and trumpets, and certain other wind

instruments peculiar to the music of that day. The hillock bordered the

high road to London--which then wound through wastes of forest land--and

now emerging from the trees to the left appeared a goodly company. First

came two riders abreast, each holding a banner. On the one was depicted

the cross and five martlets, the device of Edward, afterwards surnamed

the Confessor: on the other, a plain broad cross with a deep border round

it, and the streamer shaped into sharp points.

The first was familiar to Edith, who dropped her garland to gaze on the

approaching pageant; the last was strange to her. She had been

accustomed to see the banner of the great Earl Godwin by the side of the

Saxon king; and she said, almost indignantly,--

“Who dares, sweet grandam, to place banner or pennon where Earl Godwin’s

ought to float?”

“Peace,” said Hilda, “peace and look.”

Immediately behind the standard-bearers came two figures--strangely

dissimilar indeed in mien, in years, in bearing: each bore on his left

wrist a hawk. The one was mounted on a milk-white palfrey, with housings

inlaid with gold and uncut jewels. Though not really old--for he was

much on this side of sixty--both his countenance and carriage evinced

age. His complexion, indeed, was extremely fair, and his cheeks ruddy;

but the visage was long and deeply furrowed, and from beneath a bonnet

not dissimilar to those in use among the Scotch, streamed hair long and

white as snow, mingling with a large and forked beard. White seemed his

chosen colour. White was the upper tunic clasped on his shoulder with a

broad ouche or brooch; white the woollen leggings fitted to somewhat

emaciated limbs; and white the mantle, though broidered with a broad hem

of gold and purple. The fashion of his dress was that which well became

a noble person, but it suited ill the somewhat frail and graceless figure

of the rider. Nevertheless, as Edith saw him, she rose, with an

expression of deep reverence on her countenance, and saying, “it is our

lord the King,” advanced some steps down the hillock, and there stood,

her arms folded on her breast, and quite forgetful, in her innocence and

youth, that she had left the house without the cloak and coverchief which

were deemed indispensable to the fitting appearance of maid and matron

when they were seen abroad.

“Fair sir, and brother mine,” said the deep voice of the younger rider,

in the Romance or Norman tongue, “I have heard that the small people of

whom my neighbours, the Breton tell us much, abound greatly in this fair

land of yours; and if I were not by the side of one whom no creature

unassoilzed and unbaptised dare approach, by sweet St. Valery I should

say--yonder stands one of those same gentilles fees!”

King Edward’s eye followed the direction of his companion’s outstretched

hand, and his quiet brow slightly contracted as he beheld the young form

of Edith standing motionless a few yards before him, with the warm May

wind lifting and playing with her long golden locks. He checked his

palfrey, and murmured some Latin words which the knight beside him

recognised as a prayer, and to which, doffing his cap, he added an Amen,

in a tone of such unctuous gravity, that the royal saint rewarded him

with a faint approving smile, and an affectionate “Bene vene,

Piosissime.”

Then inclining his palfrey’s head towards the knoll, he motioned to the

girl to approach him. Edith, with a heightened colour, obeyed, and came

to the roadside. The standard-bearers halted, as did the king and his

comrade--the procession behind halted--thirty knights, two bishops, eight

abbots, all on fiery steeds and in Norman garb--squires and attendants on

foot--a long and pompous retinue--they halted all. Only a stray hound or

two broke from the rest, and wandered into the forest land with heads

trailing.

“Edith, my child,” said Edward, still in Norman-French, for he spoke his

own language with hesitation, and the Romance tongue, which had long been

familiar to the higher classes in England, had, since his accession,

become the only language in use at court, and as such every one of

‘Eorl-kind’ was supposed to speak it;--“Edith, my child, thou hast not

forgotten my lessons, I trow; thou singest the hymns I gave thee, and

neglectest not to wear the relic round thy neck.”

The girl hung her head, and spoke not.

“How comes it, then,” continued the King, with a voice to which he in

vain endeavoured to impart an accent of severity, “how comes it, O little

one, that thou, whose thoughts should be lifted already above this carnal

world, and eager for the service of Mary the chaste and blessed, standest

thus hoodless and alone on the waysides, a mark for the eyes of men? go

to, it is naught.”

Thus reproved, and in presence of so large and brilliant a company, the

girl’s colour went and came, her breast heaved high, but with an effort

beyond her age she checked her tears, and said meekly, “My grandmother,

Hilda, bade me come with her, and I came.”

“Hilda!” said the King, backing his palfrey with apparent perturbation,

“but Hilda is not with thee; I see her not.”

As he spoke, Hilda rose, and so suddenly did her tall form appear on the

brow of the hill, that it seemed as if she had emerged from the earth.

With a light and rapid stride she gained the side of her grandchild; and

after a slight and haughty reverence, said, “Hilda is here; what wants

Edward the King with his servant Hilda?”

“Nought, nought,” said the King, hastily; and something like fear passed

over his placid countenance; “save, indeed,” he added, with a reluctant

tone, as that of a man who obeys his conscience against his inclination,

“that I would pray thee to keep this child pure to threshold and altar,

as is meet for one whom our Lady, the Virgin, in due time, will elect to

her service.”

“Not so, son of Etheldred, son of Woden, the last descendant of Penda

should live, not to glide a ghost amidst cloisters, but to rock children

for war in their father’s shield. Few men are there yet like the men of

old; and while the foot of the foreigner is on the Saxon soil no branch

of the stem of Woden should be nipped in the leaf.”

“Per la resplendar De [12], bold dame,” cried the knight by the side of

Edward, while a lurid flush passed over his cheek of bronze; “but thou

art too glib of tongue for a subject, and pratest overmuch of Woden, the

Paynim, for the lips of a Christian matron.”

Hilda met the flashing eye of the knight with a brow of lofty scorn, on

which still a certain terror was visible. “Child,” she said, putting her

hand upon Edith’s fair locks; “this is the man thou shalt see but twice

in thy life;--look up, and mark well!”

Edith instinctively raised her eyes, and, once fixed upon the knight,

they seemed chained as by a spell. His vest, of a cramoisay so dark,

that it seemed black beside the snowy garb of the Confessor, was edged by

a deep band of embroidered gold; leaving perfectly bare his firm, full

throat--firm and full as a column of granite,--a short jacket or

manteline of fur, pendant from the shoulders, left developed in all its

breadth a breast, that seemed meet to stay the march of an army; and on

the left arm, curved to support the falcon, the vast muscles rose, round

and gnarled, through the close sleeve.

In height, he was really but little above the stature of many of those

present; nevertheless, so did his port [13], his air, the nobility of his

large proportions, fill the eye, that he seemed to tower immeasurably

above the rest.

His countenance was yet more remarkable than his form; still in the prime

of youth, he seemed at the first glance younger, at the second older,

than he was. At the first glance younger; for his face was perfectly

shaven, without even the moustache which the Saxon courtier, in imitating

the Norman, still declined to surrender; and the smooth visage and bare

throat sufficed in themselves to give the air of youth to that dominant

and imperious presence. His small skull-cap left unconcealed his

forehead, shaded with short thick hair, uncurled, but black and glossy as

the wings of a raven. It was on that forehead that time had set its

trace; it was knit into a frown over the eyebrows; lines deep as furrows

crossed its broad, but not elevated expanse. That frown spoke of hasty

ire and the habit of stern command; those furrows spoke of deep thought

and plotting scheme; the one betrayed but temper and circumstance; the

other, more noble, spoke of the character and the intellect. The face

was square, and the regard lion-like; the mouth--small, and even

beautiful in outline--had a sinister expression in its exceeding

firmness; and the jaw--vast, solid, as if bound in iron--showed

obstinate, ruthless, determined will; such a jaw as belongs to the tiger

amongst beasts, and the conqueror amongst men; such as it is seen in the

effigies of Caesar, of Cortes, of Napoleon.

That presence was well calculated to command the admiration of women, not

less than the awe of men. But no admiration mingled with the terror that

seized the girl as she gazed long and wistful upon the knight. The

fascination of the serpent on the bird held her mute and frozen. Never

was that face forgotten; often in after-life it haunted her in the

noon-day, it frowned upon her dreams.

“Fair child,” said the knight, fatigued at length by the obstinacy of the

gaze, while that smile peculiar to those who have commanded men relaxed

his brow, and restored the native beauty to his lip, “fair child, learn

not from thy peevish grandam so uncourteous a lesson as hate of the

foreigner. As thou growest into womanhood, know that Norman knight is

sworn slave to lady fair;” and, doffing his cap, he took from it an uncut

jewel, set in Byzantine filigree work. “Hold out thy lap, my child; and

when thou nearest the foreigner scoffed, set this bauble in thy locks,

and think kindly of William, Count of the Normans.” [14]

He dropped the jewel on the ground as he spoke; for Edith, shrinking and

unsoftened towards him, held no lap to receive it; and Hilda, to whom

Edward had been speaking in a low voice, advanced to the spot and struck

the jewel with her staff under the hoofs of the king’s palfrey.

“Son of Emma, the Norman woman, who sent thy youth into exile, trample on

the gifts of thy Norman kinsman. And if, as men say, thou art of such

gifted holiness that Heaven grants thy hand the power to heal, and thy

voice the power to curse, heal thy country, and curse the stranger!”

She extended her right arm to William as she spoke, and such was the

dignity of her passion, and such its force, that an awe fell upon all.

Then dropping her hood over her face, she slowly turned away, regained

the summit of the knoll, and stood erect beside the altar of the Northern

god, her face invisible through the hood drawn completely over it, and

her form motionless as a statue.

“Ride on,” said Edward, crossing himself.

“Now by the bones of St. Valery,” said William, after a pause, in which

his dark keen eye noted the gloom upon the King’s gentle face, “it moves

much my simple wonder how even presence so saintly can hear without wrath

words so unleal and foul. Gramercy, an the proudest dame in Normandy

(and I take her to be wife to my stoutest baron, William Fitzosborne) had

spoken thus to me--”

“Thou wouldst have done as I, my brother,” interrupted Edward; “prayed to

our Lord to pardon her, and rode on pitying.”

William’s lip quivered with ire, yet he curbed the reply that sprang to

it, and he looked with affection genuinely more akin to admiration than

scorn, upon his fellow-prince. For, fierce and relentless as the Duke’s

deeds were, his faith was notably sincere; and while this made, indeed,

the prince’s chief attraction to the pious Edward, so, on the other hand,

this bowed the Duke in a kind of involuntary and superstitious homage to

the man who sought to square deeds to faith. It is ever the case with

stern and stormy spirits, that the meek ones which contrast them steal

strangely into their affections. This principle of human nature can

alone account for the enthusiastic devotion which the mild sufferings of

the Saviour awoke in the fiercest exterminators of the North. In

proportion, often, to the warrior’s ferocity, was his love to that Divine

model, at whose sufferings he wept, to whose tomb he wandered barefoot,

and whose example of compassionate forgiveness he would have thought

himself the basest of men to follow!

“Now, by my halidame, I honour and love thee, Edward,” cried the Duke,

with a heartiness more frank than was usual to him: “and were I thy

subject, woe to man or woman that wagged tongue to wound thee by a

breath. But who and what is this same Hilda? one of thy kith and

kin?--surely not less than kingly blood runs so bold?”

“William, bien aime,” [15] said the King, “it is true that Hilda, whom

the saints assoil, is of kingly blood, though not of our kingly line. It

is feared,” added Edward, in a timid whisper, as he cast a hurried glance

around him, “that this unhappy woman has ever been more addicted to the

rites of her pagan ancestors than to those of Holy Church; and men do say

that she hath thus acquired from fiend or charm secrets devoutly to be

eschewed by the righteous. Nathless, let us rather hope that her mind is

somewhat distraught with her misfortunes.”

The King sighed, and the Duke sighed too, but the Duke’s sigh spoke

impatience. He swept behind him a stern and withering look towards the

proud figure of Hilda, still seen through the glades, and said in a

sinister voice: “Of kingly blood; but this witch of Woden hath no sons or

kinsmen, I trust, who pretend to the throne of the Saxon:”

“She is sibbe to Githa, wife of Godwin,” answered the King, “and that is

her most perilous connection; for the banished Earl, as thou knowest, did

not pretend to fill the throne, but he was content with nought less than

governing our people.”

The King then proceeded to sketch an outline of the history of Hilda, but

his narrative was so deformed both by his superstitions and prejudices,

and his imperfect information in all the leading events and characters in

his own kingdom, that we will venture to take upon ourselves his task;

and while the train ride on through glade and mead, we will briefly

narrate, from our own special sources of knowledge, the chronicle of

Hilda, the Scandinavian Vala.

CHAPTER II.

A magnificent race of men were those war sons of the old North, whom our

popular histories, so superficial in their accounts of this age, include

in the common name of the “Danes.” They replunged into barbarism the

nations over which they swept; but from that barbarism they reproduced

the noblest elements of civilisation. Swede, Norwegian, and Dane,

differing in some minor points, when closely examined, had yet one common

character viewed at a distance. They had the same prodigious energy, the

same passion for freedom, individual and civil, the same splendid errors

in the thirst for fame and the “point of honour;” and above all, as a

main cause of civilisation, they were wonderfully pliant and malleable in

their admixtures with the peoples they overran. This is their true

distinction from the stubborn Celt, who refuses to mingle, and disdains

to improve.

Frankes, the archbishop, baptised Rolf-ganger [16]: and within a little

more than a century afterwards, the descendants of those terrible

heathens who had spared neither priest nor altar, were the most

redoubtable defenders of the Christian Church; their old language

forgotten (save by a few in the town of Bayeux), their ancestral names

[17] (save among a few of the noblest) changed into French titles, and

little else but the indomitable valour of the Scandinavian remained

unaltered amongst the arts and manners of the Frankish-Norman.

In like manner their kindred tribes, who had poured into Saxon England to

ravage and lay desolate, had no sooner obtained from Alfred the Great

permanent homes, than they became perhaps the most powerful, and in a

short time not the least patriotic, part of the Anglo-Saxon population

[18]. At the time our story opens, these Northmen, under the common name

of Danes, were peaceably settled in no less than fifteen [19] counties in

England; their nobles abounded in towns and cities beyond the boundaries

of those counties which bore the distinct appellation of Danelagh. They

were numerous in London: in the precincts of which they had their own

burial-place, to the chief municipal court of which they gave their own

appellation--the Hustings [20]. Their power in the national assembly of

the Witan had decided the choice of kings. Thus, with some differences

of law and dialect, these once turbulent invaders had amalgamated

amicably with the native race [21]. And to this day, the gentry,

traders, and farmers of more than one-third of England, and in those

counties most confessed to be in the van of improvement, descend from

Saxon mothers indeed, but from Viking fathers. There was in reality

little difference in race between the Norman knight of the time of Henry

I. and the Saxon franklin of Norfolk and York. Both on the mother’s side

would most probably have been Saxon, both on the father’s would have

traced to the Scandinavian.

But though this character of adaptability was general, exceptions in some

points were necessarily found, and these were obstinate in proportion to

the adherence to the old pagan faith, or the sincere conversion to

Christianity. The Norwegian chronicles, and passages in our own history,

show how false and hollow was the assumed Christianity of many of these

fierce Odin-worshippers. They willingly enough accepted the outward sign

of baptism, but the holy water changed little of the inner man. Even

Harold, the son of Canute, scarce seventeen years before the date we have

now entered, being unable to obtain from the Archbishop of

Canterbury--who had espoused the cause of his brother Hardicanute--the

consecrating benediction, lived and reigned as one who had abjured

Christianity. [22]

The priests, especially on the Scandinavian continent, were often forced

to compound with their grim converts, by indulgence to certain habits,

such as indiscriminate polygamy. To eat horse-flesh in honour of Odin,

and to marry wives ad libitum, were the main stipulations of the

neophytes. And the puzzled monks, often driven to a choice, yielded the

point of the wives, but stood firm on the graver article of the

horse-flesh.

With their new religion, very imperfectly understood, even when genuinely

received, they retained all that host of heathen superstition which knits

itself with the most obstinate instincts in the human breast. Not many

years before the reign of the Confessor, the laws of the great Canute

against witchcraft and charms, the worship of stones, fountains, runes by

ash and elm, and the incantations that do homage to the dead, were

obviously rather intended to apply to the recent Danish converts, than to

the Anglo-Saxons, already subjugated for centuries, body and soul, to the

domination of the Christian monks.

Hilda, a daughter of the royalty of Denmark, and cousin to Githa (niece

to Canute, whom that king had bestowed in second spousals upon Godwin),

had come over to England with a fierce Jarl, her husband, a year after

Canute’s accession to the throne--both converted nominally, both secret

believers in Thor and Odin.

Hilda’s husband had fallen in one of the actions in the Northern seas,

between Canute and St. Olave, King of Norway (that saint himself, by the

bye, a most ruthless persecutor of his forefathers’ faith, and a most

unqualified assertor of his heathen privilege to extend his domestic

affections beyond the severe pale which should have confined them to a

single wife. His natural son Magnus then sat on the Danish throne). The

Jarl died as he had wished to die, the last man on board his ship, with

the soothing conviction that the Valkyrs would bear him to Valhalla.

Hilda was left with an only daughter, whom Canute bestowed on Ethelwolf,

a Saxon Earl of large domains, and tracing his descent from Penda, that

old King of Mercia who refused to be converted, but said so discreetly,

that he had no objection to his neighbours being Christians, if they

would practise that peace and forgiveness which the monks told him were

the elements of the faith.

Ethelwolf fell under the displeasure of Hardicanute, perhaps because he

was more Saxon than Danish; and though that savage king did not dare

openly to arraign him before the Witan, he gave secret orders by which he

was butchered on his own hearthstone, in the arms of his wife, who died

shortly afterwards of grief and terror. The only orphan of this unhappy

pair, Edith, was thus consigned to the charge of Hilda.

It was a necessary and invaluable characteristic of that “adaptability”

which distinguished the Danes, that they transferred to the land in which

they settled all the love they had borne to that of their ancestors; and

so far as attachment to soil was concerned, Hilda had grown no less in

heart an Englishwoman than if she had been born and reared amidst the

glades and knolls from which the smoke of her hearth rose through the old

Roman compluvium.

But in all else she was a Dane. Dane in her creed and her habits--Dane

in her intense and brooding imagination--in the poetry that filled her

soul, peopled the air with spectres, and covered the leaves of the trees

with charms. Living in austere seclusion after the death of her lord, to

whom she had borne a Scandinavian woman’s devoted but heroic

love,--sorrowing, indeed, for his death, but rejoicing that he fell

amidst the feast of ravens,--her mind settled more and more year by year,

and day by day, upon those visions of the unknown world, which in every

faith conjure up the companions of solitude and grief.

Witchcraft in the Scandinavian North assumed many forms, and was

connected by many degrees. There was the old and withered hag, on whom,

in our later mediaeval ages the character was mainly bestowed; there was

the terrific witch-wife, or wolf-witch, who seems wholly apart from human

birth and attributes, like the weird sisters of Macbeth--creatures who

entered the house at night and seized warriors to devour them, who might

be seen gliding over the sea, with the carcase of the wolf dripping blood

from their giant jaws; and there was the more serene, classical, and

awful vala, or sibyl, who, honoured by chiefs and revered by nations,

foretold the future, and advised the deeds of heroes. Of these last, the

Norse chronicles tell us much. They were often of rank and wealth, they

were accompanied by trains of handmaids and servants--kings led them

(when their counsel was sought) to the place of honour in the hall, and

their heads were sacred, as those of ministers to the gods.

This last state in the grisly realm of the Wig-laer (wizard-lore) was the

one naturally appertaining to the high rank, and the soul, lofty though

blind and perverted, of the daughter of warrior-kings. All practice of

the art to which now for long years she had devoted herself, that touched

upon the humble destinies of the vulgar, the child of Odin [23] haughtily

disdained. Her reveries were upon the fate of kings and kingdoms; she

aspired to save or to rear the dynasties which should rule the races yet

unborn. In youth proud and ambitious,--common faults with her

countrywomen,--on her entrance into the darker world, she carried with

her the prejudices and passions that she had known in that coloured by

the external sun.

All her human affections were centred in her grandchild Edith, the last

of a race royal on either side. Her researches into the future had

assured her, that the life and death of this fair child were entwined

with the fates of a king, and the same oracles had intimated a mysterious

and inseparable connection between her own shattered house and the

flourishing one of Earl Godwin, the spouse of her kinswoman Githa: so

that with this great family she was as intimately bound by the links of

superstition as by the ties of blood. The eldest born of Godwin, Sweyn,

had been at first especially her care and her favourite; and he, of more

poetic temperament than his brothers, had willingly submitted to her

influence. But of all the brethren, as will be seen hereafter, the

career of Sweyn had been most noxious and ill-omened; and at that moment,

while the rest of the house carried with it into exile the deep and

indignant sympathy of England, no man said of Sweyn, “God bless him!”

But as the second son, Harold, had grown from childhood into youth, Hilda

had singled him out with a preference even more marked than that she had

bestowed upon Sweyn. The stars and the runes assured her of his future

greatness, and the qualities and talents of the young Earl had, at the

very onset of his career, confirmed the accuracy of their predictions.

Her interest in Harold became the more intense, partly because whenever

she consulted the future for the lot of her grandchild Edith, she

invariably found it associated with the fate of Harold--partly because

all her arts had failed to penetrate beyond a certain point in their

joint destinies, and left her mind agitated and perplexed between hope

and terror. As yet, however, she had wholly failed in gaining any

ascendancy over the young Earl’s vigorous and healthful mind: and though,

before his exile, he came more often than any of Godwin’s sons to the old

Roman house, he had smiled with proud incredulity at her vague

prophecies, and rejected all her offers of aid from invisible agencies

with the calm reply--“The brave man wants no charms to encourage him to

his duty, and the good man scorns all warnings that would deter him from

fulfilling it.”

Indeed, though Hilda’s magic was not of the malevolent kind, and sought

the source of its oracles not in fiends but gods, (at least the gods in

whom she believed,) it was noticeable that all over whom her influence

had prevailed had come to miserable and untimely ends;--not alone her

husband and her son-in-law, (both of whom had been as wax to her

counsel,) but such other chiefs as rank or ambition permitted to appeal

to her lore. Nevertheless, such was the ascendancy she had gained over

the popular mind, that it would have been dangerous in the highest degree

to put into execution against her the laws condemnatory of witch craft.

In her, all the more powerful Danish families reverenced, and would have

protected, the blood of their ancient kings, and the widow of one of

their most renowned heroes.

Hospitable, liberal, and beneficent to the poor; and an easy mistress

over numerous ceorls, while the vulgar dreaded, they would yet have

defended her. Proofs of her art it would have been hard to establish;

hosts of compurgators to attest her innocence would have sprung up. Even

if subjected to the ordeal, her gold could easily have bribed the priests

with whom the power of evading its dangers rested. And with that worldly

wisdom which persons of genius in their wildest chimeras rarely lack, she

had already freed herself from the chance of active persecution from the

Church, by ample donations to all the neighbouring monasteries.

Hilda, in fine, was a woman of sublime desires and extraordinary gifts;

terrible, indeed, but as the passive agent of the Fates she invoked, and

rather commanding for herself a certain troubled admiration and

mysterious pity; no fiend-hag, beyond humanity in malice and in power,

but essentially human, even when aspiring most to the secrets of a god.

Assuming, for the moment, that by the aid of intense imagination, persons

of a peculiar idiosyncrasy of nerves and temperament might attain to such

dim affinities with a world beyond our ordinary senses, as forbid entire

rejection of the magnetism and magic of old times--it was on no foul and

mephitic pool, overhung with the poisonous nightshade, and excluded from

the beams of heaven, but on the living stream on which the star trembled,

and beside whose banks the green herbage waved, that the demon shadows

fell dark and dread.

Thus safe and thus awful, lived Hilda; and under her care, a rose beneath

the funeral cedar, bloomed her grandchild Edith, goddaughter of the Lady

of England.

It was the anxious wish, both of Edward and his virgin wife, pious as

himself, to save this orphan from the contamination of a house more than

suspected of heathen faith, and give to her youth the refuge of the

convent. But this, without her guardian’s consent or her own expressed

will, could not be legally done; and Edith as yet had expressed no desire

to disobey her grandmother, who treated the idea of the convent with

lofty scorn.

This beautiful child grew up under the influence, as it were, of two

contending creeds; all her notions on both were necessarily confused and

vague. But her heart was so genuinely mild, simple, tender, and

devoted,--there was in her so much of the inborn excellence of the sex,

that in every impulse of that heart struggled for clearer light and for

purer air the unquiet soul. In manner, in thought, and in person as yet

almost an infant, deep in her heart lay yet one woman’s secret, known

scarcely to herself, but which taught her, more powerfully than Hilda’s

proud and scoffing tongue, to shudder at the thought of the barren

cloister and the eternal vow.

CHAPTER III.

While King Edward was narrating to the Norman Duke all that he knew, and

all that he knew not, of Hilda’s history and secret arts, the road wound

through lands as wild and wold-like as if the metropolis of England lay a

hundred miles distant. Even to this day patches of such land, in the

neighbourhood of Norwood, may betray what the country was in the old

time:--when a mighty forest, “abounding with wild beasts”--“the bull and

the boar”--skirted the suburbs of London, and afforded pastime to king

and thegn. For the Norman kings have been maligned by the popular notion

that assigns to them all the odium of the forest laws. Harsh and severe

were those laws in the reign of the Anglo-Saxon; as harsh and severe,

perhaps, against the ceorl and the poor man, as in the days of Rufus,

though more mild unquestionably to the nobles. To all beneath the rank

of abbot and thegn, the king’s woods were made, even by the mild

Confessor, as sacred as the groves of the Druids: and no less penalty

than that of life was incurred by the lowborn huntsman who violated their

recesses. [24]

Edward’s only mundane passion was the chase; and a day rarely passed, but

what after mass he went forth with hawk or hound. So that, though the

regular season for hawking did not commence till October, he had ever on

his wrist some young falcon to essay, or some old favourite to exercise.

And now, just as William was beginning to grow weary of his good cousin’s

prolix recitals, the hounds suddenly gave tongue, and from a sedge-grown

pool by the way-side, with solemn wing and harsh boom, rose a bittern.

“Holy St. Peter!” exclaimed the Saint-king, spurring his palfrey, and

loosing his famous Peregrine falcon [25]. William was not slow in

following that animated example, and the whole company rode at half speed

across the rough forest-land, straining their eyes upon the soaring

quarry, and the large wheels of the falcons. Riding thus, with his eyes

in the air, Edward was nearly pitched over his palfrey’s head, as the

animal stopped suddenly, checked by a high gate, set deep in a half

embattled wall of brick and rubble. Upon this gate sate, quite unmoved

and apathetic, a tall ceorl, or labourer, while behind it was a gazing

curious group of men of the same rank, clad in those blue tunics of which

our peasant’s smock is the successor, and leaning on scythes and flails.

Sour and ominous were the looks they bent upon that Norman cavalcade.

The men were at least as well clad as those of the same condition are

now; and their robust limbs and ruddy cheeks showed no lack of the fare

that supports labour. Indeed, the working man of that day, if not one of

the absolute theowes or slaves, was, physically speaking, better off,

perhaps, than he has ever since been in England, more especially if he

appertained to some wealthy thegn of pure Saxon lineage, whose very title

of lord came to him in his quality of dispenser of bread [26]; and these

men had been ceorls under Harold, son of Godwin, now banished from the

land.

“Open the gate, open quick, my merry men,” said the gentle Edward

(speaking in Saxon, though with a strong foreign accent), after he had

recovered his seat, murmured a benediction, and crossed himself three

times. The men stirred not.

“No horse tramps the seeds we have sown for Harold the Earl to reap;”

said the ceorl, doggedly, still seated on the gate. And the group behind

him gave a shout of applause.

Moved more than ever he had been known to be before, Edward spurred his

steed up to the boor, and lifted his hand. At that signal twenty swords

flashed in the air behind, as the Norman nobles spurred to the place.

Putting back with one hand his fierce attendants, Edward shook the other

at the Saxon. “Knave, knave,” he cried, “I would hurt you, if I could!”

There was something in these words, fated to drift down into history, at

once ludicrous and touching. The Normans saw them only in the former

light, and turned aside to conceal their laughter; the Saxon felt them in

the latter and truer sense, and stood rebuked. That great king, whom he

now recognised, with all those drawn swords at his back, could not do him

hurt; that king had not the heart to hurt him. The ceorl sprang from the

gate, and opened it, bending low.

“Ride first, Count William, my cousin,” said the King, calmly.

The Saxon ceorl’s eyes glared as he heard the Norman’s name uttered in

the Norman tongue, but he kept open the gate, and the train passed

through, Edward lingering last. Then said the King, in a low voice,--

“Bold man, thou spokest of Harold the Earl and his harvests; knowest thou

not that his lands have passed from him, and that he is outlawed, and

that his harvests are not for the scythes of his ceorls to reap?”

“May it please you, dread Lord and King,” replied the Saxon simply,

“these lands that were Harold the Earl’s, are now Clapa’s, the

sixhaendman’s.”

“How is that?” quoth Edward, hastily; “we gave them neither to

sixhaendman nor to Saxon. All the lands of Harold hereabout were divided

amongst sacred abbots and noble chevaliers--Normans all.”

“Fulke the Norman had these fair fields, yon orchards and tynen; Fulke

sold them to Clapa, the Earl’s sixhaendman, and what in mancusses and

pence Clapa lacked of the price, we, the ceorls of the Earl, made up from

our own earnings in the Earl’s noble service. And this very day, in

token thereof, have we quaffed the bedden-ale [27]. Wherefore, please God

and our Lady, we hold these lands part and parcel with Clapa; and when

Earl Harold comes again, as come he will, here at least he will have his

own.”

Edward, who, despite a singular simplicity of character, which at times

seemed to border on imbecility, was by no means wanting in penetration

when his attention was fairly roused, changed countenance at this proof

of rough and homely affection on the part of these men to his banished

earl and brother-in-law. He mused a little while in grave thought, and

then said, kindly--

“Well, man, I think not the worse of you for loyal love to your thegn,

but there are those who would do so, and I advise you, brotherlike, that

ears and nose are in peril if thou talkest thus indiscreetly.”

“Steel to steel, and hand to hand,” said the Saxon, bluntly, touching the

long knife in his leathern belt, “and he who sets gripe on Sexwolf son of

Elfhelm, shall pay his weregeld twice over.”

“Forewarned, foolish man, thou are forewarned. Peace,” said the King;

and, shaking his head, he rode on to join the Normans, who now, in a

broad field, where the corn sprang green, and which they seemed to

delight in wantonly trampling, as they curvetted their steeds to and fro,

watched the movements of the bittern and the pursuit of the two falcons.

“A wager, Lord King!” said a prelate, whose strong family likeness to

William proclaimed him to be the Duke’s bold and haughty brother, Odo

[28], Bishop of Bayeux;--“a wager. My steed to your palfrey that the

Duke’s falcon first fixes the bittern.”

“Holy father,” answered Edward, in that slight change of voice which

alone showed his displeasure, “these wagers all savour of heathenesse,

and our canons forbid them to mone [29] and priest. Go to, it is naught.”

The bishop, who brooked no rebuke, even from his terrible brother, knit

his brows, and was about to make no gentle rejoinder, when William, whose

profound craft or sagacity was always at watch, lest his followers should

displease the King, interposed, and taking the word out of the prelate’s

mouth, said:

“Thou reprovest us well, Sir and King; we Normans are too inclined to

such levities. And see, your falcon is first in pride of place. By the

bones of St. Valery, how nobly he towers! See him cover the

bittern!--see him rest on the wing!--Down he swoops! Gallant bird!”

“With his heart split in two on the bittern’s bill,” said the bishop; and

down, rolling one over the other, fell bittern and hawk, while William’s

Norway falcon, smaller of size than the King’s, descended rapidly, and

hovered over the two. Both were dead.

“I accept the omen,” muttered the gazing Duke; “let the natives destroy

each other!” He placed his whistle to his lips, and his falcon flew back

to his wrist.

“Now home,” said King Edward.

CHAPTER IV.

The royal party entered London by the great bridge which divided

Southwark from the capital; and we must pause to gaze a moment on the

animated scene which the immemorial thoroughfare presented.

The whole suburb before entering Southwark was rich in orchards and

gardens, lying round the detached houses of the wealthier merchants and

citizens. Approaching the river-side, to the left, the eye might see the

two circular spaces set apart, the one for bear, the other for

bull-baiting. To the right, upon a green mound of waste, within sight of

the populous bridge, the gleemen were exercising their art. Here one

dexterous juggler threw three balls and three knives alternately in the

air, catching them one by one as they fell [30]. There, another was

gravely leading a great bear to dance on its hind legs, while his

coadjutor kept time with a sort of flute or flageolet. The lazy

bystanders, in great concourse, stared and laughed; but the laugh was

hushed at the tramp of the Norman steeds; and the famous Count by the

King’s side, as, with a smiling lip, but observant eye, he rode along,

drew all attention from the bear.

On now approaching that bridge which, not many years before, had been the

scene of terrible contest between the invading Danes and Ethelred’s ally,

Olave of Norway [31], you might still see, though neglected and already

in decay, the double fortifications that had wisely guarded that vista

into the city. On both sides of the bridge, which was of wood, were

forts, partly of timber, partly of stone, and breastworks, and by the

forts a little chapel. The bridge, broad enough to admit two vehicles

abreast [32], was crowded with passengers, and lively with stalls and

booths. Here was the favourite spot of the popular ballad-singer [33].

Here, too, might be seen the swarthy Saracen, with wares from Spain and

Afric [34]. Here, the German merchant from the Steel-yard swept along on

his way to his suburban home. Here, on some holy office, went quick the

muffled monk. Here, the city gallant paused to laugh with the country

girl, her basket full of May-boughs and cowslips. In short, all bespoke

that activity, whether in business or pastime, which was destined to

render that city the mart of the world, and which had already knit the

trade of the Anglo-Saxon to the remoter corners of commercial Europe. The

deep dark eye of William dwelt admiringly on the bustling groups, on the

broad river, and the forest of masts which rose by the indented marge

near Belin’s gate [35]. And he to whom, whatever his faults, or rather

crimes, to the unfortunate people he not only oppressed but

deceived--London at least may yet be grateful, not only for chartered

franchise [36], but for advancing, in one short vigorous reign, her

commerce and wealth, beyond what centuries of Anglo-Saxon domination,

with its inherent feebleness, had effected, exclaimed aloud:

“By rood and mass, O dear king, thy lot hath fallen on a goodly

heritage.”

“Hem!” said Edward, lazily; “thou knowest not how troublesome these

Saxons are. And while thou speakest, lo, in yon shattered walls, built

first, they say, by Alfred of holy memory, are the evidences of the

Danes. Bethink thee how often they have sailed up this river. How know I

but what the next year the raven flag may stream over these waters?

Magnus of Denmark hath already claimed my crown as heir to the royalties

of Canute, and” (here Edward hesitated), “Godwin and Harold, whom alone

of my thegns Dane and Northman fear, are far away.”

“Miss not them, Edward, my cousin,” cried the Duke, in haste. “Send for

me if danger threat thee. Ships enow await thy best in my new port of

Cherbourg. And I tell thee this for thy comfort, that were I king of the

English, and lord of this river, the citizens of London might sleep from

vespers to prime, without fear of the Dane. Never again should the raven

flag be seen by this bridge! Never, I swear, by the Splendour Divine.”

Not without purpose spoke William thus stoutly; and he turned on the King

those glittering eyes (micantes oculos), which the chroniclers have

praised and noted. For it was his hope and his aim in this visit, that

his cousin Edward should formally promise him that goodly heritage of

England. But the King made no rejoinder, and they now neared the end of

the bridge.

“What old ruin looms yonder?” [37] asked William, hiding his

disappointment at Edward’s silence; “it seemeth the remains of some

stately keape, which, by its fashion, I should pronounce Roman.”

“Ay!” said Edward, “and it is said to have been built by the Romans; and

one of the old Lombard freemasons employed on my new palace of

Westminster, giveth that, and some others in my domain, the name of the

Juillet Tower.”

“Those Romans were our masters in all things gallant and wise,” said

William; “and I predict that, some day or other, on that site, a King of

England will re-erect palace and tower. And yon castle towards the

west?”

“Is the Tower Palatine, where our predecessors have lodged, and ourself

sometimes; but the sweet loneliness of Thorney Isle pleaseth me more

now.”

Thus talking, they entered London, a rude, dark city, built mainly of

timbered houses; streets narrow and winding; windows rarely glazed, but

protected chiefly by linen blinds; vistas opening, however, at times into

broad spaces, round the various convents, where green trees grew up

behind low palisades. Tall roods, and holy images, to which we owe the

names of existing thoroughfares (Rood-lane and Lady-lane [38]), where the

ways crossed, attracted the curious and detained the pious. Spires there

were not then, but blunt, cone-headed turrets, pyramidal, denoting the

Houses of God, rose often from the low, thatched, and reeded roofs. But

every now and then, a scholar’s, if not an ordinary, eye could behold the

relics of Roman splendour, traces of that elder city which now lies

buried under our thoroughfares, and of which, year by year, are dug up

the stately skeletons.

Along the Thames still rose, though much mutilated, the wall of

Constantine [39]. Round the humble and barbarous Church of St. Paul’s

(wherein lay the dust of Sebba, that king of the East Saxons who quitted

his throne for the sake of Christ, and of Edward’s feeble and luckless

father, Ethelred) might be seen, still gigantic in decay, the ruins of

the vast temple of Diana [40]. Many a church, and many a convent,

pierced their mingled brick and timber work with Roman capital and shaft.

Still by the tower, to which was afterwards given the Saracen name of

Barbican, were the wrecks of the Roman station, where cohorts watched

night and day, in case of fire within or foe without. [41]

In a niche, near the Aldersgate, stood the headless statue of Fortitude,

which monks and pilgrims deemed some unknown saint in the old time, and

halted to honour. And in the midst of Bishopsgate-street, sate on his

desecrated throne a mangled Jupiter, his eagle at his feet. Many a

half-converted Dane there lingered, and mistook the Thunderer and the

bird for Odin and his hawk. By Leod-gate (the People’s gate [42]) still

too were seen the arches of one of those mighty aqueducts which the Roman

learned from the Etrurian. And close by the Still-yard, occupied by “the

Emperor’s cheap men” (the German merchants), stood, almost entire, the

Roman temple, extant in the time of Geoffrey of Monmouth. Without the

walls, the old Roman vineyards [43] still put forth their green leaves

and crude clusters, in the plains of East Smithfield, in the fields of

St. Giles’s, and on the site where now stands Hatton Garden. Still

massere [44] and cheapmen chaffered and bargained, at booth and stall, in

Mart-lane, where the Romans had bartered before them. With every

encroachment on new soil, within the walls and without, urn, vase,

weapon, human bones, were shovelled out, and lay disregarded amidst heaps

of rubbish.

Not on such evidences of the past civilisation looked the practical eye

of the Norman Count; not on things, but on men, looked he; and as

silently he rode on from street to street, out of those men, stalwart and

tall, busy, active, toiling, the Man-Ruler saw the Civilisation that was

to come.

So, gravely through the small city, and over the bridge that spanned the

little river of the Fleet, rode the train along the Strand; to the left,

smooth sands; to the right, fair pastures below green holts, thinly

studded with houses; over numerous cuts and inlets running into the

river, rode they on. The hour and the season were those in which youth

enjoyed its holiday, and gay groups resorted to the then [45] fashionable

haunts of the Fountain of Holywell, “streaming forth among glistening

pebbles.”

So they gained at length the village of Charing, which Edward had lately

bestowed on his Abbey of Westminster, and which was now filled with

workmen, native and foreign, employed on that edifice and the contiguous

palace. Here they loitered awhile at the Mews [46] (where the hawks were

kept), passed by the rude palace of stone and rubble, appropriated to the

tributary kings of Scotland [47]--a gift from Edgar to Kenneth--and

finally, reaching the inlet of the river, which, winding round the Isle

of Thorney (now Westminster), separated the rising church, abbey, and

palace of the Saint-king from the main-land, dismounted--and were ferried

across [48] the narrow stream to the broad space round the royal

residence.

CHAPTER V.

The new palace of Edward the Confessor, the palace of Westminster, opened

its gates, to receive the Saxon King and the Norman Duke, remounting on

the margin of the isle, and now riding side by side. And as the Duke

glanced, from brows habitually knit, first over the pile, stately, though

not yet completed, with its long rows of round arched windows, cased by

indented fringes and fraet (or tooth) work, its sweep of solid columns

with circling cloisters, and its ponderous towers of simple grandeur;

then over the groups of courtiers, with close vests, and short mantles,

and beardless cheeks, that filled up the wide space, to gaze in homage on

the renowned guest, his heart swelled within him, and, checking his rein,

he drew near to his brother of Bayeux, and whispered,--

“Is not this already the court of the Norman? Behold yon nobles and

earls, how they mimic our garb! behold the very stones in yon gate, how

they range themselves, as if carved by the hand of the Norman mason!

Verily and indeed, brother, the shadow of the rising sun rests already on

these halls.”

“Had England no people,” said the bishop, “England were yours already.

But saw you not, as we rode along, the lowering brows? and heard you not

the angry murmurs? The villeins are many, and their hate is strong.”

“Strong is the roan I bestride,” said the Duke; “but a bold rider curbs

it with the steel of the bit, and guides it with the goad of the heel.”

And now, as they neared the gate, a band of minstrels in the pay of the

Norman touched their instruments, and woke their song--the household song

of the Norman--the battle hymn of Roland, the Paladin of Charles the

Great. At the first word of the song, the Norman knights and youths

profusely scattered amongst the Normanised Saxons caught up the lay, and

with sparkling eyes, and choral voices, they welcomed the mighty Duke

into the palace of the last meek successor of Woden.

By the porch of the inner court the Duke flung himself from his saddle,

and held the stirrup for Edward to dismount. The King placed his hand

gently on his guest’s broad shoulder, and, having somewhat slowly reached

the ground, embraced and kissed him in the sight of the gorgeous

assemblage; then led him by the hand towards the fair chamber which was

set apart for the Duke, and so left him to his attendants.

William, lost in thought, suffered himself to be disrobed in silence; but

when Fitzosborne, his favourite confidant and haughtiest baron, who yet

deemed himself but honoured by personal attendance on his chief,

conducted him towards the bath, which adjoined the chamber, he drew back,

and wrapping round him more closely the gown of fur that had been thrown

over his shoulders, he muttered low,--“Nay, if there be on me yet one

speck of English dust, let it rest there!--seizin, Fitzosborne, seizin,

of the English land.” Then, waving his hand, he dismissed all his

attendants except Fitzosborne, and Rolf, Earl of Hereford [49], nephew to

Edward, but French on the father’s side, and thoroughly in the Duke’s

councils. Twice the Duke paced the chamber without vouchsafing a word to

either, then paused by the round window that overlooked the Thames. The

scene was fair; the sun, towards its decline, glittered on numerous small

pleasure-boats, which shot to and fro between Westminster and London or

towards the opposite shores of Lambeth. His eye sought eagerly, along

the curves of the river, the grey remains of the fabled Tower of Julius,

and the walls, gates, and turrets, that rose by the stream, or above the

dense mass of silent roofs; then it strained hard to descry the tops of

the more distant masts of the infant navy, fostered under Alfred, the

far-seeing, for the future civilisation of wastes unknown, and the empire

of seas untracked.

The Duke breathed hard, and opened and closed the hand which he stretched

forth into space as if to grasp the city he beheld. “Rolf,” said he,

abruptly, “thou knowest, no doubt, the wealth of the London traders, one

and all; for, foi de Gaillaume, my gentil chevalier, thou art a true

Norman, and scentest the smell of gold as a hound the boar!”

Rolf smiled, as if pleased with a compliment which simpler men might have

deemed, at the best, equivocal, and replied:

“It is true, my liege; and gramercy, the air of England sharpens the

scent; for in this villein and motley country, made up of all

races,--Saxon and Fin, Dane and Fleming, Pict and Walloon,--it is not as

with us, where the brave man and the pure descent are held chief in

honour: here, gold and land are, in truth, name and lordship; even their

popular name for their national assembly of the Witan is, ‘The Wealthy.’

[50] He who is but a ceorl to-day, let him be rich, and he may be earl

to-morrow, marry in king’s blood, and rule armies under a gonfanon

statelier than a king’s; while he whose fathers were ealdermen and

princes, if, by force or by fraud, by waste or by largess, he become

poor, falls at once into contempt, and out of his state,--sinks into a

class they call ‘six-hundred men,’ in their barbarous tongue, and his

children will probably sink still lower, into ceorls. Wherefore gold is

the thing here most coveted; and by St. Michael, the sin is infectious.”

William listened to the speech with close attention. “Good,” said he,

rubbing slowly the palm of his right hand over the back of the left; “a

land all compact with the power of one race, a race of conquering men, as

our fathers were, whom nought but cowardice or treason can degrade,--such

a land, O Rolf of Hereford, it were hard indeed to subjugate, or decoy,

or tame--”

“So has my lord the Duke found the Bretons; and so also do I find the

Welch upon my marches of Hereford.”

“But,” continued William, not heeding the interruption, “where wealth is

more than blood and race, chiefs may be bribed or menaced; and the

multitude--by’r Lady, the multitude are the same in all lands, mighty

under valiant and faithful leaders, powerless as sheep without them. But

to my question, my gentle Rolf; this London must be rich?” [51]

“Rich enow,” answered Rolf, “to coin into armed men, that should stretch

from Rouen to Flanders on the one hand, and Paris on the other.”

“In the veins of Matilda, whom thou wooest for wife,” said Fitzosborne,

abruptly, “flows the blood of Charlemagne. God grant his empire to the

children she shall bear thee!”

The Duke bowed his head, and kissed a relic suspended from his throat.

Farther sign of approval of his counsellor’s words he gave not, but after

a pause, he said:

“When I depart, Rolf, thou wendest back to thy marches. These Welch are

brave and fierce, and shape work enow for thy hands.”

“Ay, by my halidame! poor sleep by the side of the beehive you have

stricken down.”

“Marry, then,” said William, “let the Welch prey on Saxon, Saxon on

Welch; let neither win too easily. Remember our omens to-day, Welch hawk

and Saxon bittern, and over their corpses, Duke William’s Norway falcon!

Now dress we for the complin [52] and the banquet.”

BOOK II.

LANFRANC THE SCHOLAR.

CHAPTER I.

Four meals a day, nor those sparing, were not deemed too extravagant an

interpretation of the daily bread for which the Saxon prayed. Four meals

a day, from earl to ceorl! “Happy times!” may sigh the descendant of the

last, if he read these pages; partly so they were for the ceorl, but not

in all things, for never sweet is the food, and never gladdening is the

drink, of servitude. Inebriety, the vice of the warlike nations of the

North, had not, perhaps, been the pre-eminent excess of the earlier

Saxons, while yet the active and fiery Britons, and the subsequent petty

wars between the kings of the Heptarchy, enforced on hardy warriors the

safety of temperance; but the example of the Danes had been fatal. Those

giants of the sea, like all who pass from great vicissitudes of toil and

repose, from the tempest to the haven, snatched with full hands every

pleasure in their reach. With much that tended permanently to elevate

the character of the Saxon, they imparted much for a time to degrade it.

The Anglian learned to feast to repletion, and drink to delirium. But

such were not the vices of the court of the Confessor. Brought up from

his youth in the cloister-camp of the Normans, what he loved in their

manners was the abstemious sobriety, and the ceremonial religion, which

distinguished those sons of the Scandinavian from all other kindred

tribes.

The Norman position in France, indeed, in much resembled that of the

Spartan in Greece. He had forced a settlement with scanty numbers in the

midst of a subjugated and sullen population, surrounded by jealous and

formidable foes. Hence sobriety was a condition of his being, and the

policy of the chief lent a willing ear to the lessons of the preacher.

Like the Spartan, every Norman of pure race was free and noble; and this

consciousness inspired not only that remarkable dignity of mien which

Spartan and Norman alike possessed, but also that fastidious self-respect

which would have revolted from exhibiting a spectacle of debasement to

inferiors. And, lastly, as the paucity of their original numbers, the

perils that beset, and the good fortune that attended them, served to

render the Spartans the most religious of all the Greeks in their

dependence on the Divine aid; so, perhaps, to the same causes may be

traced the proverbial piety of the ceremonial Normans; they carried into

their new creed something of feudal loyalty to their spiritual

protectors; did homage to the Virgin for the lands that she vouchsafed to

bestow, and recognised in St. Michael the chief who conducted their

armies.

After hearing the complin vespers in the temporary chapel fitted up in

that unfinished abbey of Westminster, which occupied the site of the

temple of Apollo [53], the King and his guests repaired to their evening

meal in the great hall of the palace. Below the dais were ranged three

long tables for the knights in William’s train, and that flower of the

Saxon nobility who, fond, like all youth, of change and imitation,

thronged the court of their Normanised saint, and scorned the rude

patriotism of their fathers. But hearts truly English were not there.

Yea, many of Godwin’s noblest foes sighed for the English-hearted Earl,

banished by Norman guile on behalf of English law.

At the oval table on the dais the guests were select and chosen. At the

right hand of the King sat William; at the left Odo of Bayeux. Over these

three stretched a canopy of cloth of gold; the chairs on which each sate

were of metal, richly gilded over, and the arms carved in elaborate

arabesques. At this table too was the King’s nephew, the Earl of

Hereford, and, in right of kinsmanship to the Duke, the Norman’s beloved

baron and grand seneschal, William Fitzosborne, who, though in Normandy

even he sate not at the Duke’s table, was, as related to his lord,

invited by Edward to his own. No other guests were admitted to this

board, so that, save Edward, all were Norman. The dishes were of gold and

silver, the cups inlaid with jewels. Before each guest was a knife, with

hilt adorned by precious stones, and a napkin fringed with silver. The

meats were not placed on the table, but served upon small spits, and

between every course a basin of perfumed water was borne round by

high-born pages. No dame graced the festival; for she who should have

presided--she, matchless for beauty without pride, piety without

asceticism, and learning without pedantry--she, the pale rose of England,

loved daughter of Godwin, and loathed wife of Edward, had shared in the

fall of her kindred, and had been sent by the meek King, or his fierce

counsellors, to an abbey in Hampshire, with the taunt “that it was not

meet that the child and sister should enjoy state and pomp, while the

sire and brethren ate the bread of the stranger in banishment and

disgrace.”

But, hungry as were the guests, it was not the custom of that holy court

to fall to without due religious ceremonial. The rage for psalm-singing

was then at its height in England; psalmody had excluded almost every

other description of vocal music; and it is even said that great

festivals on certain occasions were preluded by no less an effort of

lungs and memory than the entire songs bequeathed to us by King David!

This day, however, Hugoline, Edward’s Norman chamberlain, had been

pleased to abridge the length of the prolix grace, and the company were

let off; to Edward’s surprise and displeasure, with the curt and unseemly

preparation of only nine psalms and one special hymn in honour of some

obscure saint to whom the day was dedicated. This performed, the guests

resumed their seats, Edward murmuring an apology to William for the

strange omission of his chamberlain, and saying thrice to himself,

“Naught, naught--very naught.”

The mirth languished at the royal table, despite some gay efforts from

Rolf, and some hollow attempts at light-hearted cheerfulness from the

great Duke, whose eyes, wandering down the table, were endeavouring to

distinguish Saxon from Norman, and count how many of the first might

already be reckoned in the train of his friends. But at the long tables

below, as the feast thickened, and ale, mead, pigment, morat, and wine

circled round, the tongue of the Saxon was loosed, and the Norman knight

lost somewhat of his superb gravity. It was just as what a Danish poet

called the “sun of the night,” (in other words, the fierce warmth of the

wine,) had attained its meridian glow, that some slight disturbance at

the doors of the hall, without which waited a dense crowd of the poor on

whom the fragments of the feast were afterwards to be bestowed, was

followed by the entrance of two strangers, for whom the officers

appointed to marshal the entertainment made room at the foot of one of

the tables. Both these new-comers were clad with extreme plainness; one

in a dress, though not quite monastic, that of an ecclesiastic of low

degree; the other in a long grey mantle and loose gonna, the train of

which last was tucked into a broad leathern belt, leaving bare the

leggings, which showed limbs of great bulk and sinew, and which were

stained by the dust and mire of travel. The first mentioned was slight

and small of person; the last was of the height and port of the sons of

Anak. The countenance of neither could be perceived, for both had let

fall the hood, worn by civilians as by priests out of doors, more than

half way over their faces.

A murmur of great surprise, disdain, and resentment, at the intrusion of

strangers so attired circulated round the neighbourhood in which they had

been placed, checked for a moment by a certain air of respect which the

officer had shown towards both, but especially the taller; but breaking

out with greater vivacity from the faint restraint, as the tall man

unceremoniously stretched across the board, drew towards himself an

immense flagon, which (agreeably to the custom of arranging the feast in

“messes” of four) had been specially appropriated to Ulf the Dane,

Godrith the Saxon, and two young Norman knights akin to the puissant Lord

of Grantmesnil,--and having offered it to his comrade, who shook his

head, drained it with a gusto that seemed to bespeak him at least no

Norman, and wiped his lips boorishly with the sleeve of his huge arm.

“Dainty sir,” said one of those Norman knights, William Mallet, of the

house of Mallet de Graville [54], as he moved as far from the gigantic

intruder as the space on the settle would permit, “forgive the

observation that you have damaged my mantle, you have grazed my foot, and

you have drunk my wine. And vouchsafe, if it so please you, the face of

the man who hath done this triple wrong to William Mallet de Graville.”

A kind of laugh--for laugh absolute it was not--rattled under the cowl of

the tall stranger, as he drew it still closer over his face, with a hand

that might have spanned the breast of his interrogator, and he made a

gesture as if he did not understand the question addressed to him.

Therewith the Norman knight, bending with demure courtesy across the

board to Godrith the Saxon, said:

“Pardex [55], but this fair guest and seigneur seemeth to me, noble

Godree (whose name I fear my lips do but rudely enounce) of Saxon line

and language; our Romance tongue he knoweth not. Pray you, is it the

Saxon custom to enter a king’s hall so garbed, and drink a knight’s wine

so mutely?”

Godrith, a young Saxon of considerable rank, but one of the most sedulous

of the imitators of the foreign fashions, coloured high at the irony in

the knight’s speech, and turning rudely to the huge guest, who was now

causing immense fragments of pasty to vanish under the cavernous cowl, he

said in his native tongue, though with a lisp as if unfamiliar to him--

“If thou beest Saxon, shame us not with thy ceorlish manners; crave

pardon of this Norman thegn, who will doubtless yield it to thee in pity.

Uncover thy face--and--”

Here the Saxon’s rebuke was interrupted; for one of the servitors just

then approaching Godrith’s side with a spit, elegantly caparisoned with

some score of plump larks, the unmannerly giant stretched out his arm

within an inch of the Saxon’s startled nose, and possessed himself of

larks, broche, and all. He drew off two, which he placed on his friend’s

platter, despite all dissuasive gesticulations, and deposited the rest

upon his own. The young banqueters gazed upon the spectacle in wrath too

full for words.

At last spoke Mallet de Graville, with an envious eye upon the larks--for

though a Norman was not gluttonous, he was epicurean--“Certes, and foi de

chevalier! a man must go into strange parts if he wish to see monsters;

but we are fortunate people,” (and he turned to his Norman friend, Aymer,

Quen [56] or Count, D’Evreux,) “that we have discovered Polyphemus

without going so far as Ulysses;” and pointing to the hooded giant, he

quoted, appropriately enough,

“Monstrum, horrendum, informe, ingens, cui lumen ademptum.”

The giant continued to devour his larks, as complacently as the ogre to

whom he was likened might have devoured the Greeks in his cave. But his

fellow intruder seemed agitated by the sound of the Latin; he lifted up

his head suddenly, and showed lips glistening with white even teeth, and

curved into an approving smile, while he said: “Bene, me fili! bene,

lepidissime, poetae verba, in militis ore, non indecora sonant.” [57]

The young Norman stared at the speaker, and replied, in the same tone of

grave affectation: “Courteous sir! the approbation of an ecclesiastic so

eminent as I take you to be, from the modesty with which you conceal your

greatness, cannot fail to draw upon me the envy of my English friends;

who are accustomed to swear in verba magistri, only for verba they

learnedly substitute vina.”

“You are pleasant, Sire Mallet,” said Godrith, reddening; “but I know

well that Latin is only fit for monks and shavelings; and little enow

even they have to boast of.”

The Norman’s lip curled in disdain. “Latin!--O, Godree, bien

aime!--Latin is the tongue of Caesars and senators, fortes conquerors and

preux chevaliers. Knowest thou not that Duke William the dauntless at

eight years old had the Comments of Julius Caesar by heart?--and that it

is his saying, that ‘a king without letters is a crowned ass?’ [58] When

the king is an ass, asinine are his subjects. Wherefore go to school,

speak respectfully of thy betters, the monks and shavelings, who with us

are often brave captains and sage councillors,--and learn that a full

head makes a weighty hand.”

“Thy name, young knight?” said the ecclesiastic, in Norman French, though

with a slight foreign accent.

“I can give it thee,” said the giant, speaking aloud for the first time,

in the same language, and in a rough voice, which a quick ear might have

detected as disguised,--“I can describe to thee name, birth, and quality.

By name, this youth is Guillaume Mallet, sometimes styled De Graville,

because our Norman gentilhommes, forsooth, must always now have a ‘de’

tacked to their names; nevertheless he hath no other right to the

seigneurie of Graville, which appertains to the head of his house, than

may be conferred by an old tower on one corner of the demesnes so

designated, with lands that would feed one horse and two villeins--if

they were not in pawn to a Jew for moneys to buy velvet mantelines and a

chain of gold. By birth, he comes from Mallet [59], a bold Norwegian in

the fleet of Rou the Sea-king; his mother was a Frank woman, from whom he

inherits his best possessions--videlicet, a shrewd wit, and a railing

tongue. His qualities are abstinence, for he eateth nowhere save at the

cost of another--some Latin, for he was meant for a monk, because he

seemed too slight of frame for a warrior--some courage, for in spite of

his frame he slew three Burgundians with his own hand; and Duke William,

among their foolish acts, spoilt a friar sans tache, by making a knight

sans terre; and for the rest--”

“And for the rest,” interrupted the Sire de Graville, turning white with

wrath, but speaking in a low repressed voice, “were it not that Duke

William sate yonder, thou shouldst have six inches of cold steel in thy

huge carcase to digest thy stolen dinner, and silence thy unmannerly

tongue.--”

“For the rest,” continued the giant indifferently, and as if he had not

heard the interruption; “for the rest, he only resembles Achilles, in

being impiger iracundus. Big men can quote Latin as well as little ones,

Messire Mallet the beau clerc!”

Mallet’s hand was on his dagger; and his eye dilated like that of the

panther before he springs; but fortunately, at that moment, the deep

sonorous voice of William, accustomed to send its sounds down the ranks

of an army, rolled clear through the assemblage, though pitched little

above its ordinary key:--

“Fair is your feast, and bright your wine, Sir King and brother mine! But

I miss here what king and knight hold as the salt of the feast and the

perfume to the wine: the lay of the minstrel. Beshrew me, but both Saxon

and Norman are of kindred stock, and love to hear in hall and bower the

deeds of their northern fathers. Crave I therefore from your gleemen, or

harpers, some song of the olden time!”

A murmur of applause went through the Norman part of the assembly; the

Saxons looked up; and some of the more practised courtiers sighed

wearily, for they knew well what ditties alone were in favour with the

saintly Edward.

The low voice of the King in reply was not heard, but those habituated to

read his countenance in its very faint varieties of expression, might

have seen that it conveyed reproof; and its purport soon became

practically known, when a lugubrious prelude was heard from a quarter of

the hall, in which sate certain ghost-like musicians in white

robes--white as winding-sheets; and forthwith a dolorous and dirgelike

voice chaunted a long and most tedious recital of the miracles and

martyrdom of some early saint. So monotonous was the chaunt, that its

effect soon became visible in a general drowsiness. And when Edward, who

alone listened with attentive delight, turned towards the close to gather

sympathising admiration from his distinguished guests, he saw his nephew

yawning as if his jaw were dislocated--the Bishop of Bayeux, with his

well-ringed fingers interlaced and resting on his stomach, fast

asleep--Fitzosborne’s half-shaven head balancing to and fro with many an

uneasy start--and, William, wide awake indeed, but with eyes fixed on

vacant space, and his soul far away from the gridiron to which (all other

saints be praised!) the saint of the ballad had at last happily arrived.

“A comforting and salutary recital, Count William,” said the King.

The Duke started from his reverie, and bowed his head: then said, rather

abruptly, “Is not yon blazon that of King Alfred?”

“Yea. Wherefore?”

“Hem! Matilda of Flanders is in direct descent from Alfred: it is a name

and a line the Saxons yet honour!”

“Surely, yes; Alfred was a great man, and reformed the Psalmster,”

replied Edward.

The dirge ceased, but so benumbing had been its effect, that the torpor

it created did not subside with the cause. There was a dead and funereal

silence throughout the spacious hall, when suddenly, loudly, mightily, as

the blast of the trumpet upon the hush of the grave, rose a single voice.

All started--all turned--all looked to one direction; and they saw that

the great voice pealed from the farthest end of the hall. From under his

gown the gigantic stranger had drawn a small three-stringed

instrument--somewhat resembling the modern lute--and thus he sang,--

THE BALLAD OF ROU. [60]

I.

From Blois to Senlis, wave by wave, roll’d on the Norman flood,

And Frank on Frank went drifting down the weltering tide of blood;

There was not left in all the land a castle wall to fire,

And not a wife but wailed a lord, a child but mourned a sire.

To Charles the king, the mitred monks, the mailed barons flew,

While, shaking earth, behind them strode the thunder march of Rou.

II.

“O King,” then cried those barons bold, “in vain are mace and mail,

We fall before the Norman axe, as corn before the hail.”

“And vainly,” cried the pious monks, “by Mary’s shrine we kneel,

For prayers, like arrows, glance aside, against the Norman teel.”

The barons groaned, the shavelings wept, while near and nearer drew,

As death-birds round their scented feast, the raven flags of Rou.

III.

Then said King Charles, “Where thousands fail, what king can stand

alone,

The strength of kings is in the men that gather round the throne.

When war dismays my barons bold, ‘tis time for war to cease;

When Heaven forsakes my pious monks, the will of Heaven is peace.

Go forth, my monks, with mass and rood the Norman camp unto,

And to the fold, with shepherd crook, entice this grisly Rou.”

IV.

“I’ll give him all the ocean coast, from Michael Mount to Eure,

And Gille, my child, shall be his bride, to bind him fast and sure:

Let him but kiss the Christian cross, and sheathe the heathen sword,

And hold the lands I cannot keep, a fief from Charles his lord.”

Forth went the pastors of the Church, the Shepherd’s work to do,

And wrap the golden fleece around the tiger loins of Rou.

V.

Psalm-chanting came the shaven monks, within the camp of dread;

Amidst his warriors, Norman Rou stood taller by the head.

Out spoke the Frank Archbishop then, a priest devout and sage,

“When peace and plenty wait thy word, what need of war and rage?

Why waste a land as fair as aught beneath the arch of blue,

Which might be thine to sow and reap?”--Thus saith the King to Rou.

VI.

“‘I’ll give thee all the ocean coast, from Michael Mount to Eure,

And Gille, my fairest child, as bride, to bind thee fast and sure;

If then but kneel to Christ our God, and sheathe thy paynim sword,

And hold thy land, the Church’s son, a fief from Charles thy lord.”

The Norman on his warriors looked--to counsel they withdrew;

The saints took pity on the Franks, and moved the soul of Rou.

VII.

So back he strode and thus he spoke, to that Archbishop meek:

“I take the land thy king bestows from Eure to Michael-peak,

I take the maid, or foul or fair, a bargain with the toast,

And for thy creed, a sea-king’s gods are those that give the most.

So hie thee back, and tell thy chief to make his proffer true,

And he shall find a docile son, and ye a saint in Rou.”

VIII.

So o’er the border stream of Epte came Rou the Norman, where,

Begirt with barons, sat the King, enthroned at green St. Clair;

He placed his hand in Charles’s hand,--loud shouted all the throng,

But tears were in King Charles’s eyes--the grip of Rou was strong.

“Now kiss the foot,” the Bishop said, “that homage still is due;”

Then dark the frown and stern the smile of that grim convert, Rou.

IX.

He takes the foot, as if the foot to slavish lips to bring;

The Normans scowl; he tilts the throne, and backwards falls the

King.

Loud laugh the joyous Norman men--pale stare the Franks aghast;

And Rou lifts up his head as from the wind springs up the mast;

“I said I would adore a God, but not a mortal too;

The foot that fled before a foe let cowards kiss!” said Rou.

No words can express the excitement which this rough minstrelsy--marred

as it is by our poor translation from the Romance-tongue in which it was

chanted--produced amongst the Norman guests; less perhaps, indeed, the

song itself, than the recognition of the minstrel; and as he closed, from

more than a hundred voices came the loud murmur, only subdued from a

shout by the royal presence, “Taillefer, our Norman Taillefer!”

“By our joint saint, Peter, my cousin the King,” exclaimed William, after

a frank cordial laugh; “Well I wot, no tongue less free than my warrior

minstrel’s could have so shocked our ears. Excuse his bold theme, for

the sake of his bold heart, I pray thee; and since I know well” (here the

Duke’s face grew grave and anxious) “that nought save urgent and weighty

news from my stormy realm could have brought over this rhyming petrel,

permit the officer behind me to lead hither a bird, I fear, of omen as

well as of song.”

“Whatever pleases thee, pleases me,” said Edward, drily; and he gave the

order to the attendant. In a few moments, up the space in the hall,

between either table, came the large stride of the famous minstrel,

preceded by the officer and followed by the ecclesiastic. The hoods of

both were now thrown back, and discovered countenances in strange

contrast, but each equally worthy of the attention it provoked. The face

of the minstrel was open and sunny as the day; and that of the priest,

dark and close as night. Thick curls of deep auburn (the most common

colour for the locks of the Norman) wreathed in careless disorder round

Taillefer’s massive unwrinkled brow. His eye, of light hazel, was bold

and joyous; mirth, though sarcastic and sly, mantled round his lips. His

whole presence was at once engaging and heroic.

On the other hand, the priest’s cheek was dark and sallow; his features

singularly delicate and refined; his forehead high, but somewhat narrow,

and crossed with lines of thought; his mien composed, modest, but not

without calm self-confidence. Amongst that assembly of soldiers,

noiseless, self-collected, and conscious of his surpassing power over

swords and mail, moved the SCHOLAR.

William’s keen eye rested on the priest with some surprise, not unmixed

with pride and ire; but first addressing Taillefer, who now gained the

foot of the dais, he said, with a familiarity almost fond:

“Now, by’re Lady, if thou bringest not ill news, thy gay face, man, is

pleasanter to mine eyes that thy rough song to my ears. Kneel,

Taillefer, kneel to King Edward, and with more address, rogue, than our

unlucky countryman to King Charles.”

But Edward, as ill-liking the form of the giant as the subject of his

lay, said, pushing back his seat as far as he could:

“Nay, nay, we excuse thee, we excuse thee, tall man.” Nevertheless, the

minstrel still knelt, and so, with a look of profound humility, did the

priest. Then both slowly rose, and at a sign from the Duke, passed to

the other side of the table, standing behind Fitzosborne’s chair.

“Clerk,” said William, eying deliberately the sallow face of the

ecclesiastic; “I know thee of old; and if the Church have sent me an

envoy, per la resplendar De, it should have sent me at least an abbot.”

“Hein, hein!” said Taillefer, bluntly, “vex not my bon camarade, Count

of the Normans. Gramercy, thou wilt welcome him, peradventure, better

than me; for the singer tells but of discord, and the sage may restore

the harmony.”

“Ha!” said the Duke, and the frown fell so dark over his eyes that the

last seemed only visible by two sparks of fire. “I guess, my proud

Vavasours are mutinous. Retire, thou and thy comrade. Await me in my

chamber. The feast shall not flag in London because the wind blows a

gale in Rouen.”

The two envoys, since so they seemed, bowed in silence and withdrew.

“Nought of ill-tidings, I trust,” said Edward, who had not listened to

the whispered communications that had passed between the Duke and his

subjects. “No schism in thy Church? The clerk seemed a peaceful man,

and a humble.”

“An there were schism in my Church,” said the fiery Duke, “my brother of

Bayeux would settle it by arguments as close as the gap between cord and

throttle.”

“Ah! thou art, doubtless, well read in the canons, holy Odo!” said the

King, turning to the bishop with more respect than he had yet evinced

towards that gentle prelate.

“Canons, yes, Seigneur, I draw them up myself for my flock conformably

with such interpretations of the Roman Church as suit best with the

Norman realm: and woe to deacon, monk, or abbot, who chooses to

misconstrue them.” [61]

The bishop looked so truculent and menacing, while his fancy thus

conjured up the possibility of heretical dissent, that Edward shrank from

him as he had done from Taillefer; and in a few minutes after, on

exchange of signals between himself and the Duke, who, impatient to

escape, was too stately to testify that desire, the retirement of the

royal party broke up the banquet; save, indeed, that a few of the elder

Saxons, and more incorrigible Danes, still steadily kept their seats, and

were finally dislodged from their later settlements on the stone floors,

to find themselves, at dawn, carefully propped in a row against the outer

walls of the palace, with their patient attendants, holding links, and

gazing on their masters with stolid envy, if not of the repose at least

of the drugs that had caused it.

CHAPTER II.

“And now,” said William, reclining on a long and narrow couch, with

raised carved work all round it like a box (the approved fashion of a bed

in those days), “now, Sire Taillefer--thy news.”

There were then in the Duke’s chamber, the Count Fitzosborne, Lord of

Breteuil, surnamed “the Proud Spirit”--who, with great dignity, was

holding before the brazier the ample tunic of linen (called dormitorium

in the Latin of that time, and night-rail in the Saxon tongue) in which

his lord was to robe his formidable limbs for repose [62],--Taillefer,

who stood erect before the Duke as a Roman sentry at his post,--and the

ecclesiastic, a little apart, with arms gathered under his gown, and his

bright dark eyes fixed on the ground.

“High and puissant, my liege,” then said Taillefer, gravely, and with a

shade of sympathy on his large face, “my news is such as is best told

briefly: Bunaz, Count d’Eu and descendant of Richard Sanspeur, hath

raised the standard of revolt.”

“Go on,” said the Duke, clenching his hand.

“Henry, King of the French, is treating with the rebel, and stirring up

mutiny in thy realm, and pretenders to thy throne.”

“Ha!” said the Duke, and his lip quivered; “this is not all.”

“No, my liege! and the worst is to come. Thy uncle Mauger, knowing that

thy heart is bent on thy speedy nuptials with the high and noble damsel,

Matilda of Flanders, has broken out again in thine absence--is preaching

against thee in hall and from pulpit. He declares that such espousals

are incestuous, both as within the forbidden degrees, and inasmuch as

Adele, the lady’s mother, was betrothed to thine uncle Richard; and

Mauger menaces excommunication if my liege pursues his suit! [63] So

troubled is the realm, that I, waiting not for debate in council, and

fearing sinister ambassage if I did so, took ship from thy port of

Cherbourg, and have not flagged rein, and scarce broken bread, till I

could say to the heir of Rolf the Founder--Save thy realm from the men of

mail, and thy bride from the knaves in serge.”

“Ho, ho!” cried William; then bursting forth in full wrath, as he sprang

from the couch. “Hearest thou this, Lord Seneschal? Seven years, the

probation of the patriarch, have I wooed and waited; and lo, in the

seventh, does a proud priest say to me, ‘Wrench the love from thy

heart-strings!’--Excommunicate me--ME--William, the son of Robert the

Devil! Ha, by God’s splendour, Mauger shall live to wish the father

stood, in the foul fiend’s true likeness, by his side, rather than brave

the bent brow of the son!”

“Dread my lord,” said Fitzosborne, desisting from his employ, and rising

to his feet; “thou knowest that I am thy true friend and leal knight;

thou knowest how I have aided thee in this marriage with the lady of

Flanders, and how gravely I think that what pleases thy fancy will guard

thy realm; but rather than brave the order of the Church, and the ban of

the Pope, I would see thee wed to the poorest virgin in Normandy.”

William, who had been pacing the room like an enraged lion in his den,

halted in amaze at this bold speech.

“This from thee, William Fitzosborne!--from thee! I tell thee, that if

all the priests in Christendom, and all the barons in France, stood

between me and my bride, I would hew my way through the midst. Foes

invade my realm--let them; princes conspire against me--I smile in scorn;

subjects mutiny--this strong hand can punish, or this large heart can

forgive. All these are the dangers which he who governs men should

prepare to meet; but man has a right to his love, as the stag to his

hind. And he who wrongs me here, is foe and traitor to me, not as Norman

Duke but as human being. Look to it--thou and thy proud barons, look to

it!”

“Proud may thy barons be,” said Fitzosborne, reddening, and with a brow

that quailed not before his lord’s; “for they are the sons of those who

carved out the realm of the Norman, and owned in Rou but the feudal chief

of free warriors; vassals are not villeins. And that which we hold our

duty--whether to Church or chief--that, Duke William, thy proud barons

will doubtless do; nor less, believe me, for threats which, braved in

discharge of duty and defence of freedom, we hold as air.”

The Duke gazed on his haughty subject with an eye in which a meaner

spirit might have seen its doom. The veins in his broad temples swelled

like cords, and a light foam gathered round his quivering lips. But

fiery and fearless as William was, not less was he sagacious and

profound. In that one man he saw the representative of that superb and

matchless chivalry--that race of races--those men of men, in whom the

brave acknowledge the highest example of valiant deeds, and the free the

manliest assertion of noble thoughts [64], since the day when the last

Athenian covered his head with his mantle, and mutely died: and far from

being the most stubborn against his will, it was to Fitzosborne’s

paramount influence with the council, that he had often owed their

submission to his wishes, and their contributions to his wars. In the

very tempest of his wrath, he felt that the blow belonged to strike on

that bold head would shiver his ducal throne to the dust. Be felt too,

that awful indeed was that power of the Church which could thus turn

against him the heart of his truest knight: and he began (for with all

his outward frankness his temper was suspicious) to wrong the

great-souled noble by the thought that he might already be won over by

the enemies whom Mauger had arrayed against his nuptials. Therefore,

with one of those rare and mighty efforts of that dissimulation which

debased his character, but achieved his fortunes, he cleared his brow of

its dark cloud, and said in a low voice, that was not without its pathos:

“Had an angel from heaven forewarned me that William Fitzosborne would

speak thus to his kinsman and brother in arms, in the hour of need and

the agony of passion, I would have disbelieved him. Let it pass----”

But ere the last word was out of his lips, Fitzosborne had fallen on his

knees before the Duke, and, clasping his hand, exclaimed, while the tears

rolled down his swarthy cheek, “Pardon, pardon, my liege! when thou

speakest thus my heart melts. What thou willest, that will I! Church or

Pope, no matter. Send me to Flanders; I will bring back thy bride.”

The slight smile that curved William’s lip, showed that he was scarce

worthy of that sublime weakness in his friend. But he cordially pressed

the hand that grasped his own, and said, “Rise; thus should brother speak

to brother.” Then--for his wrath was only concealed, not stifled, and

yearned for its vent--his eye fell upon the delicate and thoughtful face

of the priest, who had watched this short and stormy conference in

profound silence, despite Taillefer’s whispers to him to interrupt the

dispute. “So, priest,” he said, “I remember me that when Mauger before

let loose his rebellious tongue thou didst lend thy pedant learning to

eke out his brainless treason. Methought that I then banished thee my

realm?”

“Not so, Count and Seigneur,” answered the ecclesiastic, with a grave but

arch smile on his lip; “let me remind thee, that to speed me back to my

native land thou didst graciously send me a horse, halting on three legs,

and all lame on the fourth. Thus mounted, I met thee on my road. I

saluted thee; so did the beast, for his head well nigh touched the

ground. Whereon I did ask thee, in a Latin play of words, to give me at

least a quadruped, not a tripod, for my journey. [65] Gracious, even in

ire, and with relenting laugh, was thine answer. My liege, thy words

implied banishment--thy laughter pardon. So I stayed.”

Despite his wrath, William could scarce repress a smile; but recollecting

himself, he replied, more gravely, “Peace with this levity, priest.

Doubtless thou art the envoy from this scrupulous Mauger, or some other

of my gentle clergy; and thou comest, as doubtless, with soft words and

whining homilies. It is in vain. I hold the Church in holy reverence;

the pontiff knows it. But Matilda of Flanders I have wooed; and Matilda

of Flanders shall sit by my side in the halls of Rouen, or on the deck of

my war-ship, till it anchors on a land worthy to yield a new domain to

the son of the Sea-king.”

“In the halls of Rouen--and it may be on the throne of England--shall

Matilda reign by the side of William,” said the priest in a clear, low,

and emphatic voice; “and it was to tell my lord the Duke that I repent me

of my first unconsidered obeisance to Mauger as my spiritual superior;

that since then I have myself examined canon and precedent; and though

the letter of the law be against thy spousals, it comes precisely under

the category of those alliances to which the fathers of the Church accord

dispensation:--it is to tell thee this, that I, plain Doctor of Laws and

priest of Pavia, have crossed the seas.”

“Ha Rou!--Ha Rou!” cried Taillefer, with his usual bluffness, and

laughing with great glee, “why wouldst thou not listen to me,

monseigneur?”

“If thou deceivest me not,” said William, in surprise, “and thou canst

make good thy words, no prelate in Neustria, save Odo of Bayeux, shall

lift his head high as thine.” And here William, deeply versed in the

science of men, bent his eyes keenly upon the unchanging and earnest face

of the speaker. “Ah,” he burst out, as if satisfied with the survey,

“and my mind tells me that thou speakest not thus boldly and calmly

without ground sufficient. Man, I like thee. Thy name? I forget it.”

“Lanfranc of Pavia, please you my lord; called some times ‘Lanfranc the

Scholar’ in thy cloister of Bec. Nor misdeem me, that I, humble,

unmitred priest, should be thus bold. In birth I am noble, and my

kindred stand near to the grace of our ghostly pontiff; to the pontiff I

myself am not unknown. Did I desire honours, in Italy I might seek them;

it is not so. I crave no guerdon for the service I proffer; none but

this--leisure and books in the Convent of Bec.”

“Sit down--nay, sit, man,” said William, greatly interested, but still

suspicious. “One riddle only I ask thee to solve, before I give thee all

my trust, and place my very heart in thy hands. Why, if thou desirest

not rewards, shouldst thou thus care to serve me--thou, a foreigner?” A

light, brilliant and calm, shone in the eyes of the scholar, and a blush

spread over his pale cheeks.

“My Lord Prince, I will answer in plain words. But first permit me to be

the questioner.”

The priest turned towards Fitzosborne, who had seated himself on a stool

at William’s feet, and, leaning his chin on his hand, listened to the

ecclesiastic, not more with devotion to his calling, than wonder at the

influence one so obscure was irresistibly gaining over his own martial

spirit, and William’s iron craft.

“Lovest thou not, William Lord of Breteuil, lovest thou not fame for the

sake of fame?”

“Sur mon ame--yes!” said the Baron.

“And thou, Taillefer the minstrel, lovest thou not song for the sake of

song?”

“For song alone,” replied the mighty minstrel. “More gold in one ringing

rhyme than in all the coffers of Christendom.”

“And marvellest thou, reader of men’s hearts,” said the scholar, turning

once more to William, “that the student loves knowledge for the sake of

knowledge? Born of high race, poor in purse, and slight of thews,

betimes I found wealth in books, and drew strength from lore. I heard of

the Count of Rouen and the Normans, as a prince of small domain, with a

measureless spirit, a lover of letters, and a captain in war. I came to

thy duchy, I noted its subjects and its prince, and the words of

Themistocles rang in my ear: ‘I cannot play the lute, but I can make a

small state great.’ I felt an interest in thy strenuous and troubled

career. I believe that knowledge, to spread amongst the nations, must

first find a nursery in the brain of kings; and I saw in the deed-doer,

the agent of the thinker. In those espousals, on which with untiring

obstinacy thy heart is set, I might sympathise with thee;

perchance”--(here a melancholy smile flitted over the student’s pale

lips), “perchance even as a lover: priest though I be now, and dead to

human love, once I loved, and I know what it is to strive in hope, and to

waste in despair. But my sympathy, I own, was more given to the prince

than to the lover. It was natural that I, priest and foreigner, should

obey at first the orders of Mauger, archprelate and spiritual chief, and

the more so as the law was with him; but when I resolved to stay despite

thy sentence which banished me, I resolved to aid thee; for if with

Mauger was the dead law, with thee was the living cause of man. Duke

William, on thy nuptials with Matilda of Flanders rests thy duchy--rest,

perchance, the mightier sceptres that are yet to come. Thy title

disputed, thy principality new and unestablished, thou, above all men,

must link thy new race with the ancient line of kings and kaisars.

Matilda is the descendant of Charlemagne and Alfred. Thy realm is

insecure as long as France undermines it with plots, and threatens it

with arms. Marry the daughter of Baldwin--and thy wife is the niece of

Henry of France--thine enemy becomes thy kinsman, and must, perforce, be

thine ally. This is not all; it were strange, looking round this

disordered royalty of England--a childless king, who loves thee better

than his own blood; a divided nobility, already adopting the fashions of

the stranger, and accustomed to shift their faith from Saxon to Dane, and

Dane to Saxon; a people that has respect indeed for brave chiefs, but,

seeing new men rise daily from new houses, has no reverence for ancient

lines and hereditary names; with a vast mass of villeins or slaves that

have no interest in the land or its rulers; strange, seeing all this, if

thy day-dreams have not also beheld a Norman sovereign on the throne of

Saxon England. And thy marriage with the descendant of the best and most

beloved prince that ever ruled these realms, if it does not give thee a

title to the land, may help to conciliate its affections, and to fix thy

posterity in the halls of their mother’s kin. Have I said eno’ to prove

why, for the sake of nations, it were wise for the pontiff to stretch the

harsh girths of the law? why I might be enabled to prove to the Court of

Rome the policy of conciliating the love, and strengthening the hands, of

the Norman Count, who may so become the main prop of Christendom? Yea,

have I said eno’ to prove that the humble clerk can look on mundane

matters with the eye of a man who can make small states great?”

William remained speechless--his hot blood thrilled with a half

superstitious awe; so thoroughly had this obscure Lombard divined,

detailed all the intricate meshes of that policy with which he himself

had interwoven his pertinacious affection for the Flemish princess, that

it seemed to him as if he listened to the echo of his own heart, or heard

from a soothsayer the voice of his most secret thoughts.

The priest continued

“Wherefore, thus considering, I said to myself, Now has the time come,

Lanfranc the Lombard, to prove to thee whether thy self-boastings have

been a vain deceit, or whether, in this age of iron and amidst this lust

of gold, thou, the penniless and the feeble, canst make knowledge and wit

of more avail to the destinies of kings than armed men and filled

treasuries. I believe in that power. I am ready for the test. Pause,

judge from what the Lord of Breteuil hath said to thee, what will be the

defection of thy lords if the Pope confirm the threatened excommunication

of thine uncle? Thine armies will rot from thee; thy treasures will be

like dry leaves in thy coffers; the Duke of Bretagne will claim thy duchy

as the legitimate heir of thy forefathers; the Duke of Burgundy will

league with the King of France, and march on thy faithless legions under

the banner of the Church. The handwriting is on the walls, and thy

sceptre and thy crown will pass away.” William set his teeth firmly, and

breathed hard.

“But send me to Rome, thy delegate, and the thunder of Mauger shall fall

powerless. Marry Matilda, bring her to thy halls, place her on thy

throne, laugh to scorn the interdict of thy traitor uncle, and rest

assured that the Pope shall send thee his dispensation to thy spousals,

and his benison on thy marriage-bed. And when this be done, Duke

William, give me not abbacies and prelacies; multiply books, and stablish

schools, and bid thy servant found the royalty of knowledge, as thou

shalt found the sovereignty of war.”

The Duke, transported from himself, leaped up and embraced the priest

with his vast arms; he kissed his cheeks, he kissed his forehead, as, in

those days, king kissed king with “the kiss of peace.”

“Lanfranc of Pavia,” he cried, “whether thou succeed or fail, thou hast

my love and gratitude evermore. As thou speakest, would I have spoken,

had I been born, framed, and reared as thou. And, verily, when I hear

thee, I blush for the boasts of my barbarous pride, that no man can wield

my mace, or bend my bow. Poor is the strength of body--a web of law can

entangle it, and a word from a priest’s mouth can palsy. But thou!--let

me look at thee.”

William gazed on the pale face: from head to foot he scanned the

delicate, slender form, and then, turning away, he said to Fitzosborne:

“Thou, whose mailed hand hath fell’d a war-steed, art thou not ashamed of

thyself? The day is coming, I see it afar, when these slight men shall

set their feet upon our corslets.”

He paused as if in thought, again paced the room, and stopped before the

crucifix, and image of the Virgin, which stood in a niche near the

bed-head.

“Right, noble prince,” said the priest’s low voice, “pause there for a

solution to all enigmas; there view the symbol of all-enduring power;

there, learn its ends below--comprehend the account it must yield above.

To your thoughts and your prayers we leave you.”

He took the stalwart arm of Taillefer, as he spoke, and, with a grave

obeisance to Fitzosborne, left the chamber.

CHAPTER III.

The next morning William was long closeted alone with Lanfranc,--that

man, among the most remarkable of his age, of whom it was said, that “to

comprehend the extent of his talents, one must be Herodian in grammar,

Aristotle in dialectics, Cicero in rhetoric, Augustine and Jerome in

Scriptural lore,” [66]--and ere the noon the Duke’s gallant and princely

train were ordered to be in readiness for return home.

The crowd in the broad space, and the citizens from their boats in the

river, gazed on the knights and steeds of that gorgeous company, already

drawn up and awaiting without the open gates the sound of the trumpets

that should announce the Duke’s departure. Before the hall-door in the

inner court were his own men. The snow-white steed of Odo; the alezan of

Fitzosborne; and, to the marvel of all, a small palfrey plainly

caparisoned. What did that palfrey amid those steeds?--the steeds

themselves seemed to chafe at the companionship; the Duke’s charger

pricked up his ears and snorted; the Lord of Breteuil’s alezan kicked

out, as the poor nag humbly drew near to make acquaintance; and the

prelate’s white barb, with red vicious eye, and ears laid down, ran

fiercely at the low-bred intruder, with difficulty reined in by the

squires, who shared the beast’s amaze and resentment.

Meanwhile the Duke thoughtfully took his way to Edward’s apartments. In

the anteroom were many monks and many knights; but conspicuous amongst

them all was a tall and stately veteran, leaning on a great two-handed

sword, and whose dress and fashion of beard were those of the last

generation, the men who had fought with Canute the Great or Edmund

Ironsides. So grand was the old man’s aspect, and so did he contrast in

appearance the narrow garb and shaven chins of those around, that the

Duke was roused from his reverie at the sight, and marvelling why one,

evidently a chief of high rank, had neither graced the banquet in his

honour, nor been presented to his notice, he turned to the Earl of

Hereford, who approached him with gay salutation, and inquired the name

and title of the bearded man in the loose flowing robe.

“Know you not, in truth?” said the lively Earl, in some wonder. “In him

you see the great rival of Godwin. He is the hero of the Danes, as

Godwin is of the Saxons, a true son of Odin, Siward, Earl of the

Northumbrians.” [67]

“Norse Dame be my aid,--his fame hath oft filled my ears, and I should

have lost the most welcome sight in merrie England had I not now beheld

him.”

Therewith, the Duke approached courteously, and, doffing the cap he had

hitherto retained, he greeted the old hero with those compliments which

the Norman had already learned in the courts of the Frank.

The stout Earl received them coldly, and replying in Danish to William’s

Romance-tongue, he said:

“Pardon, Count of the Normans, if these old lips cling to their old

words. Both of us, methinks, date our lineage from the lands of the

Norse. Suffer Siward to speak the language the sea-kings spoke. The old

oak is not to be transplanted, and the old man keeps the ground where his

youth took root.”

The Duke, who with some difficulty comprehended the general meaning of

Siward’s speech, bit his lip, but replied courteously:

“The youths of all nations may learn from renowned age. Much doth it

shame me that I cannot commune with thee in the ancestral tongue; but the

angels at least know the language of the Norman Christian, and I pray

them and the saints for a calm end to thy brave career.”

“Pray not to angel or saint for Siward son of Beorn,” said the old man

hastily; “let me not have a cow’s death, but a warrior’s; die in my mail

of proof, axe in hand, and helm on head. And such may be my death, if

Edward the King reads my rede and grants my prayer.”

“I have influence with the King,” said William; “name thy wish, that I

may back it.”

“The fiend forfend,” said the grim Earl, “that a foreign prince should

sway England’s King, or that thegn and earl should ask other backing than

leal service and just cause. If Edward be the saint men call him, he

will loose me on the hell-wolf, without other cry than his own

conscience.”

The Duke turned inquiringly to Rolf; who, thus appealed to, said:

“Siward urges my uncle to espouse the cause of Malcolm of Cumbria against

the bloody tyrant Macbeth; and but for the disputes with the traitor

Godwin, the King had long since turned his arms to Scotland.”

“Call not traitors, young man,” said the Earl, in high disdain, “those

who, with all their faults and crimes, have placed thy kinsman on the

throne of Canute.”

“Hush, Rolf,” said the Duke, observing the fierce young Norman about to

reply hastily. “But methought, though my knowledge of English troubles

is but scant, that Siward was the sworn foe to Godwin?”

“Foe to him in his power, friend to him in his wrongs,” answered Siward.

“And if England needs defenders when I and Godwin are in our shrouds,

there is but one man worthy of the days of old, and his name is Harold,

the outlaw.”

William’s face changed remarkably, despite all his dissimulation; and,

with a slight inclination of his head, he strode on moody and irritated.

“This Harold! this Harold!” he muttered to himself, “all brave men speak

to me of this Harold! Even my Norman knights name him with reluctant

reverence, and even his foes do him honour;--verily his shadow is cast

from exile over all the land.”

Thus murmuring, he passed the throng with less than his wonted affable

grace, and pushing back the officers who wished to precede him, entered,

without ceremony, Edward’s private chamber.

The King was alone, but talking loudly to himself, gesticulating

vehemently, and altogether so changed from his ordinary placid apathy of

mien, that William drew back in alarm and awe. Often had he heard

indirectly, that of late years Edward was said to see visions, and be

rapt from himself into the world of spirit and shadow; and such, he now

doubted not, was the strange paroxysm of which he was made the witness.

Edward’s eyes were fixed on him, but evidently without recognising his

presence; the King’s hands were outstretched, and he cried aloud in a

voice of sharp anguish:

“Sanguelac, Sanguelac!--the Lake of Blood!--the waves spread,

the waves redden! Mother of mercy--where is the ark?--where the

Ararat?--Fly--fly--this way--this--” and he caught convulsive hold of

William’s arm. “No! there the corpses are piled--high and higher--there

the horse of the Apocalypse tramples the dead in their gore.”

In great horror, William took the King, now gasping on his breast, in his

arms, and laid him on his bed, beneath its canopy of state, all blazoned

with the martlets and cross of his insignia. Slowly Edward came to

himself, with heavy sighs; and when at length he sate up and looked

round, it was with evident unconsciousness of what had passed across his

haggard and wandering spirit, for he said, with his usual drowsy

calmness:

“Thanks, Guillaume, bien aime, for rousing me from unseasoned sleep. How

fares it with thee?”

“Nay, how with thee, dear friend and king? thy dreams have been

troubled.”

“Not so; I slept so heavily, methinks I could not have dreamed at all.

But thou art clad as for a journey--spur on thy heel, staff in thy hand!”

“Long since, O dear host, I sent Odo to tell thee of the ill news from

Normandy that compelled me to depart.”

“I remember--I remember me now,” said Edward, passing his pale womanly

fingers over his forehead. “The heathen rage against thee. Ah! my poor

brother, a crown is an awful head-gear. While yet time, why not both

seek some quiet convent, and put away these earthly cares?”

William smiled and shook his head. “Nay, holy Edward, from all I have

seen of convents, it is a dream to think that the monk’s serge hides a

calmer breast than the warrior’s mail, or the king’s ermine. Now give me

thy benison, for I go.”

He knelt as he spoke, and Edward bent his hands over his head, and

blessed him. Then, taking from his own neck a collar of zimmes (jewels

and uncut gems), of great price, the King threw it over the broad throat

bent before him, and rising, clapped his hands. A small door opened,

giving a glimpse of the oratory within, and a monk appeared.

“Father, have my behests been fulfilled?--hath Hugoline, my treasurer,

dispensed the gifts that I spoke of?”

“Verily yes; vault, coffer, and garde-robe--stall and meuse.-are well

nigh drained,” answered the monk, with a sour look at the Norman, whose

native avarice gleamed in his dark eyes as he heard the answer.

“Thy train go not hence empty-handed,” said Edward fondly. “Thy father’s

halls sheltered the exile, and the exile forgets not the sole pleasure of

a king--the power to requite. We may never meet again, William,--age

creeps over me, and who will succeed to my thorny throne?” William

longed to answer,--to tell the hope that consumed him,--to remind his

cousin of the vague promise in their youth, that the Norman Count should

succeed to that “thorny throne:” but the presence of the Saxon monk

repelled him, nor was there in Edward’s uneasy look much to allure him

on.

“But peace,” continued the King, “be between thine and mine, as between

thee and me!”

“Amen,” said the Duke, “and I leave thee at least free from the proud

rebels who so long disturbed thy reign. This House of Godwin, thou wilt

not again let it tower above thy palace?”

“Nay, the future is with God and his saints;” answered Edward, feebly.

“But Godwin is old--older than I, and bowed by many storms.”

“Ay, his sons are more to be dreaded and kept aloof--mostly Harold!”

“Harold,--he was ever obedient, he alone of his kith; truly my soul

mourns for Harold,” said the King, sighing.

“The serpent’s egg hatches but the serpent. Keep thy heel on it,” said

William, sternly.

“Thou speakest well,” said the irresolute prince, who never seemed three

days or three minutes together in the same mind. “Harold is in

Ireland--there let him rest: better for all.”

“For all,” said the Duke; “so the saints keep thee, O royal saint!”

He kissed the King’s hand, and strode away to the hall where Odo,

Fitzosborne, and the priest Lanfranc awaited him. And so that day,

halfway towards the fair town of Dover, rode Duke William, and by the

side of his roan barb ambled the priest’s palfrey.

Behind came his gallant train, and with tumbrils and sumpter-mules laden

with baggage, and enriched by Edward’s gifts; while Welch hawks, and

steeds of great price from the pastures of Surrey and the plains of

Cambridge and York, attested no less acceptably than zimme, and golden

chain, and embroidered robe, the munificence of the grateful King. [68]

As they journeyed on, and the fame of the Duke’s coming was sent abroad

by the bodes or messengers, despatched to prepare the towns through which

he was to pass for an arrival sooner than expected, the more highborn

youths of England, especially those of the party counter to that of the

banished Godwin, came round the ways to gaze upon that famous chief, who,

from the age of fifteen, had wielded the most redoubtable sword of

Christendom. And those youths wore the Norman garb: and in the towns,

Norman counts held his stirrup to dismount, and Norman hosts spread the

fastidious board; and when, at the eve of the next day, William saw the

pennon of one of his own favourite chiefs waving in the van of armed men,

that sallied forth from the towers of Dover (the key of the coast) he

turned to the Lombard, still by his side, and said:

“Is not England part of Normandy already?”

And the Lombard answered:

“The fruit is well nigh ripe, and the first breeze will shake it to thy

feet. Put not out thy hand too soon. Let the wind do its work.”

And the Duke made reply:

“As thou thinkest, so think I. And there is but one wind in the halls of

heaven that can waft the fruit to the feet of another.”

“And that?” asked the Lombard.

“Is the wind that blows from the shores of Ireland, when it fills the

sails of Harold, son of Godwin.”

“Thou fearest that man, and why?” asked the Lombard with interest.

And the Duke answered:

“Because in the breast of Harold beats the heart of England.”

BOOK III.

THE HOUSE OF GODWIN.

CHAPTER I.

And all went to the desire of Duke William the Norman. With one hand he

curbed his proud vassals, and drove back his fierce foes. With the

other, he led to the altar Matilda, the maid of Flanders; and all

happened as Lanfranc had foretold. William’s most formidable enemy, the

King of France, ceased to conspire against his new kinsman; and the

neighbouring princes said, “The Bastard hath become one of us since he

placed by his side the descendant of Charlemagne.” And Mauger,

Archbishop of Rouen, excommunicated the Duke and his bride, and the ban

fell idle; for Lanfranc sent from Rome the Pope’s dispensation and

blessing [69], conditionally only that bride and bridegroom founded each

a church. And Mauger was summoned before the synod, and accused of

unclerical crimes; and they deposed him from his state, and took from him

abbacies and sees. And England every day waxed more and more Norman; and

Edward grew more feeble and infirm, and there seemed not a barrier

between the Norman Duke and the English throne, when suddenly the wind

blew in the halls of heaven, and filled the sails of Harold the Earl.

And his ships came to the mouth of the Severn. And the people of

Somerset and Devon, a mixed and mainly a Celtic race, who bore small love

to the Saxons, drew together against him, and he put them to flight. [70]

Meanwhile, Godwin and his sons Sweyn, Tostig, and Gurth, who had taken

refuge in that very Flanders from which William the Duke had won his

bride,--(for Tostig had wed, previously, the sister of Matilda, the rose

of Flanders; and Count Baldwin had, for his sons-in-law, both Tostig and

William,)--meanwhile, I say, these, not holpen by the Count Baldwin, but

helping themselves, lay at Bruges, ready to join Harold the Earl. And

Edward, advised of this from the anxious Norman, caused forty ships [71]

to be equipped, and put them under command of Rolf, Earl of Hereford.

The ships lay at Sandwich in wait for Godwin. But the old Earl got from

them, and landed quietly on the southern coast. And the fort of Hastings

opened to his coming with a shout from its armed men.

All the boatmen, all the mariners, far and near, thronged to him, with

sail and with shield, with sword and with oar. All Kent (the

foster-mother of the Saxons) sent forth the cry, “Life or death with Earl

Godwin.” [72] Fast over the length and breadth of the land, went the

bodes [73] and riders of the Earl; and hosts, with one voice, answered

the cry of the children of Horsa, “Life or death with Earl Godwin.” And

the ships of King Edward, in dismay, turned flag and prow to London, and

the fleet of Harold sailed on. So the old Earl met his young son on the

deck of a war-ship, that had once borne the Raven of the Dane.

Swelled and gathering sailed the armament of the English men. Slow up

the Thames it sailed, and on either shore marched tumultuous the swarming

multitudes. And King Edward sent after more help, but it came up very

late. So the fleet of the Earl nearly faced the Julliet Keape of London,

and abode at Southwark till the flood-tide came up. When he had mustered

his host, then came the flood tide. [74]

CHAPTER II.

King Edward sate, not on his throne, but on a chair of state, in the

presence-chamber of his palace of Westminster. His diadem, with the

three zimmes shaped into a triple trefoil [75] on his brow, his sceptre

in his right hand. His royal robe, tight to the throat, with a broad

band of gold, flowed to his feet; and at the fold gathered round the left

knee, where now the kings of England wear the badge of St. George, was

embroidered a simple cross [76]. In that chamber met the thegns and

proceres of his realm; but not they alone. No national Witan there

assembled, but a council of war, composed at least one third part of

Normans--counts, knights, prelates, and abbots of high degree.

And King Edward looked a king! The habitual lethargic meekness had

vanished from his face, and the large crown threw a shadow, like a frown,

over his brow. His spirit seemed to have risen from the weight it took

from the sluggish blood of his father, Ethelred the Unready, and to have

remounted to the brighter and earlier sources of ancestral heroes.

Worthy in that hour he seemed to boast the blood and wield the sceptre of

Athelstan and Alfred. [77]

Thus spoke the King:

“Right worthy and beloved, my ealdermen, earls, and thegns of England;

noble and familiar, my friends and guests, counts and chevaliers of

Normandy, my mother’s land; and you, our spiritual chiefs, above all ties

of birth and country, Christendom your common appanage, and from Heaven

your seignories and fiefs,--hear the words of Edward, the King of England

under grace of the Most High. The rebels are in our river; open yonder

lattice, and you will see the piled shields glittering from their barks,

and hear the hum of their hosts. Not a bow has yet been drawn, not a

sword left its sheath; yet on the opposite side of the river are our

fleets of forty sail--along the strand, between our palace and the gates

of London, are arrayed our armies. And this pause because Godwin the

traitor hath demanded truce and his nuncius waits without. Are ye

willing that we should hear the message? or would ye rather that we

dismiss the messenger unheard, and pass at once, to rank and to sail, the

war-cry of a Christian king, ‘Holy Crosse and our Lady!’”

The King ceased, his left hand grasping firm the leopard head carved on

his throne, and his sceptre untrembling in his lifted hand.

A murmur of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, the war-cry of the Normans, was heard

amongst the stranger-knights of the audience; but haughty and arrogant as

those strangers were, no one presumed to take precedence, in England’s

danger, of men English born.

Slowly then rose Alred, Bishop of Winchester, the worthiest prelate in

all the land. [78]

“Kingly son,” said the bishop, “evil is the strife between men of the

same blood and lineage, nor justified but by extremes, which have not yet

been made clear to us. And ill would it sound throughout England were it

said that the King’s council gave, perchance, his city of London to sword

and fire, and rent his land in twain, when a word in season might have

disbanded yon armies, and given to your throne a submissive subject,

where now you are menaced by a formidable rebel. Wherefore, I say, admit

the nuncius.”

Scarcely had Alred resumed his seat, before Robert the Norman prelate of

Canterbury started up,--a man, it was said, of worldly learning--and

exclaimed:

“To admit the messenger is to approve the treason. I do beseech the King

to consult only his own royal heart and royal honour. Reflect--each

moment of delay swells the rebel hosts, strengthens their cause; of each

moment they avail themselves to allure to their side the misguided

citizens. Delay but proves our own weakness; a king’s name is a tower of

strength, but only when fortified by a king’s authority. Give the signal

for--war I call it not--no--for chastisement and justice.”

“As speaks my brother of Canterbury, speak I,” said William, Bishop of

London, another Norman.

But then there rose up a form at whose rising all murmurs were hushed.

Grey and vast, as some image of a gone and mightier age towered over all,

Siward, the son of Beorn, the great Earl of Northumbria.

“We have naught to do with the Normans. Were they on the river, and our

countrymen, Dane or Saxon, alone in this hall, small doubt of the King’s

choice, and niddering were the man who spoke of peace; but when Norman

advises the dwellers of England to go forth and slay each other, no sword

of mine shall be drawn at his hest. Who shall say that Siward of the

Strong Arm, the grandson of the Berserker, ever turned from a foe? The

foe, son of Ethelred, sits in these halls; I fight thy battles when I say

Nay to the Norman! Brothers-in-arms of the kindred race and common

tongue, Dane and Saxon long intermingled, proud alike of Canute the

glorious and Alfred the wise, ye will hear the man whom Godwin, our

countryman, sends to us; he at least will speak our tongue, and he knows

our laws. If the demand he delivers be just, such as a king should

grant, and our Witan should hear, woe to him who refuses; if unjust be

the demand, shame to him who accedes. Warrior sends to warrior,

countryman to countryman; hear we as countrymen, and judge as warriors.

I have said.”

The utmost excitement and agitation followed the speech of

Siward,--unanimous applause from the Saxons, even those who in times of

peace were most under the Norman contagion; but no words can paint the

wrath and scorn of the Normans. They spoke loud and many at a time; the

greatest disorder prevailed. But the majority being English, there could

be no doubt as to the decision; and Edward, to whom the emergence gave

both a dignity and presence of mind rare to him, resolved to terminate

the dispute at once. He stretched forth his sceptre, and motioning to

his chamberlain, bade him introduce the nuncius. [79]

A blank disappointment, not unmixed with apprehensive terror, succeeded

the turbulent excitement of the Normans; for well they knew that the

consequences, if not condition, of negotiations, would be their own

downfall and banishment at the least;--happy, it might be, to escape

massacre at the hands of the exasperated multitude.

The door at the end of the room opened, and the nuncius appeared. He was

a sturdy, broad-shouldered man, of middle age, and in the long loose garb

originally national with the Saxon, though then little in vogue; his

beard thick and fair, his eyes grey and calm--a chief of Kent, where all

the prejudices of his race were strongest, and whose yeomanry claimed in

war the hereditary right to be placed in the front of battle.

He made his manly but deferential salutation to the august council as he

approached; and, pausing midway between the throne and door, he fell on

his knees without thought of shame, for the King to whom he knelt was the

descendant of Woden, and the heir of Hengist. At a sign and a brief word

from the King, still on his knees, Vebba, the Kentman, spoke.

“To Edward, son of Ethelred, his most gracious king and lord, Godwin, son

of Wolnoth, sends faithful and humble greeting, by Vebba, the thegn-born.

He prays the King to hear him in kindness, and judge of him with mercy.

Not against the King comes he hither with ships and arms; but against

those only who would stand between the King’s heart and the subject’s:

those who have divided a house against itself, and parted son and father,

man and wife.”

At those last words Edward’s sceptre trembled in this hand, and his face

grew almost stern.

“Of the King, Godwin but prays with all submiss and earnest prayer, to

reverse the unrighteous outlawry against him and his; to restore him and

his sons their just possessions and well-won honours; and, more than all,

to replace them where they have sought by loving service not unworthily

to stand, in the grace of their born lord and in the van of those who

would uphold the laws and liberties of England. This done--the ships

sail back to their haven; the thegn seeks his homestead and the ceorl

returns to the plough; for with Godwin are no strangers; and his force is

but the love of his countrymen.”

“Hast thou said?” quoth the King.

“I have said.”

“Retire, and await our answer.”

The Thegn of Kent was then led back into an ante-room, in which, armed

from head to heel in ring-mail, were several Normans whose youth or

station did not admit them into the council, but still of no mean

interest in the discussion, from the lands and possessions they had

already contrived to gripe out of the demesnes of the exiles;--burning

for battle and eager for the word. Amongst these was Mallet de Graville.

The Norman valour of this young knight was, as we have seen, guided by

Norman intelligence; and he had not disdained, since William’s departure,

to study the tongue of the country in which he hoped to exchange his

mortgaged tower on the Seine, for some fair barony on the Humber or the

Thames.

While the rest of his proud countrymen stood aloof, with eyes of silent

scorn, from the homely nuncius, Mallet approached him with courteous

bearing, and said in Saxon:

“May I crave to know the issue of thy message from the reb--that is from

the doughty Earl?”

“I wait to learn it,” said Vebba, bluffly.

“They heard thee throughout, then?”

“Throughout.”

“Friendly Sir,” said the Sire de Graville, seeking to subdue the tone of

irony habitual to him, and acquired, perhaps, from his maternal ancestry,

the Franks. “Friendly and peace-making Sir, dare I so far venture to

intrude on the secrets of thy mission as to ask if Godwin demands, among

other reasonable items, the head of thy humble servant--not by name

indeed, for my name is as yet unknown to him--but as one of the unhappy

class called Normans?”

“Had Earl Godwin,” returned the nuncius, “thought fit to treat for peace

by asking vengeance, he would have chosen another spokesman. The Earl

asks but his own; and thy head is not, I trow, a part of his goods and

chattels.”

“That is comforting,” said Mallet. “Marry, I thank thee, Sir Saxon; and

thou speakest like a brave man and an honest. And if we fall to blows,

as I suspect we shall, I should deem it a favour of our Lady the Virgin

if she send thee across my way. Next to a fair friend I love a bold

foe.”

Vebba smiled, for he liked the sentiment, and the tone and air of the

young knight pleased his rough mind, despite his prejudices against the

stranger.

Encouraged by the smile, Mallet seated himself on the corner of the long

table that skirted the room, and with a debonnair gesture invited Vebba

to do the same; then looking at him gravely, he resumed:

“So frank and courteous thou art, Sir Envoy, that I yet intrude on thee

my ignorant and curious questions.”

“Speak out, Norman.”

“How comes it, then, that you English so love this Earl Godwin?--Still

more, why think you it right and proper that King Edward should love him

too? It is a question I have often asked, and to which I am not likely

in these halls to get answer satisfactory. If I know aught of your

troublous history, this same Earl has changed sides oft eno’; first for

the Saxon, then for Canute the Dane--Canute dies, and your friend takes

up arms for the Saxon again. He yields to the advice of your Witan, and

sides with Hardicanute and Harold, the Danes--a letter, nathless, is

written as from Emma, the mother to the young Saxon princes, Edward and

Alfred, inviting them over to England, and promising aid; the saints

protect Edward, who continues to say aves in Normandy--Alfred comes over,

Earl Godwin meets him, and, unless belied, does him homage, and swears to

him faith. Nay, listen yet. This Godwin, whom ye love so, then leads

Alfred and his train into the ville of Guildford, I think ye call

it,--fair quarters enow. At the dead of the night rush in King Harold’s

men, seize prince and follower, six hundred men in all; and next morning,

saving only every tenth man, they are tortured and put to death. The

prince is born off to London, and shortly afterwards his eyes are torn

out in the Islet of Ely, and he dies of the anguish! That ye should love

Earl Godwin withal may be strange, but yet possible. But is it possible,

cher Envoy, for the King to love the man who thus betrayed his brother to

the shambles?”

“All this is a Norman fable,” said the Thegn of Kent, with a disturbed

visage; “and Godwin cleared himself on oath of all share in the foul

murder of Alfred.”

“The oath, I have heard, was backed,” said the knight drily, “by a

present to Hardicanute, who after the death of King Harold resolved to

avenge the black butchery; a present, I say, of a gilt ship, manned by

fourscore warriors with gold-hilted swords, and gilt helms.--But let this

pass.”

“Let it pass,” echoed Vebba with a sigh. “Bloody were those times, and

unholy their secrets.”

“Yet answer me still, why love you Earl Godwin? He hath changed sides

from party to party, and in each change won lordships and lands. He is

ambitious and grasping, ye all allow; for the ballads sung in your

streets liken him to the thorn and the bramble, at which the sheep leaves

his wool. He is haughty and overbearing. Tell me, O Saxon, frank Saxon,

why you love Godwin the Earl? Fain would I know; for, please the saints

(and you and your Earl so permitting), I mean to live and die in this

merrie England; and it would be pleasant to learn that I have but to do

as Earl Godwin, in order to win love from the English.”

The stout Vebba looked perplexed; but after stroking his beard

thoughtfully, he answered thus:

“Though of Kent, and therefore in his earldom, I am not one of Godwin’s

especial party; for that reason was I chosen his bode. Those who are

under him doubtless love a chief liberal to give and strong to protect.

The old age of a great leader gathers reverence, as an oak gathers moss.

But to me, and those like me, living peaceful at home, shunning courts,

and tempting not broils, Godwin the man is not dear--it is Godwin the

thing.”

“Though I do my best to know your language,” said the knight, “ye have

phrases that might puzzle King Solomon. What meanest thou by ‘Godwin the

thing’?”

“That which to us Godwin only seems to uphold. We love justice; whatever

his offences, Godwin was banished unjustly. We love our laws; Godwin was

dishonoured by maintaining them. We love England, and are devoured by

strangers; Godwin’s cause is England’s, and--stranger, forgive me for not

concluding.”

Then examining the young Norman with a look of rough compassion, he laid

his large hand upon the knight’s shoulder and whispered:

“Take my advice--and fly.”

“Fly!” said De Graville, reddening. “Is it to fly, think you, that I

have put on my mail, and girded my sword?”

“Vain--vain! Wasps are fierce, but the swarm is doomed when the straw is

kindled. I tell you this--fly in time, and you are safe; but let the

King be so misguided as to count on arms, and strive against yon

multitude, and verily before nightfall not one Norman will be found alive

within ten miles of the city. Look to it, youth! Perhaps thou hast a

mother--let her not mourn a son!”

Before the Norman could shape into Saxon sufficiently polite and courtly

his profound and indignant disdain of the counsel, his sense of the

impertinence with which his shoulder had been profaned, and his mother’s

son had been warned, the nuncius was again summoned into the

presence-chamber. Nor did he return into the ante-room, but conducted

forthwith from the council--his brief answer received--to the stairs of

the palace, he reached the boat in which he had come, and was rowed back

to the ship that held the Earl and his sons.

Now this was the manoeuvre of Godwin’s array. His vessels having passed

London Bridge, had rested awhile on the banks of the Southward suburb

(Suth-weorde)--since called Southwark--and the King’s ships lay to the

north; but the fleet of the Earl’s, after a brief halt, veered

majestically round, and coming close to the palace of Westminster,

inclined northward, as if to hem the King’s ships. Meanwhile the land

forces drew up close to the Strand, almost within bow-shot of the King’s

troops, that kept the ground inland; thus Vebba saw before him, so near

as scarcely to be distinguished from each other, on the river the rival

fleets, on the shore the rival armaments.

High above all the vessels towered the majestic bark, or aesca, that had

borne Harold from the Irish shores. Its fashion was that of the ancient

sea-kings, to one of whom it had belonged. Its curved and mighty prow,

richly gilded, stood out far above the waves: the prow, the head of the

sea-snake; the stern its spire; head and spire alike glittering in the

sun.

The boat drew up to the lofty side of the vessel, a ladder was lowered,

the nuncius ascended lightly and stood on deck. At the farther end

grouped the sailors, few in number, and at respectful distance from the

Earl and his sons.

Godwin himself was but half armed. His head was bare, nor had he other

weapon of offence than the gilt battle-axe of the Danes--weapon as much

of office as of war; but his broad breast was covered with the ring mail

of the time. His stature was lower than that of any of his sons; nor did

his form exhibit greater physical strength than that of a man, well

shaped, robust, and deep of chest, who still preserved in age the pith

and sinew of mature manhood. Neither, indeed, did legend or fame ascribe

to that eminent personage those romantic achievements, those feats of

purely animal prowess, which distinguished his rival, Siward. Brave he

was, but brave as a leader; those faculties in which he appears to have

excelled all his contemporaries, were more analogous to the requisites of

success in civilised times, than those which won renown of old. And

perhaps England was the only country then in Europe which could have

given to those faculties their fitting career. He possessed essentially

the arts of party; he knew how to deal with vast masses of mankind; he

could carry along with his interests the fervid heart of the multitude;

he had in the highest degree that gift, useless in most other lands--in

all lands where popular assemblies do not exist--the gift of popular

eloquence. Ages elapsed, after the Norman conquest, ere eloquence again

became a power in England. [80]

But like all men renowned for eloquence, he went with the popular feeling

of his times; he embodied its passions, its prejudices--but also that

keen sense of self-interest, which is the invariable characteristic of a

multitude. He was the sense of the commonalty carried to its highest

degree. Whatever the faults, it may be the crimes, of a career

singularly prosperous and splendid, amidst events the darkest and most

terrible,--shining with a steady light across the thunder-clouds,--he was

never accused of cruelty or outrage to the mass of the people. English,

emphatically, the English deemed him; and this not the less that in his

youth he had sided with Canute, and owed his fortunes to that king; for

so intermixed were Danes and Saxons in England, that the agreement which

had given to Canute one half the kingdom had been received with general

applause; and the earlier severities of that great prince had been so

redeemed in his later years by wisdom and mildness--so, even in the worst

period of his reign, relieved by extraordinary personal affability, and

so lost now in men’s memories by pride in his power and fame,--that

Canute had left behind him a beloved and honoured name [81], and Godwin

was the more esteemed as the chosen counsellor of that popular prince.

At his death, Godwin was known to have wished, and even armed, for the

restoration of the Saxon line; and only yielded to the determination of

the Witan, no doubt acted upon by the popular opinion. Of one dark crime

he was suspected, and, despite his oath to the contrary, and the formal

acquittal of the national council, doubt of his guilt rested then, as it

rests still, upon his name; viz., the perfidious surrender of Alfred,

Edward’s murdered brother.

But time had passed over the dismal tragedy; and there was an instinctive

and prophetic feeling throughout the English nation, that with the House

of Godwin was identified the cause of the English people. Everything in

this man’s aspect served to plead in his favour. His ample brows were

calm with benignity and thought; his large dark blue eyes were serene and

mild, though their expression, when examined, was close and inscrutable.

His mien was singularly noble, but wholly without formality or affected

state; and though haughtiness and arrogance were largely attributed to

him, they could be found only in his deeds, not manner--plain, familiar,

kindly to all men, his heart seemed as open to the service of his

countrymen as his hospitable door to their wants.

Behind him stood the stateliest group of sons that ever filled with pride

a father’s eye. Each strikingly distinguished from the other, all

remarkable for beauty of countenance and strength of frame.

Sweyn, the eldest [82], had the dark hues of his mother the Dane: a wild

and mournful majesty sat upon features aquiline and regular, but wasted

by grief or passion; raven locks, glossy even in neglect, fell half over

eyes hollow in their sockets, but bright, though with troubled fire.

Over his shoulder he bore his mighty axe. His form, spare, but of

immense power, was sheathed in mail, and he leant on his great pointed

Danish shield. At his feet sate his young son Haco, a boy with a

countenance preternaturally thoughtful for his years, which were yet

those of childhood.

Next to him stood the most dreaded and ruthless of the sons of

Godwin--he, fated to become to the Saxon what Julian was to the Goth.

With his arms folded on his breast stood Tostig; his face was beautiful

as a Greek’s, in all save the forehead, which was low and lowering. Sleek

and trim were his bright chestnut locks; and his arms were damascened

with silver, for he was one who loved the pomp and luxury of war.

Wolnoth, the mother’s favourite, seemed yet in the first flower of youth,

but he alone of all the sons had something irresolute and effeminate in

his aspect and bearing; his form, though tall, had not yet come to its

full height and strength; and, as if the weight of mail were unusual to

him, he leant with both hands upon the wood of his long spear. Leofwine,

who stood next to Wolnoth, contrasted him notably; his sunny locks

wreathed carelessly over a white unclouded brow, and the silken hair on

the upper lip quivered over arch lips, smiling, even in that serious

hour.

At Godwin’s right hand, but not immediately near him, stood the last of

the group, Gurth and Harold. Gurth had passed his arm over the shoulder

of his brother, and, not watching the nuncius while he spoke, watched

only the effect his words produced on the face of Harold. For Gurth

loved Harold as Jonathan loved David. And Harold was the only one of the

group not armed; and had a veteran skilled in war been asked who of that

group was born to lead armed men, he would have pointed to the man

unarmed.

“So what says the King?” asked Earl Godwin.

“This; he refuses to restore thee and thy sons, or to hear thee, till

thou hast disbanded thine army, dismissed thy ships, and consented to

clear thyself and thy house before the Witanagemot.”

A fierce laugh broke from Tostig; Sweyn’s mournful brow grew darker;

Leofwine placed his right hand on his ateghar; Wolnoth rose erect; Gurth

kept his eyes on Harold, and Harold’s face was unmoved.

“The King received thee in his council of war,” said Godwin,

thoughtfully, “and doubtless the Normans were there. Who were the

Englishmen most of mark?”

“Siward of Northumbria, thy foe.”

“My sons,” said the Earl, turning to his children, and breathing loud as

if a load were off his heart; “there will be no need of axe or armour

to-day. Harold alone was wise,” and he pointed to the linen tunic of the

son thus cited.

“What mean you, Sir Father?” said Tostig, imperiously. “Think you

to----”

“Peace, son, peace;” said Godwin, without asperity, but with conscious

command. “Return, brave and dear friend,” he said to Vebba, “find out

Siward the Earl; tell him that I, Godwin, his foe in the old time, place

honour and life in his hands, and what he counsels that will we do.--Go.”

The Kent man nodded, and regained his boat. Then spoke Harold.

“Father, yonder are the forces of Edward; as yet without leaders, since

the chiefs must still be in the halls of the King. Some fiery Norman

amongst them may provoke an encounter; and this city of London is not

won, as it behoves us to win it, if one drop of English blood dye the

sword of one English man. Wherefore, with your leave, I will take boat,

and land. And unless I have lost in my absence all right here in the

hearts of our countrymen, at the first shout from our troops which

proclaims that Harold, son of Godwin, is on the soil of our fathers, half

yon array of spears and helms pass at once to our side.”

“And if not, my vain brother?” said Tostig, gnawing his lip with envy.

“And if not, I will ride alone into the midst of them, and ask what

Englishmen are there who will aim shaft or spear at this breast, never

mailed against England!”

Godwin placed his hand on Harold’s head, and the tears came to those

close cold eyes.

“Thou knowest by nature what I have learned by art. Go, and prosper. Be

it as thou wilt.”

“He takes thy post, Sweyn--thou art the elder,” said Tostig, to the wild

form by his side.

“There is guilt on my soul, and woe in my heart,” answered Sweyn,

moodily. “Shall Esau lose his birthright, and Cain retain it?” So

saying, he withdrew, and, reclining against the stern of the vessel,

leant his face upon the edge of his shield.

Harold watched him with deep compassion in his eyes, passed to his side

with a quick step, pressed his hand, and whispered, “Peace to the past, O

my brother!”

The boy Haco, who had noiselessly followed his father, lifted his sombre,

serious looks to Harold as he thus spoke; and when Harold turned away, he

said to Sweyn, timidly, “He, at least, is ever good to thee and to me.”

“And thou, when I am no more, shalt cling to him as thy father, Haco,”

answered Sweyn, tenderly smoothing back the child’s dark locks.

The boy shivered; and, bending his head, murmured to himself, “When thou

art no more! No more? Has the Vala doomed him, too? Father and son,

both?”

Meanwhile, Harold had entered the boat lowered from the sides of the

aesca to receive him; and Gurth, looking appealingly to his father, and

seeing no sign of dissent, sprang down after the young Earl, and seated

himself by his side. Godwin followed the boat with musing eyes.

“Small need,” said he, aloud, but to himself, “to believe in soothsayers,

or to credit Hilda the saga, when she prophesied, ere we left our shores,

that Harold--” He stopped short, for Tostig’s wrathful exclamation broke

on his reverie.

“Father, father! My blood surges in my ears, and boils in my heart, when

I hear thee name the prophecies of Hilda in favour of thy darling.

Dissension and strife in our house have they wrought already; and if the

feuds between Harold and me have sown grey in thy locks, thank thyself

when, flushed with vain soothsayings for thy favoured Harold, thou

saidst, in the hour of our first childish broil, ‘Strive not with Harold;

for his brothers will be his men.’”

“Falsify the prediction,” said Godwin, calmly; “wise men may always make

their own future, and seize their own fates. Prudence, patience, labour,

valour; these are the stars that rule the career of mortals.”

Tostig made no answer; for the splash of oars was near, and two ships,

containing the principal chiefs that had joined Godwin’s cause, came

alongside the Runic aesca to hear the result of the message sent to the

King. Tostig sprang to the vessel’s side, and exclaimed, “The King, girt

by his false counsellors, will hear us not, and arms must decide between

us.”

“Hold, hold! malignant, unhappy boy!” cried Godwin, between his grinded

teeth, as a shout of indignant, yet joyous ferocity broke from the

crowded ships thus hailed. “The curse of all time be on him who draws

the first native blood in sight of the altars and hearths of London!

Hear me, thou with the vulture’s blood-lust, and the peacock’s vain joy

in the gaudy plume! Hear me, Tostig, and tremble. If but by one word

thou widen the breach between me and the King, outlaw thou enterest

England, outlaw shalt thou depart--for earldom and broad lands; choose

the bread of the stranger, and the weregeld of the wolf!”

The young Saxon, haughty as he was, quailed at his father’s thrilling

voice, bowed his head, and retreated sullenly. Godwin sprang on the deck

of the nearest vessel, and all the passions that Tostig had aroused, he

exerted his eloquence to appease.

In the midst of his arguments, there rose from the ranks on the strand,

the shout of “Harold! Harold the Earl! Harold and Holy Crosse!” And

Godwin, turning his eye to the King’s ranks, saw them agitated, swayed,

and moving; till suddenly, from the very heart of the hostile array,

came, as by irresistible impulse, the cry, “Harold, our Harold! All

hail, the good Earl!”

While this chanced without,--within the palace, Edward had quitted the

presence-chamber, and was closeted with Stigand, the bishop. This

prelate had the more influence with Edward, inasmuch as though Saxon, he

was held to be no enemy to the Normans, and had, indeed, on a former

occasion, been deposed from his bishopric on the charge of too great an

attachment to the Norman queen-mother Emma [83]. Never in his whole life

had Edward been so stubborn as on this occasion. For here, more than his

realm was concerned, he was threatened in the peace of his household, and

the comfort of his tepid friendships. With the recall of his powerful

father-in-law, he foresaw the necessary reintrusion of his wife upon the

charm of his chaste solitude. His favourite Normans would be banished,

he should be surrounded with faces he abhorred. All the representations

of Stigand fell upon a stern and unyielding spirit, when Siward entered

the King’s closet.

“Sir, my King,” said the great son of Beorn, “I yielded to your kingly

will in the council, that, before we listened to Godwin, he should

disband his men, and submit to the judgment of the Witan. The Earl hath

sent to me to say, that he will put honour and life in my keeping, and

abide by my counsel. And I have answered as became the man who will

never snare a foe, or betray a trust.”

“How hast thou answered?” asked the King.

“That he abide by the laws of England; as Dane and Saxon agreed to abide

in the days of Canute; that he and his sons shall make no claim for land

or lordship, but submit all to the Witan.”

“Good,” said the King; “and the Witan will condemn him now, as it would

have condemned when he shunned to meet it.”

“And the Witan now,” returned the Earl emphatically, “will be free, and

fair, and just.”

“And meanwhile, the troops----”

“Will wait on either side; and if reason fail, then the sword,” said

Siward.

“This I will not hear,” exclaimed Edward; when the tramp of many feet

thundered along the passage; the door was flung open, and several

captains (Norman as well as Saxon) of the King’s troops rushed in, wild,

rude, and tumultuous.

“The troops desert! half the ranks have thrown down their arms at the

very name of Harold!” exclaimed the Earl of Hereford. “Curses on the

knaves!”

“And the lithsmen of London,” cried a Saxon thegn, “are all on his side,

and marching already through the gates.”

“Pause yet,” whispered Stigand; “and who shall say, this hour to-morrow,

if Edward or Godwin reign on the throne of Alfred?”

His stern heart moved by the distress of his King, and not the less for

the unwonted firmness which Edward displayed, Siward here approached,

knelt, and took the King’s hand.

“Siward can give no niddering counsel to his King; to save the blood of

his subjects is never a king’s disgrace. Yield thou to mercy, Godwin to

the law!”

“Oh for the cowl and cell!” exclaimed the Prince, wringing his hands. “Oh

Norman home, why did I leave thee?” He took the cross from his breast,

contemplated it fixedly, prayed silently but with fervour, and his face

again became tranquil.

“Go,” he said, flinging himself on his seat in the exhaustion that

follows passion, “go, Siward, go, Stigand, deal with things mundane as ye

will.”

The bishop, satisfied with this reluctant acquiescence, seized Siward by

the arm and withdrew him from the closet. The captains remained a few

moments behind, the Saxons silently gazing on the King, the Normans

whispering each other, in great doubt and trouble, and darting looks of

the bitterest scorn at their feeble benefactor. Then, as with one

accord, these last rushed along the corridor, gained the hall where their

countrymen yet assembled, and exclaimed, “A toute bride! Franc

etrier!--All is lost but life!--God for the first man,--knife and cord

for the last!”

Then, as the cry of fire, or as the first crash of an earthquake,

dissolves all union, and reduces all emotion into one thought of

self-saving, the whole conclave, crowding pell-mell on each other,

bustled, jostled, clamoured to the door--happy he who could find horse,

palfrey,--even monk’s mule! This way, that way, fled those lordly

Normans, those martial abbots, those mitred bishops--some singly, some in

pairs; some by tens, and some by scores; but all prudently shunning

association with those chiefs whom they had most courted the day before,

and who, they now knew, would be the main mark for revenge; save only

two, who yet, from that awe of the spiritual power which characterised

the Norman, who was already half monk, half soldier (Crusader and Templar

before Crusades were yet preached, or the Templars yet dreamed of),--even

in that hour of selfish panic rallied round them the prowest chivalry of

their countrymen, viz., the Bishop of London and the Archbishop of

Canterbury. Both these dignitaries, armed cap-a-pie, and spear in hand,

headed the flight; and good service that day, both as guide and champion,

did Mallet de Graville. He led them in a circuit behind both armies, but

being intercepted by a new body, coming from the pastures of

Hertfordshire to the help of Godwin, he was compelled to take the bold

and desperate resort of entering the city gates. These were wide open;

whether to admit the Saxon Earls, or vomit forth their allies, the

Londoners. Through these, up the narrow streets, riding three abreast,

dashed the slaughtering fugitives; worthy in flight of their national

renown, they trampled down every obstacle. Bodies of men drew up against

them at every angle, with the Saxon cry of “Out--Out!” “Down with the

outland men!” Through each, spear pierced, and sword clove, the way. Red

with gore was the spear of the prelate of London; broken to the hilt was

the sword militant in the terrible hand of the Archbishop of Canterbury.

So on thy rode, so on they slaughtered--gained the Eastern Gate, and

passed with but two of their number lost.

The fields once gained, for better precaution they separated. Some few,

not quite ignorant of the Saxon tongue, doffed their mail, and crept

through forest and fell towards the sea-shore; others retained steed and

arms, but shunned equally the high roads. The two prelates were among

the last; they gained, in safety, Ness, in Essex, threw themselves into

an open, crazy, fishing-boat, committed themselves to the waves, and,

half drowned and half famished, drifted over the Channel to the French

shores. Of the rest of the courtly foreigners, some took refuge in the

forts yet held by their countrymen; some lay concealed in creeks and

caves till they could find or steal boats for their passage. And thus,

in the year of our Lord 1052, occurred the notable dispersion and

ignominious flight of the counts and vavasours of great William the Duke!

CHAPTER III.

The Witana-gemot was assembled in the great hall of Westminster in all

its imperial pomp.

It was on his throne that the King sate now--and it was the sword that

was in his right hand. Some seated below, and some standing beside, the

throne, were the officers of the Basileus [84] of Britain. There were to

be seen camararius and pincerna, chamberlain and cupbearer; disc thegn

and hors thegn [85]; the thegn of the dishes, and the thegn of the stud;

with many more, whose state offices may not impossibly have been borrowed

from the ceremonial pomp of the Byzantine court; for Edgar, King of

England, had in the old time styled himself the Heir of Constantine.

Next to these sat the clerks of the chapel, with the King’s confessor at

their head. Officers were they of higher note than their name bespeaks,

and wielders, in the trust of the Great Seal, of a power unknown of old,

and now obnoxious to the Saxon. For tedious is the suit which lingers

for the king’s writ and the king’s seal; and from those clerks shall

arise hereafter a thing of torture and of might, which shall grind out

the hearts of men, and be called CHANCERY! [86]

Below the scribes, a space was left on the floor, and farther down sat

the chiefs of the Witan. Of these, first in order, both from their

spiritual rank and their vast temporal possessions, sat the lords of the

Church; the chairs of the prelates of London and Canterbury were void.

But still goodly was the array of Saxon mitres, with the harsh, hungry,

but intelligent face of Stigand,--Stigand the stout and the covetous; and

the benign but firm features of Alred, true priest and true patriot,

distinguished amidst all. Around each prelate, as stars round a sun,

were his own special priestly retainers, selected from his diocese.

Farther still down the hall are the great civil lords and viceking

vassals of the “Lord-Paramount.” Vacant the chair of the King of the

Scots, for Siward hath not yet had his wish; Macbeth is in his

fastnesses, or listening to the weird sisters in the wold; and Malcolm is

a fugitive in the halls of the Northumbrian earl. Vacant the chair of

the hero Gryffyth, son of Llewelyn, the dread of the marches, Prince of

Gwyned, whose arms had subjugated all Cymry. But there are the lesser

sub-kings of Wales, true to the immemorial schisms amongst themselves,

which destroyed the realm of Ambrosius, and rendered vain the arm of

Arthur. With their torques of gold, and wild eyes, and hair cut round

ears and brow [87], they stare on the scene.

On the same bench with these sub-kings, distinguished from them by height

of stature, and calm collectedness of mien, no less than by their caps of

maintenance and furred robes, are those props of strong thrones and

terrors of weak--the earls to whom shires and counties fall, as hyde and

carricate to the lesser thegns. But three of these were then present,

and all three the foes of Godwin,--Siward, Earl of Northumbria; Leofric

of Mercia (that Leofric whose wife Godiva yet lives in ballad and song);

and Rolf, Earl of Hereford and Worcestershire, who, strong in his claim

of “king’s blood,” left not the court with his Norman friends. And on

the same benches, though a little apart, are the lesser earls, and that

higher order of thegns, called king’s thegns.

Not far from these sat the chosen citizens from the free burgh of London,

already of great weight in the senate [88],--sufficing often to turn its

counsels; all friends were they of the English Earl and his house. In

the same division of the hall were found the bulk and true popular part

of the meeting--popular indeed--as representing not the people, but the

things the people most prized-valour and wealth; the thegn landowners,

called in the old deeds the “Ministers:” they sate with swords by their

side, all of varying birth, fortune, and connection, whether with king,

earl, or ceorl. For in the different districts of the old Heptarchy, the

qualification varied; high in East Anglia, low in Wessex; so that what

was wealth in the one shire was poverty in the other. There sate, half a

yeoman, the Saxon thegn of Berkshire or Dorset, proud of his five hydes

of land; there, half an ealderman, the Danish thegn of Norfolk or Ely,

discontented with his forty; some were there in right of smaller offices

under the crown; some traders, and sons of traders, for having crossed

the high seas three times at their own risk; some could boast the blood

of Offa and Egbert; and some traced but three generations back to

neatherd and ploughman; and some were Saxons and some were Danes: and

some from the western shires were by origin Britons, though little

cognisant of their race. Farther down still, at the extreme end of the

hall, crowding by the open doors, filling up the space without, were the

ceorls themselves, a vast and not powerless body; in these high courts

(distinct from the shire gemots, or local senates)--never called upon to

vote or to speak or to act, or even to sign names to the doom, but only

to shout “Yea, yea,” when the proceres pronounced their sentence. Yet not

powerless were they, but rather to the Witan what public opinion is to

the Witan’s successor, our modern parliament: they were opinion! And

according to their numbers and their sentiments, easily known and boldly

murmured, often and often must that august court of basileus and prelate,

vassal-king and mighty earl, have shaped the council and adjudged the

doom.

And the forms of the meeting had been duly said and done; and the King

had spoken words no doubt wary and peaceful, gracious and exhortatory;

but those words--for his voice that day was weak--travelled not beyond

the small circle of his clerks and his officers; and a murmur buzzed

through the hall, when Earl Godwin stood on the floor with his six sons

at his back; and you might have heard the hum of the gnat that vexed the

smooth cheek of Earl Rolf, or the click of the spider from the web on the

vaulted roof, the moment before Earl Godwin spoke.

“If,” said he, with the modest look and downcast eye of practised

eloquence, “If I rejoice once more to breathe the air of England, in

whose service, often perhaps with faulty deeds, but at all times with

honest thoughts, I have, both in war and council, devoted so much of my

life that little now remains--but (should you, my king, and you,

prelates, proceres, and ministers so vouchsafe) to look round and select

that spot of my native soil which shall receive my bones;--if I rejoice

to stand once more in that assembly which has often listened to my voice

when our common country was in peril, who here will blame that joy? Who

among my foes, if foes now I have, will not respect the old man’s

gladness? Who amongst you, earls and thegns, would not grieve, if his

duty bade him say to the grey-haired exile, ‘In this English air you

shall not breathe your last sigh--on this English soil you shall not find

a grave!’ Who amongst you would not grieve to say it?” (Suddenly he

drew up his head and faced his audience.) “Who amongst you hath the

courage and the heart to say it? Yes, I rejoice that I am at last in an

assembly fit to judge my cause, and pronounce my innocence. For what

offence was I outlawed? For what offence were I, and the six sons I have

given to my land, to bear the wolf’s penalty, and be chased and slain as

the wild beasts? Hear me, and answer!”

“Eustace, Count of Boulogne, returning to his domains from a visit to our

lord the King, entered the town of Dover in mail and on his war steed;

his train did the same. Unknowing our laws and customs (for I desire to

press light upon all old grievances, and will impute ill designs to none)

these foreigners invade by force the private dwellings of citizens, and

there select their quarters. Ye all know that this was the strongest

violation of Saxon right; ye know that the meanest ceorl hath the proverb

on his lip, ‘Every man’s house is his castle.’ One of the townsmen

acting on this belief,--which I have yet to learn was a false

one,--expelled from his threshold a retainer of the French Earl’s. The

stranger drew his sword and wounded him; blows followed--the stranger

fell by the arm he had provoked. The news arrives to Earl Eustace; he

and his kinsmen spur to the spot; they murder the Englishman on his

hearth-stone.--”

Here a groan, half-stifled and wrathful, broke from the ceorls at the end

of the hall. Godwin held up his hand in rebuke of the interruption, and

resumed.

“This deed done, the outlanders rode through the streets with their drawn

swords; they butchered those who came in their way; they trampled even

children under their horses’ feet. The burghers armed. I thank the

Divine Father, who gave me for my countrymen those gallant burghers!

They fought, as we English know how to fight; they slew some nineteen or

score of these mailed intruders; they chased them from the town. Earl

Eustace fled fast. Earl Eustace, we know, is a wise man: small rest took

he, little bread broke he, till he pulled rein at the gate of Gloucester,

where my lord the King then held court. He made his complaint. My lord

the King, naturally hearing but one side, thought the burghers in the

wrong; and, scandalised that such high persons of his own kith should be

so aggrieved, he sent for me, in whose government the burgh of Dover is,

and bade me chastise, by military execution, those who had attacked the

foreign Count. I appeal to the great Earls whom I see before me--to you,

illustrious Leofric; to you, renowned Siward--what value would ye set on

your earldoms, if ye had not the heart and the power to see right done to

the dwellers therein?”

“What was the course I proposed? Instead of martial execution, which

would involve the whole burgh in one sentence, I submitted that the reeve

and gerefas of the burgh should be cited to appear before the King, and

account for the broil. My lord, though ever most clement and loving to

his good people, either unhappily moved against me, or overswayed by the

foreigners, was counselled to reject this mode of doing justice, which

our laws, as settled under Edgar and Canute, enjoin. And because I would

not,--and I say in the presence of all, because I, Godwin, son of

Wolnoth, durst not, if I would, have entered the free burgh of Dover with

mail on my back and the doomsman at my right hand, these outlanders

induced my lord the King to summon me to attend in person (as for a sin

of my own) the council of the Witan, convened at Gloucester, then filled

with the foreigners, not, as I humbly opined, to do justice to me and my

folk of Dover, but to secure to this Count of Boulogne a triumph over

English liberties, and sanction his scorn for the value of English

lives.”

“I hesitated, and was menaced with outlawry; I armed in self-defence, and

in defence of the laws of England; I armed, that men might not be

murdered on their hearth-stones, nor children trampled under the hoofs of

a stranger’s war-steed. My lord the King gathered his troops round ‘the

cross and the martlets.’ Yon noble earls, Siward and Leofric, came to

that standard, as (knowing not then my cause) was their duty to the

Basileus of Britain. But when they knew my cause, and saw with me the

dwellers of the land, against me the outland aliens, they righteously

interposed. An armistice was concluded; I agreed to refer all matters to

a Witan held where it is held this day. My troops were disbanded; but

the foreigners induced my lord not only to retain his own, but to issue

his Herr-bann for the gathering of hosts far and near, even allies beyond

the seas. When I looked to London for the peaceful Witan, what saw I?

The largest armament that had been collected in this reign--that armament

headed by Norman knights. Was this the meeting where justice could be

done mine and me? Nevertheless, what was my offer? That I and my six

sons would attend, provided the usual sureties, agreeable to our laws,

from which only thieves [89] are excluded, were given that we should come

and go life-free and safe. Twice this offer was made, twice refused; and

so I and my sons were banished. We went;--we have returned!”

“And in arms,” murmured Earl Rolf, son-in-law to that Count Eustace of

Boulogne, whose violence had been temperately and truly narrated. [90]

“And in arms,” repeated Godwin: “true; in arms against the foreigners who

had thus poisoned the ear of our gracious King; in arms, Earl Rolf; and

at the first clash of those arms, Franks and foreigners have fled. We

have no need of arms now. We are amongst our countrymen, and no

Frenchman interposes between us and the ever gentle; ever generous nature

of our born King.”

“Peers and proceres, chiefs of this Witan, perhaps the largest ever yet

assembled in man’s memory, it is for you to decide whether I and mine, or

the foreign fugitives, caused the dissensions in these realms; whether

our banishment was just or not; whether in our return we have abused the

power we possessed. Ministers, on those swords by your sides there is

not one drop of blood! At all events, in submitting to you our fate, we

submit to our own laws and our own race. I am here to clear myself, on

my oath, of deed and thought of treason. There are amongst my peers as

king’s thegns, those who will attest the same on my behalf, and prove the

facts I have stated, if they are not sufficiently notorious. As for my

sons, no crime can be alleged against them, unless it be a crime to have

in their veins that blood which flows in mine--blood which they have

learned from me to shed in defence of that beloved land to which they now

ask to be recalled.”

The Earl ceased and receded behind his children, having artfully, by his

very abstinence from the more heated eloquence imputed to him often as a

fault and a wile, produced a powerful effect upon an audience already

prepared for his acquittal.

But now as, from the sons, Sweyn the eldest stepped forth; with a

wandering eye and uncertain foot, there was a movement like a shudder

amongst the large majority of the audience, and a murmur of hate or of

horror.

The young Earl marked the sensation his presence produced, and stopped

short. His breath came thick; he raised his right hand, but spoke not.

His voice died on his lips; his eyes roved wildly round with a haggard

stare more imploring than defying. Then rose, in his episcopal stole,

Alred the bishop, and his clear sweet voice trembled as he spoke.

“Comes Sweyn, son of Godwin, here to prove his innocence of treason

against the King?--if so, let him hold his peace; for if the Witan acquit

Godwin, son of Wolnoth, of that charge, the acquittal includes his House.

But in the name of the holy Church here represented by its fathers, will

Sweyn say, and fasten his word by oath, that he is guiltless of treason

to the King of Kings--guiltless of sacrilege that my lips shrink to name?

Alas, that the duty falls on me,--for I loved thee once, and love thy

kindred now. But I am God’s servant before all things”--the prelate

paused, and gathering up new energy, added in unfaltering accents, “I

charge thee here, Sweyn the outlaw, that, moved by the fiend, thou didst

bear off from God’s house and violate a daughter of the Church--Algive,

Abbess of Leominster!”

“And I,” cried Siward, rising to the full height of his stature, “I, in

the presence of these proceres, whose proudest title is milites or

warriors--I charge Sweyn, son of Godwin, that, not in open field and hand

to hand, but by felony and guile, he wrought the foul and abhorrent

murder of his cousin, Beorn the Earl!”

At these two charges from men so eminent, the effect upon the audience

was startling. While those not influenced by Godwin raised their eyes,

sparkling with wrath and scorn, upon the wasted, yet still noble face of

the eldest born, even those most zealous on behalf of that popular House

evinced no sympathy for its heir. Some looked down abashed and

mournful--some regarded the accused with a cold, unpitying gaze. Only

perhaps among the ceorls, at the end of the hall, might be seen some

compassion on anxious faces; for before those deeds of crime had been

bruited abroad, none among the sons of Godwin more blithe of mien and

bold of hand, more honoured and beloved, than Sweyn the outlaw. But the

hush that succeeded the charges was appalling in its depth. Godwin

himself shaded his face with his mantle, and only those close by could

see that his breast heaved and his limbs trembled. The brothers had

shrunk from the side of the accused, outlawed even amongst his kin--all

save Harold, who, strong in his blameless name and beloved repute,

advanced three strides, amidst the silence, and, standing by his

brother’s side, lifted his commanding brow above the seated judges, but

he did not speak.

Then said Sweyn the Earl, strengthened by such solitary companionship in

that hostile assemblage,--“I might answer that for these charges in the

past, for deeds alleged as done eight long years ago, I have the King’s

grace, and the inlaw’s right; and that in the Witans over which I as earl

presided, no man was twice judged for the same offence. That I hold to be

the law, in the great councils as the small.”

“It is! it is!” exclaimed Godwin: his paternal feelings conquering his

prudence and his decorous dignity. “Hold to it, my son!”

“I hold to it not,” resumed the young earl, casting a haughty glance over

the somewhat blank and disappointed faces of his foes, “for my law is

here”--and he smote his heart--“and that condemns me not once alone, but

evermore! Alred, O holy father, at whose knees I once confessed my every

sin,--I blame thee not that thou first, in the Witan, liftest thy voice

against me, though thou knowest that I loved Algive from youth upward;

she, with her heart yet mine, was given in the last year of Hardicanute,

when might was right, to the Church. I met her again, flushed with my

victories over the Walloon kings, with power in my hand and passion in my

veins. Deadly was my sin!--But what asked I? that vows compelled should

be annulled; that the love of my youth might yet be the wife of my

manhood. Pardon, that I knew not then how eternal are the bonds ye of

the Church have woven round those of whom, if ye fail of saints, ye may

at least make martyrs!”

He paused, and his lip curled, and his eye shot wild fire; for in that

moment his mother’s blood was high within him, and he looked and thought,

perhaps, as some heathen Dane, but the flash of the firmer man was

momentary, and humbly smiting his breast, he murmured,--“Avaunt,

Satan!--yea, deadly was my sin! And the sin was mine alone; Algive, if

stained, was blameless; she escaped--and--and died!”

“The King was wroth; and first to strive against my pardon was Harold my

brother, who now alone in my penitence stands by my side: he strove

manfully and openly; I blamed him not: but Beorn, my cousin, desired my

earldom; and he strove against me, wilily and in secret,--to my face

kind, behind my back despiteful. I detected his falsehood, and meant to

detain, but not to slay him. He lay bound in my ship; he reviled and he

taunted me in the hour of my gloom; and when the blood of the sea-kings

flowed in fire through my veins. And I lifted my axe in ire; and my men

lifted theirs, and so,--and so!--Again I say--Deadly was my sin! Think

not that I seek now to make less my guilt, as I sought when I deemed that

life was yet long, and power was yet sweet. Since then I have known

worldly evil, and worldly good,--the storm and the shine of life; I have

swept the seas, a sea-king; I have battled with the Dane in his native

land; I have almost grasped in my right hand, as I grasped in my dreams,

the crown of my kinsman, Canute;--again, I have been a fugitive and an

exile;--again, I have been inlawed, and Earl of all the lands from Isis

to the Wye [91]. And whether in state or in penury,--whether in war or in

peace, I have seen the pale face of the nun betrayed, and the gory wounds

of the murdered man. Wherefore I come not here to plead for a pardon,

which would console me not, but formally to dissever my kinsmen’s cause

from mine, which alone sullies and degrades it;--I come here to say,

that, coveting not your acquittal, fearing not your judgment, I pronounce

mine own doom. Cap of noble, and axe of warrior, I lay aside for ever;

barefooted, and alone, I go hence to the Holy Sepulchre; there to assoil

my soul, and implore that grace which cannot come from man! Harold, step

forth in the place of Sweyn the first-born! And ye prelates and peers,

milites and ministers, proceed to adjudge the living! To you, and to

England, he who now quits you is the dead!”

He gathered his robe of state over his breast as a monk his gown, and

looking neither to right nor to left, passed slowly down the hall,

through the crowd, which made way for him in awe and silence; and it

seemed to the assembly as if a cloud had gone from the face of day.

And Godwin still stood with his face covered by his robe.

And Harold anxiously watched the faces of the assembly, and saw no

relenting.

And Gurth crept to Harold’s side.

And the gay Leofwine looked sad.

And the young Wolnoth turned pale and trembled.

And the fierce Tostig played with his golden chain.

And one low sob was heard, and it came from the breast of Alred the meek

accuser,--God’s firm but gentle priest.

CHAPTER IV.

This memorable trial ended, as the reader will have forseen, in the

formal renewal of Sweyn’s outlawry, and the formal restitution of the

Earl Godwin and his other sons to their lands and honours, with

declarations imputing all the blame of the late dissensions to the

foreign favourites, and sentences of banishment against them, except

only, by way of a bitter mockery, some varlets of low degree, such as

Humphrey Cock’s-foot, and Richard son of Scrob. [92]

The return to power of this able and vigorous family was attended with an

instantaneous effect upon the long-relaxed strings of the imperial

government. Macbeth heard, and trembled in his moors; Gryffyth of Wales

lit the fire-beacon on moel and craig. Earl Rolf was banished, but

merely as a nominal concession to public opinion; his kinship to Edward

sufficed to restore him soon, not only to England, but to the lordship of

the Marches, and thither was he sent, with adequate force, against the

Welch, who had half-repossessed themselves of the borders they harried.

Saxon prelates and abbots replaced the Norman fugitives; and all were

contented with the revolution, save the King, for the King lost his

Norman friends, and regained his English wife.

In conformity with the usages of the times, hostages of the loyalty and

faith of Godwin were required and conceded. They were selected from his

own family; and the choice fell on Wolnoth, his son, and Haco, the son of

Sweyn. As, when nearly all England may be said to have repassed to the

hands of Godwin, it would have been an idle precaution to consign these

hostages to the keeping of Edward, it was settled, after some discussion,

that they should be placed in the Court of the Norman Duke until such

time as the King, satisfied with the good faith of the family, should

authorise their recall:--Fatal hostage, fatal ward and host!

It was some days after this national crisis, and order and peace were

again established in city and land, forest and shire, when, at the

setting of the sun, Hilda stood alone by the altar-stone of Thor.

The orb was sinking red and lurid, amidst long cloud-wracks of vermeil

and purple, and not one human form was seen in the landscape, save that

tall and majestic figure by the Runic shrine and the Druid crommell. She

was leaning both hands on her wand, or seid-staff, as it was called in

the language of Scandinavian superstition, and bending slightly forward

as in the attitude of listening or expectation. Long before any form

appeared on the road below she seemed to be aware of coming footsteps,

and probably her habits of life had sharpened her senses; for she smiled,

muttered to herself, “Ere it sets!” and changing her posture, leant her

arm on the altar, and rested her face upon her hand.

At length, two figures came up the road; they neared the hill; they saw

her, and slowly ascended the knoll. The one was dressed in the serge of

a pilgrim, and his cowl thrown back, showed the face where human beauty

and human power lay ravaged and ruined by human passions. He upon whom

the pilgrim lightly leaned was attired simply, without the brooch or

bracelet common to thegns of high degree, yet his port was that of

majesty, and his brow that of mild command. A greater contrast could not

be conceived than that between these two men, yet united by a family

likeness. For the countenance of the last described was, though

sorrowful at that moment, and indeed habitually not without a certain

melancholy, wonderfully imposing from its calm and sweetness. There, no

devouring passions had left the cloud or ploughed the line; but all the

smooth loveliness of youth took dignity from the conscious resolve of

men. The long hair, of a fair brown, with a slight tinge of gold, as the

last sunbeams shot through its luxuriance, was parted from the temples,

and fell in large waves half way to the shoulder. The eyebrows, darker

in hue, arched and finely traced; the straight features, not less manly

than the Norman, but less strongly marked: the cheek, hardy with exercise

and exposure, yet still retaining somewhat of youthful bloom under the

pale bronze of its sunburnt surface: the form tall, not gigantic, and

vigorous rather from perfect proportion and athletic habits than from

breadth and bulk--were all singularly characteristic of the Saxon beauty

in its highest and purest type. But what chiefly distinguished this

personage, was that peculiar dignity, so simple, so sedate, which no pomp

seems to dazzle, no danger to disturb; and which perhaps arises from a

strong sense of self-dependence, and is connected with self-respect--a

dignity common to the Indian and the Arab, and rare except in that state

of society in which each man is a power in himself. The Latin tragic

poet touches close upon that sentiment in the fine lines--

“Rex est qui metuit nihil;

Hoc regnum sibi quisque dat.” [93]

So stood the brothers, Sweyn the outlaw and Harold the Earl, before the

reputed prophetess. She looked on both with a steady eye, which

gradually softened almost into tenderness, as it finally rested upon the

pilgrim.

“And is it thus,” she said at last, “that I see the first-born of Godwin

the fortunate, for whom so often I have tasked the thunder, and watched

the setting sun? for whom my runes have been graven on the bark of the

elm, and the Scin-laeca [94] been called in pale splendour from the

graves of the dead?”

“Hilda,” said Sweyn, “not now will I accuse thee of the seeds thou hast

sown: the harvest is gathered and the sickle is broken. Abjure thy dark

Galdra [95], and turn as I to the sole light in the future, which shines

from the tomb of the Son Divine.”

The Prophetess bowed her head and replied:

“Belief cometh as the wind. Can the tree say to the wind, ‘Rest thou on

my boughs,’ or Man to Belief, ‘Fold thy wings on my heart’? Go where thy

soul can find comfort, for thy life hath passed from its use on earth.

And when I would read thy fate, the runes are as blanks, and the wave

sleeps unstirred on the fountain. Go where the Fylgia [96], whom Alfader

gives to each at his birth, leads thee. Thou didst desire love that

seemed shut from thee, and I predicted that thy love should awake from

the charnel in which the creed that succeeds to the faith of our sires

inters life in its bloom. And thou didst covet the fame of the Jarl and

the Viking, and I blessed thine axe to thy hand, and wove the sail for

thy masts. So long as man knows desire, can Hilda have power over his

doom. But when the heart lies in ashes, I raise but a corpse, that at

the hush of the charm falls again into its grave. Yet, come to me

nearer, O Sweyn, whose cradle I rocked to the chaunt of my rhyme.”

The outlaw turned aside his face, and obeyed.

She sighed as she took his passive hand in her own, and examined the

lines on the palm. Then, as if by an involuntary impulse of fondness and

pity, she put aside his cowl and kissed his brow.

“Thy skein is spun, and happier than the many who scorn, and the few who

lament thee, thou shalt win where they lose. The steel shall not smite

thee, the storm shall forbear thee, the goal that thou yearnest for thy

steps shall attain. Night hallows the ruin,--and peace to the shattered

wrecks of the brave!”

The outlaw heard as if unmoved. But when he turned to Harold, who

covered his face with his hand; but could not restrain the tears that

flowed through the clasped fingers, a moisture came into his own wild,

bright eyes, and he said, “Now, my brother, farewell, for no farther step

shalt thou wend with me.”

Harold started, opened his arms, and the outlaw fell upon his breast.

No sound was heard save a single sob, and so close was breast to breast,

that you could not say from whose heart it came. Then the outlaw

wrenched himself from the embrace, and murmured, “And Haco--my

son--motherless, fatherless--hostage in the land of the stranger! Thou

wilt remember--thou wilt shield him; thou be to him mother, father in the

days to come! So may the saints bless thee!” With these words he sprang

down the hillock.

Harold bounded after him; but Sweyn, halting, said, mournfully, “Is this

thy promise? Am I so lost that faith should be broken even with thy

father’s son?”

At that touching rebuke, Harold paused, and the outlaw passed his way

alone. As the last glimpse of his figure vanished at the turn of the

road, whence, on the second of May, the Norman Duke and the Saxon King

had emerged side by side, the short twilight closed abruptly, and up from

the far forestland rose the moon.

Harold stood rooted to the spot, and still gazing on the space, when the

Vala laid her hand on his arm.

“Behold, as the moon rises on the troubled gloaming, so rises the fate of

Harold, as yon brief, human shadow, halting between light and darkness,

passes away to night. Thou art now the first-born of a House that unites

the hopes of the Saxon with the fortunes of the Dane.”

“Thinkest thou,” said Harold, with a stern composure, “that I can have

joy and triumph in a brother’s exile and woe?”

“Not now, and not yet, will the voice of thy true nature be heard; but

the warmth of the sun brings the thunder, and the glory of fortune wakes

the storm of the soul.”

“Kinswoman,” said Harold, with a slight curl of his lip, “by me at least

have thy prophecies ever passed as the sough of the air; neither in

horror nor with faith do I think of thy incantations and charms; and I

smile alike at the exorcism of the shaveling and the spells of the Saga.

I have asked thee not to bless mine axe, nor weave my sail. No runic

rhyme is on the sword-blade of Harold. I leave my fortunes to the chance

of mine own cool brain and strong arm. Vala, between thee and me there

is no bond.”

The Prophetess smiled loftily.

“And what thinkest thou, O self-dependent! what thinkest thou is the fate

which thy brain and thine arm shall will?”

“The fate they have won already. I see no Beyond. The fate of a man

sworn to guard his country, love justice, and do right.”

The moon shone full on the heroic face of the young Earl as he spoke; and

on its surface there seemed nought to belie the noble words. Yet, the

Prophetess, gazing earnestly on that fair countenance, said, in a

whisper, that, despite a reason singularly sceptical for the age in which

it had been cultured, thrilled to the Saxon’s heart, “Under that calm eye

sleeps the soul of thy sire, and beneath that brow, so haught and so

pure, works the genius that crowned the kings of the north in the lineage

of thy mother the Dane.”

“Peace!” said Harold, almost fiercely; then, as if ashamed of the

weakness of his momentary irritation, he added, with a faint smile, “Let

us not talk of these matters while my heart is still sad and away from

the thoughts of the world, with my brother the lonely outlaw. Night is on

us, and the ways are yet unsafe; for the king’s troops, disbanded in

haste, were made up of many who turn to robbers in peace. Alone, and

unarmed, save my ateghar, I would crave a night’s rest under thy roof;

and”--he hesitated, and as light blush came over his cheek--“and I would

fain see if your grandchild is as fair as when I last looked on her blue

eyes, that then wept for Harold ere he went into exile.”

“Her tears are not at her command, nor her smiles,” said the Vala,

solemnly; “her tears flow from the fount of thy sorrows, and her smiles

are the beams from thy joys. For know, O Harold! that Edith is thine

earthly Fylgia; thy fate and her fate are as one. And vainly as man

would escape from his shadow, would soul wrench itself from the soul that

Skulda hath linked to his doom.”

Harold made no reply; but his step, habitually slow, grew more quick and

light, and this time his reason found no fault with the oracles of the

Vala.

CHAPTER V.

As Hilda entered the hall, the various idlers accustomed to feed at her

cost were about retiring, some to their homes in the vicinity, some,

appertaining to the household, to the dormitories in the old Roman villa.

It was not the habit of the Saxon noble, as it was of the Norman, to put

hospitality to profit, by regarding his guests in the light of armed

retainers. Liberal as the Briton, the cheer of the board and the shelter

of the roof were afforded with a hand equally unselfish and

indiscriminate; and the doors of the more wealthy and munificent might be

almost literally said to stand open from morn to eve.

As Harold followed the Vala across the vast atrium, his face was

recognised, and a shout of enthusiastic welcome greeted the popular Earl.

The only voices that did not swell that cry, were those of three monks

from a neighbouring convent, who choose to wink at the supposed practices

of the Morthwyrtha [97], from the affection they bore to her ale and

mead, and the gratitude they felt for her ample gifts to their convent.

“One of the wicked House, brother,” whispered the monk.

“Yea; mockers and scorners are Godwin and his lewd sons,” answered the

monk.

And all three sighed and scowled, as the door closed on the hostess and

her stately guest.

Two tall and not ungraceful lamps lighted the same chamber in which Hilda

was first presented to the reader. The handmaids were still at their

spindles, and the white web nimbly shot as the mistress entered. She

paused, and her brow knit, as she eyed the work.

“But three parts done?” she said, “weave fast, and weave strong.”

Harold, not heeding the maids or their task, gazed inquiringly round, and

from a nook near the window, Edith sprang forward with a joyous cry, and

a face all glowing with delight--sprang forward, as if to the arms of a

brother; but, within a step or so of that noble guest, she stopped short,

and her eyes fell to the ground.

Harold held his breath in admiring silence. The child he had loved from

her cradle stood before him as a woman. Even since we last saw her, in

the interval between the spring and the autumn, the year had ripened the

youth of the maiden, as it had mellowed the fruits of the earth; and her

cheek was rosy with the celestial blush, and her form rounded to the

nameless grace, which say that infancy is no more.

He advanced and took her hand, but for the first time in his life in

their greetings, he neither gave nor received the kiss.

“You are no child now, Edith,” said he, involuntarily; “but still set

apart, I pray you, some remains of the old childish love for Harold.”

Edith’s charming lips smiled softly; she raised her eyes to his, and

their innocent fondness spoke through happy tears.

But few words passed in the short interval between Harold’s entrance and

his retirement to the chamber prepared for him in haste. Hilda herself

led him to a rude ladder which admitted to a room above, evidently added,

by some Saxon lord, to the old Roman pile. The ladder showed the

precaution of one accustomed to sleep in the midst of peril, for, by a

kind of windlass in the room, it could be drawn up at the inmate’s will,

and, so drawn, left below a dark and deep chasm, delving down to the

foundations of the house; nevertheless the room itself had all the luxury

of the time; the bedstead was quaintly carved, and of some rare wood; a

trophy of arms--though very ancient, sedulously polished--hung on the

wall. There were the small round shield and spear of the earlier Saxon,

with his vizorless helm, and the short curved knife or saex [98], from

which some antiquarians deem that the Saxish men take their renowned

name.

Edith, following Hilda, proffered to the guest, on a salver of gold,

spiced wines and confections; while Hilda, silently and unperceived,

waved her seid-staff over the bed, and rested her pale hand on the

pillow.

“Nay, sweet cousin,” said Harold, smiling, “this is not one of the

fashions of old, but rather, methinks, borrowed from the Frankish manners

in the court of King Edward.”

“Not so, Harold,” answered Hilda, quickly turning; “such was ever the

ceremony due to Saxon king, when he slept in a subject’s house, ere our

kinsmen the Danes introduced that unroyal wassail, which left subject and

king unable to hold or to quaff cup, when the board was left for the

bed.”

“Thou rebukest, O Hilda, too tauntingly, the pride of Godwin’s house,

when thou givest to his homely son the ceremonial of a king. But, so

served, I envy not kings, fair Edith.”

He took the cup, raised it to his lips, and when he placed it on the

small table by his side the women had left the chamber, and he was alone.

He stood for some minutes absorbed in reverie, and his soliloquy ran

somewhat thus:

“Why said the Vala that Edith’s fate was inwoven with mine? And why did

I believe and bless the Vala, when she so said? Can Edith ever be my

wife? The monk-king designs her for the cloister--Woe, and well-a-day!

Sweyn, Sweyn, let thy doom forewarn me! And if I stand up in my place

and say, ‘Give age and grief to the cloister--youth and delight to man’s

hearth,’ what will answer the monks? ‘Edith cannot be thy wife, son of

Godwin, for faint and scarce traced though your affinity of blood, ye are

within the banned degrees of the Church. Edith may be wife to another,

if thou wilt,--barren spouse of the Church or mother of children who lisp

not Harold’s name as their father.’ Out on these priests with their

mummeries, and out on their war upon human hearts!”

His fair brow grew stern and fierce as the Norman Duke’s in his ire; and

had you seen him at the moment you would have seen the true brother of

Sweyn. He broke from his thoughts with the strong effort of a man

habituated to self-control, and advanced to the narrow window, opened the

lattice, and looked out.

The moon was in all her splendour. The long deep shadows of the

breathless forest chequered the silvery whiteness of open sward and

intervening glade. Ghostly arose on the knoll before him the grey

columns of the mystic Druid,--dark and indistinct the bloody altar of the

Warrior god. But there his eye was arrested; for whatever is least

distinct and defined in a landscape has the charm that is the strongest;

and, while he gazed, he thought that a pale phosphoric light broke from

the mound with the bautastein, that rose by the Teuton altar. He

thought, for he was not sure that it was not some cheat of the fancy.

Gazing still, in the centre of that light there appeared to gleam forth,

for one moment, a form of superhuman height. It was the form of a man,

that seemed clad in arms like those on the wall, leaning on a spear,

whose point was lost behind the shafts of the crommell. And the face

grew in that moment distinct from the light which shimmered around it, a

face large as some early god’s, but stamped with unutterable and solemn

woe. He drew back a step, passed his hand over his eyes, and looked

again. Light and figure alike had vanished; nought was seen save the

grey columns and dim fane. The Earl’s lip curved in derision of his

weakness. He closed the lattice, undressed, knelt for a moment or so by

the bedside, and his prayer was brief and simple, nor accompanied with

the crossings and signs customary in his age. He rose, extinguished the

lamp, and threw himself on the bed.

The moon, thus relieved of the lamp-light, came clear and bright through

the room, shone on the trophied arms, and fell upon Harold’s face,

casting its brightness on the pillow on which the Vala had breathed her

charm. And Harold slept--slept long--his face calm, his breathing

regular: but ere the moon sunk and the dawn rose the features were dark

and troubled, the breath came by gasps, the brow was knit, and the teeth

clenched.

BOOK IV.

THE HEATHEN ALTAR AND THE SAXON CHURCH.

CHAPTER I.

While Harold sleeps, let us here pause to survey for the first time the

greatness of that House to which Sweyn’s exile had left him the heir.

The fortunes of Godwin had been those which no man not eminently versed

in the science of his kind can achieve. Though the fable which some

modern historians of great name have repeated and detailed, as to his

early condition as the son of a cow-herd, is utterly groundless [99], and

he belonged to a house all-powerful at the time of his youth, he was

unquestionably the builder of his own greatness. That he should rise so

high in the early part of his career was less remarkable than that he

should have so long continued the possessor of a power and state in

reality more than regal.

But, as has been before implied, Godwin’s civil capacities were more

prominent than his warlike. And this it is which invests him with that

peculiar interest which attracts us to those who knit our modern

intelligence with the past. In that dim world before the Norman deluge,

we are startled to recognise the gifts that ordinarily distinguish a man

of peace in a civilised age.

His father, Wolnoth, had been “Childe” [100] of the South Saxons, or

thegn of Sussex, a nephew of Edric Streone, Earl of Mercia, the

unprincipled but able minister of Ethelred, who betrayed his master to

Canute, by whom, according to most authorities, he was righteously,

though not very legally, slain as a reward for the treason.

“I promised,” said the Dane king, “to set thy head higher than other

men’s, and I keep my word.” The trunkless head was set on the gates of

London.

Wolnoth had quarrelled with his uncle Brightric, Edric’s brother, and

before the arrival of Canute, had betaken himself to the piracy of a sea

chief, seduced twenty of the king’s ships, plundered the southern coasts,

burnt the royal navy, and then his history disappears from the

chronicles; but immediately afterwards the great Danish army, called

Thurkell’s Host, invaded the coast, and kept their chief station on the

Thames. Their victorious arms soon placed the country almost at their

command. The traitor Edric joined them with a power of more than 10,000

men; and it is probable enough that the ships of Wolnoth had before this

time melted amicably into the armament of the Danes. If this, which seems

the most likely conjecture, be received, Godwin, then a mere youth, would

naturally have commenced his career in the cause of Canute; and as the

son of a formidable chief of thegn’s rank, and even as kinsman to Edric,

who, whatever his crimes, must have retained a party it was wise to

conciliate, Godwin’s favour with Canute, whose policy would lead him to

show marked distinction to any able Saxon follower, ceases to be

surprising.

The son of Wolnoth accompanied Canute in his military expedition to the

Scandinavian continent, and here a signal victory, planned by Godwin and

executed solely by himself and the Saxon band under his command, without

aid from Canute’s Danes, made the most memorable military exploit of his

life, and confirmed his rising fortunes.

Edric, though he is said to have been low born, had married the sister of

King Ethelred; and as Godwin advanced in fame, Canute did not disdain to

bestow his own sister in marriage on the eloquent favourite, who probably

kept no small portion of the Saxon population to their allegiance. On

the death of this, his first wife, who bore him but one son [101] (who

died by accident), he found a second spouse in the same royal house; and

the mother of his six living sons and two daughters was the niece of his

king, and sister of Sweyn, who subsequently filled the throne of Denmark.

After the death of Canute, the Saxon’s predilections in favour of the

Saxon line became apparent; but it was either his policy or his

principles always to defer to the popular will as expressed in the

national council; and on the preference given by the Witan to Harold the

son of Canute over the heirs of Ethelred, he yielded his own

inclinations. The great power of the Danes, and the amicable fusion of

their race with the Saxon which had now taken place, are apparent in this

decision; for not only did Earl Leofric, of Mercia, though himself a

Saxon (as well as the Earl of Northumbria, with the thegns north of the

Thames), declare for Harold the Dane, but the citizens of London were of

the same party; and Godwin represented little more than the feeling of

his own principality of Wessex.

From that time, Godwin, however, became identified with the English

cause; and even many who believed him guilty of some share in the murder,

or at least the betrayal, of Alfred [102], Edward’s brother, sought

excuses in the disgust with which Godwin had regarded the foreign retinue

that Alfred had brought with him, as if to owe his throne to Norman

swords, rather than to English hearts. Hardicanute, who succeeded

Harold, whose memory he abhorred, whose corpse he disinterred and flung

into a fen [103], had been chosen by the unanimous council both of

English and Danish thegns; and despite Hardicanute’s first vehement

accusations of Godwin, the Earl still remained throughout that reign as

powerful as in the two preceding it. When Hardicanute dropped down dead

at a marriage banquet, it was Godwin who placed Edward upon the throne;

and that great Earl must either have been conscious of his innocence of

the murder of Edward’s brother, or assured of his own irresponsible

power, when he said to the prince who knelt at his feet, and, fearful of

the difficulties in his way, implored the Earl to aid his abdication of

the throne and return to Normandy.

“You are the son of Ethelred, grandson of Edgar. Reign, it is your duty;

better to live in glory than die in exile. You are of mature years, and

having known sorrow and need, can better feel for your people. Rely on

me, and there will be none of the difficulties you dread; whom I favour,

England favours.”

And shortly afterwards, in the national assembly, Godwin won Edward his

throne. “Powerful in speech, powerful in bringing over people to what he

desired, some yielded to his words, some to bribes.” [104] Verily, Godwin

was a man to have risen as high, had he lived later!

So Edward reigned, and agreeably, it is said, with previous stipulations,

married the daughter of his king-maker. Beautiful as Edith the Queen was

in mind and in person, Edward apparently loved her not. She dwelt in his

palace, his wife only in name.

Tostig (as we have seen) had married the daughter of Baldwin, Count of

Flanders, sister to Matilda, wife to the Norman Duke: and thus the House

of Godwin was triply allied to princely lineage--the Danish, the Saxon,

the Flemish. And Tostig might have said, as in his heart William the

Norman said, “My children shall descend from Charlemagne and Alfred.”

Godwin’s life, though thus outwardly brilliant, was too incessantly

passed in public affairs and politic schemes to allow the worldly man

much leisure to watch over the nurture and rearing of the bold spirits of

his sons. Githa his wife, the Dane, a woman with a haughty but noble

spirit, imperfect education, and some of the wild and lawless blood

derived from her race of heathen sea-kings, was more fitted to stir their

ambition and inflame their fancies, than curb their tempers and mould

their hearts.

We have seen the career of Sweyn; but Sweyn was an angel of light

compared to his brother Tostig. He who can be penitent has ever

something lofty in his original nature; but Tostig was remorseless as the

tiger, as treacherous and as fierce. With less intellectual capacities

than any of his brothers, he had more personal ambition than all put

together. A kind of effeminate vanity, not uncommon with daring natures

(for the bravest races and the bravest soldiers are usually the vainest;

the desire to shine is as visible in the fop as in the hero), made him

restless both for command and notoriety. “May I ever be in the mouths of

men,” was his favourite prayer. Like his maternal ancestry, the Danes,

he curled his long hair, and went as a bridegroom to the feast of the

ravens.

Two only of that house had studied the Humane Letters, which were no

longer disregarded by the princes of the Continent; they were the sweet

sister, the eldest of the family, fading fast in her loveless home, and

Harold.

But Harold’s mind,--in which what we call common sense was carried to

genius,--a mind singularly practical and sagacious, like his father’s,

cared little for theological learning and priestly legend--for all that

poesy of religion in which the Woman was wafted from the sorrows of

earth.

Godwin himself was no favourite of the Church, and had seen too much of

the abuses of the Saxon priesthood, (perhaps, with few exceptions, the

most corrupt and illiterate in all Europe, which is saying much,) to

instil into his children that reverence for the spiritual authority which

existed abroad; and the enlightenment, which in him was experience in

life, was in Harold, betimes, the result of study and reflection. The

few books of the classical world then within reach of the student opened

to the young Saxon views of human duties and human responsibilities

utterly distinct from the unmeaning ceremonials and fleshly

mortifications in which even the higher theology of that day placed the

elements of virtue. He smiled in scorn when some Dane, whose life had

been passed in the alternate drunkenness of wine and of blood, thought he

had opened the gates of heaven by bequeathing lands gained by a robber’s

sword, to pamper the lazy sloth of some fifty monks. If those monks had

presumed to question his own actions, his disdain would have been mixed

with simple wonder that men so besotted in ignorance, and who could not

construe the Latin of the very prayers they pattered, should presume to

be the judges of educated men. It is possible--for his nature was

earnest--that a pure and enlightened clergy, that even a clergy, though

defective in life, zealous in duty and cultivated in mind,--such a clergy

as Alfred sought to found, and as Lanfranc endeavoured (not without some

success) to teach--would have bowed his strong sense to that grand and

subtle truth which dwells in spiritual authority. But as it was, he

stood aloof from the rude superstition of his age, and early in life made

himself the arbiter of his own conscience. Reducing his religion to the

simplest elements of our creed, he found rather in the books of Heathen

authors than in the lives of the saints, his notions of the larger

morality which relates to the citizen and the man. The love of country;

the sense of justice; fortitude in adverse and temperance in prosperous

fortune, became portions of his very mind. Unlike his father, he played

no actor’s part in those qualities which had won him the popular heart.

He was gentle and affable; above all, he was fair-dealing and just, not

because it was politic to seem, but his nature to be, so.

Nevertheless, Harold’s character, beautiful and sublime in many respects

as it was, had its strong leaven of human imperfection in that very

self-dependence which was born of his reason and his pride. In resting so

solely on man’s perceptions of the right, he lost one attribute of the

true hero--faith. We do not mean that word in the religious sense alone,

but in the more comprehensive. He did not rely on the Celestial

Something pervading all nature, never seen, only felt when duly courted,

stronger and lovelier than what eye could behold and mere reason could

embrace. Believing, it is true, in God, he lost those fine links that

unite God to man’s secret heart, and which are woven alike from the

simplicity of the child and the wisdom of the poet. To use a modern

illustration, his large mind was a “cupola lighted from below.”

His bravery, though inflexible as the fiercest sea-king’s, when need

arose for its exercise, was not his prominent characteristic. He

despised the brute valour of Tostig,--his bravery was a necessary part of

a firm and balanced manhood--the bravery of Hector, not Achilles.

Constitutionally averse to bloodshed, he could seem timid where daring

only gratified a wanton vanity, or aimed at a selfish object. On the

other hand, if duty demanded daring, no danger could deter, no policy

warp him;--he could seem rash; he could even seem merciless. In the what

ought to be, he understood a must be.

And it was natural to this peculiar, yet thoroughly English temperament,

to be, in action, rather steadfast and patient than quick and ready.

Placed in perils familiar to him, nothing could exceed his vigour and

address; but if taken unawares, and before his judgment could come to his

aid, he was liable to be surprised into error. Large minds are rarely

quick, unless they have been corrupted into unnatural vigilance by the

necessities of suspicion. But a nature more thoroughly unsuspecting,

more frank, trustful, and genuinely loyal than that young Earl’s, it was

impossible to conceive. All these attributes considered, we have the key

to much of Harold’s character and conduct in the later events of his

fated and tragic life.

But with this temperament, so manly and simple, we are not to suppose

that Harold, while rejecting the superstitions of one class, was so far

beyond his time as to reject those of another. No son of fortune, no man

placing himself and the world in antagonism, can ever escape from some

belief in the Invisible. Caesar could ridicule and profane the mystic

rites of Roman mythology, but he must still believe in his fortune, as in

a god. And Harold, in his very studies, seeing the freest and boldest

minds of antiquity subjected to influences akin to those of his Saxon

forefathers, felt less shame in yielding to them, vain as they might be,

than in monkish impostures so easily detected. Though hitherto he had

rejected all direct appeal to the magic devices of Hilda, the sound of

her dark sayings, heard in childhood, still vibrated on his soul as man.

Belief in omens, in days lucky or unlucky, in the stars, was universal in

every class of the Saxon. Harold had his own fortunate day, the day of

his nativity, the 14th of October. All enterprises undertaken on that

day had hitherto been successful. He believed in the virtue of that day,

as Cromwell believed in his 3d of September. For the rest, we have

described him as he was in that part of his career in which he is now

presented. Whether altered by fate and circumstances, time will show. As

yet, no selfish ambition leagued with the natural desire of youth and

intellect for their fair share of fame and power. His patriotism, fed by

the example of Greek and Roman worthies, was genuine, pure, and ardent;

he could have stood in the pass with Leonidas, or leaped into the gulf

with Curtius.

CHAPTER II.

At dawn, Harold woke from uneasy and broken slumbers, and his eyes fell

upon the face of Hilda, large, and fair, and unutterably calm, as the

face of Egyptian sphinx.

“Have thy dreams been prophetic, son of Godwin?” said the Vala.

“Our Lord forfend,” replied the Earl, with unusual devoutness.

“Tell them, and let me read the rede; sense dwells in the voices of the

night.”

Harold mused, and after a short pause, he said:

“Methinks, Hilda, I can myself explain how those dreams came to haunt

me.”

Then raising himself on his elbow, he continued, while he fixed his clear

penetrating eyes upon his hostess:

“Tell me frankly, Hilda, didst thou not cause some light to shine on

yonder knoll, by the mound and stone, within the temple of the Druids?”

But if Harold had suspected himself to be the dupe of some imposture, the

thought vanished when he saw the look of keen interest, even of awe,

which Hilda’s face instantly assumed.

“Didst thou see a light, son of Godwin, by the altar of Thor, and over

the bautastein of the mighty dead? a flame, lambent and livid, like

moonbeams collected over snow?”

“So seemed to me the light.”

“No human hand ever kindled that flame, which announces the presence of

the Dead,” said Hilda, with a tremulous voice; “though seldom,

uncompelled by the seid and the rune, does the spectre itself warn the

eyes of the living.”

“What shape, or what shadow of shape, does that spectre assume?”

“It rises in the midst of the flame, pale as the mist on the mountain,

and vast as the giants of old; with the saex, and the spear, and the

shield, of the sons of Woden.--Thou hast seen the Scin-laeca,” continued

Hilda, looking full on the face of the Earl.

“If thou deceivest me not,” began Harold, doubting still.

“Deceive thee! not to save the crown of the Saxon dare I mock the might

of the dead. Knowest thou not--or hath thy vain lore stood in place of

the lore of thy fathers--that where a hero of old is buried, his

treasures lie in his grave; that over that grave is at times seen at

night the flame that thou sawest, and the dead in his image of air? Oft

seen in the days that are gone, when the dead and the living had one

faith--were one race; now never marked, but for portent, and prophecy,

and doom:--glory or woe to the eyes that see! On yon knoll, Aesc (the

first-born of Cerdic, that Father-King of the Saxons,) has his grave

where the mound rises green, and the stone gleams wan by the altar of

Thor. He smote the Britons in their temple, and he fell smiting. They

buried him in his arms, and with the treasures his right hand had won.

Fate hangs on the house of Cerdic, or the realm of the Saxon, when Woden

calls the laeca of his son from the grave.”

Hilda, much troubled bent her face over her clasped hands, and, rocking

to and fro, muttered some runes unintelligible to the ear of her

listener. Then she turned to him, commandingly, and said:

“Thy dreams now, indeed, are oracles, more true than living Vala could

charm with the wand and the rune: Unfold them.”

Thus adjured, Harold resumed:

“Methought, then, that I was on a broad, level plain, in the noon of day;

all was clear to my eye, and glad to my heart. I was alone and went on

my way rejoicing. Suddenly the earth opened under my feet, and I fell

deep, fathom-deep;--deep, as if to that central pit, which our heathen

sires called Niffelheim--the Home of Vapour--the hell of the dead who die

without glory. Stunned by the fall, I lay long, locked as in a dream in

the midst of a dream. When I opened my eyes, behold, I was girt round

with dead men’s bones; and the bones moved round me, undulating, as the

dry leaves that wirble round in the winds of the winter. And from midst

of them peered a trunkless skull, and on the skull was a mitre, and from

the yawning jaws a voice came hissing, as a serpent’s hiss, ‘Harold, the

scorner, thou art ours!’ Then, as from the buzz of an army, came voices

multitudinous, ‘Thou art ours!’ I sought to rise, and behold my limbs

were bound, and the gyves were fine and frail, as the web of the

gossamer, and they weighed on me like chains of iron. And I felt an

anguish of soul that no words can speak--an anguish both of horror and

shame; and my manhood seemed to ooze from me, and I was weak as a child

new born. Then suddenly there rushed forth a freezing wind, as from an

air of ice, and the bones from their whirl stood still, and the buzz

ceased, and the mitred skull grinned on me still and voiceless; and

serpents darted their arrowy tongues from the eyeless sockets. And, lo,

before me stood (O Hilda, I see it now!) the form of the spectre that had

risen from yonder knoll. With his spear, and saex, and his shield, he

stood before me; and his face, though pale as that of one long dead, was

stern as the face of a warrior in the van of armed men; he stretched his

hand, and he smote his saex on his shield, and the clang sounded hollow;

the gyves broke at the clash--I sprang to my feet, and I stood side by

side with the phantom, dauntless. Then, suddenly, the mitre on the skull

changed to a helm; and where the skull had grinned, trunkless and

harmless, stood a shape like War, made incarnate;--a Thing above giants,

with its crest to the stars and its form an eclipse between the sun and

the day. The earth changed to ocean, and the ocean was blood, and the

ocean seemed deep as the seas where the whales sport in the North, but

the surge rose not to the knee of that measureless image. And the ravens

came round it from all parts of the heaven, and the vultures with the

dead eyes and dull scream. And all the bones, before scattered and

shapeless, sprung to life and to form, some monks and some warriors; and

there was a hoot, and a hiss, and a roar, and the storm of arms. And a

broad pennon rose out of the sea of blood, and from the clouds came a

pale hand, and it wrote on the pennon, ‘Harold, the Accursed!’ Then said

the stern shape by my side, ‘Harold, fearest thou the dead men’s bones?’

and its voice was as a trumpet that gives strength to the craven, and I

answering, ‘Niddering, indeed, were Harold, to fear the bones of the

dead!’”

“As I spoke, as if hell had burst loose, came a gibber of scorn, and all

vanished at once, save the ocean of blood. Slowly came from the north,

over the sea, a bird like a raven, save that it was blood-red, like the

ocean; and there came from the south, swimming towards me, a lion. And I

looked to the spectre; and the pride of war had gone from its face, which

was so sad that methought I forgot raven and lion, and wept to see it.

Then the spectre took me in its vast arms, and its breath froze my veins,

and it kissed my brow and my lips, and said, gently and fondly, as my

mother in some childish sickness, ‘Harold, my best beloved, mourn not.

Thou hast all which the sons of Woden dreamed in their dreams of

Valhalla!’ Thus saying, the form receded slowly, slowly, still gazing on

me with its sad eyes. I stretched forth my hand to detain it, and in my

grasp was a shadowy sceptre. And, lo! round me, as if from the earth,

sprang up thegns and chiefs, in their armour; and a board was spread, and

a wassail was blithe around me. So my heart felt cheered and light, and

in my hand was still the sceptre. And we feasted long and merrily; but

over the feast flapped the wings of the blood-red raven, and over the

blood-red sea beyond, swam the lion, near and near. And in the heavens

there were two stars, one pale and steadfast, the other rushing and

luminous; and a shadowy hand pointed from the cloud to the pale star, and

a voice said, ‘Lo, Harold! the star that shone on thy birth.’ And

another hand pointed to the luminous star, and another voice said, ‘Lo,

the star that shone on the birth of the victor.’ Then, lo! the bright

star grew fiercer and larger; and, rolling on with a hissing sound, as

when iron is dipped into water, it rushed over the disc of the mournful

planet, and the whole heavens seemed on fire. So methought the dream

faded away, and in fading, I heard a full swell of music, as the swell of

an anthem in an aisle; a music like that which but once in my life I

heard; when I stood on the train of Edward, in the halls of Winchester,

the day they crowned him king.”

Harold ceased, and the Vala slowly lifted her head from her bosom, and

surveyed him in profound silence, and with a gaze that seemed vacant and

meaningless.

“Why dost thou look on me thus, and why art thou so silent?” asked the

Earl.

“The cloud is on my sight, and the burthen is on my soul, and I cannot

read thy rede,” murmured the Vala. “But morn, the ghost-chaser, that

waketh life, the action, charms into slumber life, the thought. As the

stars pale at the rising of the sun, so fade the lights of the soul when

the buds revive in the dews, and the lark sings to the day. In thy dream

lies thy future, as the wing of the moth in the web of the changing worm;

but, whether for weal or for woe, thou shalt burst through thy mesh, and

spread thy plumes in the air. Of myself I know nought. Await the hour

when Skulda shall pass into the soul of her servant, and thy fate shall

rush from my lips as the rush of the waters from the heart of the cave.”

“I am content to abide,” said Harold, with his wonted smile, so calm and

so lofty; “but I cannot promise thee that I shall heed thy rede, or obey

thy warning, when my reason hath awoke, as while I speak it awakens, from

the fumes of the fancy and the mists of the night.”

CHAPTER III.

Githa, Earl Godwin’s wife, sate in her chamber, and her heart was sad. In

the room was one of her sons, the one dearer to her than all, Wolnoth,

her darling. For the rest of her sons were stalwart and strong of frame,

and in their infancy she had known not a mother’s fears. But Wolnoth had

come into the world before his time, and sharp had been the travail of

the mother, and long between life and death the struggle of the newborn

babe. And his cradle had been rocked with a trembling knee, and his

pillow been bathed with hot tears. Frail had been his childhood--a thing

that hung on her care; and now, as the boy grew, blooming and strong,

into youth, the mother felt that she had given life twice to her child.

Therefore was he more dear to her than the rest; and, therefore, as she

gazed upon him now, fair and smiling, and hopeful, she mourned for him

more than for Sweyn, the outcast and criminal, on his pilgrimage of woe,

to the waters of Jordan, and the tomb of our Lord. For Wolnoth, selected

as the hostage for the faith of his house, was to be sent from her arms

to the Court of William the Norman. And the youth smiled and was gay,

choosing vestment and mantle, and ateghars of gold, that he might be

flaunting and brave in the halls of knighthood and the beauty,--the

school of the proudest chivalry of the Christian world. Too young, and

too thoughtless, to share the wise hate of his elders for the manners and

forms of the foreigners, their gaiety and splendour, as his boyhood had

seen them, relieving the gloom of the cloister court, and contrasting the

spleen and the rudeness of the Saxon temperament, had dazzled his fancy

and half Normanised his mind. A proud and happy boy was he, to go as

hostage for the faith, and representative of the rank, of his mighty

kinsmen; and step into manhood in the eyes of the dames of Rouen.

By Wolnoth’s side stood his young sister, Thyra, a mere infant; and her

innocent sympathy with her brother’s pleasure in gaud and toy saddened

Githa yet more.

“O my son!” said the troubled mother, “why, of all my children, have they

chosen thee? Harold is wise against danger, and Tostig is fierce against

foes, and Gurth is too loving to awake hate in the sternest, and from the

mirth of sunny Leofwine sorrow glints aside, as the shaft from the sheen

of a shield. But thou, thou, O beloved!--cursed be the king that chose

thee, and cruel was the father that forgot the light of the mother’s

eyes!”

“Tut, mother the dearest,” said Wolnoth, pausing from the contemplation

of a silk robe, all covered with broidered peacocks, which had been sent

him as a gift from his sister the Queen, and wrought with her own fair

hands; for a notable needle-woman, despite her sage lere, was the wife of

the Saint King, as sorrowful women mostly are,--“Tut! the bird must leave

the nest when the wings are fledged. Harold the eagle, Tostig the kite,

Gurth the ring-dove, and Leofwine the stare. See, my wings are the

richest of all, mother, and bright is the sun in which thy peacock shall

spread his pranked plumes.”

Then, observing that his liveliness provoked no smile from his mother, he

approached and said more seriously:

“Bethink thee, mother mine. No other choice was left to king or to

father. Harold, and Tostig, and Leofwine, have their lordships and

offices. Their posts are fixed, and they stand as the columns of our

house. And Gurth is so young, and so Saxish and so the shadow of Harold,

that his hate to the Norman is a by-word already among our youths; for

hate is the more marked in a temper of love, as the blue of this border

seems black against the white of the woof. But I;--the good King knows

that I shall be welcome, for the Norman knights love Wolnoth, and I have

spent hours by the knees of Montgommeri and Grantmesnil, listening to the

feats of Rolf-ganger, and playing with their gold chains of knighthood.

And the stout Count himself shall knight me, and I shall come back with

the spurs of gold which thy ancestors, the brave Kings of Norway and

Daneland, wore ere knighthood was known. Come, kiss me, my mother, and

come see the brave falcons Harold has sent me:--true Welch!”

Githa rested her face on her son’s shoulder, and her tears blinded her.

The door opened gently, and Harold entered; and with the Earl, a pale

dark-haired boy, Haco; the son of Sweyn.

But Githa, absorbed in her darling Wolnoth, scarce saw the grandchild

reared afar from her knees, and hurried at once to Harold. In his

presence she felt comfort and safety; for Wolnoth leant on her heart, and

her heart leant on Harold.

“O son, son!” she cried, “firmest of hand, surest of faith, and wisest of

brain, in the house of Godwin, tell me that he yonder, he thy young

brother, risks no danger in the halls of the Normans!”

“Not more than in these, mother,” answered Harold, soothing her, with

caressing lip and gentle tone. “Fierce and ruthless, men say, is William

the Duke against foes with their swords in their hands, but debonnair and

mild to the gentle [105], frank host and kind lord. And these Normans

have a code of their own, more grave than all morals, more binding than

even their fanatic religion. Thou knowest it well, mother, for it comes

from thy race of the North, and this code of honour, they call it, makes

Wolnoth’s head as sacred as the relics of a saint set in zimmes. Ask

only, my brother, when thou comest in sight of the Norman Duke, ask only

‘the kiss of peace,’ and, that kiss on thy brow, thou wilt sleep more

safe than if all the banners of England waved over thy couch.” [106]

“But how long shall the exile be?” asked Githa, comforted. Harold’s brow

fell.

“Mother, not even to cheer thee will I deceive. The time of the

hostageship rests with the King and the Duke. As long as the one affects

fear from the race of Godwin, as long as the other feigns care for such

priests or such knights as were not banished from the realm, being not

courtiers, but scattered wide and far in convent and homestead, so long

will Wolnoth and Haco be guests in the Norman halls.”

Githa wrung her hands.

“But comfort, my mother; Wolnoth is young, his eye is keen, and his

spirit prompt and quick. He will mark these Norman captains, he will

learn their strength and their weakness, their manner of war, and he will

come back, not as Edward the King came, a lover of things un-Saxon, but

able to warn and to guide us against the plots of the camp-court, which

threatens more, year by year, the peace of the world. And he will see

there arts we may worthily borrow: not the cut of a tunic, and the fold

of a gonna, but the arts of men who found states and build nations.

William the Duke is splendid and wise; merchants tell us how crafts

thrive under his iron hand, and war-men say that his forts are

constructed with skill and his battle-schemes planned as the mason plans

key-stone and arch, with weight portioned out to the prop, and the force

of the hand made tenfold by the science of the brain. So that the boy

will return to us a man round and complete, a teacher of greybeards, and

the sage of his kin; fit for earldom and rule, fit for glory and England.

Grieve not, daughter of the Dane kings, that thy son, the best loved,

hath nobler school and wider field than his brothers.”

This appeal touched the proud heart of the niece of Canute the Great, and

she almost forgot the grief of her love in the hope of her ambition.

She dried her tears and smiled upon Wolnoth, and already, in the dreams

of a mother’s vanity, saw him great as Godwin in council, and prosperous

as Harold in the field. Nor, half Norman as he was, did the young man

seem insensible of the manly and elevated patriotism of his brother’s

hinted lessons, though he felt they implied reproof. He came to the

Earl, whose arm was round his mother, and said with a frank heartiness

not usual to a nature somewhat frivolous and irresolute:

“Harold, thy tongue could kindle stones into men, and warm those men into

Saxons. Thy Wolnoth shall not hang his head with shame when he comes

back to our merrie land with shaven locks and spurs of gold. For if thou

doubtest his race from his look, thou shalt put thy right hand on his

heart, and feel England beat there in every pulse.”

“Brave words, and well spoken,” cried the Earl, and he placed his hand on

the boy’s head as in benison.

Till then, Haco had stood apart, conversing with the infant Thyra, whom

his dark, mournful face awed and yet touched, for she nestled close to

him, and put her little hand in his; but now, inspired no less than his

cousin by Harold’s noble speech, he came proudly forward by Wolnoth’s

side, and said:

“I, too, am English, and I have the name of Englishman to redeem.”

Ere Harold could reply, Githa exclaimed:

“Leave there thy right hand on my child’s head, and say, simply: ‘By my

troth and my plight, if the Duke detain Wolnoth, son of Githa, against

just plea, and King’s assent to his return, I, Harold, will, failing

letter and nuncius, cross the seas, to restore the child to the mother.’”

[107] Harold hesitated.

A sharp cry of reproach that went to his heart broke from Githa’s lips.

“Ah! cold and self-heeding, wilt thou send him to bear a peril from which

thou shrinkest thyself?”

“By my troth and my plight, then,” said the Earl, “if, fair time elapsed,

peace in England, without plea of justice, and against my king’s fiat,

Duke William of Normandy detain the hostages;--thy son and this dear boy,

more sacred and more dear to me for his father’s woes,--I will cross the

seas, to restore the child to the mother, the fatherless to his

fatherland. So help me, all-seeing One, Amen and Amen!”

CHAPTER IV.

We have seen, in an earlier part of this record, that Harold possessed,

amongst his numerous and more stately possessions, a house, not far from

the old Roman dwelling-place of Hilda. And in this residence he now

(save when with the King) made his chief abode. He gave as the reasons

for his selection, the charm it took, in his eyes, from that signal mark

of affection which his ceorls had rendered him, in purchasing the house

and tilling the ground in his absence; and more especially the

convenience of its vicinity to the new palace at Westminster; for, by

Edward’s special desire, while the other brothers repaired to their

different domains, Harold remained near his royal person. To use the

words of the great Norwegian chronicler, “Harold was always with the

Court itself, and nearest to the King in all service.”

“The King loved him very much, and kept him as his own son, for he had no

children.”’ This attendance on Edward was naturally most close at the

restoration to power of the Earl’s family. For Harold, mild and

conciliating, was, like Alred, a great peacemaker, and Edward had never

cause to complain of him, as he believed he had of the rest of that

haughty house. But the true spell which made dear to Harold the rude

building of timber, with its doors open all day to his lithsmen, when

with a light heart he escaped from the halls of Westminster, was the fair

face of Edith his neighbour. The impression which this young girl had

made upon Harold seemed to partake of the strength of a fatality. For

Harold had loved her before the marvellous beauty of her womanhood began;

and, occupied from his earliest youth in grave and earnest affairs, his

heart had never been frittered away on the mean and frivolous affections

of the idle. Now, in that comparative leisure of his stormy life, he was

naturally most open to the influence of a charm more potent than all the

glamoury of Hilda.

The autumn sun shone through the golden glades of the forest-land, when

Edith sate alone on the knoll that faced forestland and road, and watched

afar.

And the birds sung cheerily; but that was not the sound for which Edith

listened: and the squirrel darted from tree to tree on the sward beyond;

but not to see the games of the squirrel sat Edith by the grave of the

Teuton. By-and-by, came the cry of the dogs, and the tall gre-hound

[108] of Wales emerged from the bosky dells. Then Edith’s heart heaved,

and her eyes brightened. And now, with his hawk on his wrist, and his

spear [109] in his hand, came, through the yellowing boughs, Harold the

Earl.

And well may ye ween, that his heart beat as loud and his eye shone as

bright as Edith’s, when he saw who had watched for his footsteps on the

sepulchral knoll; Love, forgetful of the presence of Death;--so has it

ever been, so ever shall it be! He hastened his stride, and bounded up

the gentle hillock, and his dogs, with a joyous bark, came round the

knees of Edith. Then Harold shook the bird from his wrist, and it fell,

with its light wing, on the altar-stone of Thor.

“Thou art late, but thou art welcome, Harold my kinsman,” said Edith,

simply, as she bent her face over the hounds, whose gaunt heads she

caressed.

“Call me not kinsman,” said Harold, shrinking, and with a dark cloud on

his broad brow.

“And why, Harold?”

“Oh, Edith, why?” murmured Harold; and his thought added, “she knows not,

poor child, that in that mockery of kinship the Church sets its ban on

our bridals.”

He turned, and chid his dogs fiercely as they gambolled in rough glee

round their fair friend.

The hounds crouched at the feet of Edith; and Edith looked in mild wonder

at the troubled face of the Earl.

“Thine eyes rebuke me, Edith, more than my words the hounds!” said

Harold, gently. “But there is quick blood in my veins; and the mind must

be calm when it would control the humour. Calm was my mind, sweet Edith,

in the old time, when thou wert an infant on my knee, and wreathing, with

these rude hands, flower-chains for thy neck like the swan’s down, I

said, ‘The flowers fade, but the chain lasts when love weaves it.’”

Edith again bent her face over the crouching hounds. Harold gazed on her

with mournful fondness; and the bird still sung and the squirrel swung

himself again from bough to bough. Edith spoke first:

“My godmother, thy sister, hath sent for me, Harold, and I am to go to

the Court to-morrow. Shalt thou be there?”

“Surely,” said Harold, in an anxious voice, “surely, I will be there! So

my sister hath sent for thee: wittest thou wherefore?”

Edith grew very pale, and her tone trembled as she answered:

“Well-a-day, yes.”

“It is as I feared, then!” exclaimed Harold, in great agitation; “and my

sister, whom these monks have demented, leagues herself with the King

against the law of the wide welkin and the grand religion of the human

heart. Oh!” continued the Earl, kindling into an enthusiasm, rare to his

even moods, but wrung as much from his broad sense as from his strong

affection, “when I compare the Saxon of our land and day, all enervated

and decrepit by priestly superstition, with his forefathers in the first

Christian era, yielding to the religion they adopted in its simple

truths, but not to that rot of social happiness and free manhood which

this cold and lifeless monarchism--making virtue the absence of human

ties--spreads around--which the great Bede [110], though himself a monk,

vainly but bitterly denounced;--yea, verily, when I see the Saxon already

the theowe of the priest, I shudder to ask how long he will be folk-free

of the tyrant.”

He paused, breathed hard, and seizing, almost sternly, the girl’s

trembling arm, he resumed between his set teeth: “So they would have thee

be a nun?--Thou wilt not,--thou durst not,--thy heart would perjure thy

vows!”

“Ah, Harold!” answered Edith, moved out of all bashfulness by his emotion

and her own terror of the convent, and answering, if with the love of a

woman, still with all the unconsciousness of a child: “Better, oh better

the grate of the body than that of the heart!--In the grave I could still

live for those I love; behind the Grate, love itself must be dead. Yes,

thou pitiest me, Harold; thy sister, the Queen, is gentle and kind; I

will fling myself at her feet, and say: ‘Youth is fond, and the world is

fair: let me live my youth, and bless God in the world that he saw was

good!’”

“My own, own dear Edith!” exclaimed Harold, overjoyed. “Say this. Be

firm: they cannot and they dare not force thee! The law cannot wrench

thee against thy will from the ward of thy guardian Hilda; and, where the

law is, there Harold at least is strong,--and there at least our kinship,

if my bane, is thy blessing.”

“Why, Harold, sayest thou that our kinship is thy bane? It is so sweet

to me to whisper to myself, ‘Harold is of thy kith, though distant; and

it is natural to thee to have pride in his fame, and joy in his

presence!’ Why is that sweetness to me, to thee so bitter?”

“Because,” answered Harold, dropping the hand he had clasped, and folding

his arms in deep dejection, “because but for that I should say: ‘Edith, I

love thee more than a brother: Edith, be Harold’s wife!’ And were I to

say it, and were we to wed, all the priests of the Saxons would lift up

their hands in horror, and curse our nuptials, and I should be the bann’d

of that spectre the Church; and my house would shake to its foundations;

and my father, and my brothers, and the thegns and the proceres, and the

abbots and prelates, whose aid makes our force, would gather round me

with threats and with prayers, that I might put thee aside. And mighty

as I am now, so mighty once was Sweyn my brother; and outlaw as Sweyn is

now, might Harold be; and outlaw if Harold were, what breast so broad as

his could fill up the gap left in the defence of England? And the

passions that I curb, as a rider his steed, might break their rein; and,

strong in justice, and child of Nature, I might come, with banner and

mail, against Church, and House, and Fatherland; and the blood of my

countrymen might be poured like water: and, therefore, slave to the lying

thraldom he despises, Harold dares not say to the maid of his love, ‘Give

me thy right hand, and be my bride!’”

Edith had listened in bewilderment and despair, her eyes fixed on his,

and her face locked and rigid, as if turned to stone. But when he had

ceased, and, moving some steps away, turned aside his manly countenance,

that Edith might not perceive its anguish, the noble and sublime spirit

of that sex which ever, when lowliest, most comprehends the lofty, rose

superior both to love and to grief; and rising, she advanced, and placing

her slight hand on his stalwart shoulder, she said, half in pity, half in

reverence: “Never before, O Harold, did I feel so proud of thee: for

Edith could not love thee as she doth, and will till the grave clasp her,

if thou didst not love England more than Edith. Harold, till this hour I

was a child, and I knew not my own heart: I look now into that heart, and

I see that I am woman. Harold, of the cloister I have now no fear: and

all life does not shrink--no, it enlarges, and it soars into one

desire--to be worthy to pray for thee!”

“Maid, maid!” exclaimed Harold, abruptly, and pale as the dead, “do not

say thou hast no fear of the cloister. I adjure, I command thee, build

not up between us that dismal everlasting wall. While thou art free Hope

yet survives--a phantom, haply but Hope still.”

“As thou wilt I will,” said Edith, humbly: “order my fate so as pleases

thee the best.”

Then, not daring to trust herself longer, for she felt the tears rushing

to her eyes, she turned away hastily, and left him alone beside the

altar-stone and the tomb.

CHAPTER V.

The next day, as Harold was entering the palace of Westminster, with

intent to seek the King’s lady, his father met him in one of the

corridors, and, taking him gravely by the hand said:

“My son, I have much on my mind regarding thee and our House; come with

me.”

“Nay,” said the Earl, “by your leave let it be later. For I have it on

hand to see my sister, ere confessor, or monk, or schoolman, claim her

hours!”

“Not so, Harold,” said the Earl, briefly. “My daughter is now in her

oratory, and we shall have time enow to treat of things mundane ere she

is free to receive thee, and to preach to thee of things ghostly, the

last miracle at St. Alban’s, or the last dream of the King, who would be

a great man and a stirring, if as restless when awake as he is in his

sleep. Come.”

Harold, in that filial obedience which belonged, as of course, to his

antique cast of character, made no farther effort to escape, but with a

sigh followed Godwin into one of the contiguous chambers.

“Harold,” then said Earl Godwin, after closing the door carefully, “thou

must not let the King keep thee longer in dalliance and idleness: thine

earldom needs thee without delay. Thou knowest that these East Angles,

as we Saxons still call them, are in truth mostly Danes and Norsemen;

people jealous and fierce, and free, and more akin to the Normans than to

the Saxons. My whole power in England hath been founded, not less on my

common birth with the freefolk of Wessex--Saxons like myself, and

therefore easy for me, a Saxon, to conciliate and control--than on the

hold I have ever sought to establish, whether by arms or by arts, over

the Danes in the realm. And I tell and I warn thee, Harold, as the

natural heir of my greatness, that he who cannot command the stout hearts

of the Anglo-Danes, will never maintain the race of Godwin in the post

they have won in the vanguard of Saxon England.”

“This I wot well, my father,” answered Harold; “and I see with joy, that

while those descendants of heroes and freemen are blended indissolubly

with the meeker Saxon, their freer laws and hardier manners are gradually

supplanting, or rather regenerating, our own.”

Godwin smiled approvingly on his son, and then his brow becoming serious,

and the dark pupil of his blue eye dilating, he resumed:

“This is well, my son; and hast thou thought also, that while thou art

loitering in these galleries, amidst the ghosts of men in monk cowls,

Siward is shadowing our House with his glory, and all north the Humber

rings with his name? Hast thou thought that all Mercia is in the hands

of Leofric our rival, and that Algar his son, who ruled Wessex in my

absence, left there a name so beloved, that had I stayed a year longer,

the cry had been ‘Algar’, not ‘Godwin’?--for so is the multitude ever!

Now aid me, Harold, for my soul is troubled, and I cannot work alone; and

though I say naught to others, my heart received a death-blow when tears

fell from its blood-springs on the brow of Sweyn, my first-born.” The

old man paused, and his lip quivered.

“Thou, thou alone, Harold, noble boy, thou alone didst stand by his side

in the hall; alone, alone, and I blessed thee in that hour over all the

rest of my sons. Well, well! now to earth again. Aid me, Harold. I

open to thee my web: complete the woof when this hand is cold. The new

tree that stands alone in the plain is soon nipped by the winter; fenced

round with the forest, its youth takes shelter from its fellows [111].

So is it with a house newly founded; it must win strength from the allies

that it sets round its slender stein. What had been Godwin, son of

Wolnoth, had he not married into the kingly house of great Canute? It is

this that gives my sons now the right to the loyal love of the Danes.

The throne passed from Canute and his race, and the Saxons again had

their hour; and I gave, as Jephtha gave his daughter, my blooming Edith,

to the cold bed of the Saxon King. Had sons sprung from that union, the

grandson of Godwin, royal alike from Saxon and Dane, would reign on the

throne of the isle. Fate ordered otherwise, and the spider must weave

web anew. Thy brother, Tostig, has added more splendour than solid

strength of our line, in his marriage with the daughter of Baldwin the

Count. The foreigner helps us little in England. Thou, O Harold, must

bring new props to the House. I would rather see thee wed to the child

of one of our great rivals than to the daughter of kaisar, or outland

king. Siward hath no daughter undisposed of. Algar, son of Leofric,

hath a daughter fair as the fairest; make her thy bride that Algar may

cease to be a foe. This alliance will render Mercia, in truth, subject

to our principalities, since the stronger must quell the weaker. It doth

more. Algar himself has married into the royalty of Wales [112]. Thou

wilt win all those fierce tribes to thy side. Their forces will gain

thee the marches, now held so feebly under Rolf the Norman, and in case

of brief reverse, or sharp danger, their mountains will give refuge from

all foes. This day, greeting Algar, he told me he meditated bestowing

his daughter on Gryffyth, the rebel under-King of North Wales.

Therefore,” continued the old Earl, with a smile, “thou must speak in

time, and win and woo in the same breath. No hard task, methinks, for

Harold of the golden tongue.”

“Sir, and father,” replied the young Earl, whom the long speech addressed

to him had prepared for its close, and whose habitual self-control saved

him from disclosing his emotion, “I thank you duteously, for your care

for my future, and hope to profit by your wisdom. I will ask the King’s

leave to go to my East Anglians, and hold there a folkmuth, administer

justice, redress grievances, and make thegn and ceorl content with

Harold, their Earl. But vain is peace in the realm, if there is strife

in the house. And Aldyth, the daughter of Algar, cannot be house-wife to

me.”

“Why?” asked the old Earl, calmly, and surveying his son’s face with

those eyes so clear yet so unfathomable.

“Because, though I grant her fair, she pleases not my fancy, nor would

give warmth to my hearth. Because, as thou knowest well, Algar and I

have ever been opposed, both in camp and in council; and I am not the man

who can sell my love, though I may stifle my anger. Earl Harold needs no

bride to bring spearmen to his back at his need; and his lordships he

will guard with the shield of a man, not the spindle of a woman.”

“Said in spite and in error,” replied the old Earl, coolly. “Small pain

had it given thee to forgive Algar old quarrels, and clasp his hand as a

father-in-law--if thou hadst had for his daughter what the great are

forbidden to regard save as a folly.”

“Is love a folly, my father?”

“Surely, yes,” said the Earl, with some sadness--“surely, yes, for those

who know that life is made up of business and care, spun out in long

years, nor counted by the joys of an hour. Surely, yes; thinkest thou

that I loved my first wife, the proud sister of Canute, or that Edith,

thy sister, loved Edward, when he placed the crown on her head?”

“My father, in Edith, my sister, our House has sacrificed enow to selfish

power.”

“I grant it, to selfish power,” answered the eloquent old man, “but not

enow for England’s safety. Look to it, Harold; thy years, and thy fame,

and thy state, place thee free from my control as a father, but not till

thou sleepest in thy cerements art thou free from that father--thy land!

Ponder it in thine own wise mind--wiser already than that which speaks to

it under the hood of grey hairs. Ponder it, and ask thyself if thy

power, when I am dead, is not necessary to the weal of England? and if

aught that thy schemes can suggest would so strengthen that power, as to

find in the heart of the kingdom a host of friends like the Mercians;--or

if there could be a trouble and a bar to thy greatness, a wall in thy

path, or a thorn in thy side, like the hate or the jealousy of Algar, the

son of Leofric?”

Thus addressed, Harold’s face, before serene and calm, grew overcast; and

he felt the force of his father’s words when appealing to his reason--not

to his affections. The old man saw the advantage he had gained, and

prudently forbore to press it. Rising, he drew round him his sweeping

gonna lined with furs, and only when he reached the door, he added:

“The old see afar; they stand on the height of experience, as a warder on

the crown of a tower; and I tell thee, Harold, that if thou let slip this

golden occasion, years hence--long and many--thou wilt rue the loss of

the hour. And that, unless Mercia, as the centre of the kingdom, be

reconciled to thy power, thou wilt stand high indeed--but on the shelf of

a precipice. And if, as I suspect, thou lovest some other who now clouds

thy perception, and will then check thy ambition, thou wilt break her

heart with thy desertion, or gnaw thine own with regret. For love dies

in possession--ambition has no fruition, and so lives forever.”

“That ambition is not mine, my father,” exclaimed Harold, earnestly; “I

have not thy love of power, glorious in thee, even in its extremes. I

have not thy----”

“Seventy years!” interrupted the old man, concluding the sentence. “At

seventy all men who have been great will speak as I do; yet all will have

known love. Thou not ambitious, Harold? Thou knowest not thyself, nor

knowest thou yet what ambition is. That which I see far before me as thy

natural prize, I dare not, or I will not say. When time sets that prize

within reach of thy spear’s point, say then, ‘I am not ambitious!’

Ponder and decide.”

And Harold pondered long, and decided not as Godwin could have wished.

For he had not the seventy years of his father, and the prize lay yet in

the womb of the mountains; though the dwarf and the gnome were already

fashioning the ore to the shape of a crown.

CHAPTER VI.

While Harold mused over his father’s words, Edith, seated on a low stool

beside the Lady of England, listened with earnest but mournful reverence

to her royal namesake.

The Queen’s [113] closet opened like the King’s on one hand to an

oratory, on the other to a spacious ante-room; the lower part of the

walls was covered with arras, leaving space for a niche that contained an

image of the Virgin. Near the doorway to the oratory, was the stoupe or

aspersorium for holy-water; and in various cysts and crypts, in either

room, were caskets containing the relics of saints. The purple light

from the stained glass of a high narrow window, shaped in the Saxon arch,

streamed rich and full over the Queen’s bended head like a glory, and

tinged her pale cheek, as with a maiden blush; and she might have

furnished a sweet model for early artist, in his dreams of St. Mary the

Mother, not when, young and blest, she held the divine infant in her

arms, but when sorrow had reached even the immaculate bosom, and the

stone had been rolled over the Holy Sepulchre. For beautiful the face

still was, and mild beyond all words; but, beyond all words also, sad in

its tender resignation.

And thus said the Queen to her godchild:

“Why dost thou hesitate and turn away? Thinkest thou, poor child, in

thine ignorance of life, that the world ever can give thee a bliss

greater than the calm of the cloister? Pause, and ask thyself, young as

thou art, if all the true happiness thou hast known, is not bounded to

hope. As long as thou hopest, thou art happy.”

Edith sighed deeply, and moved her young head in involuntary

acquiescence.

“And what is life to the nun, but hope. In that hope, she knows not the

present, she lives in the future; she hears ever singing the chorus of

the angels, as St. Dunstan heard them sing at the birth of Edgar [114].

That hope unfolds to her the heiligthum of the future. On earth her body,

in heaven her soul!”

“And her heart, O Lady of England?” cried Edith, with a sharp pang.

The Queen paused a moment, and laid her pale hand kindly on Edith’s

bosom.

“Not beating, child, as thine does now, with vain thoughts, and worldly

desires; but calm, calm as mine. It is in our power,” resumed the Queen,

after a second pause, “it is in our power to make the life within us all

soul; so that the heart is not, or is felt not; so that grief and joy

have no power over us; so that we look tranquil on the stormy earth, as

yon image of the Virgin, whom we make our example, looks from the silent

niche. Listen, my godchild and darling.”

“I have known human state, and human debasement. In these halls I woke

Lady of England, and, ere sunset, my lord banished me, without one mark

of honour, without one word of comfort, to the convent of Wherwell;--my

father, my mother, my kin, all in exile; and my tears falling fast for

them, but not on a husband’s bosom.”

“Ah then, noble Edith,” said the girl, colouring with anger at the

remembered wrong for her Queen, “ah then, surely, at least, thy heart

made itself heard.”

“Heard, yea verily,” said the Queen, looking up, and pressing her hands;

“heard, but the soul rebuked it. And the soul said, ‘Blessed are they

that mourn;’ and I rejoiced at the new trial which brought me nearer to

Him who chastens those He loves.”

“But thy banished kin--the valiant, the wise; they who placed thy lord on

the throne?”

“Was it no comfort,” answered the Queen simply, “to think that in the

House of God my prayers for them would be more accepted than in the halls

of kings? Yes, my child, I have known the world’s honour, and the

world’s disgrace, and I have schooled my heart to be calm in both.”

“Ah, thou art above human strength, Queen and Saint,” exclaimed Edith;

“and I have heard it said of thee, that as thou art now, thou wert from

thine earliest years [115]; ever the sweet, the calm, the holy--ever less

on earth than in heaven.”

Something there was in the Queen’s eyes, as she raised them towards Edith

at this burst of enthusiasm, that gave for a moment, to a face otherwise

so dissimilar, the likeness to her father; something, in that large

pupil, of the impenetrable unrevealing depth of a nature close and secret

in self-control. And a more acute observer than Edith might long have

been perplexed and haunted with that look, wondering if, indeed, under

the divine and spiritual composure, lurked the mystery of human passion.

“My child,” said the Queen, with the faintest smile upon her lips, and

drawing Edith towards her, “there are moments when all that breathe the

breath of life feel, or have felt, alike. In my vain youth I read, I

mused, I pondered, but over worldly lore. And what men called the

sanctity of virtue, was perhaps but the silence of thought. Now I have

put aside those early and childish dreams and shadows, remembering them

not, save (here the smile grew more pronounced) to puzzle some poor

schoolboy with the knots and riddles of the sharp grammarian [116]. But

not to speak of my self have I sent for thee. Edith, again and again,

solemnly and sincerely, I pray thee to obey the wish of my lord the King.

And now, while yet in all the bloom of thought, as of youth, while thou

hast no memory save the child’s, enter on the Realm of Peace.”

“I cannot, I dare not, I cannot--ah, ask me not,” said poor Edith,

covering her face with her hands.

Those hands the Queen gently withdrew; and looking steadfastly in the

changeful and half-averted face, she said mournfully, “Is it so, my

godchild? and is thy heart set on the hopes of earth--thy dreams on the

love of man?”

“Nay,” answered Edith, equivocating; “but I have promised not to take the

veil.”

“Promised to Hilda?”

“Hilda,” exclaimed Edith readily, “would never consent to it. Thou

knowest her strong nature, her distaste to--to----”

“The laws of our holy Church--I do; and for that reason it is, mainly,

that I join with the King in seeking to abstract thee from her influence.

But it is not Hilda that thou hast promised?”

Edith hung her head.

“Is it to woman or to man?”

Before Edith could answer the door from the ante-room opened gently, but

without the usual ceremony, and Harold entered. His quick quiet eye

embraced both forms, and curbed Edith’s young impulse, which made her

start from her seat, and advance joyously towards him as a protector.

“Fair day to thee, my sister,” said the Earl, advancing; “and pardon, if

I break thus rudely on thy leisure; for few are the moments when beggar

and Benedictine leave thee free to receive thy brother.”

“Dost thou reproach me, Harold?”

“No, Heaven forfend!” replied the Earl, cordially, and with a look at

once of pity and admiration; “for thou art one of the few, in this court

of simulators, sincere and true; and it pleases thee to serve the Divine

Power in thy way, as it pleases me to serve Him in mine.”

“Thine, Harold?” said the Queen, shaking her head, but with a look of

some human pride and fondness in her fair face.

“Mine; as I learned it from thee when I was thy pupil, Edith; when to

those studies in which thou didst precede me, thou first didst lure me

from sport and pastime; and from thee I learned to glow over the deeds of

Greek and Roman, and say, ‘They lived and died as men; like them may I

live and die!’”

“Oh, true--too true!” said the Queen, with a sigh; “and I am to blame

grievously that I did so pervert to earth a mind that might otherwise

have learned holier examples;--nay, smile not with that haughty lip, my

brother; for believe me--yea, believe me--there is more true valour in

the life of one patient martyr than in the victories of Caesar, or even

the defeat of Brutus.”

“It may be so,” replied the Earl, “but out of the same oak we carve the

spear and the cross; and those not worthy to hold the one, may yet not

guiltily wield the other. Each to his path of life--and mine is chosen.”

Then, changing his voice, with some abruptness, he said, “But what hast

thou been saying to thy fair godchild, that her cheek is pale, and her

eyelids seem so heavy? Edith, Edith, my sister, beware how thou shapest

the lot of the martyr without the peace of the saint. Had Algive the nun

been wedded to Sweyn our brother, Sweyn were not wending, barefooted and

forlorn, to lay the wrecks of desolated life at the Holy Tomb.”

“Harold, Harold!” faltered the Queen, much struck with his words.

“But,” the Earl continued--and something of the pathos which belongs to

deep emotion vibrated in the eloquent voice, accustomed to command and

persuade--“we strip not the green leaves for our yulehearths--we gather

them up when dry and sere. Leave youth on the bough--let the bird sing

to it--let it play free in the airs of heaven. Smoke comes from the

branch which, cut in the sap, is cast upon the fire, and regret from the

heart which is severed from the world while the world is in its May.”

The Queen paced slowly, but in evident agitation, to and fro the room,

and her hands clasped convulsively the rosary round her neck; then, after

a pause of thought, she motioned to Edith and, pointing to the oratory,

said with forced composure, “Enter there, and there kneel; commune with

thyself, and be still. Ask for a sign from above--pray for the grace

within. Go; I would speak alone with Harold.”

Edith crossed her arms on her bosom meekly, and passed into the oratory.

The Queen watched her for a few moments tenderly, as the slight,

child-like form bent before the sacred symbol. Then she closed the door

gently, and coming with a quick step to Harold, said, in a low but clear

voice, “Dost thou love the maiden?”

“Sister,” answered the Earl sadly, “I love her as a man should love

woman--more than my life, but less than the ends life lives for.”

“Oh, world, world, world!” cried the Queen, passionately, “not even to

thine own objects art thou true. O world! O world! thou desirest

happiness below, and at every turn, with every vanity, thou tramplest

happiness under foot! Yes, yes; they said to me, ‘For the sake of our

greatness, thou shalt wed King Edward.’ And I live in the eyes that

loathe me--and--and----” The Queen, as if conscience-stricken, paused

aghast, kissed devoutly the relic suspended to her rosary, and continued,

with such calmness that it seemed as if two women were blent in one, so

startling was the contrast. “And I have had my reward, but not from the

world! Even so, Harold the Earl, and Earl’s son, thou lovest yon fair

child, and she thee; and ye might be happy, if happiness were earth’s

end; but, though high-born, and of fair temporal possessions, she brings

thee not lands broad enough for her dowry, nor troops of kindred to swell

thy lithsmen, and she is not a markstone in thy march to ambition; and so

thou lovest her as man loves woman--‘less than the ends life lives for!’”

“Sister,” said Harold, “thou speakest as I love to hear thee speak--as my

bright-eyed, rose-lipped sister spoke in the days of old; thou speakest

as a woman with warm heart, and not as the mummy in the stiff cerements

of priestly form; and if thou art with me, and thou wilt give me

countenance, I will marry thy godchild, and save her alike from the dire

superstitions of Hilda, and the grave of the abhorrent convent.”

“But my father--my father!” cried the Queen, “who ever bended that soul

of steel?”

“It is not my father I fear; it is thee and thy monks. Forgettest thou

that Edith and I are within the six banned degrees of the Church?”

“True, most true,” said the Queen, with a look of great terror; “I had

forgotten. Avaunt, the very thought! Pray--fast--banish it--my poor,

poor brother!” and she kissed his brow.

“So, there fades the woman, and the mummy speaks again!” said Harold,

bitterly. “Be it so: I bow to my doom. Well, there may be a time when

Nature on the throne of England shall prevail over Priestcraft; and, in

guerdon for all my services, I will then ask a King who hath blood in his

veins to win me the Pope’s pardon and benison. Leave me that hope, my

sister, and leave thy godchild on the shores of the living world.”

The Queen made no answer, and Harold, auguring ill from her silence,

moved on and opened the door of the oratory. But the image that there

met him, that figure still kneeling, those eyes, so earnest in the tears

that streamed from them fast and unheeded, fixed on the holy rood--awed

his step and checked his voice. Nor till the girl had risen, did he

break silence; then he said, gently, “My sister will press thee no more,

Edith----”

“I say not that!” exclaimed the Queen.

“Or if she doth, remember thy plighted promise under the wide cope of

blue heaven, the old nor least holy temple of our common Father.”

With these words he left the room.

CHAPTER VII.

Harold passed into the Queen’s ante-chamber. Here the attendance was

small and select compared with the crowds which we shall see presently in

the ante-room to the King’s closet; for here came chiefly the more

learned ecclesiastics, attracted instinctively by the Queen’s own mental

culture, and few indeed were they at that day (perhaps the most

illiterate known in England since the death of Alfred [117]); and here

came not the tribe of impostors, and the relic-venders, whom the

infantine simplicity and lavish waste of the Confessor attracted. Some

four or five priests and monks, some lonely widow, some orphan child,

humble worth, or protected sorrow, made the noiseless levee of the sweet,

sad Queen.

The groups turned, with patient eyes, towards the Earl as he emerged from

that chamber, which it was rare indeed to quit unconsoled, and marvelled

at the flush in his cheek; and the disquiet on his brow; but Harold was

dear to the clients of his sister; for, despite his supposed indifference

to the mere priestly virtues (if virtues we call them) of the decrepit

time, his intellect was respected by yon learned ecclesiastics; and his

character, as the foe of all injustice, and the fosterer of all that were

desolate, was known to yon pale-eyed widow and yon trembling orphan.

In the atmosphere of that quiet assembly, the Earl seemed to recover his

kindly temperament, and he paused to address a friendly or a soothing

word to each; so that when he vanished, the hearts there felt more light;

and the silence hushed before his entrance, was broken by many whispers

in praise of the good Earl.

Descending a staircase without the walls--as even in royal halls the

principal staircases were then--Harold gained a wide court, in which

loitered several house-carles [118] and attendants, whether of the King

or the visitors; and, reaching the entrance of the palace, took his way

towards the King’s rooms, which lay near, and round, what is now called

“The Painted Chamber,” then used as a bedroom by Edward on state

occasions.

And now he entered the ante-chamber of his royal brother-in-law. Crowded

it was, but rather seemed it the hall of a convent than the ante-room of

a king. Monks, pilgrims, priests, met his eye in every nook; and not

there did the Earl pause to practise the arts of popular favour. Passing

erect through the midst, he beckoned forth the officer, in attendance at

the extreme end, who, after an interchange of whispers, ushered him into

the royal presence. The monks and the priests, gazing towards the door

which had closed on his stately form, said to each other:

“The King’s Norman favourites at least honoured the Church.”

“That is true,” said an abbot; “and an it were not for two things, I

should love the Norman better than the Saxon.”

“What are they, my father?” asked an aspiring young monk.

“Inprinis,” quoth the abbot, proud of the one Latin word he thought he

knew, but, that, as we see, was an error; “they cannot speak so as to be

understood, and I fear me much they incline to mere carnal learning.”

Here there was a sanctified groan:

“Count William himself spoke to me in Latin!” continued the abbot,

raising his eyebrows.

“Did he?--Wonderful!” exclaimed several voices. “And what did you

answer, holy father?”

“Marry,” said the abbot solemnly, “I replied, Inprinis.”

“Good!” said the young monk, with a look of profound admiration.

“Whereat the good Count looked puzzled--as I meant him to be:--a heinous

fault, and one intolerant to the clergy, that love of profane tongues!

And the next thing against your Norman is (added the abbot, with a sly

wink), that he is a close man, who loves not his stoup; now, I say, that

a priest never has more hold over a sinner than when he makes the sinner

open his heart to him.”

“That’s clear!” said a fat priest, with a lubricate and shining nose.

“And how,” pursued the abbot triumphantly, “can a sinner open his heavy

heart until you have given him something to lighten it? Oh, many and

many a wretched man have I comforted spiritually over a flagon of stout

ale; and many a good legacy to the Church hath come out of a friendly

wassail between watchful shepherd and strayed sheep! But what hast thou

there?” resumed the abbot, turning to a man, clad in the lay garb of a

burgess of London, who had just entered the room, followed by a youth,

bearing what seemed a coffer, covered with a fine linen cloth.

“Holy father!” said the burgess, wiping his forehead, “it is a treasure

so great, that I trow Hugoline, the King’s treasurer, will scowl at me

for a year to come, for he likes to keep his own grip on the King’s

gold.”

At this indiscreet observation, the abbot, the monks, and all the

priestly bystanders looked grim and gloomy, for each had his own special

design upon the peace of poor Hugoline, the treasurer, and liked not to

see him the prey of a layman.

“Inprinis!” quoth the abbot, puffing out the word with great scorn;

“thinkest thou, son of Mammon, that our good King sets his pious heart on

gew-gaw, and gems, and such vanities? Thou shouldst take the goods to

Count Baldwin of Flanders; or Tostig, the proud Earl’s proud son.”

“Marry!” said the cheapman, with a smile; “my treasure will find small

price with Baldwin the scoffer, and Tostig the vain! Nor need ye look at

me so sternly, my fathers; but rather vie with each other who shall win

this wonder of wonders for his own convent; know, in a word, that it is

the right thumb of St. Jude, which a worthy man bought at Rome for me,

for 3000 lb. weight of silver; and I ask but 500 lb. over the purchase

for my pains and my fee.” [119]

“Humph!” said the abbot.

“Humph!” said the aspiring young monk; the rest gathered wistfully round

the linen cloth.

A fiery exclamation of wrath and disdain was here heard; and all turning,

saw a tall, fierce-looking thegn, who had found his way into that group,

like a hawk in a rookery.

“Dost thou tell me, knave,” quoth the thegn, in a dialect that bespoke

him a Dane by origin, with the broad burr still retained in the north;

“Dost thou tell me that the King will waste his gold on such fooleries,

while the fort built by Canute at the flood of the Humber is all fallen

into ruin, without a man in steel jacket to keep watch on the war fleets

of Swede and Norwegian?”

“Worshipful minister,” replied the cheapman, with some slight irony in

his tone, “these reverend fathers will tell thee that the thumb of St.

Jude is far better aid against Swede and Norwegian than forts of stone

and jackets of steel; nathless, if thou wantest jackets of steel, I have

some to sell at a fair price, of the last fashion, and helms with long

nose-pieces, as are worn by the Normans.”

“The thumb of a withered old saint,” cried the Dane, not heeding the last

words, “more defence at the mouth of the Humber than crenellated castles

and mailed men!”

“Surely, naught son,” said the abbot, looking shocked, and taking part

with the cheapman. “Dost thou not remember that, in the pious and famous

council of 1014, it was decreed to put aside all weapons of flesh against

thy heathen countrymen, and depend alone on St. Michael to fight for us?

Thinkest thou that the saint would ever suffer his holy thumb to fall

into the hands of the Gentiles?--never! Go to, thou art not fit to have

conduct of the King’s wars. Go to, and repent, my son, or the King shall

hear of it.”

“Ah, wolf in sheep’s clothing!” muttered the Dane, turning on his heel;

“if thy monastery were but built on the other side the Humber!”

The cheapman heard him, and smiled. While such the scene in the

ante-room, we follow Harold into the King’s presence.

On entering, he found there a man in the prime of life, and though richly

clad in embroidered gonna, and with gilt ateghar at his side, still with

the loose robe, the long moustache, and the skin of the throat and right

hand punctured with characters and devices, which proved his adherence to

the fashions of the Saxon [120]. And Harold’s eye sparkled, for in this

guest he recognized the father of Aldyth, Earl Algar, son of Leofric.

The two nobles exchanged grave salutations, and each eyed the other

wistfully.

The contrast between the two was striking. The Danish race were men

generally of larger frame and grander mould than the Saxon [121]; and

though in all else, as to exterior, Harold was eminently Saxon, yet, in

common with his brothers, he took from the mother’s side the lofty air

and iron frame of the old kings of the sea. But Algar, below the middle

height, though well set, was slight in comparison with Harold. His

strength was that which men often take rather from the nerve than the

muscle; a strength that belongs to quick tempers and restless energies.

His light blue eye, singularly vivid and glittering; his quivering lip,

the veins swelling at each emotion on the fair white temples; the long

yellow hair, bright as gold, and resisting, in its easy curls, all

attempts to curb it into the smooth flow most in fashion; the nervous

movements of the gesture; the somewhat sharp and hasty tones of the

voice; all opposed, as much as if the two men were of different races,

the steady, deep eye of Harold, his composed mien, sweet and majestic,

his decorous locks parted on the king-like front, with their large single

curl where they touched the shoulder. Intelligence and will were apparent

in both the men; but the intelligence of one was acute and rapid, that of

the other profound and steadfast; the will of one broke in flashes of

lightning, that of the other was calm as the summer sun at noon.

“Thou art welcome, Harold,” said the King, with less than his usual

listlessness, and with a look of relief as the Earl approached him.

“Our good Algar comes to us with a suit well worthy consideration, though

pressed somewhat hotly, and evincing too great a desire for goods

worldly; contrasting in this his most laudable father our well-beloved

Leofric, who spends his substance in endowing monasteries and dispensing

alms; wherefore he shall receive a hundred-fold in the treasure-house

above.”

“A good interest, doubtless, my lord the King,” said Algar; quickly, “but

one that is not paid to his heirs; and the more need, if my father (whom

I blame not for doing as he lists with his own) gives all he hath to the

monks--the more need, I say, to take care that his son shall be enabled

to follow his example. As it is, most noble King, I fear me that Algar,

son of Leofric, will have nothing to give. In brief, Earl Harold,”

continued Algar, turning to his fellow-thegn--“in brief, thus stands the

matter. When our lord the King was first graciously pleased to consent

to rule in England, the two chiefs who most assured his throne were thy

father and mine: often foes, they laid aside feud and jealousy for the

sake of the Saxon line. Now, since then, thy father hath strung earldom

to earldom, like links in a coat-mail. And, save Northumbria and Mercia;

well-nigh all England falls to him and his sons: whereas my father

remains what he was, and my father’s son stands landless and penceless.

In thine absence the King was graciously pleased to bestow on me thy

father’s earldom; men say that I ruled it well. Thy father returns, and

though” (here Algar’s eyes shot fire, and his hand involuntarily rested

on his ateghar) “I could have held it, methinks, by the strong hand, I

gave it up at my father’s prayer and the King’s hest, with a free heart.

Now, therefore, I come to my lord, and I ask, ‘What lands and what

lordships canst thou spare in broad England to Algar, once Earl of

Wessex, and son to the Leofric whose hand smoothed the way to thy

throne?’ My lord the King is pleased to preach to me contempt of the

world; thou dost not despise the world, Earl of the East Angles,--what

sayest thou to the heir of Leofric?”

“That thy suit is just,” answered Harold, calmly, “but urged with small

reverence.”

Earl Algar bounded like a stag that the arrow hath startled.

“It becomes thee, who hast backed thy suits with warships and mail, to

talk of reverence, and rebuke one whose fathers reigned over earldoms

[122], when thine were, no doubt, ceorls at the plough. But for Edric

Streone, the traitor and low-born, what had been Wolnoth, thy grandsire?”

So rude and home an assault in the presence of the King, who, though

personally he loved Harold in his lukewarm way, yet, like all weak men,

was not displeased to see the strong split their strength against each

other, brought the blood into Harold’s cheek; but he answered calmly:

“We live in a land, son of Leofric, in which birth, though not

disesteemed, gives of itself no power in council or camp. We belong to a

land where men are valued for what they are, not for what their dead

ancestors might have been. So has it been for ages in Saxon England,

where my fathers, through Godwin, as thou sayest, might have been ceorls;

and so, I have heard, it is in the land of the martial Danes, where my

fathers, through Githa, reigned on the thrones of the North.”

“Thou dost well,” said Algar, gnawing his lip, “to shelter thyself on the

spindle side, but we Saxons of pure descent think little of your kings of

the North, pirates and idolaters, and eaters of horseflesh; but enjoy

what thou hast, and let Algar have his clue.”

“It is for the King, not his servant, to answer the prayer of Algar,”

said Harold, withdrawing to the farther end of the room.

Algar’s eye followed him, and observing that the King was fast sinking

into one of the fits of religious reverie in which he sought to be

inspired with a decision, whenever his mind was perplexed, he moved with

a light step to Harold, put his band on his shoulder, and whispered:

“We do ill to quarrel with each other--I repent me of hot words--enough.

Thy father is a wise man, and sees far--thy father would have us friends.

Be it so. Hearken my daughter Aldyth is esteemed not the least fair of

the maidens in England; I will give her to thee as thy wife, and as thy

morgen gift, thou shalt will for me from the King the earldom forfeited

by thy brother Sweyn, now parcelled out amongst sub-earls and

thegns--easy enow to control. By the shrine of St. Alban, dost thou

hesitate, man?”

“No, not an instant,” said Harold, stung to the quick. “Not, couldst

thou offer me all Mercia as her dower, would I wed the daughter of Algar;

and bend my knee, as a son to a wife’s father, to the man who despises my

lineage, while he truckles to my power.”

Algar’s face grew convulsed with rage; but without saying a word to the

Earl he strode back to Edward, who now with vacant eyes looked up from

the rosary over which he had been bending, and said abruptly:

“My lord the King, I have spoken as I think it becomes a man who knows

his own claims, and believes in the gratitude of princes. Three days

will I tarry in London for your gracious answer; on the fourth I depart.

May the saints guard your throne, and bring around it its best defence,

the thegn-born satraps whose fathers fought with Alfred and Athelstan.

All went well with merrie England till the hoof of the Dane King broke

the soil, and mushrooms sprung up where the oak-trees fell.”

When the son of Leofric had left the chamber, the King rose wearily and

said in Norman French, to which language he always yearningly returned

when with those who could speak it:

“Beau frere and bien aime, in what trifles must a king pass his life!

And, all this while, matters grave and urgent demand me. Know that

Eadmer, the cheapman, waits without, and hath brought me, dear and good

man, the thumb of St. Jude! What thought of delight! And this

unmannerly son of strife, with his jay’s voice and wolf’s eyes, screaming

at me for earldoms!--oh the folly of man! Naught, naught, very naught!”

“Sir and King,” said Harold; “it ill becomes me to arraign your pious

desires, but these relics are of vast cost; our coasts are ill defended,

and the Dane yet lays claim to your kingdom. Three thousand pounds of

silver and more does it need to repair even the old wall of London and

Southweorc.”

“Three thousand pounds!” cried the King; “thou art mad, Harold! I have

scarce twice that sum in the treasury; and besides the thumb of St. Jude,

I daily expect the tooth of St. Remigius--the tooth of St. Remigius!”

Harold sighed. “Vex not yourself, my lord, I will see to the defences of

London. For, thanks to your grace, my revenues are large, while my wants

are simple. I seek you now to pray your leave to visit my earldom. My

lithsmen murmur at my absence, and grievances, many and sore, have arisen

in my exile.”

The King stared in terror; and his look was that of a child when about to

be left in the dark.

“Nay, nay; I cannot spare thee, beau frere. Thou curbest all these stiff

thegns--thou leavest me time for the devout; moreover, thy father, thy

father, I will not be left to thy father! I love him not!”

“My father,” said Harold, mournfully, “returns to his own earldom; and of

all our House you will have but the mild face of your queen by your

side!”

The King’s lip writhed at that hinted rebuke, or implied consolation.

“Edith the Queen,” he said, after a slight pause, “is pious and good; and

she hath never gainsaid my will, and she hath set before her as a model

the chaste Susannah, as I, unworthy man, from youth upward, have walked

in the pure steps of Joseph [123]. But,” added the King, with a touch of

human feeling in his voice, “canst thou not conceive, Harold, thou who

art a warrior, what it would be to see ever before thee the face of thy

deadliest foe--the one against whom all thy struggles of life and death

had turned into memories of hyssop and gall?”

“My sister!” exclaimed Harold, in indignant amaze, “My sister thy

deadliest foe! She who never once murmured at neglect, disgrace--she

whose youth hath been consumed in prayers for thee and thy realm--my

sister! O King, I dream?”

“Thou dreamest not, carnal man,” said the King, peevishly. “Dreams are

the gifts of the saints, and are not granted to such as thou! Dost thou

think that, in the prune of my manhood, I could have youth and beauty

forced on my sight, and hear man’s law and man’s voice say, ‘They are

thine, and thine only,’ and not feel that war was brought to my hearth,

and a snare set on my bed, and that the fiend had set watch on my soul?

Verily, I tell thee, man of battle, that thou hast known no strife as

awful as mine, and achieved no victory as hard and as holy. And now,

when my beard is silver, and the Adam of old is expelled at the precincts

of death; now, thinkest thou, that I can be reminded of the strife and

temptation of yore, without bitterness and shame; when days were spent in

fasting, and nights in fierce prayer; and in the face of woman I saw the

devices of Satan?”

Edward coloured as he spoke, and his voice trembled with the accents of

what seemed hate. Harold gazed on him mutely, and felt that at last he

had won the secret that had ever perplexed him, and that in seeking to be

above the humanity of love, the would-be saint had indeed turned love

into the hues of hate--a thought of anguish, and a memory of pain.

The King recovered himself in a few moments, and said, with some dignity,

“But God and his saints alone should know the secrets of the household.

What I have said was wrung from me. Bury it in thy heart. Leave me,

then, Harold, sith so it must be. Put thine earldom in order, attend to

the monasteries and the poor, and return soon. As for Algar, what sayest

thou?”

“I fear me,” answered the large-souled Harold, with a victorious effort

of justice over resentment, “that if you reject his suit you will drive

him into some perilous extremes. Despite his rash and proud spirit, he

is brave against foes, and beloved by the ceorls, who oft like best the

frank and hasty spirit. Wherefore some power and lordship it were wise

to give, without dispossessing others, and not more wise than due, for

his father served you well.”

“And hath endowed more houses of God than any earl in the kingdom. But

Algar is no Leofric. We will consider your words and heed them. Bless

you, beau frere! and send in the cheapman. The thumb of St. Jude! What

a gift to my new church of St. Peter! The thumb of St. Jude! Non nobis

gloria! Sancta Maria! The thumb of St. Jude!”

BOOK V.

DEATH AND LOVE.

CHAPTER I.

Harold, without waiting once more to see Edith, nor even taking leave of

his father, repaired to Dunwich [124], the capital of his earldom. In his

absence, the King wholly forgot Algar and his suit; and in the mean while

the only lordships at his disposal, Stigand, the grasping bishop, got

from him without an effort. In much wrath, Earl Algar, on the fourth

day, assembling all the loose men-at-arms he could find around the

metropolis, and at the head of a numerous disorderly band, took his way

into Wales, with his young daughter Aldyth, to whom the crown of a Welch

king was perhaps some comfort for the loss of the fair Earl; though the

rumour ran that she had long since lost her heart to her father’s foe.

Edith, after a long homily from the King, returned to Hilda; nor did her

godmother renew the subject of the convent. All she said on parting,

was, “Even in youth the silver cord may be loosened, and the golden bowl

may be broken; and rather perhaps in youth than in age, when the heart

has grown hard, wilt thou recall with a sigh my counsels.”

Godwin had departed to Wales; all his sons were at their several

lordships; Edward was left alone to his monks and relic-venders. And so

months passed.

Now it was the custom with the old kings of England to hold state and

wear their crowns thrice a year, at Christmas, at Easter, and at

Whitsuntide; and in those times their nobles came round them, and there

was much feasting and great pomp.

So, in the Easter of the year of our Lord 1053, King Edward kept his

court at Windshore [125], and Earl Godwin and his sons, and many others

of high degree, left their homes to do honour to the King. And Earl

Godwin came first to his house in London--near the Tower Palatine, in

what is now called the Fleet--and Harold the Earl, and Tostig, and

Leofwine, and Gurth, were to meet him there, and go thence, with the full

state of their sub-thegns, and cnehts, and house-carles, their falcons,

and their hounds, as become men of such rank, to the court of King

Edward.

Earl Godwin sate with his wife, Githa, in a room out of the Hall, which

looked on the Thames,--awaiting Harold, who was expected to arrive ere

nightfall. Gurth had ridden forth to meet his brother, and Leofwine and

Tostig had gone over to Southwark, to try their band-dogs on the great

bear, which had been brought from the north a few days before, and was

said to have hugged many good hounds to death, and a large train of

thegns and house-carles had gone with them to see the sport; so that the

old Earl and his lady the Dane sate alone. And there was a cloud upon

Earl Godwin’s large forehead, and he sate by the fire, spreading his

hands before it, and looking thoughtfully on the flame, as it broke

through the smoke which burst out into the cover, or hole in the roof.

And in that large house there were no less than three “covers,” or rooms,

wherein fires could be lit in the centre of the floor; and the rafters

above were blackened with the smoke; and in those good old days, ere

chimneys, if existing, were much in use, “poses, and rheumatisms, and

catarrhs,” were unknown, so wholesome and healthful was the smoke. Earl

Godwin’s favourite hound, old, like himself, lay at his feet, dreaming,

for it whined and was restless. And the Earl’s old hawk, with its

feathers all stiff and sparse, perched on the dossal of the Earl’s chair

and the floor was pranked with rushes and sweet herbs--the first of the

spring; and Githa’s feet were on her stool, and she leaned her proud face

on the small hand which proved her descent from the Dane, and rocked

herself to and fro, and thought of her son Wolnoth in the court of the

Norman.

“Githa,” at last said the Earl, “thou hast been to me a good wife and a

true, and thou hast borne me tall and bold sons, some of whom have caused

us sorrow, and some joy; and in sorrow and in joy we have but drawn

closer to each other. Yet when we wed thou wert in thy first youth, and

the best part of my years was fled; and thou wert a Dane and I a Saxon;

and thou a king’s niece, and now a king’s sister, and I but tracing two

descents to thegn’s rank.”

Moved and marvelling at this touch of sentiment in the calm earl, in whom

indeed such sentiment was rare, Githa roused herself from her musings,

and said, simply and anxiously:

“I fear my lord is not well, that he speaks thus to Githa!”

The Earl smiled faintly.

“Thou art right with thy woman’s wit, wife. And for the last few weeks,

though I said it not to alarm thee, I have had strange noises in my ears,

and a surge, as of blood, to the temples.”

“O Godwin! dear spouse,” said Githa, tenderly, “and I was blind to the

cause, but wondered why there was some change in thy manner! But I will

go to Hilda to-morrow; she hath charms against all disease.”

“Leave Hilda in peace, to give her charms to the young; age defies Wigh

and Wicca. Now hearken to me. I feel that my thread is nigh spent, and,

as Hilda would say, my Fylgia forewarns me that we are about to part.

Silence, I say, and hear me. I have done proud things in my day; I have

made kings and built thrones, and I stand higher in England than ever

thegn or earl stood before. I would not, Githa, that the tree of my

house, planted in the storm, and watered with lavish blood, should wither

away.”

The old Earl paused, and Githa said, loftily:

“Fear not that thy name will pass from the earth, or thy race from power.

For fame has been wrought by thy hands, and sons have been born to thy

embrace; and the boughs of the tree thou hast planted shall live in the

sunlight when we its roots, O my husband, are buried in the earth.”

“Githa,” replied the Earl, “thou speakest as the daughter of kings and

the mother of men; but listen to me, for my soul is heavy. Of these our

sons, or first-born, alas! is a wanderer and outcast--Sweyn, once the

beautiful and brave; and Wolnoth, thy darling, is a guest in the court of

the Norman, our foe. Of the rest, Gurth is so mild and so calm, that I

predict without fear that he will be warrior of fame, for the mildest in

hall are ever the boldest in field. But Gurth hath not the deep wit of

these tangled times; and Leofwine is too light, and Tostig too fierce.

So wife mine, of these our six sons, Harold alone, dauntless as Tostig,

mild as Gurth, hath his father’s thoughtful brain. And, if the King

remains as aloof as now from his royal kinsman, Edward the Atheling,

who”--the Earl hesitated and looked round--“who so near to the throne

when I am no more, as Harold, the joy of the ceorls, and the pride of the

thegns?--he whose tongue never falters in the Witan, and whose arm never

yet hath known defeat in the field?”

Githa’s heart swelled, and her cheek grew flushed.

“But what I fear the most,” resumed the Earl, “is, not the enemy without,

but the jealousy within. By the side of Harold stands Tostig, rapacious

to grasp, but impotent to hold--able to ruin, strengthless to save.”

“Nay, Godwin, my lord, thou wrongest our handsome son.”

“Wife, wife,” said the Earl, stamping his foot, “hear me and obey me; for

my words on earth may be few, and while thou gainsayest me the blood

mounts to my brain, and my eyes see through a cloud.”

“Forgive me, sweet lord,” said Githa, humbly.

“Mickle and sore it repents me that in their youth I spared not the time

from my worldly ambition to watch over the hearts of my sons; and thou

wert too proud of the surface without, to look well to the workings

within, and what was once soft to the touch is now hard to the hammer.

In the battle of life the arrows we neglect to pick up, Fate, our foe,

will store in her quiver; we have armed her ourselves with the

shafts--the more need to beware with the shield. Wherefore, if thou

survivest me, and if, as I forebode, dissension break out between Harold

and Tostig, I charge thee by memory of our love, and reverence for my

grave, to deem wise and just all that Harold deems just and wise. For

when Godwin is in the dust, his House lives alone in Harold. Heed me

now, and heed ever. And so, while the day yet lasts, I will go forth

into the marts and the guilds, and talk with the burgesses, and smile on

their wives, and be, to the last, Godwin the smooth and the strong.”

So saying; the old Earl arose, and walked forth with a firm step; and his

old hound sprang up, pricked its ears, and followed him; the blinded

falcon turned its head towards the clapping door, but did not stir from

the dossel.

Then Githa again leant her cheek on her hand, and again rocked herself to

and fro, gazing into the red flame of the fire,--red and fitful through

the blue smoke,--and thought over her lord’s words. It might be the

third part of an hour after Godwin had left the house, when the door

opened, and Githa, expecting the return of her sons, looked up eagerly,

but it was Hilda, who stooped her head under the vault of the door; and

behind Hilda came two of her maidens, bearing a small cyst, or chest. The

Vala motioned to her attendants to lay the cyst at the feet of Githa, and

that done, with lowly salutation they left the room.

The superstitions of the Danes were strong in Githa; and she felt an

indescribable awe when Hilda stood before her, the red light playing on

the Vala’s stern marble face, and contrasting robes of funereal black.

But, with all her awe, Githa, who, not educated like her daughter Edith,

had few feminine resources, loved the visits of her mysterious kinswoman.

She loved to live her youth over again in discourse on the wild customs

and dark rites of the Dane; and even her awe itself had the charm which

the ghost tale has to the child;--for the illiterate are ever children.

So, recovering her surprise, and her first pause, she rose to welcome the

Vala, and said:

“Hail, Hilda, and thrice hail! The day has been warm and the way long;

and, ere thou takest food and wine, let me prepare for thee the bath for

thy form, or the bath for thy feet. For as sleep to the young, is the

bath to the old.”

Hilda shook her head.

“Bringer of sleep am I, and the baths I prepare are in the halls of

Valhalla. Offer not to the Vala the bath for mortal weariness, and the

wine and the food meet for human guests. Sit thee down, daughter of the

Dane, and thank thy new gods for the past that hath been thine. Not ours

is the present, and the future escapes from our dreams; but the past is

ours ever, and all eternity cannot revoke a single joy that the moment

hath known.”

Then seating herself in Godwin’s large chair, she leant over her

seid-staff, and was silent, as if absorbed in her thoughts.

“Githa,” she said at last, “where is thy lord? I came to touch his hands

and to look on his brow.”

“He hath gone forth into the mart, and my sons are from home; and Harold

comes hither, ere night, from his earldom.”

A faint smile, as of triumph, broke over the lips of the Vala, and then

as suddenly yielded to an expression of great sadness.

“Githa,” she said, slowly, “doubtless thou rememberest in thy young days

to have seen or heard of the terrible hell-maid Belsta?”

“Ay, ay,” answered Githa shuddering; “I saw her once in gloomy weather,

driving before her herds of dark grey cattle. Ay, ay; and my father

beheld her ere his death, riding the air on a wolf, with a snake for a

bridle. Why askest thou?”

“Is it not strange,” said Hilda, evading the question, “that Belsta, and

Heidr, and Hulla of old, the wolf-riders, the men-devourers, could win to

the uttermost secrets of galdra, though applied only to purposes the

direst and fellest to man, and that I, though ever in the future,--I,

though tasking the Nornas not to afflict a foe, but to shape the careers

of those I love,--I find, indeed, my predictions fulfilled; but how

often, alas! only in horror and doom!”

“How so, kinswoman, how so?” said Githa, awed yet charmed in the awe, and

drawing her chair nearer to the mournful sorceress. “Didst thou not

fortell our return in triumph from the unjust outlawry, and, lo, it hath

come to pass? and hast thou not” (here Githa’s proud face flushed)

“foretold also that my stately Harold shall wear the diadem of a king?”

“Truly, the first came to pass,” said Hilda; “but----” she paused, and

her eye fell on the cyst; then breaking off she continued, speaking to

herself rather than to Githa--“And Harold’s dream, what did that portend?

the runes fail me, and the dead give no voice. And beyond one dim day,

in which his betrothed shall clasp him with the arms of a bride, all is

dark to my vision--dark--dark. Speak not to me, Githa; for a burthen,

heavy as the stone on a grave, rests on a weary heart!”

A dead silence succeeded, till, pointing with her staff to the fire, the

Vala said, “Lo, where the smoke and the flame contend--the smoke rises in

dark gyres to the air, and escapes, to join the wrack of clouds. From

the first to the last we trace its birth and its fall; from the heart of

the fire to the descent in the rain, so is it with human reason, which is

not the light but the smoke; it struggles but to darken us; it soars but

to melt in the vapour and dew. Yet, lo, the flame burns in our hearth

till the fuel fails, and goes at last, none know whither. But it lives

in the air though we see it not; it lurks in the stone and waits the

flash of the steel; it coils round the dry leaves and sere stalks, and a

touch re-illumines it; it plays in the marsh--it collects in the

heavens--it appals us in the lightning--it gives warmth to the air--life

of our life, and the element of all elements. O Githa, the flame is the

light of the soul, the element everlasting; and it liveth still, when it

escapes from our view; it burneth in the shapes to which it passes; it

vanishes, but its never extinct.”

So saying, the Vala’s lips again closed; and again both the women sate

silent by the great fire, as it flared and flickered over the deep lines

and high features of Githa, the Earl’s wife, and the calm, unwrinkled,

solemn face of the melancholy Vala.

CHAPTER II.

While these conferences took place in the house of Godwin, Harold, on his

way to London, dismissed his train to precede him to his father’s roof,

and, striking across the country, rode fast and alone towards the old

Roman abode of Hilda. Months had elapsed since he had seen or heard of

Edith. News at that time, I need not say, was rare and scarce, and

limited to public events, either transmitted by special nuncius or

passing pilgrim, or borne from lip to lip by the talk of the scattered

multitude. But even in his busy and anxious duties, Harold had in vain

sought to banish from his heart the image of that young girl, whose life

he needed no Vala to predict to him was interwoven with the fibres of his

own. The obstacles which, while he yielded to, he held unjust and

tyrannical, obstacles allowed by his reluctant reason and his secret

ambition--not sanctified by conscience--only inflamed the deep strength

of the solitary passion his life had known; a passion that, dating from

the very childhood of Edith, had, often unknown to himself, animated his

desire of fame, and mingled with his visions of power. Nor, though hope

was far and dim, was it extinct. The legitimate heir of Edward the

Confessor was a prince living in the Court of the Emperor, of fair

repute, and himself wedded; and Edward’s health, always precarious,

seemed to forbid any very prolonged existence to the reigning king.

Therefore, he thought that through the successor, whose throne would rest

in safety upon Harold’s support, he might easily obtain that dispensation

from the Pope which he knew the present king would never ask--a

dispensation rarely indeed, if ever, accorded to any subject, and which,

therefore, needed all a king’s power to back it.

So in that hope, and fearful lest it should be quenched for ever by

Edith’s adoption of the veil and the irrevocable vow, with a beating,

disturbed, but joyful heart he rode over field and through forest to the

old Roman house.

He emerged at length to the rear of the villa, and the sun, fast

hastening to its decline, shone full upon the rude columns of the Druid

temple. And there, as he had seen her before, when he had first spoken

of love and its barriers, he beheld the young maiden.

He sprang from his horse, and leaving the well-trained animal loose to

browse on the waste land, he ascended the knoll. He stole noiselessly

behind Edith, and his foot stumbled against the grave-stone of the dead

Titan-Saxon of old. But the apparition, whether real or fancied, and the

dream that had followed, had long passed from his memory, and no

superstition was in the heart springing to the lips, that cried “Edith”

once again.

The girl started, looked round, and fell upon his breast. It was some

moments before she recovered consciousness, and then, withdrawing herself

gently from his arms, she leant for support against the Teuton altar.

She was much changed since Harold had seen her last: her cheek had grown

pale and thin, and her rounded form seemed wasted; and sharp grief, as he

gazed, shot through the soul of Harold.

“Thou hast pined, thou hast suffered,” said he, mournfully: “and I, who

would shed my life’s blood to take one from thy sorrows, or add to one of

thy joys, have been afar, unable to comfort, perhaps only a cause of thy

woe.”

“No, Harold,” said Edith, faintly, “never of woe; always of comfort, even

in absence. I have been ill, and Hilda hath tried rune and charm all in

vain. But I am better, now that Spring hath come tardily forth, and I

look on the fresh flowers, and hear the song of the birds.”

But tears were in the sound of her voice, while she spoke.

“And they have not tormented thee again with the thoughts of the

convent?”

“They? no;--but my soul, yes. O Harold, release me from my promise; for

the time already hath come that thy sister foretold to me; the silver

cord is loosened, and the golden bowl is broken, and I would fain take

the wings of the dove, and be at peace.”

“Is it so?--Is there peace in the home where the thought of Harold

becomes a sin?”

“Not sin then and there, Harold, not sin. Thy sister hailed the convent

when she thought of prayer for those she loved.”

“Prate not to me of my sister!” said Harold, through his set teeth. “It

is but a mockery to talk of prayer for the heart that thou thyself

rendest in twain. Where is Hilda? I would see her.”

“She hath gone to thy father’s house with a gift; and it was to watch for

her return that I sate on the green knoll.”

The Earl then drew near and took her hand, and sate by her side, and they

conversed long. But Harold saw with a fierce pang that Edith’s heart was

set upon the convent, and that even in his presence, and despite his

soothing words, she was broken-spirited and despondent. It seemed as if

her youth and life had gone from her, and the day had come in which she

said, “There is no pleasure.”

Never had he seen her thus; and, deeply moved as well as keenly stung, he

rose at length to depart; her hand lay passive in his parting clasp, and

a slight shiver went over her frame.

“Farewell, Edith; when I return from Windshore, I shall be at my old home

yonder, and we shall meet again.”

Edith’s lips murmured inaudibly, and she bent her eyes to the ground.

Slowly Harold regained his steed, and as he rode on, he looked behind and

waved oft his hand. But Edith sate motionless, her eyes still on the

ground, and he saw not the tears that fell from them fast and burning;

nor heard he the low voice that groaned amidst the heathen ruins, “Mary,

sweet mother, shelter me from my own heart!”

The sun had set before Harold gained the long and spacious abode of his

father. All around it lay the roofs and huts of the great Earl’s special

tradesmen, for even his goldsmith was but his freed ceorl. The house

itself stretched far from the Thames inland, with several low courts

built only of timber, rugged and shapeless, but filled with bold men,

then the great furniture of a noble’s halls.

Amidst the shouts of hundreds, eager to hold his stirrup, the Earl

dismounted, passed the swarming hall, and entered the room, in which he

found Hilda and Githa, and Godwin, who had preceded his entry but a few

minutes.

In the beautiful reverence of son to father, which made one of the

loveliest features of the Saxon character [126] (as the frequent want of

it makes the most hateful of the Norman vices), the all-powerful Harold

bowed his knee to the old Earl, who placed his hand on his head in

benediction, and then kissed him on the cheek and brow.

“Thy kiss, too, dear mother,” said the younger Earl; and Githa’s embrace,

if more cordial than her lord’s, was not, perhaps, more fond.

“Greet Hilda, my son,” said Godwin, “she hath brought me a gift, and she

hath tarried to place it under thy special care. Thou alone must heed

the treasure, and open the casket. But when and where, my kinswoman?”

“On the sixth day after thy coming to the King’s hall,” answered Hilda,

not returning the smile with which Godwin spoke,--“on the sixth day,

Harold, open the chest, and take out the robe which hath been spun in the

house of Hilda for Godwin the Earl. And now, Godwin, I have clasped

thine hand, and I have looked on thy brow, and my mission is done, and I

must wend homeward.”

“That shalt thou not, Hilda,” said the hospitable Earl; “the meanest

wayfarer hath a right to bed and board in this house for a night and a

day, and thou wilt not disgrace us by leaving our threshold, the bread

unbroken, and the couch unpressed. Old friend, we were young together,

and thy face is welcome to me as the memory of former days.”

Hilda shook her head, and one of those rare, and for that reason most

touching, expressions of tenderness of which the calm and rigid character

of her features, when in repose, seemed scarcely susceptible, softened

her eye, and relaxed the firm lines of her lips.

“Son of Wolnoth,” said she, gently, “not under thy roof-tree should lodge

the raven of bode. Bread have I not broken since yestere’en, and sleep

will be far from my eyes to-night. Fear not, for my people without are

stout and armed, and for the rest there lives not the man whose arm can

have power over Hilda.”

She took Harold’s hand as she spoke, and leading him forth, whispered in

his ear, “I would have a word with thee ere we part.” Then, reaching the

threshold, she waved her hand thrice over the floor, and muttered in the

Danish tongue a rude verse, which, translated, ran somewhat thus:

“All free from the knot

Glide the thread of the skein,

And rest to the labour,

And peace to the pain!”

“It is a death-dirge,” said Githa, with whitening lips, but she spoke

inly, and neither husband nor son heard her words.

Hilda and Harold passed in silence through the hall, and the Vala’s

attendants, with spears and torches, rose from the settles, and went

before to the outer court, where snorted impatiently her black palfrey.

Halting in the midst of the court, she said to Harold, in a low voice:

“At sunset we part--at sunset we shall meet again. And behold, the star

rises on the sunset; and the star, broader and brighter, shall rise on

the sunset then! When thy hand draws the robe from the chest, think on

Hilda, and know that at that hour she stands by the grave of the Saxon

warrior, and that from the grave dawns the future. Farewell to thee!”

Harold longed to speak to her of Edith, but a strange awe at his heart

chained his lips; so he stood silent by the great wooden gates of the

rude house. The torches flamed round him, and Hilda’s face seemed lurid

in the glare. There he stood musing long after torch and ceorl had

passed away, nor did he wake from his reverie till Gurth, springing from

his panting horse, passed his arm round the Earl’s shoulder, and cried:

“How did I miss thee, my brother? and why didst thou forsake thy train?”

“I will tell thee anon. Gurth, has my father ailed? There is that in

his face which I like not.”

“He hath not complained of misease,” said Gurth, startled; “but now thou

speakest of it, his mood hath altered of late, and he hath wandered much

alone, or only with the old hound and the old falcon.”

Then Harold turned back, and, his heart was full; and, when he reached

the house, his father was sitting in the hall on his chair of state; and

Githa sate on his right hand, and a little below her sate Tostig and

Leofwine, who had come in from the bear-hunt by the river-gate, and were

talking loud and merrily; and thegns and cnehts sate all around, and

there was wassail as Harold entered. But the Earl looked only to his

father, and he saw that his eyes were absent from the glee, and that he

was bending his head over the old falcon, which sate on his wrist.

CHAPTER III.

No subject of England, since the race of Cerdic sate on the throne, ever

entered the courtyard of Windshore with such train and such state as Earl

Godwin.--Proud of that first occasion, since his return, to do homage to

him with whose cause that of England against the stranger was bound, all

truly English at heart amongst the thegns of the land swelled his

retinue. Whether Saxon or Dane, those who alike loved the laws and the

soil, came from north and from south to the peaceful banner of the old

Earl. But most of these were of the past generation, for the rising race

were still dazzled by the pomp of the Norman; and the fashion of English

manners, and the pride in English deeds, had gone out of date with long

locks and bearded chins. Nor there were the bishops and abbots and the

lords of the Church,--for dear to them already the fame of the Norman

piety, and they shared the distaste of their holy King to the strong

sense and homely religion of Godwin, who founded no convents, and rode to

war with no relics round his neck. But they with Godwin were the stout

and the frank and the free, in whom rested the pith and marrow of English

manhood; and they who were against him were the blind and willing and

fated fathers of slaves unborn.

Not then the stately castle we now behold, which is of the masonry of a

prouder race, nor on the same site, but two miles distant on the winding

of the river shore (whence it took its name), a rude building partly of

timber and partly of Roman brick, adjoining a large monastery and

surrounded by a small hamlet, constituted the palace of the saint-king.

So rode the Earl and his four fair sons, all abreast, into the courtyard

of Windshore [127]. Now when King Edward heard the tramp of the steeds

and the hum of the multitudes, as he sate in his closet with his abbots

and priests, all in still contemplation of the thumb of St. Jude, the

King asked:

“What army, in the day of peace, and the time of Easter, enters the gates

of our palace?”

Then an abbot rose and looked out of the narrow window, and said with a

groan:

“Army thou mayst well call it, O King!--and foes to us and to thee head

the legions----”

“Inprinis,” quoth our abbot the scholar; “thou speakest, I trow, of the

wicked Earl and his sons.”

The King’s face changed. “Come they,” said he, “with so large a train?

This smells more of vaunt than of loyalty; naught--very naught.”

“Alack!” said one of the conclave, “I fear me that the men of Belial will

work us harm; the heathen are mighty, and----”

“Fear not,” said Edward, with benign loftiness, observing that his guests

grew pale, and himself, though often weak to childishness, and morally

wavering and irresolute,--still so far king and gentleman, that he knew

no craven fear of the body. “Fear not for me, my fathers; humble as I

am, I am strong in the faith of heaven and its angels.”

The Churchmen looked at each other, sly yet abashed; it was not precisely

for the King that they feared.

Then spoke Alred, the good prelate and constant peacemaker--fair column

and lone one of the fast-crumbling Saxon Church. “It is ill in you,

brethren to arraign the truth and good meaning of those who honour your

King; and in these days that lord should ever be the most welcome who

brings to the halls of his king the largest number of hearts, stout and

leal.”

“By your leave, brother Alred,” said Stigand, who, though from motives of

policy he had aided those who besought the King not to peril his crown by

resisting the return of Godwin, benefited too largely by the abuses of

the Church to be sincerely espoused to the cause of the strong-minded

Earl; “By your leave, brother Alred, to every leal heart is a ravenous

mouth; and the treasures of the King are well-nigh drained in feeding

these hungry and welcomeless visitors. Durst I counsel my lord I would

pray him, as a matter of policy, to baffle this astute and proud Earl.

He would fain have the King feast in public, that he might daunt him and

the Church with the array of his friends.”

“I conceive thee, my father,” said Edward, with more quickness than

habitual, and with the cunning, sharp though guileless, that belongs to

minds undeveloped, “I conceive thee; it is good and most politic. This

our orgulous Earl shall not have his triumph, and, so fresh from his

exile, brave his King with the mundane parade of his power. Our health

is our excuse for our absence from the banquet, and, sooth to say, we

marvel much why Easter should be held a fitting time for feasting and

mirth. Wherefore, Hugoline, my chamberlain, advise the Earl that to-day

we keep fast till the sunset, when temperately, with eggs, bread, and

fish, we will sustain Adam’s nature. Pray him and his sons to attend

us--they alone be our guests.” And with a sound that seemed a laugh, or

the ghost of a laugh, low and chuckling--for Edward had at moments an

innocent humour which his monkish biographer disdained not to note

[128],--he flung himself back in his chair. The priests took the cue,

and shook their sides heartily, as Hugoline left the room, not ill

pleased, by the way, to escape an invitation to the eggs, bread, and

fish.

Alred sighed; and said, “For the Earl and his sons, this is honour; but

the other earls, and the thegns, will miss at the banquet him whom they

design but to honour, and----”

“I have said,” interrupted Edward, drily, and with a look of fatigue.

“And,” observed another Churchman, with malice, “at least the young Earls

will be humbled, for they will not sit with the King and their father, as

they would in the Hall, and must serve my lord with napkin and wine.”

“Inprinis,” quoth our scholar the abbot, “that will be rare! I would I

were by to see. But this Godwin is a man of treachery and wile, and my

lord should beware of the fate of murdered Alfred, his brother!”

The King started, and pressed his hands to his eyes.

“How darest thou, Abbot Fatchere,” cried Alred, indignantly; “How darest

thou revive grief without remedy, and slander without proof?”

“Without proof?” echoed Edward, in a hollow voice. “He who could murder,

could well stoop to forswear! Without proof before man; but did he try

the ordeals of God?--did his feet pass the ploughshare?--did his hand

grasp the seething iron? Verily, verily, thou didst wrong to name to me

Alfred my brother! I shall see his sightless and gore-dropping sockets

in the face of Godwin, this day, at my board.”

The King rose in great disorder; and, after pacing the room some moments,

disregardful of the silent and scared looks of his Churchmen, waved his

hand, in sign to them to depart. All took the hint at once save Alred;

but he, lingering the last, approached the King with dignity in his step

and compassion in his eyes.

“Banish from thy breast, O King and son, thoughts unmeet, and of doubtful

charity! All that man could know of Godwin’s innocence or guilt--the

suspicion of the vulgar--the acquittal of his peers--was known to thee

before thou didst seek his aid for thy throne, and didst take his child

for thy wife. Too late is it now to suspect; leave thy doubts to the

solemn day, which draws nigh to the old man, thy wife’s father!”

“Ha!” said the king, seeming not to heed, or wilfully to misunderstand

the prelate, “Ha! leave him to God;--I will!”

He turned away impatiently; and the prelate reluctantly departed.

CHAPTER IV.

Tostig chafed mightily at the King’s message; and, on Harold’s attempt to

pacify him, grew so violent that nothing short of the cold stern command

of his father, who carried with him that weight of authority never known

but to those in whom wrath is still and passion noiseless, imposed sullen

peace on his son’s rugged nature. But the taunts heaped by Tostig upon

Harold disquieted the old Earl, and his brow was yet sad with prophetic

care when he entered the royal apartments. He had been introduced into

the King’s presence but a moment before Hugoline led the way to the

chamber of repast, and the greeting between King and Earl had been brief

and formal.

Under the canopy of state were placed but two chairs, for the King and

the Queen’s father; and the four sons, Harold, Tostig, Leofwine, and

Gurth, stood behind. Such was the primitive custom of ancient Teutonic

kings; and the feudal Norman monarchs only enforced, though with more

pomp and more rigour, the ceremonial of the forest patriarchs--youth to

wait on age, and the ministers of the realm on those whom their policy

had made chiefs in council and war.

The Earl’s mind, already embittered by the scene with his sons, was

chafed yet more by the King’s unloving coldness; for it is natural to

man, however worldly, to feel affection for those he has served, and

Godwin had won Edward his crown; nor, despite his warlike though

bloodless return, could even monk or Norman, in counting up the old

Earl’s crimes, say that he had ever failed in personal respect to the

King he had made; nor over-great for subject, as the Earl’s power must be

confessed, will historian now be found to say that it had not been well

for Saxon England if Godwin had found more favour with his King, and monk

and Norman less. [129]

So the old Earl’s stout heart was stung, and he looked from those deep,

impenetrable eyes, mournfully upon Edward’s chilling brow.

And Harold, with whom all household ties were strong, but to whom his

great father was especially dear, watched his face and saw that it was

very flushed. But the practised courtier sought to rally his spirits,

and to smile and jest.

From smile and jest, the King turned and asked for wine. Harold,

starting, advanced with the goblet; as he did so, he stumbled with one

foot, but lightly recovered himself with the other; and Tostig laughed

scornfully at Harold’s awkwardness.

The old Earl observed both stumble and laugh, and willing to suggest a

lesson to both his sons, said--laughing pleasantly--“Lo, Harold, how the

left foot saves the right!--so one brother, thou seest, helps the other!”

[130]

King Edward looked up suddenly.

“And so, Godwin, also, had my brother Alfred helped me, hadst thou

permitted.”

The old Earl, galled to the quick, gazed a moment on the King, and his

cheek was purple, and his eyes seemed bloodshot.

“O Edward!” he exclaimed, “thou speakest to me hardly and unkindly of thy

brother Alfred, and often hast thou thus more than hinted that I caused

his death.”

The King made no answer.

“May this crumb of bread choke me,” said the Earl, in great emotion, “if

I am guilty of thy brother’s blood!” [131] But scarcely had the bread

touched his lips, when his eyes fixed, the long warning symptoms were

fulfilled. And he fell to the ground, under the table, sudden and heavy,

smitten by the stroke of apoplexy.

Harold and Gurth sprang forward; they drew their father from the ground.

His face, still deep-red with streaks of purple, rested on Harold’s

breast; and the son, kneeling, called in anguish on his father: the ear

was deaf.

Then said the King, rising:

“It is the hand of God: remove him!” and he swept from the room,

exulting.

CHAPTER V.

For five days and five nights did Godwin lie speechless [132]. And

Harold watched over him night and day. And the leaches [133] would not

bleed him, because the season was against it, in the increase of the moon

and the tides; but they bathed his temples with wheat flour boiled in

milk, according to a prescription which an angel in a dream [134] had

advised to another patient; and they placed a plate of lead on his

breast, marked with five crosses, saying a paternoster over each cross;

together with other medical specifics in great esteem [135]. But,

nevertheless, five days and five nights did Godwin lie speechless; and

the leaches then feared that human skill was in vain.

The effect produced on the court, not more by the Earl’s death-stroke

than the circumstances preceding it, was such as defies description. With

Godwin’s old comrades in arms it was simple and honest grief; but with

all those under the influence of the priests, the event was regarded as a

direct punishment from Heaven. The previous words of the King, repeated

by Edward to his monks, circulated from lip to lip, with sundry

exaggerations as it travelled: and the superstition of the day had the

more excuse, inasmuch as the speech of Godwin touched near upon the

defiance of one of the most popular ordeals of the accused,--viz. that

called the “corsned,” in which a piece of bread was given to the supposed

criminal; if he swallowed it with ease he was innocent; if it stuck in

his throat, or choked him, nay, if he shook and turned pale, he was

guilty. Godwin’s words had appeared to invite the ordeal, God had heard

and stricken down the presumptuous perjurer!

Unconscious, happily, of these attempts to blacken the name of his dying

father, Harold, towards the grey dawn succeeding the fifth night, thought

that he heard Godwin stir in his bed. So he put aside the curtain, and

bent over him. The old Earl’s eyes were wide open, and the red colour

had gone from his cheeks, so that he was pale as death.

“How fares it, dear father?” asked Harold.

Godwin smiled fondly, and tried to speak, but his voice died in a

convulsive rattle. Lifting himself up, however, with an effort, he

pressed tenderly the hand that clasped his own, leant his head on

Harold’s breast, and so gave up the ghost.

When Harold was at last aware that the struggle was over, he laid the

grey head gently on the pillow; he closed the eyes, and kissed the lips,

and knelt down and prayed. Then, seating himself at a little distance,

he covered his face with his mantle.

At this time his brother Gurth, who had chiefly shared watch with

Harold,--for Tostig, foreseeing his father’s death, was busy soliciting

thegn and earl to support his own claims to the earldom about to be

vacant; and Leofwine had gone to London on the previous day to summon

Githa who was hourly expected--Gurth, I say, entered the room on tiptoe,

and seeing his brother’s attitude, guessed that all was over. He passed

on to the table, took up the lamp, and looked long on his father’s face.

That strange smile of the dead, common alike to innocent and guilty, had

already settled on the serene lips; and that no less strange

transformation from age to youth, when the wrinkles vanish, and the

features come out clear and sharp from the hollows of care and years, had

already begun. And the old man seemed sleeping in his prime.

So Gurth kissed the dead, as Harold had done before him, and came up and

sate himself by his brother’s feet, and rested his head on Harold’s knee;

nor would he speak till, appalled by the long silence of the Earl, he

drew away the mantle from his brother’s face with a gentle hand, and the

large tears were rolling down Harold’s cheeks.

“Be soothed, my brother,” said Gurth; “our father has lived for glory,

his age was prosperous, and his years more than those which the Psalmist

allots to man. Come and look on his face, Harold, its calm will comfort

thee.”

Harold obeyed the hand that led him like a child; in passing towards the

bed, his eye fell upon the cyst which Hilda had given to the old Earl,

and a chill shot through his veins.

“Gurth,” said he, “is not this the morning of the sixth day in which we

have been at the King’s Court?”

“It is the morning of the sixth day.”

Then Harold took forth the key which Hilda had given him, and unlocked

the cyst, and there lay the white winding-sheet of the dead, and a

scroll. Harold took the scroll, and bent over it, reading by the mingled

light of the lamp and the dawn:

“All hail, Harold, heir of Godwin the great, and Githa the king-born!

Thou hast obeyed Hilda, and thou knowest now that Hilda’s eyes read the

future, and her lips speak the dark words of truth. Bow thy heart to the

Vala, and mistrust the wisdom that sees only the things of the daylight.

As the valour of the warrior and the song of the scald, so is the lore of

the prophetess. It is not of the body, it is soul within soul; it

marshals events and men, like the valour--it moulds the air into

substance, like the song. Bow thy heart to the Vala. Flowers bloom over

the grave of the dead. And the young plant soars high, when the king of

the woodland lies low!”

CHAPTER VI.

The sun rose, and the stairs and passages without were filled with the

crowds that pressed to hear news of the Earl’s health. The doors stood

open, and Gurth led in the multitude to look their last on the hero of

council and camp, who had restored with strong hand and wise brain the

race of Cerdic to the Saxon throne. Harold stood by the bed-head silent,

and tears were shed and sobs were heard. And many a thegn who had before

half believed in the guilt of Godwin as the murderer of Alfred, whispered

in gasps to his neighbour:

“There is no weregeld for manslaying on the head of him who smiles so in

death on his old comrades in life!”

Last of all lingered Leofric, the great Earl of Mercia; and when the rest

had departed, he took the pale hand, that lay heavy on the coverlid, in

his own, and said:

“Old foe, often stood we in Witan and field against each other; but few

are the friends for whom Leofric would mourn as he mourns for thee.

Peace to thy soul! Whatever its sins, England should judge thee mildly,

for England beat in each pulse of thy heart, and with thy greatness was

her own!”

Then Harold stole round the bed, and put his arms round Leofric’s neck,

and embraced him. The good old Earl was touched, and he laid his

tremulous hands on Harold’s brown locks and blessed him.

“Harold,” he said, “thou succeedest to thy father’s power: let thy

father’s foes be thy friends. Wake from thy grief, for thy country now

demands thee,--the honour of thy House, and the memory of the dead. Many

even now plot against thee and thine. Seek the King, demand as thy right

thy father’s earldom, and Leofric will back thy claim in the Witan.”

Harold pressed Leofric’s hand, and raising it to his lips replied: “Be

our Houses at peace henceforth and for ever.”

Tostig’s vanity indeed misled him, when he dreamed that any combination

of Godwin’s party could meditate supporting his claims against the

popular Harold--nor less did the monks deceive themselves, when they

supposed that, with Godwin’s death, the power of his family would fall.

There was more than even the unanimity of the chiefs of the Witan, in

favour of Harold; there was that universal noiseless impression

throughout all England, Danish and Saxon, that Harold was now the sole

man on whom rested the state--which, whenever it so favours one

individual, is irresistible. Nor was Edward himself hostile to Harold,

whom alone of that House, as we have before said, he esteemed and loved.

Harold was at once named Earl of Wessex; and relinquishing the earldom he

held before, he did not hesitate as to the successor to be recommended in

his place. Conquering all jealousy and dislike for Algar, he united the

strength of his party in favour of the son of Leofric, and the election

fell upon him. With all his hot errors, the claims of no other Earl,

whether from his own capacities or his father’s services, were so strong;

and his election probably saved the state from a great danger, in the

results of that angry mood and that irritated ambition with which he had

thrown himself into the arms of England’s most valiant aggressor,

Gryffyth, King of North Wales.

To outward appearance, by this election, the House of Leofric--uniting in

father and son the two mighty districts of Mercia and the East

Anglians--became more powerful than that of Godwin; for, in that last

House, Harold was now the only possessor of one of the great earldoms,

and Tostig and the other brothers had no other provision beyond the

comparatively insignificant lordships they held before. But if Harold

had ruled no earldom at all, he had still been immeasurably the first man

in England--so great was the confidence reposed in his valour and wisdom.

He was of that height in himself, that he needed no pedestal to stand on.

The successor of the first great founder of a House succeeds to more than

his predecessor’s power, if he but know how to wield and maintain it.

For who makes his way to greatness without raising foes at every step?

and who ever rose to power supreme, without grave cause for blame? But

Harold stood free from the enmities his father had provoked, and pure

from the stains that slander or repute cast upon his father’s name. The

sun of the yesterday had shone through cloud; the sun of the day rose in

a clear firmament. Even Tostig recognised the superiority of his

brother; and after a strong struggle between baffled rage and covetous

ambition, yielded to him, as to a father. He felt that all Godwin’s House

was centred in Harold alone; and that only from his brother (despite his

own daring valour and despite his alliance with the blood of Charlemagne

and Alfred, through the sister of Matilda, the Norman duchess,) could his

avarice of power be gratified.

“Depart to thy home, my brother,” said Earl Harold to Tostig, “and grieve

not that Algar is preferred to thee. For, even had his claim been less

urgent, ill would it have beseemed us to arrogate the lordships of all

England as our dues. Rule thy lordship with wisdom: gain the love of thy

lithsmen. High claims hast thou in our father’s name, and moderation now

will but strengthen thee in the season to come. Trust on Harold

somewhat, on thyself more. Thou hast but to add temper and judgment to

valour and zeal, to be worthy mate of the first earl in England. Over my

father’s corpse I embraced my father’s foe. Between brother and brother

shall there not be love, as the best bequest of the dead?”

“It shall not be my fault, if there be not,” answered Tostig, humbled

though chafed. And he summoned his men and returned to his domains.

CHAPTER VII.

Fair, broad, and calm set the sun over the western woodlands. Hilda

stood on the mound, and looked with undazzled eyes on the sinking orb.

Beside her, Edith reclined on the sward, and seemed with idle hand

tracing characters in the air. The girl had grown paler still, since

Harold last parted from her on the same spot, and the same listless and

despondent apathy stamped her smileless lips and her bended head.

“See, child of my heart,” said Hilda, addressing Edith, while she still

gazed on the western luminary, “see, the sun goes down to the far deeps,

where Rana and Aegir [136] watch over the worlds of the sea; but with

morning he comes from the halls of the Asas--the golden gates of the

East--and joy comes in his train. And yet then thinkest, sad child,

whose years have scarce passed into woman, that the sun, once set, never

comes back to life. But even while we speak, thy morning draws near, and

the dunness of cloud takes the hues of the rose!”

Edith’s hand paused from its vague employment, and fell droopingly on her

knee;--she turned with an unquiet and anxious eye to Hilda, and after

looking some moments wistfully at the Vala, the colour rose to her cheek,

and she said in a voice that had an accent half of anger:

“Hilda, thou art cruel!”

“So is Fate!” answered the Vala. “But men call not Fate cruel when it

smiles on their desires. Why callest thou Hilda cruel, when she reads in

the setting sun the runes of thy coming joy!”

“There is no joy for me,” returned Edith, plaintively; “and I have that on

my heart,” she added, with a sudden and almost fierce change of tone,

“which at last I will dare to speak. I reproach thee, Hilda, that thou

hast marred all my life, that thou hast duped me with dreams, and left me

alone in despair.”

“Speak on,” said Hilda, calmly, as a nurse to a froward child.

“Hast thou not told me, from the first dawn of my wondering reason, that

my life and lot were inwoven with--with (the word, mad and daring, must

out)--with those of Harold the peerless? But for that, which my infancy

took from thy lips as a law, I had never been so vain and so frantic! I

had never watched each play of his face, and treasured each word from his

lips; I had never made my life but part of his life--all my soul but the

shadow of his sun. But for that, I had hailed the calm of the

cloister--but for that, I had glided in peace to my grave. And now--now,

O Hilda--” Edith paused, and that break had more eloquence than any words

she could command. “And,” she resumed quickly, “thou knowest that these

hopes were but dreams--that the law ever stood between him and me--and

that it was guilt to love him.”

“I knew the law,” answered Hilda, “but the law of fools is to the wise as

the cobweb swung over the brake to the wing of the bird. Ye are sibbe to

each other, some five times removed; and therefore an old man at Rome

saith that ye ought not to wed. When the shavelings obey the old man at

home, and put aside their own wives and frillas [137], and abstain from

the wine cup, and the chase, and the brawl, I will stoop to hear of their

laws,--with disrelish it may be, but without scorn. [138] It is no sin

to love Harold; and no monk and no law shall prevent your union on the

day appointed to bring ye together, form and heart.”

“Hilda! Hilda! madden me not with joy,” cried Edith, starting up in

rapturous emotion, her young face dyed with blushes, and all her

renovated beauty so celestial that Hilda herself was almost awed, as if

by the vision of Freya, the northern Venus, charmed by a spell from the

halls of Asgard.

“But that day is distant,” renewed the Vala.

“What matters! what matters!” cried the pure child of Nature; “I ask but

hope. Enough,--oh! enough, if we were but wedded on the borders of the

grave!”

“Lo, then,” said Hilda, “behold, the sun of thy life dawns again!”

As she spoke, the Vala stretched her arm, and through the intersticed

columns of the fane, Edith saw the large shadow of a man cast over the

still sward. Presently into the space of the circle came Harold, her

beloved. His face was pale with grief yet recent; but, perhaps, more

than ever, dignity was in his step and command on his brow, for he felt

that now alone with him rested the might of Saxon England. And what

royal robe so invests with imperial majesty the form of a man as the

grave sense of power responsible, in an earnest soul?

“Thou comest,” said Hilda, “in the hour I predicted; at the setting of

the sun and the rising of the star.”

“Vala,” said Harold, gloomily, “I will not oppose my sense to thy

prophecies; for who shall judge of that power of which he knows not the

elements? or despise the marvel of which he cannot detect the imposture?

But leave me, I pray thee, to walk in the broad light of the common day.

These hands are made to grapple with things palpable, and these eyes to

measure the forms that front my way. In my youth, I turned in despair or

disgust from the subtleties of the schoolmen, which split upon hairs the

brains of Lombard and Frank; in my busy and stirring manhood entangle me

not in the meshes which confuse all my reason, and sicken my waking

thoughts into dreams of awe. Mine be the straight path and the plain

goal!”

The Vala gazed on him with an earnest look, that partook of admiration,

and yet more of gloom; but she spoke not, and Harold resumed:

“Let the dead rest, Hilda,--proud names with glory on earth and shadows

escaped from our ken, submissive to mercy in heaven. A vast chasm have

my steps overleapt since we met, O Hilda--sweet Edith; a vast chasm, but

a narrow grave.” His voice faltered a moment, and again he renewed,--

“Thou weepest, Edith; ah, how thy tears console me! Hilda, hear me! I

love thy grandchild--loved her by irresistible instinct since her blue

eyes first smiled on mine. I loved her in her childhood, as in her

youth--in the blossom as in the flower. And thy grandchild loves me.

The laws of the Church proscribe our marriage, and therefore we parted;

but I feel, and thine Edith feels, that the love remains as strong in

absence: no other will be her wedded lord, no other my wedded wife.

Therefore, with heart made soft by sorrow, and, in my father’s death,

sole lord of my fate, I return, and say to thee in her presence, ‘Suffer

us to hope still!’ The day may come when under some king less enthralled

than Edward by formal Church laws, we may obtain from the Pope absolution

for our nuptials--a day, perhaps, far off; but we are both young, and

love is strong and patient: we can wait.”

“O Harold,” exclaimed Edith, “we can wait!”

“Have I not told thee, son of Godwin,” said the Vala, solemnly, “that

Edith’s skein of life was inwoven with thine? Dost thou deem that my

charms have not explored the destiny of the last of my race? Know that

it is in the decrees of the fates that ye are to be united, never more to

be divided. Know that there shall come a day, though I can see not its

morrow, and it lies dim and afar, which shall be the most glorious of thy

life, and on which Edith and fame shall be thine,--the day of thy

nativity, on which hitherto all things have prospered with thee. In vain

against the stars preach the mone and the priest: what shall be, shall

be. Wherefore, take hope and joy, O Children of Time! And now, as I join

your hands, I betroth your souls.”

Rapture unalloyed and unprophetic, born of love deep and pure, shone in

the eyes of Harold, as he clasped the hand of his promised bride. But an

involuntary and mysterious shudder passed over Edith’s frame, and she

leant close, close, for support upon Harold’s breast. And, as if by a

vision, there rose distinct in her memory a stern brow, a form of power

and terror--the brow and the form of him who but once again in her waking

life the Prophetess had told her she should behold. The vision passed

away in the warm clasp of those protecting arms; and looking up into

Harold’s face, she there beheld the mighty and deep delight that

transfused itself at once into her own soul.

Then Hilda, placing one hand over their heads, and raising the other

towards heaven, all radiant with bursting stars, said in her deep and

thrilling tones:

“Attest the betrothal of these young hearts, O ye Powers that draw nature

to nature by spells which no galdra can trace, and have wrought in the

secrets of creation no mystery so perfect as love,--Attest it, thou

temple, thou altar!--attest it, O sun and O air! While the forms are

divided, may the souls cling together--sorrow with sorrow, and joy with

joy. And when, at length, bride and bridegroom are one,--O stars, may

the trouble with which ye are charged have exhausted its burthen; may no

danger molest, and no malice disturb, but, over the marriage-bed, shine

in peace, O ye stars!”

Up rose the moon. May’s nightingale called its mate from the breathless

boughs; and so Edith and Harold were betrothed by the grave of the son of

Cerdic. And from the line of Cerdic had come, since Ethelbert, all the

Saxon kings who with sword and with sceptre had reigned over Saxon

England.

BOOK VI.

AMBITION.

CHAPTER I.

There was great rejoicing in England. King Edward had been induced to

send Alred the prelate [139] to the court of the German Emperor, for his

kinsman and namesake, Edward Atheling, the son of the great Ironsides.

In his childhood, this Prince, with his brother Edmund, had been

committed by Canute to the charge of his vassal, the King of Sweden; and

it has been said (though without sufficient authority), that Canute’s

design was, that they should be secretly made away with. The King of

Sweden, however, forwarded the children to the court of Hungary; they

were there honourably reared and received. Edmund died young, without

issue. Edward married a daughter of the German Emperor, and during the

commotions in England, and the successive reigns of Harold Harefoot,

Hardicanute, and the Confessor, had remained forgotten in his exile,

until now suddenly recalled to England as the heir presumptive of his

childless namesake. He arrived with Agatha his wife, one infant son,

Edgar, and two daughters, Margaret and Christina.

Great were the rejoicings. The vast crowd that had followed the royal

visitors in their procession to the old London palace (not far from St.

Paul’s) in which they were lodged, yet swarmed through the streets, when

two thegns who had personally accompanied the Atheling from Dover, and

had just taken leave of him, now emerged from the palace, and with some

difficulty made their way through the crowded streets.

The one in the dress and short hair imitated from the Norman,--was our

old friend Godrith, whom the reader may remember as the rebuker of

Taillefer, and the friend of Mallet de Graville; the other, in a plain

linen Saxon tunic, and the gonna worn on state occasions, to which he

seemed unfamiliar, but with heavy gold bracelets on his arms, long haired

and bearded, was Vebba, the Kentish thegn, who had served as nuncius from

Godwin to Edward.

“Troth and faith!” said Vebba, wiping his brow, “this crowd is enow to

make plain roan stark wode. I would not live in London for all the gauds

in the goldsmith’s shops, or all the treasures in King Edward’s vaults.

My tongue is as parched as a hay-field in the weyd-month. [140] Holy

Mother be blessed! I see a Cumen-hus [141] open; let us in and refresh

ourselves with a horn of ale.”

“Nay, friend,” quoth Godrith, with a slight disdain, “such are not the

resorts of men of our rank. Tarry yet awhile, till we arrive near the

bridge by the river-side; there, indeed, you will find worthy company and

dainty cheer.”

“Well, well, I am at your hest, Godrith,” said the Kent man, sighing; “my

wife and my sons will be sure to ask me what sights I have seen, and I

may as well know from thee the last tricks and ways of this burly-burly

town.”

Godrith, who was master of all the fashions in the reign of our lord King

Edward, smiled graciously, and the two proceeded in silence, only broken

by the sturdy Kent man’s exclamations; now of anger when rudely jostled,

now of wonder and delight when, amidst the throng, he caught sight of a

gleeman, with his bear or monkey, who took advantage of some space near

convent garden, or Roman ruin, to exhibit his craft; till they gained a

long low row of booths, most pleasantly situated to the left of this side

London bridge, and which was appropriated to the celebrated cookshops,

that even to the time of Fitzstephen retained their fame and their

fashion.

Between the shops and the river was a space of grass worn brown and bare

by the feet of the customers, with a few clipped trees with vines trained

from one to the other in arcades, under cover of which were set tables

and settles. The place was thickly crowded, and but for Godrith’s

popularity amongst the attendants, they might have found it difficult to

obtain accommodation. However, a new table was soon brought forth,

placed close by the cool margin of the water, and covered in a trice with

tankards of hippocras, pigment, ale, and some Gascon, as well as British

wines: varieties of the delicious cake-bread for which England was then

renowned; while viands, strange to the honest eye and taste of the

wealthy Kent man, were served on spits.

“What bird is this?” said he, grumbling.

“O enviable man, it is a Phrygian attagen [142] that thou art about to

taste for the first time; and when thou hast recovered that delight, I

commend to thee a Moorish compound, made of eggs and roes of carp from

the old Southweorc stewponds, which the cooks here dress notably.”

“Moorish!--Holy Virgin!” cried Vebba, with his mouth full of the Phrygian

attagen, “how came anything Moorish in our Christian island?”

Godrith laughed outright.

“Why, our cook here is Moorish; the best singers in London are Moors.

Look yonder! see those grave comely Saracens!”

“Comely, quotha, burnt and black as a charred pine-pole!” grunted Vebba;

“well, who are they?”

“Wealthy traders; thanks to whom, our pretty maids have risen high in the

market.” [143]

“More the shame,” said the Kent man; “that selling of English youth to

foreign masters, whether male or female, is a blot on the Saxon name.”

“So saith Harold our Earl, and so preach the monks,” returned Godrith.

“But thou, my good friend, who art fond of all things that our ancestors

did, and hast sneered more than once at my Norman robe and cropped hair,

thou shouldst not be the one to find fault with what our fathers have

done since the days of Cerdic.”

“Hem,” said the Kent man, a little perplexed, “certainly old manners are

the best, and I suppose there is some good reason for this practice,

which I, who never trouble myself about matters that concern me not, do

not see.”

“Well, Vebba, and how likest thou the Atheling? he is of the old line,”

said Godrith.

Again the Kent man looked perplexed, and had recourse to the ale, which

he preferred to all more delicate liquor, before he replied:

“Why, he speaks English worse than King Edward! and as for his boy Edgar,

the child can scarce speak English at all. And then their German carles

and cnehts!--An I had known what manner of folk they were, I had not

spent my mancuses in running from my homestead to give them the welcome.

But they told me that Harold the good Earl had made the King send for

them: and whatever the Earl counselled must, I thought, be wise, and to

the weal of sweet England.”

“That is true,” said Godrith with earnest emphasis, for, with all his

affectation of Norman manners, he was thoroughly English at heart, and

now among the staunchest supporters of Harold, who had become no less the

pattern and pride of the young nobles than the darling of the humbler

population,--“that is true--and Harold showed us his noble English heart

when he so urged the King to his own loss.”

As Godrith thus spoke, nay, from the first mention of Harold’s name, two

men richly clad, but with their bonnets drawn far over their brows, and

their long gonnas so worn as to hide their forms, who were seated at a

table behind Godrith and had thus escaped his attention, had paused from

their wine-cups, and they now listened with much earnestness to the

conversation that followed.

“How to the Earl’s loss?” asked Vebba.

“Why, simple thegn,” answered Godrith, “why, suppose that Edward had

refused to acknowledge the Atheling as his heir, suppose the Atheling had

remained in the German court, and our good King died suddenly,--who,

thinkest thou, could succeed to the English throne?”

“Marry, I have never thought of that at all,” said the Kent man,

scratching his head.

“No, nor have the English generally; yet whom could we choose but

Harold?”

A sudden start from one of the listeners was checked by the warning

finger of the other; and the Kent man exclaimed:

“Body o’ me! But we have never chosen king (save the Danes) out of the

line of Cerdic. These be new cranks, with a vengeance; we shall be

choosing German, or Saracen, or Norman next!”

“Out of the line of Cerdic! but that line is gone, root and branch, save

the Atheling, and he thou seest is more German than English. Again I say,

failing the Atheling, whom could we choose but Harold, brother-in-law to

the King: descended through Githa from the royalties of the Norse, the

head of all armies under the Herr-ban, the chief who has never fought

without victory, yet who has always preferred conciliation to

conquest--the first counsellor in the Witan--the first man in the

realm--who but Harold? answer me, staring Vebba?”

“I take in thy words slowly,” said the Kent man, shaking his head, “and

after all, it matters little who is king, so he be a good one. Yes, I see

now that the Earl was a just and generous man when he made the King send

for the Atheling. Drink-hael! long life to them both!”

“Was-hael,” answered Godrith, draining his hippocras to Vebba’s more

potent ale. “Long life to them both! may Edward the Atheling reign, but

Harold the Earl rule! Ah, then, indeed, we may sleep without fear of

fierce Algar and still fiercer Gryffyth the Walloon--who now, it is true,

are stilled for the moment, thanks to Harold--but not more still than the

smooth waters in Gwyned, that lie just above the rush of a torrent.”

“So little news hear I,” said Vebba, “and in Kent so little are we

plagued with the troubles elsewhere, (for there Harold governs us, and

the hawks come not where the eagles hold eyrie!)--that I will thank thee

to tell me something about our old Earl for a year [144], Algar the

restless, and this Gryffyth the Welch King, so that I may seem a wise man

when I go back to my homestead.”

“Why, thou knowest at least that Algar and Harold were ever opposed in

the Witan, and hot words thou hast heard pass between them!”

“Marry, yes! But Algar was as little match for Earl Harold in speech as

in sword play.”

Now again one of the listeners started, (but it was not the same as the

one before,) and muttered an angry exclamation.

“Yet is he a troublesome foe,” said Godrith, who did not hear the sound

Vebba had provoked, “and a thorn in the side both of the Earl and of

England; and sorrowful for both England and Earl was it, that Harold

refused to marry Aldyth, as it is said his father, wise Godwin,

counselled and wished.”

“Ah! but I have heard scops and harpers sing pretty songs that Harold

loves Edith the Fair, a wondrous proper maiden, they say!”

“It is true; and for the sake of his love, he played ill for his

ambition.”

“I like him the better for that,” said the honest Kent man: “why does he

not marry the girl at once? she hath broad lands, I know, for they run

from the Sussex shore into Kent.”

“But they are cousins five times removed, and the Church forbids the

marriage; nevertheless Harold lives only for Edith; they have exchanged

the true-lofa [145], and it is whispered that Harold hopes the Atheling,

when he comes to be King, will get him the Pope’s dispensation. But to

return to Algar; in a day most unlucky he gave his daughter to Gryffyth,

the most turbulent sub-king the land ever knew, who, it is said, will not

be content till he has won all Wales for himself without homage or

service, and the Marches to boot. Some letters between him and Earl

Algar, to whom Harold had secured the earldom of the East Angles, were

discovered, and in a Witan at Winchester thou wilt doubtless have heard,

(for thou didst not, I know, leave thy lands to attend it,) that Algar

[146] was outlawed.”

“Oh, yes, these are stale tidings; I heard thus much from a palmer--and

then Algar got ships from the Irish, sailed to North Wales, and beat

Rolf, the Norman Earl, at Hereford. Oh, yes, I heard that, and,” added

the Kent man, laughing, “I was not sorry to hear that my old Earl Algar,

since he is a good and true Saxon, beat the cowardly Norman,--more shame

to the King for giving a Norman the ward of the Marches!”

“It was a sore defeat to the King and to England,” said Godrith, gravely.

“The great Minster of Hereford built by King Athelstan was burned and

sacked by the Welch; and the crown itself was in danger, when Harold came

up at the head of the Fyrd. Hard is it to tell the distress and the

marching and the camping, and the travail, and destruction of men, and

also of horses, which the English endured [147] till Harold came; and

then luckily came also the good old Leofric, and Bishop Alred the

peacemaker, and so strife was patched up--Gryffyth swore oaths of faith

to King Edward, and Algar was inlawed; and there for the nonce rests the

matter now. But well I ween that Gryffyth will never keep troth with the

English, and that no hand less strong than Harold’s can keep in check a

spirit as fiery as Algar’s: therefore did I wish that Harold might be

King.”

“Well,” quoth the honest Kent man, “I hope, nevertheless, that Algar,

will sow his wild oats, and leave the Walloons to grow the hemp for their

own halters; for, though he is not of the height of our Harold, he is a

true Saxon, and we liked him well enow when he ruled us. And how is our

Earl’s brother Tostig esteemed by the Northmen? It must be hard to

please those who had Siward of the strong arm for their Earl before.”

“Why, at first, when (at Siward’s death in the wars for young Malcolm)

Harold secured to Tostig the Northumbrian earldom, Tostig went by his

brother’s counsel, and ruled well and won favour. Of late I hear that

the Northmen murmur. Tostig is a man indeed dour and haughty.”

After a few more questions and answers on the news of the day, Vebba rose

and said:

“Thanks for thy good fellowship; it is time for me now to be jogging

homeward. I left my ceorls and horses on the other side the river, and

must go after them. And now forgive me my bluntness, fellow-thegn, but

ye young courtiers have plenty of need for your mancuses, and when a

plain countryman like me comes sight-seeing, he ought to stand payment;

wherefore,” here he took from his belt a great leathern purse,

“wherefore, as these outlandish birds and heathenish puddings must be

dear fare--”

“How!” said Godrith, reddening, “thinkest thou so meanly of us thegns of

Middlesex as to deem we cannot entertain thus humbly a friend from a

distance? Ye Kent men I know are rich. But keep your pennies to buy

stuffs for your wife, my friend.”

The Kent man, seeing he had displeased his companion, did not press his

liberal offer,--put up his purse, and suffered Godrith to pay the

reckoning. Then, as the two thegns shook hands, he said:

“But I should like to have said a kind word or so to Earl Harold--for he

was too busy and too great for me to come across him in the old palace

yonder. I have a mind to go back and look for him at his own house.”

“You will not find him there,” said Godrith, “for I know that as soon as

he hath finished his conference with the Atheling, he will leave the

city; and I shall be at his own favourite manse over the water at sunset,

to take orders for repairing the forts and dykes on the Marches. You can

tarry awhile and meet us; you know his old lodge in the forest land?”

“Nay, I must be back and at home ere night, for all things go wrong when

the master is away. Yet, indeed, my good wife will scold me for not

having shaken hands with the handsome Earl.”

“Thou shalt not come under that sad infliction,” said the good-natured

Godrith, who was pleased with the thegn’s devotion to Harold, and who,

knowing the great weight which Vebba (homely as he seemed) carried in his

important county, was politically anxious that the Earl should humour so

sturdy a friend,--“Thou shalt not sour thy wife’s kiss, man. For look

you, as you ride back you will pass by a large old house, with broken

columns at the back.”

“I have marked it well,” said the thegn, “when I have gone that way, with

a heap of queer stones, on a little hillock, which they say the witches

or the Britons heaped together.”

“The same. When Harold leaves London, I trow well towards that house

will his road wend; for there lives Edith the swan’s-neck, with her awful

grandam the Wicca. If thou art there a little after noon, depend on it

thou wilt see Harold riding that way.”

“Thank thee heartily, friend Godrith,” said Vebba, taking his leave, “and

forgive my bluntness if I laughed at thy cropped head, for I see thou art

as good a Saxon as e’er a franklin of Kent--and so the saints keep thee.”

Vebba then strode briskly over the bridge; and Godrith, animated by the

wine he had drunk, turned gaily on his heel to look amongst the crowded

tables for some chance friend with whom to while away an hour or so at

the games of hazard then in vogue.

Scarce had he turned, when the two listeners, who, having paid their

reckoning, had moved under shade of one of the arcades, dropped into a

boat which they had summoned to the margin by a noiseless signal, and

were rowed over the water. They preserved a silence which seemed

thoughtful and gloomy until they reached the opposite shore; then one of

them, pushing back his bonnet, showed the sharp and haughty features of

Algar.

“Well, friend of Gryffyth,” said he, with a bitter accent, “thou hearest

that Earl Harold counts so little on the oaths of thy King, that he

intends to fortify the Marches against him; and thou hearest also, that

nought save a life, as fragile as the reed which thy feet are trampling,

stands between the throne of England and the only Englishman who could

ever have humbled my son-in-law to swear oath of service to Edward.”

“Shame upon that hour,” said the other, whose speech, as well as the gold

collar round his neck, and the peculiar fashion of his hair, betokened

him to be Welch. “Little did I think that the great son of Llewellyn,

whom our bards had set above Roderic Mawr, would ever have acknowledged

the sovereignty of the Saxon over the hills of Cymry.”

“Tut, Meredydd,” answered Algar, “thou knowest well that no Cymrian ever

deems himself dishonoured by breaking faith with the Saxon; and we shall

yet see the lions of Gryffyth scaring the sheepfolds of Hereford.”

“So be it,” said Meredydd, fiercely. “And Harold shall give to his

Atheling the Saxon land, shorn at least of the Cymrian kingdom.”

“Meredydd,” said Algar, with a seriousness that seemed almost solemn,

“no Atheling will live to rule these realms! Thou knowest that I was

one of the first to hail the news of his coming--I hastened to Dover to

meet him. Methought I saw death writ on his countenance, and I bribed

the German leach who attends him to answer my questions; the Atheling

knows it not, but he bears within him the seeds of a mortal complaint.

Thou wottest well what cause I have to hate Earl Harold; and were I the

only man to oppose his way to the throne, he should not ascend it but

over my corpse. But when Godrith, his creature, spoke, I felt that he

spoke the truth; and, the Atheling dead, on no head but Harold’s can

fall the crown of Edward.”

“Ha!” said the Cymrian chief, gloomily; “thinkest thou so indeed?”

“I think it not; I know it. And for that reason, Meredydd, we must wait

not till he wields against us all the royalty of England. As yet, while

Edward lives, there is hope. For the King loves to spend wealth on

relics and priests, and is slow when the mancuses are wanted for fighting

men. The King too, poor man! is not so ill-pleased at my outbursts as he

would fain have it thought; he thinks, by pitting earl against earl, that

he himself is the stronger [148]. While Edward lives, therefore, Harold’s

arm is half crippled; wherefore, Meredydd, ride thou, with good speed,

back to King Gryffyth, and tell him all I have told thee. Tell him that

our time to strike the blow and renew the war will be amidst the dismay

and confusion that the Atheling’s death will occasion. Tell him, that if

we can entangle Harold himself in the Welch defiles, it will go hard but

what we shall find some arrow or dagger to pierce the heart of the

invader. And were Harold but slain--who then would be king in England?

The line of Cerdic gone--the House of Godwin lost in Earl Harold, (for

Tostig is hated in his own domain, Leofwine is too light, and Gurth is

too saintly for such ambition)--who then, I say, can be king in England

but Algar, the heir of the great Leofric? And I, as King of England,

will set all Cymry free, and restore to the realm of Gryffyth the shires

of Hereford and Worcester. Ride fast, O Meredydd, and heed well all I

have said.”

“Dost thou promise and swear, that wert thou king of England, Cymry

should be free from all service?”

“Free as air, free as under Arthur and Uther: I swear it. And remember

well how Harold addressed the Cymrian chiefs, when he accepted Gryffyth’s

oaths of service.”

“Remember it--ay,” cried Meredydd, his face lighting up with intense ire

and revenge; “the stern Saxon said, ‘Heed well, ye chiefs of Cymry, and

thou Gryffyth the King, that if again ye force, by ravage and rapine, by

sacrilege and murther, the majesty of England to enter your borders, duty

must be done: God grant that your Cymrian lion may leave us in peace--if

not, it is mercy to Human life that bids us cut the talons, and draw the

fangs.”

“Harold, like all calm and mild men, ever says less than he means,”

returned Algar; “and were Harold king, small pretext would he need for

cutting the talons and drawing the fangs.”

“It is well,” said Meredydd, with a fierce smile. “I will now go to my

men who are lodged yonder; and it is better that thou shouldst not be

seen with me.”

“Right; so St. David be with you--and forget not a word of my message to

Gryffyth my son-in-law.”

“Not a word,” returned Meredydd, as with a wave of his hand he moved

towards an hostelry, to which, as kept by one of their own countrymen,

the Welch habitually resorted in the visits to the capital which the

various intrigues and dissensions in their unhappy land made frequent.

The chief’s train, which consisted of ten men, all of high birth, were

not drinking in the tavern--for sorry customers to mine host were the

abstemious Welch. Stretched on the grass under the trees of an orchard

that backed the hostelry, and utterly indifferent to all the rejoicings

that animated the population of Southwark and London, they were listening

to a wild song of the old hero-days from one of their number; and round

them grazed the rough shagged ponies which they had used for their

journey. Meredydd, approaching, gazed round, and seeing no stranger was

present, raised his hand to hush the song, and then addressed his

countrymen briefly in Welch--briefly, but with a passion that was evident

in his flashing eyes and vehement gestures. The passion was contagious;

they all sprang to their feet with a low but fierce cry, and in a few

moments they had caught and saddled their diminutive palfreys, while one

of the band, who seemed singled out by Meredydd, sallied forth alone from

the orchard, and took his way, on foot, to the bridge. He did not tarry

there long; at the sight of a single horseman, whom a shout of welcome,

on that swarming thoroughfare, proclaimed to be Earl Harold, the Welchman

turned, and with a fleet foot regained his companions.

Meanwhile Harold, smilingly, returned the greetings he received, cleared

the bridge, passed the suburbs, and soon gained the wild forest land that

lay along the great Kentish road. He rode somewhat slowly, for he was

evidently in deep thought; and he had arrived about half-way towards

Hilda’s house when he heard behind quick pattering sounds, as of small

unshod hoofs: he turned, and saw the Welchmen at the distance of some

fifty yards. But at that moment there passed, along the road in front,

several persons bustling into London to share in the festivities of the

day. This seemed to disconcert the Welch in the rear, and, after a few

whispered words, they left the high road and entered the forest land.

Various groups from time to time continued to pass along the

thoroughfare. But still, ever through the glades, Harold caught glimpses

of the riders; now distant, now near. Sometimes he heard the snort of

their small horses, and saw a fierce eye glaring through the bushes;

then, as at the sight or sound of approaching passengers, the riders

wheeled, and shot off through the brakes.

The Earl’s suspicions were aroused; for (though he knew of no enemy to

apprehend, and the extreme severity of the laws against robbers made the

high roads much safer in the latter days of the Saxon domination than

they were for centuries under that of the subsequent dynasty, when Saxon

thegns themselves had turned kings of the greenwood,) the various

insurrections in Edward’s reign had necessarily thrown upon society many

turbulent disbanded mercenaries.

Harold was unarmed, save the spear which, even on occasions of state, the

Saxon noble rarely laid aside, and the ateghar in his belt; and, seeing

now that the road had become deserted, he set spurs to his horse, and was

just in sight of the Druid temple, when a javelin whizzed close by his

breast, and another transfixed his horse, which fell head foremost to the

ground.

The Earl gained his feet in an instant, and that haste was needed to save

his life; for while he rose ten swords flashed around him. The Welchmen

had sprung from their palfreys as Harold’s horse fell. Fortunately for

him, only two of the party bore javelins, (a weapon which the Welch

wielded with deadly skill,) and those already wasted, they drew their

short swords, which were probably imitated from the Romans, and rushed

upon him in simultaneous onset. Versed in all the weapons of the time,

with his right hand seeking by his spear to keep off the rush, with the

ateghar in his left parrying the strokes aimed at him, the brave Earl

transfixed the first assailant, and sore wounded the next; but his tunic

was dyed red with three gashes, and his sole chance of life was in the

power yet left him to force his way through the ring. Dropping his

spear, shifting his ateghar into the right hand, wrapping round his left

arm his gonna as a shield, he sprang fiercely on the onslaught, and on

the flashing swords. Pierced to the heart fell one of his foes--dashed

to the earth another--from the hand of a third (dropping his own ateghar)

he wrenched the sword. Loud rose Harold’s cry for aid, and swiftly he

strode towards the hillock, turning back, and striking as he turned; and

again fell a foe, and again new blood oozed through his own garb. At

that moment his cry was echoed by a shriek so sharp and so piercing that

it startled the assailants, it arrested the assault; and, ere the unequal

strife could be resumed, a woman was in the midst of the fray; a woman

stood dauntless between the Earl and his foes.

“Back! Edith. Oh, God! Back, back!” cried the Earl, recovering all his

strength in the sole fear which that strife had yet stricken into his

bold heart; and drawing Edith aside with his strong arm, he again

confronted the assailants.

“Die!” cried, in the Cymrian tongue, the fiercest of the foes, whose

sword had already twice drawn the Earl’s blood; “Die, that Cymry may be

free!”

Meredydd sprang, with him sprang the survivors of his band; and, by a

sudden movement, Edith had thrown herself on Harold’s breast, leaving his

right arm free, but sheltering his form with her own.

At that sight every sword rested still in air. These Cymrians,

hesitating not at the murder of the man whose death seemed to their false

virtue a sacrifice due to their hopes of freedom, were still the

descendants of Heroes, and the children of noble Song, and their swords

were harmless against a woman. The same pause which saved the life of

Harold, saved that of Meredydd; for the Cymrian’s lifted sword had left

his breast defenceless, and Harold, despite his wrath, and his fears for

Edith, touched by that sudden forbearance, forbore himself the blow.

“Why seek ye my life?” said he. “Whom in broad England hath Harold

wronged?”

That speech broke the charm, revived the suspense of vengeance. With a

sudden aim, Meredydd smote at the head which Edith’s embrace left

unprotected. The sword shivered on the steel of that which parried the

stroke, and the next moment, pierced to the heart, Meredydd fell to the

earth, bathed in his gore. Even as he fell, aid was at hand. The ceorls

in the Roman house had caught the alarm, and were hurrying down the

knoll, with arms snatched in haste, while a loud whoop broke from the

forest land hard by; and a troop of horse, headed by Vebba, rushed

through the bushes and brakes. Those of the Welch still surviving, no

longer animated by their fiery chief, turned on the instant, and fled

with that wonderful speed of foot which characterised their active race;

calling, as they fled, to their Welch pigmy steeds, which, snorting loud,

and lashing out, came at once to the call. Seizing the nearest at hand,

the fugitives sprang to selle, while the animals unchosen paused by the

corpses of their former riders, neighing piteously, and shaking their

long manes. And then, after wheeling round and round the coming

horsemen, with many a plunge, and lash, and savage cry, they darted after

their companions, and disappeared amongst the bushwood. Some of the

Kentish men gave chase to the fugitives, but in vain; for the nature of

the ground favoured flight. Vebba, and the rest, now joined by Hilda’s

lithsmen, gained the spot where Harold, bleeding fast, yet strove to keep

his footing, and, forgetful of his own wounds, was joyfully assuring

himself of Edith’s safety. Vebba dismounted, and recognising the Earl,

exclaimed:

“Saints in heaven! are we in tine? You bleed--you faint!--Speak, Lord

Harold. How fares it?”

“Blood enow yet left here for our merrie England!” said Harold, with a

smile. But as he spoke, his head drooped, and he was borne senseless

into the house of Hilda.

CHAPTER II.

The Vala met them at the threshold, and testified so little surprise at

the sight of the bleeding and unconscious Earl, that Vebba, who had heard

strange tales of Hilda’s unlawful arts, half-suspected that those

wild-looking foes, with their uncanny diminutive horses, were imps

conjured by her to punish a wooer to her grandchild--who had been perhaps

too successful in the wooing. And fears so reasonable were not a little

increased when Hilda, after leading the way up the steep ladder to the

chamber in which Harold had dreamed his fearful dream, bade them all

depart, and leave the wounded man to her care.

“Not so,” said Vebba, bluffly. “A life like this is not to be left in

the hands of woman, or wicca. I shall go back to the great town, and

summon the Earl’s own leach. And I beg thee to heed, meanwhile, that

every head in this house shall answer for Harold’s.”

The great Vala, and highborn Hleafdian, little accustomed to be accosted

thus, turned round abruptly, with so stern an eye and so imperious a

mien, that even the stout Kent man felt abashed. She pointed to the door

opening on the ladder, and said, briefly:

“Depart! Thy lord’s life hath been saved already, and by woman. Depart!”

“Depart, and fear not for the Earl, brave and true friend in need,” said

Edith, looking up from Harold’s pale lips, over which she bent; and her

sweet voice so touched the good thegn, that, murmuring a blessing on her

fair face, he turned and departed.

Hilda then proceeded, with a light and skilful hand, to examine the

wounds of her patient. She opened the tunic, and washed away the blood

from four gaping orifices on the breast and shoulders. And as she did

so, Edith uttered a faint cry, and falling on her knees, bowed her head

over the drooping hand, and kissed it with stifling emotions, of which

perhaps grateful joy was the strongest; for over the heart of Harold was

punctured, after the fashion of the Saxons, a device--and that device was

the knot of betrothal, and in the centre of the knot was graven the word

“Edith.”

CHAPTER III.

Whether, owing to Hilda’s runes, or to the merely human arts which

accompanied them, the Earl’s recovery was rapid, though the great loss of

blood he had sustained left him awhile weak and exhausted. But, perhaps,

he blessed the excuse which detained him still in the house of Hilda, and

under the eyes of Edith.

He dismissed the leach sent to him by Vebba, and confided, not without

reason, to the Vala’s skill. And how happily went his hours beneath the

old Roman roof!

It was not without a superstition, more characterised, however, by

tenderness than awe, that Harold learned that Edith had been undefinably

impressed with a foreboding of danger to her betrothed, and all that

morning she had watched his coming from the old legendary hill. Was it

not in that watch that his good Fylgia had saved his life? Indeed, there

seemed a strange truth in Hilda’s assertions, that in the form of his

betrothed, his tutelary spirit lived and guarded. For smooth every step,

and bright every day, in his career, since their troth had been plighted.

And gradually the sweet superstition had mingled with human passion to

hallow and refine it. There was a purity and a depth in the love of these

two, which, if not uncommon in women, is most rare in men.

Harold, in sober truth, had learned to look on Edith as on his better

angel; and, calming his strong manly heart in the hour of temptation,

would have recoiled, as a sacrilege, from aught that could have sullied

that image of celestial love. With a noble and sublime patience, of

which perhaps only a character so thoroughly English in its habits of

self-control and steadfast endurance could have been capable, he saw the

months and the years glide away, and still contented himself with

hope;--hope, the sole godlike joy that belongs to men!

As the opinion of an age influences even those who affect to despise it,

so, perhaps, this holy and unselfish passion was preserved and guarded by

that peculiar veneration for purity which formed the characteristic

fanaticism of the last days of the Anglo-Saxons,--when still, as Aldhelm

had previously sung in Latin less barbarous than perhaps any priest in

the reign of Edward could command:

“Virginitas castam servans sine crimine carnem

Caetera virtutem vincit praeconia laudi--

Spiritus altithroni templum sibi vindicat almus;” [149]

when, amidst a great dissoluteness of manners, alike common to Church and

laity, the opposite virtues were, as is invariable in such epochs of

society, carried by the few purer natures into heroic extremes. “And as

gold, the adorner of the world, springs from the sordid bosom of earth,

so chastity, the image of gold, rose bright and unsullied from the clay

of human desire.” [150]

And Edith, though yet in the tenderest flush of beautiful youth, had,

under the influence of that sanctifying and scarce earthly affection,

perfected her full nature as woman. She had learned so to live in

Harold’s life, that--less, it seemed, by study than intuition--a

knowledge graver than that which belonged to her sex and her time, seemed

to fall upon her soul--fall as the sunlight falls on the blossoms,

expanding their petals, and brightening the glory of their hues.

Hitherto, living under the shade of Hilda’s dreary creed, Edith, as we

have seen, had been rather Christian by name and instinct than acquainted

with the doctrines of the Gospel, or penetrated by its faith. But the

soul of Harold lifted her own out of the Valley of the Shadow up to the

Heavenly Hill. For the character of their love was so pre-eminently

Christian, so, by the circumstances that surrounded it--so by hope and

self-denial, elevated out of the empire, not only of the senses, but even

of that sentiment which springs from them, and which made the sole

refined and poetic element of the heathen’s love, that but for

Christianity it would have withered and died. It required all the

aliment of prayer; it needed that patient endurance which comes from the

soul’s consciousness of immortality; it could not have resisted earth,

but from the forts and armies it won from heaven. Thus from Harold might

Edith be said to have taken her very soul. And with the soul, and

through the soul, woke the mind from the mists of childhood.

In the intense desire to be worthy the love of the foremost man of her

land; to be the companion of his mind, as well as the mistress of his

heart, she had acquired, she knew not how, strange stores of thought, and

intelligence, and pure, gentle wisdom. In opening to her confidence his

own high aims and projects, he himself was scarcely conscious how often

he confided but to consult--how often and how insensibly she coloured his

reflections and shaped his designs. Whatever was highest and purest,

that, Edith ever, as by instinct, beheld as the wisest. She grew to him

like a second conscience, diviner than his own. Each, therefore,

reflected virtue on the other, as planet illumines planet.

All these years of probation then, which might have soured a love less

holy, changed into weariness a love less intense, had only served to wed

them more intimately soul to soul; and in that spotless union what

happiness there was! what rapture in word and glance, and the slight,

restrained caress of innocence, beyond all the transports love only human

can bestow!

CHAPTER IV.

It was a bright still summer noon, when Harold sate with Edith amidst the

columns of the Druid temple, and in the shade which those vast and

mournful relics of a faith departed cast along the sward. And there,

conversing over the past, and planning the future, they had sate long,

when Hilda approached from the house, and entering the circle, leant her

arm upon the altar of the war-god, and gazing on Harold with a calm

triumph in her aspect, said:

“Did I not smile, son of Godwin, when, with thy short-sighted wisdom,

thou didst think to guard thy land and secure thy love, by urging the

monk-king to send over the seas for the Atheling? Did I not tell thee,

‘Thou dost right, for in obeying thy judgment thou art but the instrument

of fate; and the coming of the Atheling shall speed thee nearer to the

ends of thy life, but not from the Atheling shalt thou take the crown of

thy love, and not by the Atheling shall the throne of Athelstan be

filled’?”

“Alas,” said Harold, rising in agitation, “let me not hear of mischance

to that noble prince. He seemed sick and feeble when I parted from him;

but joy is a great restorer, and the air of the native land gives quick

health to the exile.”

“Hark!” said Hilda, “you hear the passing bell for the soul of the son of

Ironsides!”

The mournful knell, as she spoke, came dull from the roofs of the city

afar, borne to their ears by the exceeding stillness of the atmosphere.

Edith crossed herself, and murmured a prayer according to the custom of

the age; then raising her eyes to Harold, she murmured, as she clasped

her hands:

“Be not saddened, Harold; hope still.”

“Hope!” repeated Hilda, rising proudly from her recumbent position,

“Hope! in that knell from St. Paul’s, dull indeed is thine ear, O Harold,

if thou hearest not the joy-bells that inaugurate a future king!”

The Earl started; his eyes shot fire; his breast heaved.

“Leave us, Edith,” said Hilda, in a low voice; and after watching her

grandchild’s slow reluctant steps descend the knoll, she turned to

Harold, and leading him towards the gravestone of the Saxon chief, said:

“Rememberest thou the spectre that rose from this mound?--rememberest

thou the dream that followed it?”

“The spectre, or deceit of mine eye, I remember well,” answered the Earl;

“the dream, not;--or only in confused and jarring fragments.”

“I told thee then, that I could not unriddle the dream by the light of

the moment; and that the dead who slept below never appeared to men, save

for some portent of doom to the house of Cerdic. The portent is

fulfilled; the Heir of Cerdic is no more. To whom appeared the great

Scin-laeca, but to him who shall lead a new race of kings to the Saxon

throne!”

Harold breathed hard, and the colour mounted bright and glowing to his

cheek and brow.

“I cannot gainsay thee, Vala. Unless, despite all conjecture, Edward

should be spared to earth till the Atheling’s infant son acquires the age

when bearded men will acknowledge a chief [151], I look round in England

for the coming king, and all England reflects but mine own image.”

His head rose erect as he spoke, and already the brow seemed august, as

if circled by the diadem of the Basileus. “And if it be so,” he added,

“I accept that solemn trust, and England shall grow greater in my

greatness.”

“The flame breaks at last from the smouldering fuel!” cried the Vala,

“and the hour I so long foretold to thee hath come!”

Harold answered not, for high and kindling emotions deafened him to all

but the voice of a grand ambition, and the awakening joy of a noble

heart.

“And then--and then,” he exclaimed, “I shall need no mediator between

nature and monkcraft;--then, O Edith, the life thou hast saved will

indeed be thine!” He paused, and it was a sign of the change that an

ambition long repressed, but now rushing into the vent legitimately open

to it, had already begun to work in the character hitherto so

self-reliant, when he said in a low voice, “But that dream which hath so

long lain locked, not lost, in my mind; that dream of which I recall only

vague remembrances of danger yet defiance, trouble yet triumph,--canst

thou unriddle it, O Vala, into auguries of success?”

“Harold,” answered Hilda, “thou didst hear at the close of thy dream, the

music of the hymns that are chaunted at the crowning of a king,--and a

crowned king shalt thou be; yet fearful foes shall assail thee--foreshown

in the shapes of a lion and raven, that came in menace over the bloodred

sea. The two stars in the heaven betoken that the day of thy birth was

also the birthday of a foe, whose star is fatal to thine; and they warn

thee against a battle-field, fought on the day when those stars shall

meet. Farther than this the mystery of thy dream escapes from my

lore;--wouldst thou learn thyself, from the phantom that sent the

dream;--stand by my side at the grave of the Saxon hero, and I will

summon the Scin-laeca to counsel the living. For what to the Vala the

dead may deny, the soul of the brave on the brave may bestow!”

Harold listened with a serious and musing attention which his pride or

his reason had never before accorded to the warnings of Hilda. But his

sense was not yet fascinated by the voice of the charmer, and he answered

with his wonted smile, so sweet yet so haughty:

“A hand outstretched to a crown should be armed for the foe; and the eye

that would guard the living should not be dimmed by the vapours that

encircle the dead.”

CHAPTER V.

But from that date changes, slight, yet noticeable and important, were at

work both in the conduct and character of the great Earl.

Hitherto he had advanced on his career without calculation; and nature,

not policy, had achieved his power. But henceforth he began thoughtfully

to cement the foundations of his House, to extend the area, to strengthen

the props. Policy now mingled with the justice that had made him

esteemed, and the generosity that had won him love. Before, though by

temper conciliatory, yet, through honesty, indifferent to the enmities he

provoked, in his adherence to what his conscience approved, he now laid

himself out to propitiate all ancient feuds, soothe all jealousies, and

convert foes into friends. He opened constant and friendly communication

with his uncle Sweyn, King of Denmark; he availed himself sedulously of

all the influence over the Anglo-Danes which his mother’s birth made so

facile. He strove also, and wisely, to conciliate the animosities which

the Church had cherished against Godwin’s house: he concealed his disdain

of the monks and monkridden: he showed himself the Church’s patron and

friend; he endowed largely the convents, and especially one at Waltham,

which had fallen into decay, though favourably known for the piety of its

brotherhood. But if in this he played a part not natural to his

opinions, Harold could not, even in simulation, administer to evil. The

monasteries he favoured were those distinguished for purity of life, for

benevolence to the poor, for bold denunciation of the excesses of the

great. He had not, like the Norman, the grand design of creating in the

priesthood a college of learning, a school of arts; such notions were

unfamiliar in homely, unlettered England. And Harold, though for his

time and his land no mean scholar, would have recoiled from favouring a

learning always made subservient to Rome; always at once haughty and

scheming, and aspiring to complete domination over both the souls of men

and the thrones of kings. But his aim was, out of the elements he found

in the natural kindliness existing between Saxon priest and Saxon flock,

to rear a modest, virtuous, homely clergy, not above tender sympathy with

an ignorant population. He selected as examples for his monastery at

Waltham, two low-born humble brothers, Osgood and Ailred; the one known

for the courage with which he had gone through the land, preaching to

abbot and thegn the emancipation of the theowes, as the most meritorious

act the safety of the soul could impose; the other, who, originally a

clerk, had, according to the common custom of the Saxon clergy,

contracted the bonds of marriage, and with some eloquence had vindicated

that custom against the canons of Rome, and refused the offer of large

endowments and thegn’s rank to put away his wife. But on the death of

that spouse he had adopted the cowl, and while still persisting in the

lawfulness of marriage to the unmonastic clerks, had become famous for

denouncing the open concubinage which desecrated the holy office, and

violated the solemn vows, of many a proud prelate and abbot.

To these two men (both of whom refused the abbacy of Waltham) Harold

committed the charge of selecting the new brotherhood established there.

And the monks of Waltham were honoured as saints throughout the

neighbouring district, and cited as examples to all the Church.

But though in themselves the new politic arts of Harold seemed blameless

enough, arts they were, and as such they corrupted the genuine simplicity

of his earlier nature. He had conceived for the first time an ambition

apart from that of service to his country. It was no longer only to

serve the land, it was to serve it as its ruler, that animated his heart

and coloured his thoughts. Expediencies began to dim to his conscience

the healthful loveliness of Truth. And now, too, gradually, that empire

which Hilda had gained over his brother Sweyn began to sway this man,

heretofore so strong in his sturdy sense. The future became to him a

dazzling mystery, into which his conjectures plunged themselves more and

more. He had not yet stood in the Runic circle and invoked the dead; but

the spells were around his heart, and in his own soul had grown up the

familiar demon.

Still Edith reigned alone, if not in his thoughts at least in his

affections; and perhaps it was the hope of conquering all obstacles to

his marriage that mainly induced him to propitiate the Church, through

whose agency the object he sought must be attained; and still that hope

gave the brightest lustre to the distant crown. But he who admits

Ambition to the companionship of Love, admits a giant that outstrides the

gentler footsteps of its comrade.

Harold’s brow lost its benign calm. He became thoughtful and abstracted.

He consulted Edith less, Hilda more. Edith seemed to him now not wise

enough to counsel. The smile of his Fylgia, like the light of the star

upon a stream, lit the surface, but could not pierce to the deep.

Meanwhile, however, the policy of Harold throve and prospered. He had

already arrived at that height, that the least effort to make power

popular redoubled its extent. Gradually all voices swelled the chorus in

his praise; gradually men became familiar to the question, “If Edward

dies before Edgar, the grandson of Ironsides, is of age to succeed, where

can we find a king like Harold?”

In the midst of this quiet but deepening sunshine of his fate, there

burst a storm, which seemed destined either to darken his day or to

disperse every cloud from the horizon. Algar, the only possible rival to

his power--the only opponent no arts could soften--Algar, whose

hereditary name endeared him to the Saxon laity, whose father’s most

powerful legacy was the love of the Saxon Church, whose martial and

turbulent spirit had only the more elevated him in the esteem of the

warlike Danes in East Anglia (the earldom in which he had succeeded

Harold), by his father’s death, lord of the great principality of

Mercia--availed himself of that new power to break out again into

rebellion. Again he was outlawed, again he leagued with the fiery

Gryffyth. All Wales was in revolt; the Marches were invaded and laid

waste. Rolf, the feeble Earl of Hereford, died at this critical

juncture, and the Normans and hirelings under him mutinied against other

leaders; a fleet of vikings from Norway ravaged the western coasts, and

sailing up the Menai, joined the ships of Gryffyth, and the whole empire

seemed menaced with dissolution, when Edward issued his Herr-bane, and

Harold at the head of the royal armies marched on the foe.

Dread and dangerous were those defiles of Wales; amidst them had been

foiled or slaughtered all the warriors under Rolf the Norman; no Saxon

armies had won laurels in the Cymrian’s own mountain home within the

memory of man; nor had any Saxon ships borne the palm from the terrible

vikings of Norway. Fail, Harold, and farewell the crown!--succeed, and

thou hast on thy side the ultimam rationem regum (the last argument of

kings), the heart of the army over which thou art chief.

CHAPTER VI.

It was one day in the height of summer that two horsemen rode slowly, and

conversing with each other in friendly wise, notwithstanding an evident

difference of rank and of nation, through the lovely country which formed

the Marches of Wales. The younger of these men was unmistakably a

Norman; his cap only partially covered the head, which was shaven from

the crown to the nape of the neck [152], while in front the hair, closely

cropped, curled short and thick round a haughty but intelligent brow.

His dress fitted close to his shape, and was worn without mantle; his

leggings were curiously crossed in the fashion of a tartan, and on his

heels were spurs of gold. He was wholly unarmed; but behind him and his

companion, at a little distance, his war-horse, completely caparisoned,

was led by a single squire, mounted on a good Norman steed; while six

Saxon theowes, themselves on foot, conducted three sumpter-mules,

somewhat heavily laden, not only with the armour of the Norman knight,

but panniers containing rich robes, wines, and provender. At a few paces

farther behind, marched a troop, light-armed, in tough hides, curiously

tanned, with axes swung over their shoulders, and bows in their hands.

The companion of the knight was as evidently a Saxon, as the knight was

unequivocally a Norman. His square short features, contrasting the oval

visage and aquiline profile of his close-shaven comrade, were half

concealed beneath a bushy beard and immense moustache. His tunic, also,

was of hide, and, tightened at the waist, fell loose to his knee; while a

kind of cloak, fastened to the right shoulder by a large round button or

brooch, flowed behind and in front, but left both arms free. His cap

differed in shape from the Norman’s, being round and full at the sides,

somewhat in shape like a turban. His bare, brawny throat was curiously

punctured with sundry devices, and a verse from the Psalms.

His countenance, though without the high and haughty brow, and the acute,

observant eye of his comrade, had a pride and intelligence of its own--a

pride somewhat sullen, and an intelligence somewhat slow.

“My good friend, Sexwolf,” quoth the Norman in very tolerable Saxon, “I

pray you not so to misesteem us. After all, we Normans are of your own

race: our fathers spoke the same language as yours.”

“That may be,” said the Saxon, bluntly, “and so did the Danes, with

little difference, when they burned our houses and cut our throats.”

“Old tales, those,” replied the knight, “and I thank thee for the

comparison; for the Danes, thou seest, are now settled amongst ye,

peaceful subjects and quiet men, and in a few generations it will be hard

to guess who comes from Saxon, who from Dane.”

“We waste time, talking such matters,” returned the Saxon, feeling

himself instinctively no match in argument for his lettered companion;

and seeing, with his native strong sense; that some ulterior object,

though he guessed not what, lay hid in the conciliatory language of his

companion; “nor do I believe, Master Mallet or Gravel--forgive me if I

miss of the right forms to address you--that Norman will ever love Saxon,

or Saxon Norman; so let us cut our words short. There stands the

convent, at which you would like to rest and refresh yourself.”

The Saxon pointed to a low, clumsy building of timber, forlorn and

decayed, close by a rank marsh, over which swarmed gnats, and all foul

animalcules.

Mallet de Graville, for it was he, shrugged his shoulders, and said, with

an air of pity and contempt:

“I would, friend Sexwolf, that thou couldst but see the houses we build

to God and his saints in our Normandy; fabrics of stately stone, on the

fairest sites. Our Countess Matilda hath a notable taste for the

masonry; and our workmen are the brethren of Lombardy, who know all the

mysteries thereof.”

“I pray thee, Dan-Norman,” cried the Saxon, “not to put such ideas into

the soft head of King Edward. We pay enow for the Church, though built

but of timber; saints help us indeed, if it were builded of stone!”

The Norman crossed himself, as if he had heard some signal impiety, and

then said:

“Thou lovest not Mother Church, worthy Sexwolf?”

“I was brought up,” replied the sturdy Saxon, “to work and sweat hard,

and I love not the lazy who devour my substance, and say, ‘the saints

gave it them.’ Knowest thou not, Master Mallet, that one-third of all

the lands of England is in the hands of the priests?”

“Hem!” said the acute Norman, who, with all his devotion, could stoop to

wring worldly advantage from each admission of his comrade; “then in this

merrie England of thine thou hast still thy grievances and cause of

complaint?”

“Yea indeed, and I trow it,” quoth the Saxon, even in that day a

grumbler; “but I take it, the main difference between thee and me is,

that I can say what mislikes me out like a man; and it would fare ill

with thy limbs or thy life if thou wert as frank in the grim land of thy

heretogh.”

“Now, Notre Dame stop thy prating,” said the Norman, in high disdain,

while his brow frowned and his eye sparkled. “Strong judge and great

captain as is William the Norman, his barons and knights hold their heads

high in his presence, and not a grievance weighs on the heart that we

give not out with the lip.”

“So have I heard,” said the Saxon, chuckling; “I have heard, indeed, that

ye thegns, or great men, are free enow, and plainspoken. But what of the

commons--the sixhaendmen and the ceorls, master Norman? Dare they speak

as we speak of king and of law, of thegn and of captain?”

The Norman wisely curbed the scornful “No, indeed,” that rushed to his

lips, and said, all sweet and debonnair: “Each land hath its customs,

dear Sexwolf: and if the Norman were king of England, he would take the

laws as he finds them, and the ceorls would be as safe with William as

Edward.”

“The Norman king of England!” cried the Saxon, reddening to the tips of

his great ears, “what dost thou babble of, stranger? The Norman!--How

could that ever be?”

“Nay, I did but suggest--but suppose such a case,” replied the knight,

still smothering his wrath. “And why thinkest thou the conceit so

outrageous? Thy King is childless; William is his next of kin, and dear

to him as a brother; and if Edward did leave him the throne--”

“The throne is for no man to leave,” almost roared the Saxon. “Thinkest

thou the people of England are like cattle and sheep, and chattels and

theowes, to be left by will, as man fancies? The King’s wish has its

weight, no doubt, but the Witan hath its yea or its nay, and the Witan

and Commons are seldom at issue thereon. Thy duke King of England!

Marry! Ha! ha!”

“Brute!” muttered the knight to himself; then adding aloud, with his old

tone of irony (now much habitually subdued by years and discretion), “Why

takest thou so the part of the ceorls? thou a captain, and well-nigh a

thegn!”

“I was born a ceorl, and my father before me,” returned Sexwolf, “and I

feel with my class; though my grandson may rank with the thegns, and, for

aught I know, with the earls.”

The Sire de Graville involuntarily drew off from the Saxon’s side, as if

made suddenly aware that he had grossly demeaned himself in such

unwitting familiarity with a ceorl, and a ceorl’s son; and he said, with

a much more careless accent and lofty port than before:

“Good man, thou wert a ceorl, and now thou leadest Earl Harold’s men to

the war! How is this? I do not quite comprehend it.”

“How shouldst thou, poor Norman?” replied the Saxon, compassionately.

“The tale is soon told. Know that when Harold our Earl was banished, and

his lands taken, we his ceorls helped with his sixhaendman, Clapa, to

purchase his land, nigh by London, and the house wherein thou didst find

me, of a stranger, thy countryman, to whom they were lawlessly given.

And we tilled the land, we tended the herds, and we kept the house till

the Earl came back.”

“Ye had moneys then, moneys of your own, ye ceorls!” said the Norman,

avariciously.

“How else could we buy our freedom? Every ceorl hath some hours to

himself to employ to his profit, and can lay by for his own ends. These

savings we gave up for our Earl, and when the Earl came back, he gave the

sixhaendman hides of land enow to make him a thegn; and he gave the

ceorls who hade holpen Clapa, their freedom and broad shares of his

boc-land, and most of them now hold their own ploughs and feed their own

herds. But I loved the Earl (having no wife) better than swine and

glebe, and I prayed him to let me serve him in arms. And so I have

risen, as with us ceorls can rise.”

“I am answered,” said Mallet de Graville, thoughtfully, and still

somewhat perplexed. “But these theowes, (they are slaves,) never rise.

It cannot matter to them whether shaven Norman or bearded Saxon sit on

the throne?”

“Thou art right there,” answered the Saxon; “it matters as little to them

as it doth to thy thieves and felons, for many of them are felons and

thieves, or the children of such; and most of those who are not, it is

said, are not Saxons, but the barbarous folks whom the Saxons subdued.

No, wretched things, and scarce men, they care nought for the land.

Howbeit, even they are not without hope, for the Church takes their part;

and that, at least, I for one think Church-worthy,” added the Saxon with

a softened eye. “And every abbot is bound to set free three theowes on

his lands, and few who own theowes die without freeing some by their

will; so that the sons of theowes may be thegns, and thegns some of them

are at this day.”

“Marvels!” cried the Norman. “But surely they bear a stain and stigma,

and their fellow-thegns flout them?”

“Not a whit--why so? land is land, money money. Little, I trow, care we

what a man’s father may have been, if the man himself hath his ten hides

or more of good boc-land.”

“Ye value land and the moneys,” said the Norman, “so do we, but we value

more name and birth.”

“Ye are still in your leading-strings, Norman,” replied the Saxon, waxing

good-humoured in his contempt. “We have an old saying and a wise one,

‘All come from Adam except Tib the ploughman: but when Tib grows rich all

call him “dear brother.”’”

“With such pestilent notions,” quoth the Sire de Graville, no longer

keeping temper, “I do not wonder that our fathers of Norway and Daneland

beat ye so easily. The love for things ancient--creed, lineage, and

name, is better steel against the stranger than your smiths ever welded.”

Therewith, and not waiting for Sexwolf’s reply, he clapped spurs to his

palfrey, and soon entered the courtyard of the convent.

A monk of the order of St. Benedict, then most in favour [153], ushered

the noble visitor into the cell of the abbot; who, after gazing at him a

moment in wonder and delight, clasped him to his breast and kissed him

heartily on brow and cheek.

“Ah, Guillaume,” he exclaimed in the Norman tongue, “this is indeed a

grace for which to sing Jubilate. Thou canst not guess how welcome is

the face of a countryman in this horrible land of ill-cooking and exile.”

“Talking of grace, my dear father, and food,” said De Graville, loosening

the cincture of the tight vest which gave him the shape of a wasp--for

even at that early period, small waists were in vogue with the warlike

fops of the French Continent--“talking of grace, the sooner thou say’st

it over some friendly refection, the more will the Latin sound unctuous

and musical. I have journeyed since daybreak, and am now hungered and

faint.”

“Alack, alack!” cried the abbot, plaintively, “thou knowest little, my

son, what hardships we endure in these parts, how larded our larders, and

how nefarious our fare. The flesh of swine salted--”

“The flesh of Beelzebub,” cried Mallet de Graville, aghast. “But comfort

thee, I have stores on my sumpter-mules--poulardes and fishes, and other

not despicable comestibles, and a few flasks of wine, not pressed, laud

the saints! from the vines of this country: wherefore, wilt thou see to

it, and instruct thy cooks how to season the cheer?”

“No cooks have I to trust to,” replied the abbot; “of cooking know they

here as much as of Latin; nathless, I will go and do my best with the

stew-pans. Meanwhile, thou wilt at least have rest and the bath. For the

Saxons, even in their convents, are a clean race, and learned the bath

from the Dane.”

“That I have noted,” said the knight, “for even at the smallest house at

which I lodged in my way from London, the host hath courteously offered

me the bath, and the hostess linen curious and fragrant; and to say

truth, the poor people are hospitable and kind, despite their uncouth

hate of the foreigner; nor is their meat to be despised, plentiful and

succulent; but pardex, as thou sayest, little helped by the art of

dressing. Wherefore, my father, I will while the time till the poulardes

be roasted, and the fish broiled or stewed, by the ablutions thou

profferest me. I shall tarry with thee some hours, for I have much to

learn.”

The abbot then led the Sire de Graville by the hand to the cell of honour

and guestship, and having seen that the bath prepared was of warmth

sufficient, for both Norman and Saxon (hardy men as they seem to us from

afar) so shuddered at the touch of cold water, that a bath of natural

temperature (as well as a hard bed) was sometimes imposed as a

penance,--the good father went his way, to examine the sumpter-mules, and

admonish the much suffering and bewildered lay-brother who officiated as

cook,--and who, speaking neither Norman nor Latin, scarce made out one

word in ten of his superior’s elaborate exhortations.

Mallet’s squire, with a change of raiment, and goodly coffers of soaps,

unguents, and odours, took his way to the knight, for a Norman of birth

was accustomed to much personal attendance, and had all respect for the

body; and it was nearly an hour before, in long gown of fur, reshaven,

dainty, and decked, the Sire de Graville bowed, and sighed, and prayed

before the refection set out in the abbot’s cell.

The two Normans, despite the sharp appetite of the layman, ate with great

gravity and decorum, drawing forth the morsels served to them on spits

with silent examination; seldom more than tasting, with looks of patient

dissatisfaction, each of the comestibles; sipping rather than drinking,

nibbling rather than devouring, washing their fingers in rose water with

nice care at the close, and waving them afterwards gracefully in the air,

to allow the moisture somewhat to exhale before they wiped off the

lingering dews with their napkins. Then they exchanged looks and sighed

in concert, as if recalling the polished manners of Normandy, still

retained in that desolate exile. And their temperate meal thus

concluded, dishes, wines, and attendants vanished, and their talk

commenced.

“How camest thou in England?” asked the abbot abruptly.

“Sauf your reverence,” answered De Graville, “not wholly for reason

different from those that bring thee hither. When, after the death of

that truculent and orgulous Godwin, King Edward entreated Harold to let

him have back some of his dear Norman favourites, thou, then little

pleased with the plain fare and sharp discipline of the convent of Bec,

didst pray Bishop William of London to accompany such train as Harold,

moved by his poor king’s supplication, was pleased to permit. The bishop

consented, and thou wert enabled to change monk’s cowl for abbot’s mitre.

In a word, ambition brought thee to England, and ambition brings me

hither.”

“Hem! and how? Mayst thou thrive better than I in this swine-sty!”

“You remember,” renewed De Graville, “that Lanfranc, the Lombard, was

pleased to take interest in my fortunes, then not the most flourishing,

and after his return from Rome, with the Pope’s dispensation for Count

William’s marriage with his cousin, he became William’s most trusted

adviser. Both William and Lanfranc were desirous to set an example of

learning to our Latinless nobles, and therefore my scholarship found

grace in their eyes. In brief since then I have prospered and thriven.

I have fair lands by the Seine, free from clutch of merchant and Jew. I

have founded a convent, and slain some hundreds of Breton marauders.

Need I say that I am in high favour? Now it so chanced that a cousin of

mine, Hugo de Magnaville, a brave lance and franc-rider, chanced to

murder his brother in a little domestic affray, and, being of conscience

tender and nice, the deed preyed on him, and he gave his lands to Odo of

Bayeux, and set off to Jerusalem. There, having prayed at the tomb,”

(the knight crossed himself,) “he felt at once miraculously cheered and

relieved; but, journeying back, mishaps befell him. He was made slave by

some infidel, to one of whose wives he sought to be gallant, par amours,

and only escaped at last by setting fire to paynim and prison. Now, by

the aid of the Virgin, he has got back to Rouen, and holds his own land

again in fief from proud Odo, as a knight of the bishop’s. It so

happened that, passing homeward through Lycia, before these misfortunes

befell him, he made friends with a fellow-pilgrim who had just returned,

like himself, from the Sepulchre, but not lightened, like him, of the

load of his crime. This poor palmer lay broken-hearted and dying in the

hut of an eremite, where my cousin took shelter; and, learning that Hugo

was on his way to Normandy, he made himself known as Sweyn, the once fair

and proud Earl of England, eldest son to old Godwin, and father to Haco,

whom our Count still holds as a hostage. He besought Hugo to intercede

with the Count for Haco’s release and return, if King Edward assented

thereto; and charged my cousin, moreover, with a letter to Harold, his

brother, which Hugo undertook to send over. By good luck, it so chanced

that, through all his sore trials, cousin Hugo kept safe round his neck a

leaden effigy of the Virgin. The infidels disdained to rob him of lead,

little dreaming the worth which the sanctity gave to the metal. To the

back of the image Hugo fastened the letter, and so, though somewhat

tattered and damaged, he had it still with him on arriving in Rouen.”

“Knowing, then, my grace with the Count, and not, despite absolution and

pilgrimage, much wishing to trust himself in the presence of William, who

thinks gravely of fratricide, he prayed me to deliver the message, and

ask leave to send to England the letter.”

“It is a long tale,” quoth the abbot.

“Patience, my father! I am nearly at the end. Nothing more in season

could chance for my fortunes. Know that William has been long moody and

anxious as to matters in England. The secret accounts he receives from

the Bishop of London make him see that Edward’s heart is much alienated

from him, especially since the Count has had daughters and sons; for, as

thou knowest, William and Edward both took vows of chastity in youth

[154], and William got absolved from his, while Edward hath kept firm to

the plight. Not long ere my cousin came back, William had heard that

Edward had acknowledged his kinsman as natural heir to his throne.

Grieved and troubled at this, William had said in my hearing, ‘Would that

amidst yon statues of steel, there were some cool head and wise tongue I

could trust with my interests in England! and would that I could devise

fitting plea and excuse for an envoy to Harold the Earl!’ Much had I

mused over these words, and a light-hearted man was Mallet de Graville

when, with Sweyn’s letter in hand, he went to Lanfranc the abbot and

said, ‘Patron and father! thou knowest that I, almost alone of the Norman

knights, have studied the Saxon language. And if the Duke wants

messenger and plea, here stands the messenger, and in his hand is the

plea. Then I told my tale. Lanfranc went at once to Duke William. By

this time, news of the Atheling’s death had arrived, and things looked

more bright to my liege. Duke William was pleased to summon me

straightway, and give me his instructions. So over the sea I came alone,

save a single squire, reached London, learned the King and his court were

at Winchester (but with them I had little to do), and that Harold the

Earl was at the head of his forces in Wales against Gryffyth the Lion

King. The Earl had sent in haste for a picked and chosen band of his own

retainers, on his demesnes near the city. These I joined, and learning

thy name at the monastery at Gloucester, I stopped here to tell thee my

news and hear thine.”

“Dear brother,” said the abbot, looking enviously on the knight, “would

that, like thee, instead of entering the Church, I had taken up arms!

Alike once was our lot, well born and penniless. Ah me!--Thou art now as

the swan on the river, and I as the shell on the rock.”

“But,” quoth the knight, “though the canons, it is true, forbid monks to

knock people on the head, except in self-preservation, thou knowest well

that, even in Normandy, (which, I take it, is the sacred college of all

priestly lore, on this side the Alps,) those canons are deemed too

rigorous for practice: and, at all events, it is not forbidden thee to

look on the pastime with sword or mace by thy side in case of need.

Wherefore, remembering thee in times past, I little counted on finding

thee--like a slug in thy cell! No; but with mail on thy back, the canons

clean forgotten, and helping stout Harold to sliver and brain these

turbulent Welchmen.”

“Ah me! ah me! No such good fortune!” sighed the tall abbot. “Little,

despite thy former sojourn in London, and thy lore of their tongue,

knowest thou of these unmannerly Saxons. Rarely indeed do abbot and

prelate ride to the battle [155]; and were it not for a huge Danish monk,

who took refuge here to escape mutilation for robbery, and who mistakes

the Virgin for a Valkyr, and St. Peter for Thor,--were it not, I say,

that we now and then have a bout at sword-play together, my arm would be

quite out of practice.”

“Cheer thee, old friend,” said the knight, pityingly, “better times may

come yet. Meanwhile, now to affairs. For all I hear strengthens all

William has heard, that Harold the Earl is the first man in England. Is

it not so?”

“Truly, and without dispute.”

“Is he married, or celibate? For that is a question which even his own

men seem to answer equivocally.”

“Why, all the wandering minstrels have songs, I am told by those who

comprehend this poor barbarous tongue, of the beauty of Editha pulchra,

to whom it is said the Earl is betrothed, or it may be worse. But he is

certainly not married, for the dame is akin to him within the degrees of

the Church.”

“Hem, not married! that is well; and this Algar, or Elgar, he is not now

with the Welch, I hear.”

“No; sore ill at Chester with wounds and much chafing, for he hath sense

to see that his cause is lost. The Norwegian fleet have been scattered

over the seas by the Earl’s ships, like birds in a storm. The rebel

Saxons who joined Gryffyth under Algar have been so beaten, that those

who survive have deserted their chief, and Gryffyth himself is penned up

in his last defiles, and cannot much longer resist the stout foe, who, by

valorous St. Michael, is truly a great captain. As soon as Gryffyth is

subdued, Algar will be crushed in his retreat, like a bloated spider in

his web; and then England will have rest, unless our liege, as thou

hintest, set her to work again.”

The Norman knight mused a few moments, before he said:

“I understand, then, that there is no man in the land who is peer to

Harold:--not, I suppose, Tostig his brother?”

“Not Tostig, surely, whom nought but Harold’s repute keeps a day in his

earldom. But of late--for he is brave and skilful in war--he hath done

much to command the respect, though he cannot win back the love, of his

fierce Northumbrians, for he hath holpen the Earl gallantly in this

invasion of Wales, both by sea and by land. But Tostig shines only from

his brother’s light; and if Gurth were more ambitious, Gurth alone could

be Harold’s rival.”

The Norman, much satisfied with the information thus gleaned from the

abbot, who, despite his ignorance of the Saxon tongue, was, like all his

countrymen, acute and curious, now rose to depart. The abbot, detaining

him a few moments, and looking at him wistfully, said, in a low voice:

“What thinkest thou are Count William’s chances of England?”

“Good, if he have recourse to stratagem; sure, if he can win Harold.”

“Yet, take my word, the English love not the Normans, and will fight

stiffly.”

“That I believe. But if fighting must be, I see that it will be the

fight of a single battle, for there is neither fortress nor mountain to

admit of long warfare. And look you, my friend, everything here is worn

out! The royal line is extinct with Edward, save in a child, whom I hear

no man name as a successor; the old nobility are gone, there is no

reverence for old names; the Church is as decrepit in the spirit as thy

lath monastery is decayed in its timbers; the martial spirit of the Saxon

is half rotted away in the subjugation to a clergy, not brave and

learned, but timid and ignorant; the desire for money eats up all

manhood; the people have been accustomed to foreign monarchs under the

Danes; and William, once victor, would have but to promise to retain the

old laws and liberties, to establish himself as firmly as Canute. The

Anglo-Danes might trouble him somewhat, but rebellion would become a

weapon in the hands of a schemer like William. He would bristle all the

land with castles and forts, and hold it as a camp. My poor friend, we

shall live yet to exchange gratulations,--thou prelate of some fair

English see, and I baron of broad English lands.”

“I think thou art right,” said the tall abbot, cheerily, “and marry, when

the day comes, I will at least fight for the Duke. Yea--thou art right,”

he continued, looking round the dilapidated walls of the cell; “all here

is worn out, and naught can restore the realm, save the Norman William,

or----”

“Or who?”

“Or the Saxon Harold. But thou goest to see him--judge for thyself.”

“I will do so, and heedfully,” said the Sire de Graville; and embracing

his friend he renewed his journey.

CHAPTER VII.

Messire Mallet de Graville possessed in perfection that cunning

astuteness which characterised the Normans, as it did all the old pirate

races of the Baltic; and if, O reader, thou, peradveuture, shouldst ever

in this remote day have dealings with the tall men of Ebor or Yorkshire,

there wilt thou yet find the old Dane-father’s wit--it may be to thy

cost--more especially if treating for those animals which the ancestors

ate, and which the sons, without eating, still manage to fatten on.

But though the crafty knight did his best, during his progress from

London into Wales, to extract from Sexwolf all such particulars

respecting Harold and his brethren as he had reasons for wishing to

learn, he found the stubborn sagacity or caution of the Saxon more than a

match for him. Sexwolf had a dog’s instinct in all that related to his

master; and he felt, though he scarce knew why, that the Norman cloaked

some design upon Harold in all the cross-questionings so carelessly

ventured. And his stiff silence, or bluff replies, when Harold was

mentioned, contrasted much the unreserve of his talk when it turned upon

the general topics of the day, or the peculiarities of Saxon manners.

By degrees, therefore, the knight, chafed and foiled, drew into himself;

and seeing no farther use could be made of the Saxon, suffered his own

national scorn of villein companionship to replace his artificial

urbanity. He therefore rode alone, and a little in advance of the rest,

noticing with a soldier’s eye the characteristics of the country, and

marvelling, while he rejoiced, at the insignificance of the defences

which, even on the Marches, guarded the English country from the Cymrian

ravager [156]. In musings of no very auspicious and friendly nature

towards the land he thus visited, the Norman, on the second day from that

in which he had conversed with the abbot, found himself amongst the

savage defiles of North Wales.

Pausing there in a narrow pass overhung with wild and desolate rocks, the

knight deliberately summoned his squires, clad himself in his ring mail,

and mounted his great destrier.

“Thou dost wrong, Norman,” said Sexwolf, “thou fatiguest thyself in

vain--heavy arms here are needless. I have fought in this country

before: and as for thy steed, thou wilt soon have to forsake it, and

march on foot.”

“Know, friend,” retorted the knight, “that I come not here to learn the

horn-book of war; and for the rest, know also, that a noble of Normandy

parts with his life ere he forsakes his good steed.”

“Ye outlanders and Frenchmen,” said Sexwolf, showing the whole of his

teeth through his forest of beard, “love boast and big talk; and, on my

troth, thou mayest have thy belly full of them yet; for we are still in

the track of Harold, and Harold never leaves behind him a foe. Thou art

as safe here, as if singing psalms in a convent.”

“For thy jests, let them pass, courteous sir,” said the Norman; “but I

pray thee only not to call me Frenchman [157]. I impute it to thy

ignorance in things comely and martial, and not to thy design to insult

me. Though my own mother was French, learn that a Norman despises a

Frank only less than he doth a Jew.”

“Crave your grace,” said the Saxon, “but I thought all ye outlanders were

the same, rib and rib, sibbe and sibbe.”

“Thou wilt know better, one of these days. March on, master Sexwolf.”

The pass gradually opened on a wide patch of rugged and herbless waste;

and Sexwolf, riding up to the knight, directed his attention to a stone,

on which was inscribed the words, “Hic victor fuit Haroldus,”--Here

Harold conquered.

“In sight of a stone like that, no Walloon dare come,” said the Saxon.

“A simple and classical trophy,” remarked the Norman, complacently, “and

saith much. I am glad to see thy lord knows the Latin.”

“I say not that he knows Latin,” replied the prudent Saxon; fearing that

that could be no wholesome information on his lord’s part, which was of a

kind to give gladness to the Norman--“Ride on while the road lets ye--in

God’s name.”

On the confines of Caernarvonshire, the troop halted at a small village,

round which had been newly dug a deep military-trench bristling with

palisades, and within its confines might be seen,--some reclined on the

grass, some at dice, some drinking,--many men, whose garbs of tanned

hide, as well as a pennon waving from a little mound in the midst,

bearing the tiger heads of Earl Harold’s insignia, showed them to be

Saxons.

“Here we shall learn,” said Sexwolf, “what the Earl is about--and here,

at present, ends my journey.”

“Are these the Earl’s headquarters, then?--no castle, even of wood--no

wall, nought but ditch and palisades?” asked Mallet de Graville in a tone

between surprise and contempt.

“Norman,” said Sexwolf, “the castle is there, though you see it not, and

so are the walls. The castle is Harold’s name, which no Walloon will

dare to confront; and the walls are the heaps of the slain which lie in

every valley around.” So saying, he wound his horn, which was speedily

answered, and led the way over a plank which admitted across the trench.

“Not even a drawbridge!” groaned the knight.

Sexwolf exchanged a few words with one who seemed the head of the small

garrison, and then regaining the Norman, said: “The Earl and his men have

advanced into the mountainous regions of Snowdon; and there, it is said,

the blood-lusting Gryffyth is at length driven to bay. Harold hath left

orders that, after as brief a refreshment as may be, I and my men, taking

the guide he hath left for us, join him on foot. There may now be danger:

for though Gryffyth himself may be pinned to his heights, he may have met

some friends in these parts to start up from crag and combe. The way on

horse is impassable: wherefore, master Norman, as our quarrel is not

thine nor thine our lord, I commend thee to halt here in peace and in

safety, with the sick and the prisoners.”

“It is a merry companionship, doubtless,” said the Norman; “but one

travels to learn, and I would fain see somewhat of thine uncivil

skirmishings with these men of the mountains; wherefore, as I fear my

poor mules are light of the provender, give me to eat and to drink. And

then shalt thou see, should we come in sight of the enemy, if a Norman’s

big words are the sauce of small deeds.”

“Well spoken, and better than I reckoned on,” said Sexwolf, heartily.

While De Graville, alighting, sauntered about the village, the rest of

the troop exchanged greetings with their countrymen. It was, even to the

warrior’s eye, a mournful scene. Here and there, heaps of ashes and

ruin-houses riddled and burned--the small, humble church, untouched

indeed by war, but looking desolate and forlorn--with sheep grazing on

large recent mounds thrown over the brave dead, who slept in the

ancestral spot they had defended.

The air was fragrant with spicy smells of the gale or bog myrtle; and the

village lay sequestered in a scene wild indeed and savage, but prodigal

of a stern beauty to which the Norman, poet by race, and scholar by

culture, was not insensible. Seating himself on a rude stone, apart from

all the warlike and murmuring groups, he looked forth on the dim and vast

mountain peaks, and the rivulet that rushed below, intersecting the

village, and lost amidst copses of mountain ash. From these more refined

contemplations he was roused by Sexwolf, who, with greater courtesy than

was habitual to him, accompanied the theowes who brought the knight a

repast, consisting of cheese, and small pieces of seethed kid, with a

large horn of very indifferent mead.

“The Earl puts all his men on Welch diet,” said the captain,

apologetically. “For indeed, in this lengthy warfare, nought else is to

be had!”

The knight curiously inspected the cheese, and bent earnestly over the

kid.

“It sufficeth, good Sexwolf,” said he, suppressing a natural sigh. “But

instead of this honey-drink, which is more fit for bees than for men, get

me a draught of fresh water: water is your only safe drink before

fighting.”

“Thou hast never drank ale, then!” said the Saxon; “but thy foreign

tastes shall be heeded, strange man.”

A little after noon, the horns were sounded, and the troop prepared to

depart. But the Norman observed that they had left behind all their

horses: and his squire, approaching, informed him that Sexwolf had

positively forbidden the knight’s steed to be brought forth.

“Was it ever heard before,” cried Sire Mallet de Graville, “that a Norman

knight was expected to walk, and to walk against a foe too! Call hither

the villein,--that is, the captain.”

But Sexwolf himself here appeared, and to him De Graville addressed his

indignant remonstrance. The Saxon stood firm, and to each argument

replied simply, “It is the Earl’s orders;” and finally wound up with a

bluff--“Go or let alone: stay here with thy horse, or march with us on

thy feet.”

“My horse is a gentleman,” answered the knight, “and, as such, would be

my more fitting companion. But as it is, I yield to compulsion--I bid

thee solemnly observe, by compulsion; so that it may never be said of

William Mallet de Graville, that he walked, bon gre, to battle.” With

that, he loosened his sword in the sheath, and, still retaining his ring

mail, fitting close as a shirt, strode on with the rest.

A Welch guide, subject to one of the Underkings (who was in allegiance to

England, and animated, as many of those petty chiefs were, with a

vindictive jealousy against the rival tribe of Gryffyth, far more intense

than his dislike of the Saxon), led the way.

The road wound for some time along the course of the river Conway;

Penmaen-mawr loomed before them. Not a human being came in sight, not a

goat was seen on the distant ridges, not a sheep on the pastures. The

solitude in the glare of the broad August sun was oppressive. Some houses

they passed--if buildings of rough stones, containing but a single room,

can be called houses--but they were deserted. Desolation preceded their

way, for they were on the track of Harold the Victor. At length, they

passed the cold Conovium, now Caer-hen, lying low near the river. There

were still (not as we now scarcely discern them, after centuries of

havoc,) the mighty ruins of the Romans,--vast shattered walls, a tower

half demolished, visible remnants of gigantic baths, and, proudly rising

near the present ferry of Tal-y-Cafn, the fortress, almost unmutilated,

of Castell-y-Bryn. On the castle waved the pennon of Harold. Many large

flat-bottomed boats were moored to the river-side, and the whole place

bristled with spears and javelins.

Much comforted, (for,--though he disdained to murmur, and rather than

forego his mail, would have died therein a martyr,--Mallet de Graville

was mightily wearied by the weight of his steel,) and hoping now to see

Harold himself, the knight sprang forward with a spasmodic effort at

liveliness, and found himself in the midst of a group, among whom he

recognised at a glance his old acquaintance, Godrith. Doffing his helm

with its long nose-piece, he caught the thegn’s hand, and exclaimed:

“Well met, ventre de Guillaume! well met, O Godree the debonnair! Thou

rememberest Mallet de Graville, and in this unseemly guise, on foot, and

with villeins, sweating under the eyes of plebeian Phoebus, thou

beholdest that much-suffering man!”

“Welcome indeed,” returned Godrith, with some embarrassment; “but how

camest thou hither, and whom seekest thou?”

“Harold, thy Count, man--and I trust he is here.”

“Not so, but not far distant--at a place by the mouth of the river called

Caer Gyffin [158]. Thou shalt take boat, and be there ere the sunset.”

“Is a battle at hand? Yon churl disappointed and tricked me; he promised

me danger, and not a soul have we met.”

“Harold’s besom sweeps clean,” answered Godrith, smiling. “But thou art

like, perhaps, to be in at the death. We have driven this Welch lion to

bay at last. He is ours, or grim Famine’s. Look yonder;” and Godrith

pointed to the heights of Penmaen-mawr. “Even at this distance, you may

yet descry something grey and dim against the sky.”

“Deemest thou my eye so ill practised in siege, as not to see towers?

Tall and massive they are, though they seem here as airy as roasts, and

as dwarfish as landmarks.”

“On that hill-top, and in those towers, is Gryffyth, the Welch king, with

the last of his force. He cannot escape us; our ships guard all the

coasts of the shore; our troops, as here, surround every pass. Spies,

night and day, keep watch. The Welch moels (or beacon-rocks) are manned

by our warders. And, were the Welch King to descend, signals would blaze

from post to post, and gird him with fire and sword. From land to land,

from hill to hill, from Hereford to Caerleon, from Caerleon to Milford,

from Milford to Snowdon, through Snowdon to yonder fort, built, they say,

by the fiends or the giants,--through defile and through forest, over

rock, through morass, we have pressed on his heels. Battle and foray

alike have drawn the blood from his heart; and thou wilt have seen the

drops yet red on the way, where the stone tells that Harold was victor.”

“A brave man and true king, then, this Gryffyth,” said the Norman, with

some admiration; “but,” he added in a colder tone, “I confess, for my own

part, that though I pity the valiant man beaten, I honour the brave man

who wins; and though I have seen but little of this rough land as yet, I

can well judge from what I have seen, that no captain, not of patience

unwearied, and skill most consummate, could conquer a bold enemy in a

country where every rock is a fort.”

“So I fear,” answered Godrith, “that thy countryman Rolf found; for the

Welch beat him sadly, and the reason was plain. He insisted on using

horses where no horses could climb, and attiring men in full armour to

fight against men light and nimble as swallows, that skim the earth, then

are lost in clouds. Harold, more wise, turned our Saxons into Welchmen,

flying as they flew, climbing where they climbed; it has been as a war of

the birds. And now there rests but the eagle, in his last lonely eyrie.”

“Thy battles have improved thy eloquence much, Messire Godree,” said the

Norman, condescendingly. “Nevertheless, I cannot but think a few light

horse----”

“Could scale yon mountain-brow?” said Godrith, laughing, and pointing to

Penmaen-mawr.

The Norman looked and was silent, though he thought to himself, “That

Sexwolf was no such dolt after all!”

BOOK VII.

THE WELCH KING.

CHAPTER I.

The sun had just cast his last beams over the breadth of water into which

Conway, or rather Cyn-wy, “the great river,” emerges its winding waves.

Not at that time existed the matchless castle, which is now the monument

of Edward Plantagenet, and the boast of Wales. But besides all the

beauty the spot took from nature, it had even some claim from ancient

art. A rude fortress rose above the stream of Gyffin, out of the wrecks

of some greater Roman hold [159], and vast ruins of a former town lay

round it; while opposite the fort, on the huge and ragged promontory of

Gogarth, might still be seen, forlorn and grey, the wrecks of the

imperial city, destroyed ages before by lightning.

All these remains of a power and a pomp that Rome in vain had bequeathed

to the Briton, were full of pathetic and solemn interest, when blent with

the thought, that on yonder steep, the brave prince of a race of heroes,

whose line transcended, by ages, all the other royalties of the North,

awaited, amidst the ruins of man, and in the stronghold which nature yet

gave, the hour of his doom.

But these were not the sentiments of the martial and observant Norman,

with the fresh blood of a new race of conquerors.

“In this land,” thought he, “far more even than in that of the Saxon,

there are the ruins of old; and when the present can neither maintain nor

repair the past, its future is subjection or despair.”

Agreeably to the peculiar uses of Saxon military skill, which seems to

have placed all strength in dykes and ditches, as being perhaps the

cheapest and readiest outworks, a new trench had been made round the

fort, on two sides, connecting it on the third and fourth with the

streams of Gyffin and the Conway. But the boat was rowed up to the very

walls, and the Norman, springing to land, was soon ushered into the

presence of the Earl.

Harold was seated before a rude table, and bending over a rough map of

the great mountain of Penmaen; a lamp of iron stood beside the map,

though the air was yet clear.

The Earl rose, as De Graville, entering with the proud but easy grace

habitual to his countrymen, said, in his best Saxon:

“Hail to Earl Harold! William Mallet de Graville, the Norman, greets

him, and brings him news from beyond the seas.”

There was only one seat in that bare room--the seat from which the Earl

had risen. He placed it with simple courtesy before his visitor, and

leaning, himself, against the table, said, in the Norman tongue, which he

spoke fluently:

“It is no slight thanks that I owe to the Sire de Graville, that he hath

undertaken voyage and journey on my behalf; but before you impart your

news, I pray you to take rest and food.”

“Rest will not be unwelcome; and food, if unrestricted to goats’ cheese,

and kid-flesh,--luxuries new to my palate,--will not be untempting; but

neither food nor rest can I take, noble Harold, before I excuse myself,

as a foreigner, for thus somewhat infringing your laws by which we are

banished, and acknowledging gratefully the courteous behavior I have met

from thy countrymen notwithstanding.”

“Fair Sir,” answered Harold, “pardon us if, jealous of our laws, we have

seemed inhospitable to those who would meddle with them. But the Saxon

is never more pleased than when the foreigner visits him only as the

friend: to the many who settle amongst us for commerce--Fleming, Lombard,

German, and Saracen--we proffer shelter and welcome; to the few who, like

thee, Sir Norman, venture over the seas but to serve us, we give frank

cheer and free hand.”

Agreeably surprised at this gracious reception from the son of Godwin,

the Norman pressed the hand extended to him, and then drew forth a small

case, and related accurately, and with feeling, the meeting of his cousin

with Sweyn, and Sweyn’s dying charge.

The Earl listened, with eyes bent on the ground, and face turned from the

lamp; and, when Mallet had concluded his recital, Harold said, with an

emotion he struggled in vain to repress:

“I thank you cordially gentle Norman, for kindness kindly rendered!

I--I--” The voice faltered. “Sweyn was very dear to me in his sorrows!

We heard that he had died in Lycia, and grieved much and long. So, after

he had thus spoken to your cousin, he--he----Alas! O Sweyn, my brother!”

“He died,” said the Norman, soothingly; “but shriven and absolved; and my

cousin says, calm and hopeful, as they die ever who have knelt at the

Saviour’s tomb!”

Harold bowed his head, and turned the case that held the letter again and

again in his hand, but would not venture to open it. The knight himself,

touched by a grief so simple and manly, rose with the delicate instinct

that belongs to sympathy, and retired to the door, without which yet

waited the officer who had conducted him.

Harold did not attempt to detain him, but followed him across the

threshold, and briefly commanding the officer to attend to his guest as

to himself, said: “With the morning, Sire de Granville, we shall meet

again; I see that you are one to whom I need not excuse man’s natural

emotions.”

“A noble presence!” muttered the knight, as he descended the stairs; “but

he hath Norman, at least Norse, blood in his veins on the distaff

side.--Fair Sir!”--(this aloud to the officer)--“any meat save the

kid-flesh, I pray thee; and any drink save the mead!”

“Fear not, guest” said the officer; “for Tostig the Earl hath two ships

in yon bay, and hath sent us supplies that would please Bishop William of

London; for Tostig the Earl is a toothsome man.”

“Commend me, then, to Tostig the Earl,” said the knight; “he is an earl

after my own heart.”

CHAPTER II.

On re-entering the room, Harold drew the large bolt across the door,

opened the case, and took forth the distained and tattered scroll:

“When this comes to thee, Harold, the brother of thy childish days will

sleep in the flesh, and be lost to men’s judgment and earth’s woe in the

spirit. I have knelt at the Tomb; but no dove hath come forth from the

cloud,--no stream of grace hath re-baptised the child of wrath! They

tell me now--monk and priest tell me--that I have atoned all my sins;

that the dread weregeld is paid; that I may enter the world of men with a

spirit free from the load, and a name redeemed from the stain. Think so,

O brother!--Bid my father (if he still lives, the dear old man!) think

so;--tell Githa to think it; and oh, teach Haco, my son, to hold the

belief as a truth! Harold, again I commend to thee my son; be to him as

a father! My death surely releases him as a hostage. Let him not grow

up in the court of the stranger, in the land of our foes. Let his feet,

in his youth, climb the green holts of England;--let his eyes, resin dims

them, drink the blue of her skies! When this shall reach thee, thou in

thy calm, effortless strength, wilt be more great than Godwin our father.

Power came to him with travail and through toil, the geld of craft and of

force. Power is born to thee as strength to the strong man; it gathers

around thee as thou movest; it is not thine aim, it is thy nature, to be

great. Shield my child with thy might; lead him forth from the

prison-house by thy serene right hand! I ask not for lordships and

earldoms, as the appanage of his father; train him not to be rival to

thee:--I ask but for freedom, and English air! So counting on thee, O

Harold, I turn my face to the wall, and hush my wild heart to peace!”

The scroll dropped noiseless from Harold’s hand.

“Thus,” said he, mournfully, “hath passed away less a life than a dream!

Yet of Sweyn, in our childhood, was Godwin most proud; who so lovely in

peace, and so terrible in wrath? My mother taught him the songs of the

Baltic, and Hilda led his steps through the woodland with tales of hero

and scald. Alone of our House, he had the gift of the Dane in the flow

of fierce song, and for him things lifeless had being. Stately tree,

from which all the birds of heaven sent their carol; where the falcon

took roost, whence the mavis flew forth in its glee,--how art thou

blasted and seared, bough and core!--smit by the lightning and consumed

by the worm!”

He paused, and, though none were by, he long shaded his brow with his

hand.

“Now,” thought he, as he rose and slowly paced the chamber, “now to what

lives yet on earth--his son! Often hath my mother urged me in behalf of

these hostages; and often have I sent to reclaim them. Smooth and false

pretexts have met my own demand, and even the remonstrance of Edward

himself. But, surely, now that William hath permitted this Norman to

bring over the letter, he will assent to what it hath become a wrong and

an insult to refuse; and Haco will return to his father’s land, and

Wolnoth to his mother’s arms.”

CHAPTER III.

Messire Mallet de Graville (as becomes a man bred up to arms, and

snatching sleep with quick grasp whenever that blessing be his to

command) no sooner laid his head on the pallet to which he had been

consigned, than his eyes closed, and his senses were deaf even to dreams.

But at the dead of the midnight he was wakened by sounds that might have

roused the Seven Sleepers--shouts, cries, and yells, the blast of horns,

the tramp of feet, and the more distant roar of hurrying multitudes. He

leaped from his bed, and the whole chamber was filled with a lurid

bloodred air. His first thought was that the fort was on fire. But

springing upon the settle along the wall, and looking through the

loophole of the tower, it seemed as if not the fort but the whole land

was one flame, and through the glowing atmosphere he beheld all the

ground, near and far, swarming with men. Hundreds were swimming the

rivulet, clambering up dyke mounds, rushing on the levelled spears of the

defenders, breaking through line and palisade, pouring into the

enclosures; some in half-armour of helm and corselet--others in linen

tunics--many almost naked. Loud sharp shrieks of “Alleluia!” [160]

blended with those of “Out! out! Holy crosse!” [161] He divined at once

that the Welch were storming the Saxon hold. Short time indeed sufficed

for that active knight to case himself in his mail; and, sword in hand,

he burst through the door, cleared the stairs, and gained the hall below,

which was filled with men arming in haste.

“Where is Harold?” he exclaimed.

“On the trenches already,” answered Sexwolf, buckling his corslet of

hide. “This Welch hell hath broke loose.”

“And you are their beacon-fires? Then the whole land is upon us!”

“Prate less,” quoth Sexwolf; “those are the hills now held by the warders

of Harold: our spies gave them notice, and the watch-fires prepared us

ere the fiends came in sight, otherwise we had been lying here limbless

or headless. Now, men, draw up, and march forth.”

“Hold! hold!” cried the pious knight, crossing himself, “is there no

priest here to bless us? first a prayer and a psalm!”

“Prayer and psalm!” cried Sexwolf, astonished, “an thou hadst said ale

and mead, I could have understood thee.--Out! Out!--Holyrood, Holyrood!”

“The godless paynims!” muttered the Norman, borne away with the crowd.

Once in the open space, the scene was terrific. Brief as had been the

onslaught the carnage was already unspeakable. By dint of sheer physical

numbers, animated by a valour that seemed as the frenzy of madmen or the

hunger of wolves, hosts of the Britons had crossed trench and stream,

seizing with their hands the points of the spears opposed to them,

bounding over the corpses of their countrymen, and with yells of wild joy

rushing upon the close serried lines drawn up before the fort. The

stream seemed literally to run gore; pierced by javelins and arrows,

corpses floated and vanished, while numbers, undeterred by the havoc,

leaped into the waves from the opposite banks. Like bears that surround

the ship of a sea-king beneath the polar meteors, or the midnight sun of

the north, came the savage warriors through that glaring atmosphere.

Amidst all, two forms were pre-eminent: the one, tall and towering, stood

by the trench, and behind a banner, that now drooped round the stave, now

streamed wide and broad, stirred by the rush of men--for the night in

itself was breezeless. With a vast Danish axe wielded by both hands,

stood this man, confronting hundreds, and at each stroke, rapid as the

levin, fell a foe. All round him was a wall of his own--the dead. But

in the centre of the space, leading on a fresh troop of shouting Welchmen

who had forced their way from another part, was a form which seemed

charmed against arrow and spear. For the defensive arms of this chief

were as slight as if worn but for ornament: a small corselet of gold

covered only the centre of his breast, a gold collar of twisted wires

circled his throat, and a gold bracelet adorned his bare arm, dropping

gore, not his own, from the wrist to the elbow. He was small and

slight-shaped--below the common standard of men--but he seemed as one

made a giant by the sublime inspiration of war. He wore no helmet,

merely a golden circlet; and his hair, of deep red (longer than was usual

with the Welch), hung like the mane of a lion over his shoulders, tossing

loose with each stride. His eyes glared like the tiger’s at night, and

he leaped on the spears with a bound. Lost a moment amidst hostile

ranks, save by the swift glitter of his short sword, he made, amidst all,

a path for himself and his followers, and emerged from the heart of the

steel unscathed and loud-breathing; while, round the line he had broken,

wheeled and closed his wild men, striking, rushing, slaying, slain.

“Pardex, this is war worth the sharing,” said the knight. “And now,

worthy Sexwolf, thou shalt see if the Norman is the vaunter thou deemest

him. Dieu nous aide! Notre Dame!--Take the foe in the rear.” But

turning round, he perceived that Sexwolf had already led his men towards

the standard, which showed them where stood the Earl, almost alone in his

peril. The knight, thus left to himself, did not hesitate:--a minute

more, and he was in the midst of the Welch force, headed by the chief

with the golden panoply. Secure in his ring mail against the light

weapons of the Welch, the sweep of the Norman sword was as the scythe of

Death. Right and left he smote through the throng which he took in the

flank, and had almost gained the small phalanx of Saxons, that lay firm

in the midst, when the Cymrian Chief’s flashing eye was drawn to his new

and strange foe, by the roar and the groan round the Norman’s way; and

with the half-naked breast against the shirt of mail, and the short Roman

sword against the long Norman falchion, the Lion King of Wales fronted

the knight.

Unequal as seems the encounter, so quick was the spring of the Briton, so

pliant his arm, and so rapid his weapon, that that good knight (who

rather from skill and valour than brute physical strength, ranked amongst

the prowest of William’s band of martial brothers) would willingly have

preferred to see before him Fitzosborne or Montgommeri, all clad in steel

and armed with mace and lance, than parried those dazzling strokes, and

fronted the angry majesty of that helmless brow. Already the strong rings

of his mail had been twice pierced, and his blood trickled fast, while

his great sword had but smitten the air in its sweeps at the foe; when

the Saxon phalanx, taking advantage of the breach in the ring that girt

them, caused by this diversion, and recognising with fierce ire the gold

torque and breastplate of the Welch King, made their desperate charge.

Then for some minutes the pele mele was confused and indistinct--blows

blind and at random--death coming no man knew whence or how; till

discipline and steadfast order (which the Saxons kept, as by mechanism,

through the discord) obstinately prevailed. The wedge forced its way;

and, though reduced in numbers and sore wounded, the Saxon troop cleared

the ring, and joined the main force drawn up by the fort, and guarded in

the rear by its wall.

Meanwhile Harold, supported by the band under Sexwolf, had succeeded at

length in repelling farther reinforcements of the Welch at the more

accessible part of the trenches; and casting now his practised eye over

the field, he issued orders for some of the men to regain the fort, and

open from the battlements, and from every loophole, the batteries of

stone and javelin, which then (with the Saxons, unskilled in sieges,)

formed the main artillery of forts. These orders given, he planted

Sexwolf and most of his band to keep watch round the trenches; and

shading his eye with his hand, and looking towards the moon, all waning

and dimmed in the watchfires, he said, calmly, “Now patience fights for

us. Ere the moon reaches yon hill-top, the troops of Aber and Caer-hen

will be on the slopes of Penmaen, and cut off the retreat of the

Walloons. Advance my flag to the thick of yon strife.”

But as the Earl, with his axe swung over his shoulder, and followed but

by some half-score or more with his banner, strode on where the wild war

was now mainly concentred, just midway between trench and fort, Gryffyth

caught sight both of the banner and the Earl, and left the press at the

very moment when he had gained the greatest advantage; and when indeed,

but for the Norman, who, wounded as he was, and unused to fight on foot,

stood resolute in the van, the Saxons, wearied out by numbers, and

falling fast beneath the javelins, would have fled into their walls, and

so sealed their fate,--for the Welch would have entered at their heels.

But it was the misfortune of the Welch heroes never to learn that war is

a science; and instead of now centering all force on the point most

weakened, the whole field vanished from the fierce eye of the Welch King,

when he saw the banner and form of Harold.

The Earl beheld the coming foe, wheeling round, as the hawk on the

heron;--halted, drew up his few men in a semicircle, with their large

shields as a rampart, and their levelled spears as a palisade; and before

them all, as a tower, stood Harold with his axe. In a minute more he was

surrounded; and through the rain of javelins that poured upon him, hissed

and glittered the sword of Gryffyth. But Harold, more practised than the

Sire de Graville in the sword-play of the Welch, and unencumbered by

other defensive armour (save only the helm, which was shaped like the

Norman’s,) than his light coat of hide, opposed quickness to quickness,

and suddenly dropping his axe, sprang upon his foe, and clasping him

round with his left arm, with the right hand griped at his throat:

“Yield and quarter!--yield, for thy life, son of Llewellyn!”

Strong was that embrace, and deathlike that gripe; yet, as the snake from

the hand of the dervise--as a ghost from the grasp of the dreamer, the

lithe Cymrian glided away, and the broken torque was all that remained in

the clutch of Harold.

At this moment a mighty yell of despair broke from the Welch near the

fort: stones and javelins rained upon them from the walls, and the fierce

Norman was in the midst, with his sword drinking blood; but not for

javelin, stone, and sword, shrank and shouted the Welchmen. On the other

side of the trenches were marching against them their own countrymen, the

rival tribes that helped the stranger to rend the land: and far to the

right were seen the spears of the Saxon from Aber, and to the left was

heard the shout of the forces under Godrith from Caer-hen; and they who

had sought the leopard in his lair were now themselves the prey caught in

the toils. With new heart, as they beheld these reinforcements, the

Saxons pressed on; tumult, and flight, and indiscriminate slaughter,

wrapped the field. The Welch rushed to the stream and the trenches; and

in the bustle and hurlabaloo, Gryffyth was swept along, as a bull by a

torrent; still facing the foe, now chiding, now smiting his own men, now

rushing alone on the pursuers, and halting their onslaught, he gained,

still unwounded, the stream, paused a moment, laughed loud, and sprang

into the wave. A hundred javelins hissed into the sullen and bloody

waters. “Hold!” cried Harold the Earl, lifting his hand on high, “No

dastard dart at the brave!”

CHAPTER IV.

The fugitive Britons, scarce one-tenth of the number that had first

rushed to the attack,--performed their flight with the same Parthian

rapidity that characterised the assault; and escaping both Welch foe and

Saxon, though the former broke ground to pursue them, they gained the

steeps of Penmaen.

There was no further thought of slumber that night within the walls.

While the wounded were tended, and the dead were cleared from the soil,

Harold, with three of his chiefs, and Mallet de Graville, whose feats

rendered it more than ungracious to refuse his request that he might

assist in the council, conferred upon the means of terminating the war

with the next day. Two of the thegns, their blood hot with strife and

revenge, proposed to scale the mountain with the whole force the

reinforcements had brought them, and put all they found to the sword.

The third, old and prudent, and inured to Welch warfare, thought

otherwise.

“None of us,” said he, “know what is the true strength of the place which

ye propose to storm. Not even one Welchman have we found who hath ever

himself gained the summit, or examined the castle which is said to exist

there.” [162]

“Said!” echoed De Graville, who, relieved of his mail, and with his

wounds bandaged, reclined on his furs on the floor. “Said, noble sir!

Cannot our eyes perceive the towers?”

The old thegn shook his head. “At a distance, and through mists, stones

loom large, and crags themselves take strange shapes. It may be castle,

may be rock, may be old roofless temples of heathenesse that we see. But

to repeat (and, as I am slow, I pray not again to be put out in my

speech)--none of us know what, there, exists of defence, man-made or

Nature-built. Not even thy Welch spies, son of Godwin, have gained to

the heights. In the midst lie the scouts of the Welch King, and those on

the top can see the bird fly, the goat climb. Few of thy spies, indeed,

have ever returned with life; their heads have been left at the foot of

the hill, with the scroll in their lips,--‘Dic ad inferos--quid in

superis novisti.’ Tell to the shades below what thou hast seen in the

heights above.”

“And the Walloons know Latin!” muttered the knight; “I respect them!”

The slow thegn frowned, stammered, and renewed:

“One thing at least is clear; that the rock is well nigh insurmountable

to those who know not the passes; that strict watch, baffling even Welch

spies, is kept night and day; that the men on the summit are desperate

and fierce; that our own troops are awed and terrified by the belief of

the Welch, that the spot is haunted and the towers fiend-founded. One

single defeat may lose us two years of victory. Gryffyth may break from

the eyrie, regain what he hath lost, win back our Welch allies, ever

faithless and hollow. Wherefore, I say, go on as we have begun. Beset

all the country round; cut off all supplies, and let the foe rot by

famine--or waste, as he hath done this night, his strength by vain

onslaught and sally.”

“Thy counsel is good,” said Harold, “but there is yet something to add to

it, which may shorten the strife, and gain the end with less sacrifice of

life. The defeat of tonight will have humbled the spirits of the Welch;

take them yet in the hour of despair and disaster. I wish, therefore, to

send to their outposts a nuncius, with these terms: ‘Life and pardon to

all who lay down arms and surrender.’”

“What, after such havoc and gore?” cried one of the thegns.

“They defend their own soil,” replied the Earl simply: “had not we done

the same?”

“But the rebel Gryffyth?” asked the old thegn, “thou canst not accept him

again as crowned sub-king of Edward?”

“No,” said the Earl, “I propose to exempt Gryffyth alone from the pardon,

with promise, natheless, of life if he give himself up as prisoner; and

count, without further condition, on the King’s mercy.” There was a

prolonged silence. None spoke against the Earl’s proposal, though the

two younger thegns misliked it much.

At last said the elder, “But hast thou thought who will carry this

message? Fierce and wild are yon blood-dogs; and man must needs shrive

soul and make will, if he will go to their kennel.”

“I feel sure that my bode will be safe,” answered Harold; “for Gryffyth

has all the pride of a king, and, sparing neither man nor child in the

onslaught, will respect what the Roman taught his sires to respect--envoy

from chief to chief--as a head scatheless and sacred.”

“Choose whom thou wilt, Harold,” said one of the young thegns, laughing,

“but spare thy friends; and whomsoever thou choosest, pay his widow the

weregeld.”

“Fair sirs,” then said De Graville, “if ye think that I, though a

stranger, could serve you as nuncius, it would be a pleasure to me to

undertake this mission. First, because, being curious as concerns forts

and castles, I would fain see if mine eyes have deceived me in taking yon

towers for a hold of great might. Secondly, because that same wild-cat

of a king must have a court rare to visit. And the only reflection that

withholds my pressing the offer as a personal suit is, that though I have

some words of the Breton jargon at my tongue’s need, I cannot pretend to

be a Tully in Welch; howbeit, since it seems that one, at least, among

them knows something of Latin, I doubt not but what I shall get out my

meaning!”

“Nay, as to that, Sire de Graville,” said Harold, who seemed well pleased

with the knight’s offer, “there shall be no hindrance or let, as I will

make clear to you; and in spite of what you have just heard, Gryffyth

shall harm you not in limb or in life. But, kindly and courteous Sir,

will your wounds permit the journey, not long, but steep and laborious,

and only to be made on foot?”

“On foot!” said the knight, a little staggered, “Pardex! well and truly,

I did not count upon that!”

“Enough,” said Harold, turning away in evident disappointment, “think of

it no more.”

“Nay, by your leave, what I have once said I stand to,” returned the

knight; “albeit, you may as well cleave in two one of those respectable

centaurs of which we have read in our youth, as part Norman and horse. I

will forthwith go to my chamber, and apparel myself becomingly--not

forgetting, in case of the worst, to wear my mail under my robe.

Vouchsafe me but an armourer, just to rivet up the rings through which

scratched so felinely the paw of that well-appelled Griffin.”

“I accept your offer frankly,” said Harold, “and all shall be prepared

for you, as soon as you yourself will re-seek me here.”

The knight rose, and though somewhat stiff and smarting with his wounds,

left the room lightly, summoned his armourer and squire, and having

dressed with all the care and pomp habitual to a Norman, his gold chain

round his neck, and his vest stiff with broidery, he re-entered the

apartment of Harold. The Earl received him alone, and came up to him

with a cordial face. “I thank thee more, brave Norman, than I ventured

to say before my thegns, for I tell thee frankly, that my intent and aim

are to save the life of this brave king; and thou canst well understand

that every Saxon amongst us must have his blood warmed by contest, and

his eyes blind with national hate. You alone, as a stranger, see the

valiant warrior and hunted prince, and as such you can feel for him the

noble pity of manly foes.”

“That is true,” said De Graville, a little surprised, “though we Normans

are at least as fierce as you Saxons, when we have once tasted blood; and

I own nothing would please me better than to dress that catamaran in

mail, put a spear in its claws, and a horse under its legs, and thus

fight out my disgrace at being so clawed and mauled by its griffes. And

though I respect a brave knight in distress, I can scarce extend my

compassion to a thing that fights against all rule, martial and kingly.”

The Earl smiled gravely. “It is the mode in which his ancestors rushed

on the spears of Caesar. Pardon him.”

“I pardon him, at your gracious request,” quoth the knight, with a grand

air, and waving his hands; “say on.”

“You will proceed with a Welch monk--whom, though not of the faction of

Gryffyth, all Welchmen respect--to the mouth of a frightful pass,

skirting the river; the monk will bear aloft the holy rood in signal of

peace. Arrived at that pass, you will doubtless be stopped. The monk

here will be spokesman; and ask safe-conduct to Gryffyth to deliver my

message; he will also bear certain tokens, which will no doubt win the

way for you.”

“Arrived before Gryffyth, the monk will accost him; mark and heed well

his gestures, since thou wilt know not the Welch tongue he employs. And

when he raises the rood, thou,--in the mean while, having artfully

approached close to Gryffyth,--wilt whisper in Saxon, which he well

understands, and pressing the ring I now give thee into his hand, ‘Obey,

by this pledge; thou knowest Harold is true, and thy head is sold by

thine own people.’ If he asks more thou knowest nought.”

“So far, this is as should be from chief to chief,” said the Norman,

touched, “and thus had Fitzosborne done to his foe. I thank thee for

this mission, and the more that thou hast not asked me to note the

strength of the bulwark, and number the men that may keep it.”

Again Harold smiled. “Praise me not for this, noble Norman--we plain

Saxons have not your refinements. If ye are led to the summit, which I

think ye will not be, the monk at least will have eyes to see, and tongue

to relate. But to thee I confide this much;--I know already, that

Gryffyth’s strongholds are not his walls and his towers, but the

superstition of our men, and the despair of his own. I could win those

heights, as I have won heights as cloudcapt, but with fearful loss of my

own troops, and the massacre of every foe. Both I would spare, if I

may.”

“Yet thou hast not shown such value for life, in the solitudes I passed,”

said the knight bluntly.

Harold turned pale, but said firmly, “Sire de Graville, a stern thing is

duty, and resistless is its voice. These Welchmen, unless curbed to

their mountains, eat into the strength of England, as the tide gnaws into

a shore. Merciless were they in their ravages on our borders, and

ghastly and torturing their fell revenge. But it is one thing to grapple

with a foe fierce and strong, and another to smite when his power is

gone, fang and talon. And when I see before me the faded king of a great

race, and the last band of doomed heroes, too few and too feeble to make

head against my arms,--when the land is already my own, and the sword is

that of the deathsman, not of the warrior,--verily, Sir Norman, duty

releases its iron tool, and man becomes man again.”

“I go,” said the Norman, inclining his head low as to his own great Duke,

and turning to the door; yet there he paused, and looking at the ring

which he had placed on his finger, he said, “But one word more, if not

indiscreet--your answer may help argument, if argument be needed. What

tale lies hid in this token?”

Harold coloured and paused a moment, then answered:

“Simply this. Gryffyth’s wife, the lady Aldyth, a Saxon by birth, fell

into my hands. We were storming Rhadlan, at the farther end of the isle;

she was there. We war not against women; I feared the license of my own

soldiers, and I sent the lady to Gryffyth. Aldyth gave me this ring on

parting; and I bade her tell Gryffyth that whenever, at the hour of his

last peril and sorest need, I sent that ring back to him, he might hold

it the pledge of his life.”

“Is this lady, think you, in the stronghold with her lord?”

“I am not sure, but I fear yes,” answered Harold.

“Yet one word: And if Gryffyth refuse, despite all warning?”

Harold’s eyes drooped.

“If so, he dies; but not by the Saxon sword. God and our lady speed

you!”

CHAPTER V.

On the height called Pen-y-Dinas (or “Head of the City”) forming one of

the summits of Penmaen-mawr, and in the heart of that supposed fortress

which no eye in the Saxon camp had surveyed [163], reclined Gryffyth, the

hunted King. Nor is it marvellous that at that day there should be

disputes as to the nature and strength of the supposed bulwark, since, in

times the most recent, and among antiquaries the most learned, the

greatest discrepancies exist, not only as to theoretical opinion, but

plain matter of observation, and simple measurement. The place, however,

I need scarcely say, was not as we see it now, with its foundations of

gigantic ruin, affording ample space for conjecture; yet, even then, a

wreck as of Titans, its date and purpose were lost in remote antiquity.

The central area (in which the Welch King now reclined) formed an oval

barrow of loose stones: whether so left from the origin, or the relics of

some vanished building, was unknown even to bard and diviner. Round this

space were four strong circumvallations of loose stones, with a space

about eighty yards between each; the walls themselves generally about

eight feet wide, but of various height, as the stones had fallen by time

and blast. Along these walls rose numerous and almost countless circular

buildings, which might pass for towers, though only a few had been

recently and rudely roofed in. To the whole of this quadruple enclosure

there was but one narrow entrance, now left open as if in scorn of

assault; and a winding narrow pass down the mountain, with innumerable

curves, alone led to the single threshold. Far down the hill, walls

again were visible; and the whole surface of the steep soil, more than

half way in the descent, was heaped with vast loose stones, as if the

bones of a dead city. But beyond the innermost enclosure of the fort (if

fort, or sacred enclosure, be the correcter name), rose, thick and

frequent, other mementos of the Briton; many cromlechs, already shattered

and shapeless; the ruins of stone houses; and high over all, those

upraised, mighty amber piles, as at Stonehenge, once reared, if our dim

learning be true, in honour to Bel, or Bal-Huan [164], the idol of the

sun. All, in short, showed that the name of the place, “the Head of the

City,” told its tale; all announced that, there, once the Celt had his

home, and the gods of the Druid their worship. And musing amidst these

skeletons of the past, lay the doomed son of Pen-Dragon.

Beside him a kind of throne had been raised with stones, and over it was

spread a tattered and faded velvet pall. On this throne sat Aldyth the

Queen; and about the royal pair was still that mockery of a court which

the jealous pride of the Celt king retained amidst all the horrors of

carnage and famine. Most of the officers indeed (originally in number

twenty-four), whose duties attached them to the king and queen of the

Cymry, were already feeding the crow or the worm. But still, with gaunt

hawk on his wrist, the penhebogydd (grand falconer) stood at a distance;

still, with beard sweeping his breast, and rod in hand, leant against a

projecting shaft of the wall, the noiseless gosdegwr, whose duty it was

to command silence in the King’s hall; and still the penbard bent over

his bruised harp, which once had thrilled, through the fair vaults of

Caerleon and Rhaldan, in high praise of God, and the King, and the Hero

Dead. In the pomp of gold dish and vessel [165] the board was spread on

the stones for the King and Queen; and on the dish was the last fragment

of black bread, and in the vessel full and clear, the water from the

spring that bubbled up everlastingly through the bones of the dead city.

Beyond this innermost space, round a basin of rock, through which the

stream overflowed as from an artificial conduit, lay the wounded and

exhausted, crawling, turn by turn, to the lips of the basin, and happy

that the thirst of fever saved them from the gnawing desire of food. A

wan and spectral figure glided listlessly to and fro amidst those

mangled, and parched, and dying groups. This personage, in happier

times, filled the office of physician to the court, and was placed

twelfth in rank amidst the chiefs of the household. And for cure of the

“three deadly wounds,” the cloven skull, or the gaping viscera, or the

broken limb (all three classed alike), large should have been his fee

[166]. But feeless went he now from man to man, with his red ointment

and his muttered charm; and those over whom he shook his lean face and

matted locks, smiled ghastly at that sign that release and death were

near. Within the enclosures, either lay supine, or stalked restless, the

withered remains of the wild army. A sheep, and a horse, and a clog,

were yet left them all to share for the day’s meal. And the fire of

flickering and crackling brushwood burned bright from a hollow amidst the

loose stones; but the animals were yet unslain, and the dog crept by the

fire, winking at it with dim eyes.

But over the lower part of the wall nearest to the barrow, leant three

men. The wall there was so broken, that they could gaze over it on that

grotesque yet dismal court; and the eyes of the three men, with a fierce

and wolfish glare, were bent on Gryffyth.

Three princes were they of the great old line; far as Gryffyth they

traced the fabulous honours of their race, to Hu-Gadarn and Prydain, and

each thought it shame that Gryffyth should be lord over him! Each had

had throne and court of his own; each his “white palace” of peeled willow

wands--poor substitutes, O kings, for the palaces and towers that the

arts of Rome had bequeathed your fathers! And each had been subjugated

by the son of Llewellyn, when, in his day of might, he re-united under

his sole sway all the multiform principalities of Wales, and regained,

for a moment’s splendour, the throne of Roderic the Great.

“Is it,” said Owain, in a hollow whisper, “for yon man, whom heaven hath

deserted, who could not keep his very torque from the gripe of the Saxon,

that we are to die on these hills, gnawing the flesh from our bones?

Think ye not the hour is come?”

“The hour will come, when the sheep, and the horse, and the dog are

devoured,” replied Modred, “and when the whole force, as one man, will

cry to Gryffyth, ‘Thou a king!--give us bread!’”

“It is well,” said the third, an old man, leaning on a wand of solid

silver, while the mountain wind, sweeping between the walls, played with

the rags of his robe,--“it is well that the night’s sally, less of war

than of hunger, was foiled even of forage and food. Had the saints been

with Gryffyth, who had dared to keep faith with Tostig the Saxon.”

Owain laughed, a laugh hollow and false.

“Art thou Cymrian, and talkest of faith with a Saxon? Faith with the

spoiler, the ravisher and butcher? But a Cymrian keeps faith with

revenge; and Gryffyth’s trunk should be still crownless and headless,

though Tostig had never proffered the barter of safety and food. Hist!

Gryffyth wakes from the black dream, and his eyes glow from under his

hair.”

And indeed at this moment the King raised himself on his elbow, and

looked round with a haggard and fierce despair in his glittering eyes.

“Play to us, Harper; sing some song of the deeds of old!” The bard

mournfully strove to sweep the harp, but the chords were broken, and the

note came discordant and shrill as the sigh of a wailing fiend.

“O King!” said the bard, “the music hath left the harp.”

“Ha!” murmured Gryffyth, “and Hope the earth! Bard, answer the son of

Llewellyn. Oft in my halls hast thou sung the praise of the men that

have been. In the halls of the race to come, will bards yet unborn sweep

their harps to the deeds of thy King? Shall they tell of the day of

Torques, by Llyn-Afangc, when the princes of Powys fled from his sword as

the clouds from the blast of the wind? Shall they sing, as the Hirlas

goes round, of his steeds of the sea, when no flag came in sight of his

prows between the dark isle of the Druid [167] and the green pastures of

Huerdan? [168] Or the towns that he fired, on the lands of the Saxon,

when Rolf and the Nortbmen ran fast from his javelin and spear? Or say,

Child of Truth, if all that is told of Gryffyth thy King shall be his woe

and his shame?”

The bard swept his hand over his eyes, and answered:

“Bards unborn shall sing of Gryffyth the son of Llewellyn. But the song

shall not dwell on the pomp of his power, when twenty sub-kings knelt at

his throne, and his beacon was lighted in the holds of the Norman and

Saxon. Bards shall sing of the hero, who fought every inch of crag and

morass in the front of his men,--and on the heights of Penmaen-mawr, Fame

recovers thy crown!”

“Then I have lived as my fathers in life, and shall live with their glory

in death!” said Gryffyth; “and so the shadow hath passed from my soul.”

Then turning round, still propped upon his elbow, he fixed his proud eye

upon Aldyth, and said gravely, “Wife, pale is thy face, and gloomy thy

brow; mournest thou the throne or the man?”

Aldyth cast on her wild lord a look of more terror than compassion, a

look without the grief that is gentle, or the love that reveres; and

answered:

“What matter to thee my thoughts or my sufferings? The sword or the

famine is the doom thou hast chosen. Listening to vain dreams from thy

bard, or thine own pride as idle, thou disdainest life for us both: be it

so; let us die!”

A strange blending of fondness and wrath troubled the pride on Gryffyth’s

features, uncouth and half savage as they were, but still noble and

kingly.

“And what terror has death, if thou lovest me?” said he.

Aldyth shivered and turned aside. The unhappy King gazed hard on that

face, which, despite sore trial and recent exposure to rough wind and

weather, still retained the proverbial beauty of the Saxon women--but

beauty without the glow of the heart, as a landscape from which sunlight

has vanished; and as he gazed, at the colour went and came fitfully over

his swarthy cheeks whose hue contrasted the blue of his eye and the red

tawny gold of his shaggy hair.

“Thou wouldst have me,” he said at length, “send to Harold thy

countryman; thou wouldst have me, me--rightful lord of all Britain--beg

for mercy, and sue for life. Ah, traitress, and child of robber-sires,

fair as Rowena art thou, but no Vortimer am I! Thou turnest in loathing

from the lord whose marriage-gift was a crown; and the sleek form of thy

Saxon Harold rises up through the clouds of the carnage.”

All the fierce and dangerous jealousy of man’s most human passion--when

man loves and hates in a breath--trembled in the Cymrian’s voice, and

fired his troubled eye; for Aldyth’s pale cheek blushed like the rose,

but she folded her arms haughtily on her breast, and made no reply.

“No,” said Gryffyth, grinding teeth, white [169] and strong as those of a

young hound. “No, Harold in vain sent me the casket; the jewel was gone.

In vain thy form returned to my side; thy heart was away with thy captor:

and not to save my life (were I so base as to seek it), but to see once

more the face of him to whom this cold hand, in whose veins no pulse

answers my own, had been given, if thy House had consulted its daughter,

wouldst thou have me crouch like a lashed dog at the feet of my foe! Oh

Shame! shame! shame! Oh worst perfidy of all! Oh sharp--sharper than

Saxon sword or serpent’s tooth, is--is--”

Tears gushed to those fierce eyes, and the proud King dared not trust to

his voice.

Aldyth rose coldly. “Slay me if thou wilt--not insult me. I have said,

‘Let us die!’”

With these words, and vouchsafing no look on her lord, she moved away

towards the largest tower or cell, in which the single and rude chamber

it contained had been set apart for her.

Gryffyth’s eye followed her, softening gradually as her form receded,

till lost to his sight. And then that peculiar household love, which in

uncultivated breasts often survives trust and esteem, rushed back on his

rough heart, and weakened it, as woman only can weaken the strong to whom

Death is a thought of scorn.

He signed to his bard, who, during the conference between wife and lord,

had retired to a distance, and said, with a writhing attempt to smile:

“Was there truth, thinkest thou, in the legend, that Guenever was false

to King Arthur?”

“No,” answered the bard, divining his lord’s thought, “for Guenever

survived not the King, and they were buried side by side in the Vale of

Avallon.”

“Thou art wise in the lore of the heart, and love hath been thy study

from youth to grey hairs. Is it love, is it hate, that prefers death for

the loved one, to the thought of her life as another’s?” A look of the

tenderest compassion passed over the bard’s wan face, but vanished in

reverence, as he bowed his head and answered:

“O King, who shall say what note the wind calls from the harp, what

impulse love wakes in the soul--now soft and now stern? But,” he added,

raising his form, and, with a dread calm on his brow, “but the love of a

king brooks no thought of dishonour; and she who hath laid her head on

his breast should sleep in his grave.”

“Thou wilt outlive me,” said Gryffyth, abruptly. “This carn be my tomb!”

“And if so,” said the bard, “thou shalt sleep not alone. In this carn

what thou lovest best shall be buried by thy side; the bard shall raise

his song over thy grave, and the bosses of shields shall be placed at

intervals, as rises and falls the sound of song. Over the grave of two

shall a new mound arise, and we will bid the mound speak to others in the

fair days to come. But distant yet be the hour when the mighty shall be

laid low! and the tongue of thy bard may yet chant the rush of the lion

from the toils and the spears. Hope still!”

Gryffyth, for answer, leant on the harper’s shoulder, and pointed

silently to the sea, that lay, lake-like at the distance, dark-studded

with the Saxon fleet. Then turning, his hands stretched over the forms

that, hollow-eyed and ghost-like, flitted between the walls, or lay

dying, but mute, around the waterspring. His hand then dropped, and

rested on the hilt of his sword.

At this moment there was a sudden commotion at the outer entrance of the

wall; the crowd gathered to one spot, and there was a loud hum of voices.

In a few moments one of the Welch scouts came into the enclosure, and the

chiefs of the royal tribes followed him to the carn on which the King

stood.

“Of what tellest thou?” said Gryffyth, resuming on the instant all the

royalty of his bearing.

“At the mouth of the pass,” said the scout, kneeling, “there are a monk

bearing the holy rood, and a chief, unarmed. And the monk is Evan, the

Cymrian, of Gwentland; and the chief, by his voice, seemeth not to be

Saxon. The monk bade me give thee these tokens” (and the scout displayed

the broken torque which the King had left in the grasp of Harold,

together with a live falcon belled and blinded), “and bade me say thus to

the King: Harold the Earl greets Gryffyth, son of Llewellyn, and sends

him, in proof of good will, the richest prize he hath ever won from a

foe; and a hawk, from Llandudno;--that bird which chief and equal give to

equal and chief. And he prays Gryffyth, son of Llewellyn, for the sake

of his realm and his people, to grant hearing to his nuncius.”

A murmur broke from the chiefs--a murmur of joy and surprise from all,

save the three conspirators, who interchanged anxious and fiery glances.

Gryffyth’s hand had already closed, while he uttered a cry that seemed of

rapture, on the collar of gold; for the loss of that collar had stung

him, perhaps more than the loss of the crown of all Wales. And his

heart, so generous and large, amidst all its rude passions, was touched

by the speech and the tokens that honoured the fallen outlaw both as foe

and as king. Yet in his face there was still seen a moody and proud

struggle; he paused before he turned to the chiefs.

“What counsel ye--ye strong in battle, and wise in debate?” said he.

With one voice all, save the Fatal Three, exclaimed: “Hear the monk, O

King!”

“Shall we dissuade?” whispered Modred to the old chief, his accomplice.

“No; for so doing, we shall offend all:--and we must win all.”

Then the bard stepped into the ring. And the ring was hushed, for wise

is ever the counsel of him whose book is the human heart.

“Hear the Saxons,” said he, briefly, and with an air of command when

addressing others, which contrasted strongly his tender respect to the

King; “hear the Saxons, but not in these walls. Let no man from the foe

see our strength or our weakness. We are still mighty and impregnable,

while our dwelling is in the realm of the Unknown. Let the King, and his

officers of state, and his chieftains of battle, descend to the pass.

And behind, at the distance, let the spearmen range from cliff to cliff,

as a ladder of steel; so will their numbers seem the greater.”

“Thou speakest well,” said the King.

Meanwhile the knight and the monk waited below at that terrible pass

[170], which then lay between mountain and river, and over which the

precipices frowned, with a sense of horror and weight. Looking up, the

knight murmured:

“With those stones and crags to roll down on a marching army, the place

well defies storm and assault; and a hundred on the height would

overmatch thousands below.”

He then turned to address a few words, with all the far-famed courtesy of

Norman and Frank, to the Welch guards at the outpost. They were picked

men; the strongest and best armed and best fed of the group. But they

shook their heads and answered not, gazing at him fiercely, and showing

their white teeth, as dogs at a bear before they are loosened from the

band.

“They understand me not, poor languageless savages!” said Mallet de

Graville, turning to the monk, who stood by with the lifted rood; “speak

to them in their own jargon.”

“Nay,” said the Welch monk, who, though of a rival tribe from South

Wales, and at the service of Harold, was esteemed throughout the land for

piety and learning, “they will not open mouth till the King’s orders come

to receive or dismiss us unheard.”

“Dismiss us unheard!” repeated the punctilious Norman; “even this poor

barbarous King can scarcely be so strange to all comely and gentle usage,

as to put such insult on Guillaume Mallet de Graville. But,” added the

knight, colouring, “I forgot that he is not advised of my name and land;

and, indeed, sith thou art to be spokesman, I marvel why Harold should

have prayed my service at all, at the risk of subjecting a Norman knight

to affronts contumelious.”

“Peradventure,” replied Evan, “peradventure thou hast something to

whisper apart to the King, which, as stranger and warrior, none will

venture to question; but which from me, as countryman and priest, would

excite the jealous suspicions of those around him.”

“I conceive thee,” said De Graville. “And see, spears are gleaming down

the path; and per pedes Domini, yon chief with the mantle, and circlet of

gold on his head, is the cat-king that so spitted and scratched in the

melee last night.”

“Heed well thy tongue,” said Evan, alarmed; “no jests with the leader of

men.”

“Knowest thou, good monk, that a facete and most gentil Roman (if the

saintly writer from whom I take the citation reports aright--for, alas! I

know not where myself to purchase, or to steal, one copy of Horatius

Flaccus) hath said ‘Dulce est desipere in loco.’ It is sweet to jest,

but not within reach of claws, whether of kaisars or cats.”

Therewith the knight drew up his spare but stately figure, and arranging

his robe with grace and dignity, awaited the coming chief.

Down the paths, one by one, came first the chiefs, privileged by birth to

attend the King; and each, as he reached the mouth of the pass, drew on

the upper side, among the stones of the rough ground. Then a banner,

tattered and torn, with the lion ensign that the Welch princes had

substituted for the old national dragon, which the Saxon of Wessex had

appropriated to themselves [171], preceded the steps of the King. Behind

him came his falconer and bard, and the rest of his scanty household.

The King halted in the pass, a few steps from the Norman knight; and

Mallet de Graville, though accustomed to the majestic mien of Duke

William, and the practised state of the princes of France and Flanders,

felt an involuntary thrill of admiration at the bearing of the great

child of Nature with his foot on his father’s soil.

Small and slight as was his stature, worn and ragged his mantle of state,

there was that in the erect mien and steady eye of the Cymrian hero,

which showed one conscious of authority, and potent in will; and the wave

of his hand to the knight was the gesture of a prince on his throne.

Nor, indeed, was that brave and ill-fated chief without some irregular

gleams of mental cultivation, which under happier auspices, might have

centred into steadfast light. Though the learning which had once existed

in Wales (the last legacy of Rome) had long since expired in broil and

blood, and youths no longer flocked to the colleges of Caerleon, and

priests no longer adorned the casuistical theology of the age, Gryffyth

himself, the son of a wise and famous father [172], had received an

education beyond the average of Saxon kings. But, intensely national,

his mind had turned from all other literature, to the legends, and songs,

and chronicles of his land; and if he is the best scholar who best