continued, "we will set a new church, and Llywel, Teilo, and I, we
three, will own it in perpetuity. And of the three thou, Teilo, shalt
have the pre-eminence. Willingly wilt thou fast forty days upon this
spot, for our church's hallowing. A small omission troubles thy
conscience, I know. Children," turning from the Abbot of Llandaff to
the man and woman before him, "I would see all well with you before I
depart. Give me thy ring, Indeg."
She put her ring in the palm of David.
"It is not yet the noon-hour," said he. "Lily, where is my altar, and
the other things I now require?"
"Here is your altar, my father," was Lily's reply, "and the sacred
elements, look you!--ready for the swearing of oaths."
He brought David's portable altar and placed it before him, and set
bread and wine upon it.
David rose to his feet, and, supported by Teilo and Ismael, said mass
as it was celebrated for a marriage.
"Cynyr," said he in the British tongue, "wilt thou have Indeg as thy
wife?"
"Yes, yes!" Cynyr answered.
"And, Indeg, wilt thou have Cynyr as thy husband?"
She nodded her head several times.
"Then I declare before all these, men and women of the Plant y Cymry,
that ye be man and wife together. And, Cynyr, thou shalt love Indeg as
long as her life shall last; and thou, Indeg, shalt love Cynyr and obey
him. The blessing of God is upon you; and ye shall go with my blessing,
and with the blessing of Teilo."
Hand in hand the lovers wandered away over the young, green grass.
"Sixty days and no less will I fast before I consecrate Llywel's
church," cried Teilo, his native generosity breaking forth, "and those
two shall have my prayers at each day's offering!"
Gwhir, Teilo's bard at Llandaff, unslung his harp from his shoulder,
and struck a triumphant prelude from the strings. He began to chant the
praises of his master:
"Thrice a hundred servants of Christ does Teilo feed in his Bangor.
The fierce old dragon he drove to the seas--potent is our father.
Miracles are all about the little ones of Teilo.
"With Brynach aforetime did angels company in the wilderness about
Nant Nimer.
No harvest had Llandaff but flower of the broom, the gold-finch of
the meadows.
Surely white messengers were at hand for the succour of the Cor of
Teilo!"
David listened at first with a slight frown, but by the end of the
second triad his countenance had softened.
"Truth governs the tongue of Gwhir," said he. "Hearken! there is also
music over yonder. Give me thy arm, my Ismael--I would hear the
children sing."
They left the dingle, David and his followers, and ascended a gentle
slope that led to an open stretch of level, sheep-cropped sward. Here
stunted cowslips grew, and daisies, and a few stray tufts of thyme
greeted the footsteps of each comer with their tonic perfume. Young men
and girls, partnered in couples, were dancing about a blossoming
hawthorn. At their shoulders and wrists, their knees or their ankles,
coloured ribbons fluttered; and as they sprang, with outstretched arms,
to touch the tree-trunk they hissed between tongue and palate. A man
played shrilly upon a pipe, and a number of elderly women, seated upon
the ground, were singing:
"Arianrod's battlements light the pathless waste of the sky.
Oak for power, and ash for aid, and birch for constancy!
Bird calls to bird that gone is winter, the time of hunger and
fear.
Bless the thorntree, maidens and boys, and bless the spring of
the year!"
David watched them indulgently, for the days of the Druids were far
off. When their dance was over, they rushed in a body to his feet,
begging his blessing, and crying out compliments, sincere though
extravagant, upon his sanctity and his fame.
"Dewi Sant! Dewi Sant! Father of the Saints of Britain! May he live
amongst us for ever!"
"As God wills," said he, as he turned to leave them. "Beautiful the May
tree--more beautiful the groves of Paradise. There is a hard task, my
brothers, for Ismael."
His companions remembered well what he had spoken of Ismael in two
months less than a year from that hour.[13]
[13] Ismael succeeded David as Bishop of Mynyw.
One February day in the year Six Hundred and One, many folk, rich and
poor, flocked to the walls of Ty Ddewi, David's monastic enclosure. A
rumour had gone abroad that the saint had had heavenly premonition that
his end was near at hand. So, weeping and lamenting, these men and
women came from the regions around, crying upon their bishop to take
their sadness from them. Within Ty Ddewi there was a wonderful silence
and peace; and in the streets of Mynyw were heard the flutterings of
invisible wings.
"Look you, this mourning must cease, now!" said blessed David.
"Well, well, true is what ye have heard. Merry tidings have reached me!
In a little while from now, on the first day of March, I must go hence
to the place where is life without end, rest without labour, and joy
without sorrow--where is health and no pain, youth and no old age,
peace and no contention, music and no discord. I charge you pray
always, in all your undertakings, spiritual and bodily; and be good,
little people, for the best usage is goodness."
His last words on earth were just as simple:
"Take me with Thee!"
Star of Mercia
"_Hic regina detestatur
Amplexus illicitos;
Spreta mortem machinatur
Ob amores vetitos._"
"Nay, Ethelfrith, bide thou here in quiet!" said Cynerith. "Tush, girl!
art no child now, at sixteen years old! Why, thou hast witnessed the
death of many a fledgling rook. The sun must not stain thy cheeks this
day, and that thou knowest! The young man cannot now be afar off, God
help! Nay, good lack! I will not have such pouting! It is my behest
that thou stay at home."
In reality, the Lady Ethelfrith could scarcely be said to pout; and she
knew her mother too well to venture a protest. The party set
forth--Offa the King, the imperious Cynerith his Queen, their son the
Atheling, and Eadburh their handsome elder daughter, wife of Beorhtric,
King of Wessex, and now on a visit to her parents' court--and the young
Ethelfrith, debarred from the sport, climbed to the upper room which
was her own sleeping-chamber, and looked out over the shire of
Hereford.
If she leant out and turned sideways, her window commanded a view of
the highway that ran by the gates of King Offa's palace of Sutton. She
peered idly in that direction, without emotion of any sort--even anger,
or curiosity. Below her lay the orchard-close, bright green under foot,
and rosy overhead with the vernal glory of the apple-trees. It was the
fairest day of the fair month of May; but its beauty awoke in
Ethelfrith a dull, continuous pain. She was seldom happy, poor little
princess: she thought much, but there was no one to whom she could tell
her ideas, or who would give her sympathy. The King was always
occupied; her brother was as spare of speech as herself; her mother was
the Queen and unapproachable, except when she jested coarsely; and she
feared her sister, the Queen of Wessex. There were many puzzling things
in her everyday world which had only just begun to claim her attention.
She was a very fairy-like being, so small and slim and fragile; her
complexion was as delicate as the apple-blossom; she had soft eyes,
grey as the plumage of a dove and a soft mouth with an obstinate curve;
her hair was of the purest, palest gold, just saved from being flaxen
and colourless. A strange child, surely, for those two robust persons,
Offa and Cynerith. Just now she was wondering why they had not told her
before yesterday of Ethelbert of East Anglia, his coming and its
purpose. Every one about the palace had known of it but herself. She
had overheard what had been whispered to a servant of her sister's from
Wessex, in the orchard, upon the foregoing afternoon, by one of her
father's henchmen, whose eyes had shed a marvellously tender light
while he gazed upon her, King Offa's daughter.
"She is the star and flower of all Mercia," this henchman had said,
"and she is to wed Lord Ethelbert, the star of the Eastern Angles."
Although she had remarked it, the expression of the speaker's
countenance had in no wise stirred her sensibilities; she had been a
little ruffled in temper, perhaps--no more. For Ethelfrith had no
affinities with the courtiers; the overfed, voluptuous women and their
satellites filled her with a cold disgust. The nuns of Marden, she
thought, led peaceful lives, and bore in their faces a truly joyous
light. Yet she had no longing for the seclusion of a religious house.
She would sometimes, however--though very rarely--go to visit the
sisters and spend a day in their company. The reverend mother was a
motherly woman indeed; she was very gentle with the princess, and
careful to refrain in her presence from any allusion to her life or her
kinsfolk that might dash her girlish, half-childish dreams. When the
maiden returned to her ordinary surroundings, how the glare and the
chatter tired her head and oppressed her whole dainty frame! So it came
about that the Lady Ethelfrith was little accounted by the great folk
of Mercia: she was always silent, usually prim, and sometimes brusque;
and to some she seemed a cross, spoilt child, and to others, witless.
Then there had been her mother's half-teasing words of the evening
before; that was really all she knew! At the thought of King Ethelbert,
a sharper pain than the ache of loneliness amid natural beauties struck
through her heart. She remembered the Queen's parting injunctions. Her
childhood was surely at an end. This Ethelbert would be coming by the
highway to the halls of Sutton before long.
Impatiently she turned away from the dusty road. Her eyes lighted upon
the flowering gorse-bushes that blazed upon the outskirts of an upland
covert in the distance. There ran through her head a riddle of her
nursery days, couched in the rhyming metre which the Mercians had begun
to imitate from the neighbouring Welsh.
"Yellow and green,
Sharp and keen,
Grows in the mene.
The King can't ride it, no more can the Queen."
Song after song, carol after carol, lay after lay, came tripping
after--some of God and the saints and ghostly blessedness; some of love
and mirth; others of woe. A smile hovered about the lips of Ethelfrith.
She loved songs--they were often her only solace.
She would walk in the garden--no, she would not. The sun was too
hot--the wind was too cold. She had just decided to wile away the time
by strumming upon her cither, when she descried figures approaching
along the road. They were horsemen, many horsemen; a mighty train. And
there, unmistakably, was the banner of some great one. It was not a
lord of Mercia, nor a lord of Wessex! Ethelfrith rushed from her room,
down the stairs, and headlong into the orchard-close, in a fit of wild
shyness.
There was her waiting-maid, and there were several aged ladies who
cared not to look on at the shooting of the rooks. All confused, she
stammered to them of her surmise--how that the King of East Anglia was
even at their gates. What should they do, with her parents away?
"Why, lady, there is no need for fear," said one kind-hearted matron.
Even as she spoke a servant appeared in the orchard doorway, ushering
with every token of respect a company of nobly-attired, travel-stained
men. In another moment the little group beneath the trees had become
aware of the leader of the party--a young man, very lithe, very
muscular, with an energetic open countenance, and the bluest, brightest
eyes that Ethelfrith had ever seen. Their glance wandered from one to
another of the women, and came to rest upon King Offa's youngest
daughter.
It seemed to her that the universe whirled around her: she had to
strain at her insteps in order to keep herself upright. Then she heard
him saying:
"O lady, forgive me that I know not whom I should greet! Do I speak to
the high and mighty lady, the Lady Ethelfrith of Mercia?"
She curtsied, and hung her head; she was pallid now, who had been
crimson the instant before; her tongue refused to utter audible sound.
"I am Ethelbert of East Anglia," continued the stranger. "Here am I at
King Offa's bidding. They have told you of my coming?"
"Indeed, I am Ethelfrith," said she. "I do greatly grieve--my father
and mother.... Oh, my lord, will ye not be seated? I had forgotten....
Ye will deem me unmannerly...."
"Nay, lady, surely nay," said Ethelbert earnestly; and he seated
himself beside her upon a bench built round the trunk of an ancient
apple-tree. He had begun to address her once more in his kindly tones,
when a bustling noise reached them from within the palace, and in
another moment the whole court was about them. Offa, the welcoming
host, Cynerith, with her ready, witty talk. And Eadburh, whose person
and taste in adornment made her give the effect of a full-blown poppy.
Ethelfrith felt faded and nerveless beside her. She shrank into the
background.
"In a good hour!" cried Offa. "Ye have spoken with my little daughter,
I see: no need to make you known one to another. I trow ye are weary
from your wayfaring. Come with me, and ye shall bathe you, and have
meat and drink. And then, Ethelbert Etheldred's son, I will show you my
horses, my hounds, and my hawks, and ye shall say whether ye have other
such in East Anglia."
And they all departed into the house, leaving the princess alone.
She, pondering dazedly, thought that a thunderstorm had broken.
But the sun was shining as it had shone all day: the little stream
which bounded the orchard from the meadows beyond was as blue as the
sky whose colour it borrowed. The earth beneath her feet seemed to pant
forth the scent, sweet and languorous, of white wild violets. A cuckoo
shouted insistently. The air was vibrant with the voices of created
things. A glimmering sulphur-moth came fluttering before her.
Ethelfrith began to run. About and about she chased it, screaming in
her excitement; and presently she fell on her knees, panting, by the
brookside, her arms clasped around a clump of meadowsweet and
forget-me-not.
Summer was summer once again.
They were all upon a green knoll, sheltered by ash and elm. They had
flown their hawks with some success, and were now enjoying shade and
repose, while their attendants laid the midday meal before them.
Ethelfrith looked often at Ethelbert. He was listening somewhat
impatiently to Eadburh, whose florid beauty was evidently little to his
taste.
"Lord King," she was saying, "ye seem to me in no wise a monkish man. I
thought, from what I had heard, that surely ye would betake you to the
life of the cloister, or else bind yourself to all of a saint's life in
your kingly halls. I beseech you say, had ye ever such a meaning?"
"They were my youthful thoughts," said Ethelbert. "But I have put them
far from me. A king's life is for a king, and no monk's life. Besides,
I am the last of my father's house."
He rose, and crossed to Ethelfrith, offering to pour mead into her
drinking-horn.
Now Cynerith had looked often and long at Ethelbert since his coming.
"A harmless boy!" she remarked to her daughter Eadburh; and then she
said "Fore heaven! the handsomest boy I have seen this many a year!"
Eadburh laughed her horse-laugh.
"Are all things to thy liking, fair lady?" said Ethelbert to
Ethelfrith.
"Why, greatly to my liking, O King!" answered she.
Suddenly Cynerith called out, "Child, where is thine amethyst brooch?
Is it lost, then, thou naughty one?"
"My lady," said the girl, trembling, "I did give it.... Ye saw the
beggars. One there was that might have been a leper; and there were
little children. O mother, be not wroth! I could not do else--woeful
was their crying. I sent them unto the sisters, who will feed them and
care for them this night; and I gave my brooch unto the woman with the
baby in her arms."
"Fie upon thee, fie upon thee!" cried the Queen. "Is my daughter
altogether a fool? I will not have thee go among such filthy folk, to
touch them belike! Precious stones give I not thee for this!"
"All beggars and such scum should be whipped and branded," said
Eadburh, little guessing that in years to come she herself would roam a
foreign city,[14] begging her bread. "Lord father, think ye not that it
would be well that when a bondman have not work enough, or when he
feign himself a cripple, his lord might sell him beyond seas? So do I
often tell King Beorhtric."
[14] Pavia.
"Why, why," Ethelbert broke in, "I miss my ring of onyx!"
"Was it loose upon thy finger?" said Queen Cynerith. "Often in
unhooding a hawk----"
"Nay," said he, smiling, "I do think it is where the Lady Ethelfrith's
sweet charity would have it be!"
Cynerith bit her lip.
"Have ye indeed bestowed your ring upon the beggars?" Ethelfrith
whispered.
"Surely, aye," answered he. "The sad, sorry souls! These do fear lest
they be besmirched by fellowship with the mean and ailing. But I think
that a king, before all men in the earth ought to be lowly." Bending
towards her, he said softly, "Tell me now, are all things truly to thy
liking?"
"Oh, my lord...." said she. Here, amongst all these people--before all
her kindred!
"'High and mighty' I greeted thee," he pursued. "Dearest, I knew not
then to whom I spake. 'Soft and lovely lady' hail I thee now!"
He handed her down the slope and together they wandered slowly through
the fields.
The royal party followed immediately, and they proceeded, mostly on
foot, along the path which leads through the lush meadow-land.
Presently Cynerith called the King of East Anglia to her, and they in
their turn headed the company.
"May-tide is God's gift to lovers," she said. "The Queen's words are
sooth," was his rejoinder.
"Hearken to the live things, and to the birds," said Cynerith, and her
eyes were languishing. "Ethelbert, a woman's heart blooms blithe and
tender in this month of May!"
Eadburh looked her sister from head to foot.
"Art not a fine woman," she remarked. "Belike thou wilt yet grow."
"Think ye I must needs become a fine woman?" said the other, smiling.
"Men like them," replied Eadburh. "All men," she added, with a meaning
glance towards Ethelbert.
"What wouldst thou hint?" cried Ethelfrith; but Queen Eadburh was gone
from her side.
The younger sister was not easy in heart or mind. Lately she had become
aware of circumstances which she did not care to think on; and now, her
sister's words! She was used to the moods of her mother; but there was
also Sexwolf, the young lord who had been the Queen's constant
companion for two years--he was full of smouldering fury, it was
evident, and would speak to no one. Her brother was near at hand, but
he always snubbed her when she talked inquisitively; he would be no
help. There was thane Edric, the honest old man, seneschal of the
court; she was certain he would tell her plainly anything he thought
she ought to know. Why should she not take her perplexities to him?
Alack! here was Eadburh again! Her she could not question. She would
consult old Edric later on.
"Is a woman ever too old to love?" said Cynerith the Queen.
Ethelbert looked up quickly, surprised and a little amused. They were
walking along the edge of a springing cornfield.
"Look, the bonny blossoms!" cried she.
She stooped over a patch of poppies, whose bowls seemed to burn with
liquid scarlet fire. As she did so, her hand brushed against
Ethelbert's as though by accident.
"Bonny, for sure," answered the young man.
"Pity they have no smell--as it were, no soul. They are rank, too, I
think. O lady mother, this morning I heard Ethelfrith singing to
herself...."
* * * * *
"Why, Leofgythe, whither away?" said Ethelfrith.
Said the waiting-maid: "Lady, there is great mirth afoot to-night for
us of the household. The Queen hath given us leave that we may go to
the dancing at Aegelstane the Thane's. I beseech you, my lady, that ye
forget not to comb your locks right thoroughly; they must shine like
gold for King Ethelbert."
"Good luck go with thee, Leofgythe," cried the Lady gaily. "I would we
might have dancing too. But I fear me we shall be too few." And she
passed on up the staircase.
In the palace hall King Ethelbert and Queen Cynerith sat facing one
another across a little table, playing at chess. All was not well
between them. The Queen leant very far over the board, and her lips
were pouting. Her fingers rested lightly upon the head of a chessman.
Suddenly she withdrew her hand, and launched a side-long look at her
opponent from beneath drooping lashes. Ethelbert's brow was black, and
for an instant there appeared in his eyes a glint of loathing.
Then Cynerith surveyed the board once more and played her piece.
It was checkmate.
As by a common impulse, they both rose, making no comment upon the
game. The Queen was flushed and quivering. Ethelbert bowed to her and
strode hurriedly from the hall.
Cynerith went then to King Offa's private chamber. The King was there
alone: he smiled at sight of her, and greeted her lovingly. Cynerith
stood before him, rapping one foot upon the earthen floor.
"My lord," she burst forth at last, "what will ye do if things fall out
even so as your dearest wishes be undermined?"
Offa spread wide his hands.
"How now, sweetheart?" he queried, laughing.
"It were well to be ready. If East Anglia become our foe--if Ethelbert
will not wed with Ethelfrith----?"
"Not wed with Ethelfrith! Not wed my little maid! How, wife, what
meanest thou?"
"I understand not, for my life," said Cynerith, "which way things are
faring between them twain! It is my belief that Ethelbert is here to
pick a quarrel with thee, Offa."
"Tush, woman, woman! I have marked nought of this."
"Thou wilt own that my woman's wit is ever quicker than thine own,
husband. I think he beareth little love to our daughter, and none to
thee or me, or any of us. For all he is so mild, and his tongue so
smooth, he is a man to scheme deep undertakings. Why hath he brought
with him so great an armed train--greater far than a wedding
warranteth? Offa, I tell thee this youth will some day spread his sway
in England, even so far as thou hast spread thine!"
"If I thought he truly scorned my daughter...."
"Shall we let him go forth, husband, wed or unwed? Thou shouldst set
him straightway in ward, the wheedling knave! or there are other ways,
maybe!"
"Lady wife," said Offa, "do thou bear in mind that this man is our
guest!"
"My lord, Ethelbert is young, and as for thee, thou hast looked thy
last upon the height of thy manhood. And Egbert our son will never be
the man that thou art. I say, beware! Come tell me now, if so be that
Ethelbert of East Anglia wriggle from out of this pact he is come to
make with us--if he make of us laughing-stocks from Iceland unto Caisar
Charles's court--aye, and beyond--say ye will strike, O Offa of Mercia,
so that your kingly dignity be upheld in the land!"
"God knoweth I will strike, and right heavily!" cried Offa. "I give my
word I will not fail thee. But, lady, I hold thee mistaken--all this
can scarcely be."
And as he was in gleeful humour, he put the matter from his mind, and
began contentedly to examine and polish his boar-spears. He had
suffered one or two envious pangs through Ethelbert's youth and vigour.
Moreover, strong man though he was, he had never been able to bridle
Cynerith.
Hardly had the Queen left the room than Sexwolf, her neglected
favourite, sprang out upon her; and bitterly he upbraided her, raging,
expostulating, pleading, outside the very door of King Offa's cabinet.
"Hold thy tongue, young man!" said she loudly, in her stateliest tones;
and she swept from before him into the hall, where some were setting
out the evening meal.
It was a hot evening, even sultry. They opened the doors, and such
windows as had swinging frames, and the red glow of sunset shone in
upon them for a brief hour. Though few of their court were to be
present, they decked themselves that night in their full finery.
Cynerith, clad in wine-purple, was as handsome, seen by twilight, as
she had ever been in the days of her prime. Eadburh, in green and
crimson, was gorgeous and blatant. Ethelfrith wore white, exquisitely
embroidered with silver and gold.