A GRIM TEMPLE, A GRIM PRIEST, AND A SAD HEART.
"When true hearts lie wither'd
And fond ones are flown,
Oh! who would inhabit
This bleak world alone?"
Moore.
Ethel, deeply muffled and disguised, passed through the little
postern-gate of the fortress. A word in the ear of the sentinel who
paced to and fro before it on guard, secured instant obedience. Ethel's
position in the fortress was thoroughly understood by all. Her
self-denial, her patience, and her burning patriotism, were well known
in this camp of Saxon outlaws. The readiness with which she undertook
positions involving fatigue and privation, for the cause, was a constant
inspiration to the common people. They watched her come and go with
veneration--almost with awe and superstition. They whispered one to
another of her strange journeyings by night and day; and many regarded
this young chieftainess as a special favourite of the gods. As she
glided through the gate in the early morning hours, the sentinel thrust
his head forth and watched her swiftly descend the slope, like a ghost
in the darkness. When her form was no longer visible, he closed the
door, and secured it with bolt and bar.
"Whatever can she be after so early in the morning, and before the day
dawns? There's something very uncanny about her, tramping over hill and
dale by night and day like any wolfshead, or wicca-hag.[3] I saw the
fiery lights in the heavens two hours ago. I wonder what it all means. I
almost wish I was safely out in the Bruneswald, where I could hop about
like a bird from tree to tree, and where never a Norman could corner
one. This being cooped up like a rabbit in a hole I don't relish. I like
room to ply my heels. Howsomever, I'll stick, and stand my chance, for
the women can't be whisked through the air; and the children, too, they
must have a nest." So the sentinel continued his watch, and ruminated on
these things.
[Footnote 3: Witch.]
Meanwhile, Ethel sped with quick step over the rugged limestone hills,
flying before the fastly pursuing dawn like a fugitive who dreaded his
revealing power. Ever and anon she turned to measure with her eye the
distance she had traversed. The shadowy outlines of the fortress she
left behind began to take shape in the distance, and she quickened her
pace. "I shall soon be beyond the reach of vision," she muttered to
herself. "I would not have Oswald know my errand to-day for worlds. My
mind is dark, I know not what I do; but my hope dies, and my heart
breaks. Perhaps the Norseman's gods may help me, for the Christian's God
fails me. 'Tis a dread alternative; but I would know, if I could, what
Fate has decreed for me."
For three weary hours she sped over dreary moors and scraggy,
precipitous valleys, which were often little better than ravines.
Presently she turned into a declivity running between two banked-up,
precipitous sides. A little ahead, the two sides curved inwards and came
together, and to all appearance this strange gorge came to an end. Ethel
marched forward with unfaltering step, evidently straight at the blunt
face of the joined limestone rock. But when she reached the extremity,
there became visible, what at a very short distance could not be seen,
an obscure opening behind a jagged projection of rock. It might be, to
all appearance, merely an entrance to a fox's or wolf's den. Into this
opening, however, Ethel crept, without halt or questionings of any kind.
Presently the narrow entrance became larger, and she stood upright, but
continued to descend a rough and precipitous path, until she reached a
level piece of ground. Looking up--the place was simply a stupendous
slit in the limestone rock, broadening downwards into a considerable
area. The trees and shrubs growing at the top interlocked from side to
side, and the light came streaming through a network of branches.
Desolate and awe-inspiring was the place. At the farther end were two
mounds of earth, or tumuli, where the grim priests of Thor and Woden
were sleeping the long sleep of death--lives which had been literally
burnt out by the fierce fires of fanaticism, and savage asceticism.
Ethel paused to look around, but everything was still as death; she
shuddered and drew her cloak tighter about her.
"The last time I came to this spot my father brought me. I feel his
untamed Norseman blood stir within me. The fierce gods of war and
revenge and death his Viking ancestors and he worshipped, I dare to
consult to-day. 'Tis a cruel necessity, and jars my woman's instincts--I
feel it petrifies my heart with unlovely savagery; but the followers of
this Christ have slain my people with a wicked and unsparing slaughter.
They differ in no way in their wanton cruelty to Norseman and Dane.
Their women, too, with their fair faces, dainty fingers, and courtly
manners, have stolen the heart of Oswald, and I am slighted and
disdained; nothing in my beauty--and suitors of noble lineage have
sought me ere now for my beauty; nothing in my rank--and it is but
yesterday that I might have stood amongst the proudest of the land. No;
I am a withered leaf, battered, bruised, and trampled upon. My love is
unrequited! My misfortunes are compassionated, but that soothes not my
wounded spirit, and is but a hateful substitute for the love I crave.
Alas! nothing avails me, for I am only a heathen woman and an outcast.
So, hard driven by my misfortunes and my wounded love, I will consult
the gods of my father. The Norseman's gods may help me perhaps. Yet,"
said she, pausing for a moment, whilst her breast heaved with strange
and powerful emotions which struggled for the mastery within her, "my
mother was Christian and Saxon. She was a follower of this Christ. She
was gentle, and taught me to pray to Him. I remember it well, though I
was but a child. 'Our Father which art in heaven.' Ah, that is
wonderfully soothing to me, and not like the prayers I was taught to
offer to Thor and Odin. But my mother could not have known this Jesus;
for if He was merciful and gentle, why do His blood-thirsty followers
delight in treachery and bloodshed. 'Twas a part of my cruel fate that
she should die in my infancy, for had she lived I might have learned of
her more perfectly. O ye gods!" said she, wringing her hands in agony
above her head, and looking up to the vaulted roof with tear-blinded
eyes and with agonised entreaty,--"have pity on me in my
friendlessness!"
Then she sped on with a quick, determined tread. Down each side of this
weird retreat there were standing out, like grim, ghostly sentinels in
the uncertain light, a long line of runic stones, on which were carved
many strange devices; rude figures of uncouth and unearthly animals and
reptiles. She had been taught that these strange hieroglyphics and signs
had marvellous potency for good or ill. They could cause passionate
love, or undying hatred, in the breasts of those over whom their spell
was thrown. Indeed, the power of life and death was wielded by them.
Strange supernatural agencies and powers were their messengers, and did
their bidding. Starting from the rock, or planted here and there, were
many of the ominous rowan trees, or witch-wood. The hemlock and the
nightshade clustered together, and the nodding cypress dropped sombrely
over the runic stones beneath them. Ethel glanced nervously round, but
not a living thing was visible; not a sound broke the death-like silence
of the place. Quickly gliding beneath the drooping branches of one of
the cypress trees, she fell on her knees before the frowning pillar of
stone. She had knelt there before by the side of her father, who had
remained heathen to the last. But to kneel alone, in this very vestibule
of the Place of Darkness, and to pour out her passionate entreaties to
powers which she knew were the Powers of Darkness, strange to mercy, and
which had but the attributes of fiends; the ordeal was terrible indeed.
With feelings tumultuous and frenzied, she apostrophised the weird and
forbidding emblem before her.
"O ye gods of my fathers, whether ye be Powers of Light or of Darkness I
know not. Pity my ignorance, and my apostasy, for I have turned to this
Jesus whom the Christians worship, and He has failed me, and turned my
joy into mourning. My father and my brother have been slain by the
followers of this Jesus. My home is made desolate, and I flee for life
and honour from these Christian fiends. There is one also who might have
been my lover, who is bravest amongst the brave, and most chivalrous
amongst the chivalrous; who is gentle as a sunbeam, and tender as my own
lost mother, yet strong as any tower in the storm. He is lost to me
through the subtle arts of their women. My life has become to me but a
living torment. Can ye turn again the heart of Oswald to me? 'Tis said
ye can turn even hatred into love. I know it is unmaidenly to plead for
a love I cannot inspire, but I can bear this burden no longer alone, and
I would ye could give me favour in his eyes, or give me a long home in
one of these sepulchral mounds."
She started to her feet with a shriek, as a deep voice saluted her from
behind,--
"Waes hael, Viking's daughter!"
She hastily turned, and behold there stood before her Olaf, the aged
priest of this Vikings' temple, to whom for a couple of generations the
heathenism and savagery of the countryside had repaired for ghostly
consolation, and into whose ears had been poured the secrets of fierce
loves and fiercer hatreds of these descendants of the Norsemen. He had
been the grim dispenser of dark and mystic rites and potent spells to
weirdly savage and credulous votaries. A strange being surely to claim a
place in times so advanced as these! He was a living embodiment and
personification of a bygone era, and so totally destitute of all
humanising instincts that he might have slid down the ages,
glacier-like, from prehistoric times--when men dwelt in caves, and
gnawed the flesh from the bones of their prey like wild beasts--without
ever having come in contact with the outermost fringe of civilisation; a
Viking of the Vikings in savagery and blood. His head was uncovered, and
his long and matted grey hair fell over his shoulders. His form was
shrunken and racked with rheumatic pains, from his long exposure and
unlovely life. Long, deep furrows ploughed his face, and the long,
powerful, and uncleanly teeth stood away from the shrunken cheeks,
whilst his sunken eyes gleamed like the eyes of some savage beast of
prey. He was a visible and concentrated embodiment of the _war spirit_
in its unrelieved and unredeemed essentials. No touch of pen or pencil,
however graphic, could depict, in all his hideous grimness, this
stranded relic of a bygone age of savage lawlessness and force, who
seemed to be but half a dozen removes from the tooth-and-claw methods of
wild beasts.
"Ha! ye are come at last, are ye?" he hoarsely croaked. "Ye are come
now, when ye find that this strange God, this Christ of whom the
Christians speak, has proved to be no God, and cannot save ye! But the
gods of your fathers have given ye over to desolation because ye have
forsaken them. Ha, ha, ha! I could laugh at ye now! Ye despised the old
priest, did ye not? ha, ha, ha!"
As the harsh, grating voice of the priest fell upon her ears, Ethel
almost cowered in terror before him. At sight of her terror, the old
priest somewhat relented his fierceness.
"Hist to me," said he. "Ye are a Viking's daughter, after all, and come
of a stock whose deeds our Sagas tell of, though the Christian taint has
mixed too freely with your father's blood. It does my old tired bones
good, nevertheless, to see ye come back again to me once more. I have
been very lonely and forsaken, for my fellow priests are all lying
beneath these mounds. I buried the last myself not a month agone. See!
the mound is newly heaped. I shall soon be gone also, and there will be
never a priest at hand to give me back into the arms of mother earth, to
reveal to ye the dark mysteries of Valhalla, or to call from the land of
the dead the Sein-loeca,[4] to speak with you. Viking's daughter, are
ye now aweary of following this strange God of the Christians?"
[Footnote 4: Apparition.]
"Alas! I know not what to do, priest! I am as desolate and forsaken as
ye are. I would have the heart of Oswald, the Saxon chieftain, turned
towards me. If ye have any charm that will give me favour in his eyes, I
covet it, priest."
"Ah, but this Oswald is Christian; ye do not well in seeking thus to
further dilute the Viking blood that flows in your veins. Is there no
hardy Norseman ye can mate with? and I can help ye."
"None, father! I gave my heart to this valiant Saxon long ago; but alas!
a Norman woman has won his love, and when he comes into my presence now,
I see that there is always a far-away look in his eye, and I know he is
looking in imagination upon the dark-haired Norman he loves more than
me. He shuns his couch to keep nightly tryst with her. I have dogged his
steps, and watched them in the starlight nights, pacing the battlements
of the castle in loving converse, and in loving embrace. He is kind and
gentle to me, but there is none of the subtle tones of love so dear to
us women when once our heart is won. Men say I am fair; but have ye any
charm to make me fair to _him_? It matters not what men may say, or what
the multitude may say. There is but _one_ man in all the world, and if I
am not fair to _him_, why then the sun goes down on all my hopes, and
leaves naught behind but the long black shadows of despair! Ah! I fear
me, priest, it is in my spirit! There is no charm for him in the passion
and frenzy, the fire and restlessness, of my Viking spirit. This
voluptuous southern maiden, with her courtly manners and her gentle
speech, has touched a chord in his heart which never responds to the
Saxon maiden!"
"Girl, ye are no Saxon maiden! ye are a Viking's daughter! I claim ye
for the old race that has swept every sea, and made the Viking name a
terror to all lands. I will not have ye despise the fierce spirit of
your race that lives in ye! Listen. I know a Viking of the old stock, a
true descendant of our heroes whose mighty deeds our Sagas tell. He hath
a passion for ye deep and fierce, and pure as a Viking's love should be.
'Tis Sigurd of Lakesland, who was here but yestere'en. Let me plight
your troth with him, and there shall spring a progeny like unto our
forefathers, who will sweep the infamous Norman brood into the sea, and
make the cowardly Saxon cower at the feet of the Norseman, as in the
days gone by."
"Ye speak, priest, as though a maiden's heart were like a willow bush,
to veer about as any idle wind may blow, or so gross a thing that it may
be huckstered for a consideration, or be cast as a mere makeweight into
the scale of policy. Never dream, priest, that this is a possible
remedy; for I have nothing to offer Sigurd or any other. If ye cannot
tell me that I shall be Oswald's bride, then I will be wedded to my
people, and I will serve my country till death comes to free me."
"A curse on the evil times I have lived to see, girl!" said the priest
savagely. "This simpering sentiment is not like the love of a Viking
maiden at all! The sturdiest and fiercest warrior was wont to be the
choice of our maidens in the old days. What charm would ye have? There
is but one charm will serve the Viking cause in love or war. It never
failed them, in the past, and will not fail them now if 'tis wielded
fearlessly."
"What is this spell--this charm ye speak of? Tell it me at once!" said
Ethel eagerly.
The priest slowly withdrew from his bosom a bright-bladed dagger, at
sight of which Ethel shuddered and drew back.
The priest scowled, and said angrily, "If ye shrink at this ye are not
fit to be a Viking's daughter. This will serve you if ye are resolute,
for 'tis easy to get an audience of this Norman that hath bewitched
Oswald, and then it were easy to plunge this dagger into her heart; and
what then were thy hated rival? Take the blade in thy hand, nor shrink
from it; the touch of steel will fire thy heart, and purge away the
accursed leaven of effeminacy which is creeping over our Viking race.
There is a magic in the touch of cold steel; my fingers tingle as I feel
it. It has served the Viking's cause as nothing else could do for a
thousand years."
As he spoke he pressed the fearsome weapon into her unwilling hand.
"But how then, priest, when I have taken the life of this innocent lady?
Will that bring back the heart of Oswald? Nay, he will loathe me then,
and I shall be as a 'daughter of perdition' unto him."
"Idle scruples, daughter!" said the priest, testy and irritable. "Who
shall tell him it was your hand did this deed? Be resolute, and fear
not; the Vikings' gods will help ye if ye be bold."
"But after I have done this deed, priest, and if Oswald should never
know it was I that did this foul, this desperate deed, I can never rid
me of the loathsome memory, nor the clinging horror, of
blood-guiltiness. What after that? when self-respect, womanhood--nay,
when the last shred of my _humanity_ is gone--what would remain that
were worth the having? What should I be, and how could I look to mate
with his upright and chivalrous nature? What daily horror would be mine!
for each look of his unsuspecting eye would damn me! Nay, priest, take
back this dagger, for such means as these can never help me. My
innocence is my heaven, and I will keep it while I may; for when this is
lost, then all is lost. I thought ye might have gentler means."
At this the old priest fairly roared with impotent rage.
"Avast!" he cried. "'Tis this Christ hath done it all! Why do ye come to
the Vikings' gods until ye have renounced Him? How can I summon spirits
from Valhalla to your help, or send the wicca-hag skirling on the wind
to ply her sorceries on Oswald, that his heart may be turned to ye, if
ye are Christian?"
Then, dropping into a gentler and more persuasive tone, as he saw Ethel
fairly cowering in terror before him, he said,--
"Go, Viking's daughter. Ye know my heart is sore for ye and for my race;
but it must be either Odin or Jesus. Go renounce this Christ, and then I
can help ye. Nay, nay! keep the dagger, for it hath wondrous virtue in
it. It was with this dagger that Thore Hund slew the Christian renegade
Olaf Haraldssen on the bloody field of Sticklarstad, and Odin proved
himself a mightier than this Christ. It shall be so again, for the
Viking race shall be a terror to all lands. Why should ye be fearful and
afraid? Why should ye hesitate and shrink at this act of revenge? Surely
ye have suffered enough at the hands of this accursed race. How can ye
be so scrupulous, when ye think of the vengeance ye owe these Norman
tyrants and usurpers for a father and brother slaughtered, for your
sadness, and your homelessness? Think of the love this Norman woman hath
stolen from ye. Nurse these thoughts, and be courageous, Viking's
daughter."
Ethel slowly climbed from the weird retreat, where for generations these
savage priests of Thor and Odin had exercised a dread and mystic sway
over the descendants of the Norsemen conquerors, who in past times had
swooped down on Northumbria, peopling it with rough and hardy warriors;
and still the barbarous rites and crude beliefs held extensive sway, in
spite of the leavening influences of the Saxons' Christ. Ethel had
entered this nature's temple with dim hopes that by some exercise of
supernatural powers the heart of Oswald might be influenced so as to
turn to her; and if not this, that she might know the worst. Alas! the
sad heart and the wounded love had met with no amelioration of its
sadness and despair; but the dormant passion and frenzy which ran in her
Viking blood had been stirred in its lethargy into a madness of revenge,
the extent and power of which she had never felt before.
"What is to be the end of this?" she said to herself, as she sped over
the wild hills. "Either I must conquer or be crushed. There is no middle
course; either it is hell or heaven. I cannot cast off or change my
love; that is given unreservedly and beyond recall. This Viking, Sigurd,
is a warrior true as steel, and his love is as sincere and true. But
what of that? To wed him were a suggestion most gross, and impossible as
gross. How could I crouch beside the ingle of an untamed Viking husband,
and in all unloveliness mother a rude progeny, and blur out, in the
grossness and savagery of it, the vision of better things, and of the
nobler love I have seen? Question. Shall I tamely submit to the
usurpation of a love that might have been mine, but of which I have been
despoiled by a Norman woman? Or shall I fling to the winds my Christian
trammels and scruples, and, Viking-like, take the Viking's remedy?" and
she drew forth from her bosom the unlovely and murderous weapon the
priest had given her. "The priest said this was my only remedy. 'Tis a
grim alternative. But why should I suffer this for a love too readily
given? I never told my heart to dote on Oswald. 'Twas a wild freak of
affection I could not bridle; and I cannot undo it now, so that change
is impossible. It was without effort of mine, also, that he has filled
my eye so fully that I cannot see another. Shall I tamely suffer this
eclipse at the hands of this southern woman? This priest tells me what a
Viking woman would do, and surely, if foul wrongs call for fierce
revenge, then I should not timidly shrink from this avenging act.
Madness and despair nerve my arm and steel my heart, and I will act as a
Viking woman would act!"
But just at that moment, as the fierce spirit of revenge assumed the
mastery, there flitted before her mental vision a scene of long ago,
when, as a child, she knelt at her mother's knee, and heard the wondrous
story of the Redeemer's mercifulness and love for his enemies. The
revulsion of feeling was instant and overpowering. Stretching her
clenched hands heavenwards, she shrieked, in an agony of prayer, "Jesu,
_God of mercy_, help!"
Overwrought nature could bear no more, and she sank in insensibility to
the ground, her fair countenance convulsed with agony. Speedily,
however, the shadows of despair gave place to a placid smile of sweet
content. Again she was a child, and her mother's form was bending over
her, but wondrously ennobled and beautified; and she spoke words of
comfort and of hope. "Daughter, be of good courage, and remember the
words of the Master that I taught you: 'Come unto Me all ye that labour
and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest'; 'Lo, I am with you
always, even unto the end of the world.'" Then, with a smile angelic in
its sweetness, the heavenly vision faded away.
Slowly Ethel staggered to her feet, for her physical strength was
exhausted; but the look of blank despair had passed away, and her
countenance was transfigured until it shone like the countenance of a
saint of God. And drawing the dagger from her bosom she hurled it over a
precipice, shuddering as she did so. Then she slowly turned her
footsteps towards the fortress on the hill.