Now it becomes needful that I should tell where Ethelbert was
lodged, for I had not been to his apartments yet.
Across the upper end of the great hall there was a long building
set, and this was divided into three uneven parts. From the hall
one entered it by the door behind the king's high seat on the dais,
whence I had seen Offa and his guest come last night; and then one
found that the midmost of these divisions was a sort of council
chamber, lighted by a window in the opposite wall, and with a door
on the right and left at either end. That on the right led to the
largest division, where were the king's own chamber and the queen's
bower. Other buildings had been added to this end; and it had its
own entrance for the queen from the courtyards, as I knew, for it
was behind the church and priest's lodging where they had bestowed
me.
The door from the council chamber to the left led to the smallest
division of the cross building, and there were two chambers for
such honoured guest as Ethelbert. One could only reach these
chambers from the council room, and they had no private way into
the courtyard. It seemed that the guest hall, which was built
against the great hall to its left, ran back to the walls of this
end of the cross building, for there was a heavily-barred low
doorway, which could lead nowhere else, in the wall of the outer
living room. The only other door was that of the bedchamber, and
that was opposite the entrance.
Pleasant and quiet chambers these were; for the noise of the hall
could not reach them and their windows were set to the westward,
looking out toward the Welsh hills beyond the Wye, which showed
above the rampart and stockading.
So with much ceremony, which was wearisome to Ethelbert--and need
not be set down, for it would weary any one, and was of no use--we
reached those chambers, and there, being ready for the feast
myself, I helped to array the king, and so passed with the royal
party to the high place when the time came.
"Come back presently with me when the meal is over," the king said;
"I have somewhat to ask you."
Then I found my way to the place which had been given me last
night, and so had Hilda for neighbour again, to my much content;
for the order of sitting had been little changed, save down the
hall below the salt, where some fifty more men from the forest had
been made room for. It was a great feast and merry, and it seemed
the more so to me after the rough camp life across the sea, or the
rare state banquets which I had seen in Carl's court. There was
none of our hearty fellowship there, and there was more feeling of
difference between men of high and low rank, which made a feast go
stiffly to an English mind.
Presently I saw Gymbert across the hall, and I thought he looked
uneasy. As he had fairly spoiled his name as a good huntsman, I was
not surprised, nor did it trouble me. I missed him toward the end
of the feast; but no doubt he had his duties about the place as
when I spoke to him last night, and that was nothing to wonder at.
I did not see him go.
It was a long feast. We began by daylight, and ended in the red
blaze of torches set in sconces all down the hall, and in the
whiter shine of great wax tapers which armed housecarls held behind
us on the high place. I had never seen such waste of wax before;
but Offa was magnificent in all he did, in a rougher way than that
of Carl.
When the time of eating was ended and the toasts were to go round,
the queen came with a wonderful golden cup which even the Frankish
treasury could not match, and standing beside Ethelbert filled it
with the red wine and pledged him. Very beautiful did she look as
she held the cup to the young king, and her words were soft and
full of kindness. She seemed well-nigh as young as the stately and
pale Etheldrida, her daughter.
After that she and the other ladies left the hall after the custom,
and we sat on telling tales and listening to the gleemen and
harpers, and taking each our turn in singing. The East Anglian
thanes had a way of singing together which was new to me and
pleased me well. The hall grew hot and full of the smoke from the
pine-knot torches before the kings rose up to go. By that time,
too, the foresters seemed to be singing against one another, and
the noise grew great with their mirth.
I rose and followed Ethelbert as I had been bidden, and passed into
the council chamber, where Offa and his guest parted for the night,
each going his own way. I thought Offa seemed heavy and moody, but
in every wise friendly. Tired he was, methought, for it had been a
long day.
Ethelbert signed to me, Father Selred, and Sighard to follow him,
and we went into his apartment, closing the door after us. Out in
the council chamber we left three of the Anglian thanes and three
Mercian, who would act as guards for the night.
It was very pleasant in the silence of this cool chamber after the
din and glare of the great hall. The moonlight came in at the
western window; and though there were torches ready, the king would
not have us light them, for he said we would sit in the dim light
awhile till he grew sleepy. And so at first we spoke of the day's
hunting, and, of course, Sighard had his say on the matter of
Gymbert's carelessness.
Seeing that neither he nor the king had any doubt that carelessness
it was, and naught else, I did not think it worth while to say
anything of my own suspicions. I do not think that they could have
believed that any harm was meant me had I told of the arrow. It
seemed impossible, and if it were not that, it was a private matter
of my own.
Presently that matter dropped, and there was a short silence. I
heard then the sounds of shuffling feet plainly enough from
somewhere close at hand, and thought that the wall between us and
the guest hall must be somewhat thinner than it would seem, so that
the sound came through thence. Sighard heard it also, and rose up
quietly and looked into the inner chamber.
"What is it?" asked Ethelbert, as he came back and sat down again.
"Naught, lord. I thought I heard footsteps in your bedchamber; but
there is nothing there. A strange house has strange sounds, and it
takes time to get used to them."
"Some one passing under the window," said Selred the chaplain,
laughing.
The little noise ceased, and we forgot it. Today I can seem to hear
it as if it had thundered in our ears, for I know what it was and
what it meant. Yet at the time there was no reason to think aught
of it.
Then Ethelbert asked us somewhat which seemed strange.
"Have any of you noted aught in the look or way of King Offa which
would make you think that he has not long to live?"
With one accord we said that we certainly had not done so, and that
in some surprise. Sighard asked plainly what had put such a thought
into his head.
"I will tell you," said Ethelbert in a low voice. "Between
ourselves, here it is of no use to pretend that one does not know
the name for ambition which Quendritha the queen has. Tell me what
you make of this. Today I had a little private speech with her, and
she would have me put off the wedding. She more than hinted that I
might make a higher match, and that angered me. Whereon she told me
that Offa might not have long to live; that Mercia and East Anglia
would be a mighty realm if united. And, on my word, it seemed to me
that she would bid me wait till she was a widow."
He laughed uneasily, as if he thought himself foolish; but we knew
that unless he had full reason for that belief he would not have
told us. That must have been a strange talk between this honest
young king and Quendritha, if he deemed it best to speak to us of
it.
Sighard frowned, and said:
"If it is true that Offa is thus--well, we are forewarned.
Quendritha has let us see that in one way or the other she would
fain have East Anglia. I think that she spoke unwarily to you, my
king."
"Nay," said Selred the priest; "I hold that she sounded you as to
whether you had any thought of adding Mercia to your own realm. If
it is true that Offa has some secret ailment which is slowly and
surely bringing his end near, she looks onward to the time when she
shall stand alone. She would find out if you are to be feared."
"Maybe that is it," said Ethelbert, with a sigh of relief. "It must
be. She is a mistress of craft; and had I one thought of adding to
my realm, that would have made me show it. However, she should be
satisfied. I would hear naught of putting off the wedding, as you
may suppose."
I said nothing, but it was in my mind that mayhap there was more at
the back of all this than they saw. I had heard overmuch of
Quendritha to have much doubt that if she could see her way to
reigning over both realms, she would stay for naught, even for the
removing of Offa from her path if he stood in it. And almost did I
tell the king of Thrond's knowledge of her, but forbore. Sighard
knew it also, and he was the best judge of that. But I will say
that I was somewhat lighter of heart to hear this, for it was plain
to me that Offa himself had no thought of guile toward Ethelbert;
and to this day I do not believe that he had. His mind was far too
great for that; and if he loved power, I hold that to have married
his daughter to a king was fully enough for him. Beyond that all
was from Quendritha. To tell the truth, if I feared for any one, it
was for Offa himself.
Now Ethelbert rose and said that he grew weary and would go to
rest. Sighard said that he would get him a light from the council
chamber; but he would rather bide in the moonlight, which was
enough to fill all the room. So we three went into his sleeping
chamber with him. At one side was the state bed with its heavy
hangings, and midway in the room, by its side, was a great chair,
softly cushioned. The smell of the sweet sedges with which the room
had been newly strown was pleasant and cool, and a little chill
breeze came in from the window with the moonlight.
"Leave me for a while, my thanes," he said; "I will call you anon.
Wilfrid will no doubt be glad to go to his place; so goodnight"
He smiled at me, and held out his hand, and I bent and kissed it.
So we went back to the other room to wait, for we knew that the
king would pray. The door swung softly to after us.
Now I thought I heard the chair creak as the king went to it. Then
there was a sound as of a fall somewhere near us, and a stifled
cry.
"What is that?" I said, turning to Sighard.
"Housecarls outside;" he said. "It was from the place whence we
heard the footsteps awhile ago. Listen! there they are again."
I heard the same sort of dull trampling as before, and there was
also a voice.
"It seems to be almost beneath us," I said.
But the footsteps were plainly going away from us, and growing
fainter in the distance. I climbed on a settle and looked out of
the high window, which was set aloft so that none could see into
the chamber as they passed it. But I could see no man. There were
some wood piles and sheds between the rampart and us, but nothing
stirred about them so far as I could see. Whereby I supposed that
they had passed round the corner. On the rampart an armed sentry
was pacing, black against the low moon, and beyond him the fires of
the Welsh--who watched us--burnt as brightly as last night.
Now there was a gentle knock on the outer door, and I opened it.
One of the thanes said that the man who served me would see me, and
I went out into the great hall, bidding Sighard and the chaplain
goodnight as I did so. Down the length of the hall men were
throwing themselves on the rushes to sleep along the walls in their
wonted places, though there were yet groups at the tables still
telling tales and drinking. The torches were almost all burnt out
save where these men were, and across the open roof were strange
white shafts of moonlight through the smoke, from windows and under
westward eaves.
Outside the door, on the high place, stood Erling alone, for the
tables there had been cleared away. Only the throne of the king
remained. And in the light from the council chamber I saw that the
face of my comrade was white as death.
"Where is Ethelbert the king?" he said, almost wildly, and
clutching my arm.
"In his chamber," I answered. "All is well. I saw him there not ten
minutes ago."
"How can that be? It is not that time ago since he stood by me on
the rampart, where I walked alone, and spoke to me."
"It was some one else like him," I said. "He is going to sleep."
But Erling stared beyond me, and grew yet paler. I saw the black
rims grow round his eyes. Then his grip tightened on my arm, and he
gasped:
"He stood before me, and that red line round his neck had drops
like gems therefrom. He said, 'Now do I die and pass to rest. I
would that you came after me.' And I said, 'Trouble not yourself,
king, for the like of me.' And he smiled wondrously, and answered,
'Nay, but needs must I, for you are the only heathen man in this
palace garth. I would that all were well with you as with me.' Then
he was gone, and there was only a brightness, and betimes that
faded. Then I came hither. There is ill which has befallen the
king."
"Impossible," I said. And even as I said it into my mind flashed
that strange, unaccounted for trampling, and I went back, with
Erling after me, unbidden. The six thanes who waited in the council
chamber stared at me, but I did not heed them. Across to the king's
door I went, and passed in. Selred and the old thane were talking
quietly under their breath, and I had but been gone three minutes.
"Back again, Wilfrid? Eh, what is amiss?" said Sighard, starting as
he set eyes on Erling.
"Has the king called you?" I asked hastily.
"No; it is hardly time for him to do so," Selred answered, smiling.
"Look into his chamber softly, I pray you, Father Selred," Erling
said in a strange voice. "It is upon me that all is not well."
Now so urgent was the tone in which the Dane spoke that the priest
went at once to the inner door and opened it very gently, and
peered in. Then he started forward suddenly and threw the door
wide.
"Thanes!" he cried wildly, and we were at his side.
The room was empty. There was naught but the bed in it, for even
the great chair was gone. Only where it had been there was a square
patch of floor which was not covered with the sedges I had noted as
so lavishly strown. Nor was the king in the bed, whose coverings
were unruffled. Sighard lifted its hangings and peered under and
behind them in a sort of frantic hope; for though there was no
sound, and no answer to his whispering of the well-loved name of
his master, it seemed unbelievable that from this little chamber a
man should have gone utterly and without a sound during these few
minutes. Yet so it was.
I set my hands on the high sill of the window and drew my face to
its level. It was too narrow for a man to get through, and there
was nothing to be seen outside but the white moonlight, and the
mist which rose from the Lugg and curled over the rampart, white
and ghostly round the sentry, who leaned on his spear and stared at
the twinkling hill fires.
"It is wizardry," said Sighard, groaning, while cold drops broke
out on his forehead. "He has been spirited away."
"I saw him on the rampart," answered Erling; "but it was his ghost
that I saw. I knew it, and came and told my master here."
Now there came a silence in which we looked at one another. Then Sighard
went and began to search the walls for hidden doors--hopelessly, for the
timbers were a full foot thick. And so of a sudden some frenzy seemed to
take him, for he set his hand on his sword, and would have waked the
palace with the cry of treason, but that Selred stayed him.
"Friend, friend," he said earnestly, "have a care--wait! We are but
two score amid hundreds, and that cry may mean death to us all.
"Wilfrid, call the other thanes hither."
I went to the door of the council chamber, and there was that in my
face which bade the thanes spring up and hurry to me with words of
question. I looked first at the three Mercians; but their faces
were blank as those of the Anglians. They expected naught.
"The king has gone," I said. "You Mercians may best know whither."
One of them laughed, and sat down again.
"You have a strange idea of a jest in Carl's camp, paladin," he
said. "What is it? The king gone, with us sitting here at his door,
forsooth!"
"No jest, thane, but the truth," I said, taking the tall wax torch
which was on the table before them. "Come."
Then they leaped up and followed me into the bedchamber, and stood
staring as we had stared. It was plain that they knew as little as
ourselves.
"He has passed into the guest hall," said one of the Mercians,
looking round him wildly enough.
But that was not possible, for the door was in the outer room
whence we had come, and it was barred on both sides.
"We are disgraced," said another, groaning. "Our charge has been
made away with, and how we cannot tell. We shall pay for this with
our lives."
Then Sighard said, "He cannot be far off. Men--think! How can he
have gone hence? Who would make away with him?"
But there was no answer to these questions. The thing remained a
mystery. If there was any plot, these three honest thanes were not
in it. And then as I walked uneasily from side to side of the room,
turning over impossible ways of disappearance in my mind, I came
near where the great chair had been. And under my step the floor
creaked.
Now seeing how that house was built, this was a sound one would not
expect to hear at all. It came into my mind that here was one of
the few floors which were boarded, the most being of beaten clay,
or paved with great stones wonderfully. So I trod again firmly in
that place, and it seemed to me that the floor gave, somewhat.
I reached out for the torch which I had set on the sconce in the
wall and looked at the floor, but why it creaked I did not make
out. The boards were of hewn oak, and how thick one could not tell.
"Fetch Offa the king," said a Mercian; "we had better tell him. No
use in gaping here. We can swear that Ethelbert has not passed out
of these doors."
"No," said Selred quickly; "that were to wake the whole palace. Let
us seek further into this.--Thanes, if aught has been done amiss to
our king, we are all in danger."
The floor creaked under my foot again, and I looked back to it.
What I saw now made me start and call the others to me.
"See here!" I cried.
Round that clear space where the chair had been was a saw cut newly
made. It went through the flooring, so that the square was like a
trapdoor. And it was uneven, as if it had been made in haste. Then
I knew what must have been the meaning of the sounds we heard and
thought nothing of--the creak, and the fall, and the stifled cry.
Sighard looked once, and then threw himself on his knees, drawing
his stout seax as he did so.
"Have it up!" he said, with his teeth clenched, "have it up!"
Then a thought came to me, and I beckoned to Erling. It might be
that armed men lurked under that trapdoor, and that our end was
coming; but at least we would have fair play.
"Go and bar the door to the great hall," I told him. "We will have
none else in here if there is a fight. Then see if you can get the
door to the guest hall undone."
He nodded and went out. One of the Mercians asked sharply where he
was going; but Sighard paid no heed to him, for he was trying to
get his blade into the saw cut, and so raise the square of
flooring.
"Thane," I said to the Mercian, staying him from following Erling,
"he will shut the door to the hall, and let this thing be seen
through in silence. Go you and watch at the door of Offa, for it
has bided untended long enough."
He went out in haste, and Erling watched him there. I saw him sit
down to the table whence he had risen at my coming, and set his
head on his hands as if in despair. I had no fear that he would
call Offa yet, or that Erling would suffer him to go to his
comrades in the hall. The other two stayed and watched Sighard
silently.
Now the old thane had his blade fast in the timber and lifted. The
square of floor rose slowly at that corner, and one of the Mercians
set his hand to it. Another lift, and the whole was coming up, for
the boards had been fastened together with cross pieces underneath,
doorwise. As it rose I heard the fall of props that had kept it in
place, and I bade Sighard have a care. I feared it would let him
through suddenly as these props fell; but it had been roughly
hinged at one end with thongs. He rose, and he and the Mercian
heaved on the door and threw it back.
Then below us gaped a black pit which seemed to go deep into the
earth, and for a moment we shrank back from it as men must needs do
when a depth is suddenly before them. Nor should I have wondered if
thence the bright points of waiting spears had darted upward in our
faces.
But there was nothing save a little cold draught of wind that blew
into them from out of that pit, and we looked into it. I held the
torch so that its flickering blaze went to the bottom, and as we
saw what was there a groan came from us.
There was the great chair lying, overturned on its side as it may
have fallen, but it was dragged back from under the door somewhat.
There were the cushions I had noted also--one lying on the stone
floor of the pit, and the other on the seat of the chair. But there
was no sign of the king--none but a stain of red on the cushions
and on the floor, and on the blade of a sword which lay beside that
terrible pool. And the sword was the king's own.
Then said Sighard, and his voice came hoarse and broken:
"Our king is slain! Hounds of Mercians, tell us who has wrought
this!"
One answered him from dry lips:
"We cannot tell. It is a shame on the house of Offa, and on the
very name of Mercia. Kill us if you will, for we are niddering."
He plucked his sword from his belt and threw it on the floor. The
thane who had gone into the council chamber was on his feet and
staring at us through the open doors, and Erling was ready to fall
on him if he cried out. But the third Mercian, whose name was
Witred, did not lose his senses thus.
"True enough," he said, looking fearlessly at the angry group
before him. "But it were better to follow this passage and see if
we may not overtake those who have been here.
"Bide here, paladin and priest, and keep our way back clear with my
comrade yonder, and let us go quickly. If they slay us--maybe that
is no loss, but at least we have done what we should."
Without another word Sighard leaped into that awesome pit, and
Witred followed him. Then went our three thanes, and Selred and I
stood alone in the room. I handed the torch down to the last man,
and so saw that from the place where the chair was set a low
stone-arched passage led westward into darkness. It was some work
of the old Romans, no doubt, for no Saxon ever made such
stonework--strong and heavy as rock itself.
The light flashed from somewhat on the wall also, as it seemed,
drawing my eyes to it.
"Yonder is a spear set," I said to the thane, as he took the light
from me; "hand it to me."
He took it from where it rested against the wall and gave it me,
turning at once to follow our comrades. Then I knew the spear well
enough, for I had seen it over close to me once before. It was
Gymbert's boar spear.