With all her persuasion of her own powers in penetrating the future,
we have seen that Hilda had never consulted her oracles on the fate of
Harold, without a dark and awful sense of the ambiguity of their
responses. That fate, involving the mightiest interests of a great
race, and connected with events operating on the farthest times and
the remotest lands, lost itself to her prophetic ken amidst omens the
most contradictory, shadows and lights the most conflicting, meshes
the most entangled. Her human heart, devotedly attached to the Earl,
through her love for Edith,--her pride obstinately bent on securing to
the last daughter of her princely race that throne, which all her
vaticinations, even when most gloomy, assured her was destined to the
man with whom Edith's doom was interwoven, combined to induce her to
the most favourable interpretation of all that seemed sinister and
doubtful. But according to the tenets of that peculiar form of magic
cultivated by Hilda, the comprehension became obscured by whatever
partook of human sympathy. It was a magic wholly distinct from the
malignant witchcraft more popularly known to us, and which was equally
common to the Germanic and Scandinavian heathens.
The magic of Hilda was rather akin to the old Cimbrian Alirones, or
sacred prophetesses; and, as with them, it demanded the priestess--
that is, the person without human ties or emotions, a spirit clear as
a mirror, upon which the great images of destiny might be cast
untroubled.
However the natural gifts and native character of Hilda might be
perverted by the visionary and delusive studies habitual to her, there
was in her very infirmities a grandeur, not without its pathos. In
this position which she had assumed between the earth and the heaven,
she stood so solitary and in such chilling air,--all the doubts that
beset her lonely and daring soul came in such gigantic forms of terror
and menace!--On the verge of the mighty Heathenesse sinking fast into
the night of ages, she towered amidst the shades, a shade herself; and
round her gathered the last demons of the Dire Belief, defying the
march of their luminous foe, and concentering round their mortal
priestess, the wrecks of their horrent empire over a world redeemed.
All the night that succeeded her last brief conference with Harold,
the Vala wandered through the wild forest land, seeking haunts or
employed in collecting herbs, hallowed to her dubious yet solemn lore;
and the last stars were receding into the cold grey skies, when,
returning homeward, she beheld within the circle of the Druid temple a
motionless object, stretched on the ground near the Teuton's grave;
she approached, and perceived what seemed a corpse, it was so still
and stiff in its repose, and the face upturned to the stars was so
haggard and death-like;--a face horrible to behold; the evidence of
extreme age was written on the shrivelled livid skin and the deep
furrows, but the expression retained that intense malignity which
belongs to a power of life that extreme age rarely knows. The garb,
which was that of a remote fashion, was foul and ragged, and neither
by the garb, nor by the face, was it easy to guess what was the sex of
this seeming corpse. But by a strange and peculiar odour that rose
from the form [179], and a certain glistening on the face, and the
lean folded hands, Hilda knew that the creature was one of those
witches, esteemed of all the most deadly and abhorred, who, by the
application of certain ointments, were supposed to possess the art of
separating soul from body, and, leaving the last as dead, to dismiss
the first to the dismal orgies of the Sabbat. It was a frequent
custom to select for the place of such trances, heathen temples and
ancient graves. And Hilda seated herself beside the witch to await
the waking. The cock crowed thrice, heavy mists began to arise from
the glades, covering the gnarled roots of the forest trees, when the
dread face on which Hilda calmly gazed, showed symptoms of returning
life! a strong convulsion shook the vague indefinite form under its
huddled garments, the eyes opened, closed,--opened again; and what had
a few moments before seemed a dead thing sate up and looked round.
"Wicca," said the Danish prophetess, with an accent between contempt
and curiosity, "for what mischief to beast or man hast thou followed
the noiseless path of the Dreams through the airs of Night?"
The creature gazed hard upon the questioner, from its bleared but
fiery eyes, and replied slowly, "Hail, Hilda, the Morthwyrtha! why art
thou not of us, why comest thou not to our revels? Gay sport have we
had to-night with Faul and Zabulus [180]; but gayer far shall our
sport be in the wassail hall of Senlac, when thy grandchild shall come
in the torchlight to the bridal bed of her lord. A buxom bride is
Edith the Fair, and fair looked her face in her sleep on yester noon,
when I sate by her side, and breathed on her brow, and murmured the
verse that blackens the dream; but fairer still shall she look in her
sleep by her lord. Ha! ha! Ho! we shall be there, with Zabulus and
Faul; we shall be there!"
"How!" said Hilda, thrilled to learn that the secret ambition she
cherished was known to this loathed sister in the art. "How dost thou
pretend to that mystery of the future, which is dim and clouded even
to me? Canst thou tell when and where the daughter of the Norse kings
shall sleep on the breast of her lord?"
A sound that partook of laughter, but was so unearthly in its
malignant glee that it seemed not to come from a human lip, answered
the Vala; and as the laugh died the witch rose, and said:
"Go and question thy dead, O Morthwyrtha! Thou deemest thyself wiser
than we are; we wretched hags, whom the ceorl seeks when his herd has
the murrain, or the girl when her false love forsakes her; we, who
have no dwelling known to man; but are found at need in the wold or
the cave, or the side of dull slimy streams where the murderess-mother
hath drowned her babe. Askest thou, O Hilda, the rich and the
learned, askest thou counsel and lore from the daughter of Faul?"
"No," answered the Vala, haughtily, "not to such as thou do the great
Nornas unfold the future. What knowest thou of the runes of old,
whispered by the trunkless skull to the mighty Odin? runes that
control the elements, and conjure up the Shining Shadows of the grave.
Not with thee will the stars confer; and thy dreams are foul with
revelries obscene, not solemn and haunted with the bodements of things
to come! Only I marvelled, while I beheld thee on the Saxon's grave,
what joy such as thou can find in that life above life, which draws
upward the soul of the true Vala."
"The joy," replied the Witch, "the joy which comes from wisdom and
power, higher than you ever won with your spells from the rune or the
star. Wrath gives the venom to the slaver of the clog, and death to
the curse of the Witch. When wilt thou be as wise as the hag thou
despisest? When will all the clouds that beset thee roll away from
thy ken? When thy hopes are all crushed, when thy passions lie dead,
when thy pride is abased, when thou art but a wreck, like the shafts
of this temple, through which the starlight can shine. Then only, thy
soul will see clearly the sense of the runes, and then, thou and I
will meet on the verge of the Black Shoreless Sea!"
So, despite all her haughtiness and disdain, did these words startle
the lofty Prophetess, that she remained gazing into space long after
that fearful apparition had vanished, and up from the grass, which
those obscene steps had profaned, sprang the lark carolling.
But ere the sun had dispelled the dews on the forest sward, Hilda had
recovered her wonted calm, and, locked within her own secret chamber,
prepared the seid and the runes for the invocation of the dead.