Athelwold was still troubled in his mind, although his suspicion and
fear were not so acute as at first, and the longer they sat
talking--until the small hours--the more relieved did he feel from
Edgar's manner towards him. Edgar in his cups opened his heart and was
more loving and free in his speech than ever before. He loved Athelwold
as he loved no one else in the world, and to see him great and happy was
his first desire; and he congratulated him from his heart on having
found a wife who was worthy of him and would eventually bring him,
through her father, such great possessions as would make him the chief
nobleman in the land. All happiness and glory to them both; and when a
child was born to them he would be its godfather, and if happily by that
time there was a queen, she should be its godmother.
Then he recalled their happy boyhood's days in East Anglia, that joyful
time when they first hunted and had many a mishap and fell from their
horses when they pursued hare and deer and bustard in the wide open
stretches of sandy country; and in the autumn and winter months when
they were wild-fowling in the great level flooded lands where the geese
and all wild-fowl came in clouds and myriads. And now he laughed and now
his eyes grew moist at the recollection of the irrecoverable glad days.
Little time was left for sleep; yet they were ready early next morning
for the day's great boar-hunt in the forest, and only when the king was
about to mount his horse did Elfrida make her appearance. She came out
to him from the door, not richly dressed now, but in a simple white
linen robe and not an ornament on her except that splendid crown of the
red-gold hair on her head. And her face too was almost colourless now,
and grave and still. She brought wine in a golden cup and gave it to the
king, and he once more fixed his eyes on her and for some moments they
continued silently gazing, each in that fixed gaze seeming to devour the
secrets of the other's soul. Then she wished him a happy hunting, and he
said in reply he hoped it would be the happiest hunting he had ever had.
Then, after drinking the wine, he mounted his horse and rode away. And
she remained standing very still, the cup in her hand, gazing after him
as he rode side by side with Athelwold, until in the distance the trees
hid him from her sight.
Now when they had ridden a distance of three miles or more into the
heart of the forest, they came to a broad drive-like stretch of green
turf, and the king cried: This is just what I have been wishing for!
Come, let us give our horses a good gallop. And when they loosened the
reins, the horses, glad to have a race on such a ground, instantly
sprang forward; but Edgar, keeping a tight rein, was presently left
twenty or thirty yards behind; then, setting spurs to his horse, he
dashed forward, and on coming abreast of his companion, drew his knife
and struck him in the back, dealing the blow with such a concentrated
fury that the knife was buried almost to the hilt. Then violently
wrenching it out, he would have struck again had not the earl, with a
scream of agony, tumbled from his seat. The horse, freed from its rider,
rushed on in a sudden panic, and the king's horse side by side with it.
Edgar, throwing himself back and exerting his whole strength, succeeded
in bringing him to a stop at a distance of fifty or sixty yards, then
turning, came riding back at a furious speed.
Now when Athelwold fell, all those who were riding behind, the earl's
and the king's men to the number of thirty or forty, dashed forward, and
some of them, hurriedly dismounting, gathered about him as he lay
groaning and writhing and pouring out his blood on the ground. But at
the king's approach they drew quickly back to make way for him, and he
came straight on and caused his horse to trample on the fallen man. Then
pointing to him with the knife he still had in his hand, he cried: That
is how I serve a false friend and traitor! Then, wiping the stained
knife-blade on his horse's neck and sheathing it, he shouted: Back to
Salisbury! and setting spurs to his horse, galloped off towards the
Andover road.
His men immediately mounted and followed, leaving the earl's men with
their master. Lifting him up, they placed him on a horse, and with a
mounted man on each side to hold him up, they moved back at a walking
pace towards Wherwell.
Messengers were sent ahead to inform Elfrida of what had happened, and
then, an hour later, yet another messenger to tell that Athelwold, when
half-way home, had breathed his last. Then at last the corpse was
brought to the castle and she met it with tears and lamentations. But
afterwards in her own chamber, when she had dismissed all her
attendants, as she desired to weep alone, her grief changed to joy. O,
glorious Edgar, she said, the time will come when you will know what I
feel now, when at your feet, embracing your knees and kissing the
blessed hand that with one blow has given me life and liberty. One blow
and your revenge was satisfied and you had won me; I know it, I saw it
all in that flame of love and fury in your eyes at our first meeting,
which you permitted me to see, which, if he had seen, he would have
known that he was doomed. O perfect master of dissimulation, all the
more do I love and worship you for dealing with him as he dealt with you
and with me; caressing him with flattering words until the moment came
to strike and slay. And I love you all the more for making your horse
trample on him as he lay bleeding his life out on the ground. And now
you have opened the way with your knife you shall come back or call me
to you when it pleases you, and for the rest of your life it will be a
satisfaction to you to know that you have taken a modest woman as well
as the fairest in the land for wife and queen, and your pride in me will
be my happiness and glory. For men's love is little to me since
Athelwold taught me to think meanly of all men, except you that slew
him. And you shall be free to follow your own mind and be ever strenuous
and vigilant and run after kingly pleasures, pursuing deer and wolf and
beautiful women all over the land. And I shall listen to the tales of
your adventures and conquests with a smile like that of a mother who
sees her child playing seriously with its dolls and toys, talking to and
caressing them. And in return you shall give me my desire, which is
power and splendour; for these I crave, to be first and greatest, to
raise up and cast down, and in all our life I shall be your help and
stay in ruling this realm, so that our names may be linked together and
shine in the annals of England for all time.
* * * * *
When Edgar slew Athelwold his age was twenty-two, and before he was a
year older he had married Elfrida, to the rage of that great man and
primate and more than premier, who, under Edgar, virtually ruled
England. And in his rage, and remembering how he had dealt with a
previous boy king, whose beautiful young wife he had hounded to her
dreadful end, he charged Elfrida with having instigated her husband's
murder, and commanded the king to put that woman away. This roused the
man and passionate lover, and the tiger in the man, in Edgar, and the
wise and subtle-minded ecclesiastic quickly recognised that he had set
himself against one of a will more powerful and dangerous than his own.
He remembered that it was Edgar, who, when he had been deprived of his
abbey and driven in disgrace from the land, had recalled and made him so
great, and he knew that the result of a quarrel between them would be a
mighty upheaval in the land and the sweeping away of all his great
reforms. And so, cursing the woman in his heart and secretly vowing
vengeance on her, he was compelled in the interests of the Church to
acquiesce in this fresh crime of the king.
VII
Eight years had passed since the king's marriage with Elfrida, and the
one child born to them was now seven, the darling of his parents,
Ethelred the angelic child, who to the end of his long life would be
praised for one thing only--his personal beauty. But Edward, his
half-brother, now in his thirteenth year, was regarded by her with an
almost equal affection, on account of his beauty and charm, his devotion
to his step-mother, the only mother he had known, and, above all, for
his love of his little half-brother. He was never happy unless he was
with him, acting the part of guide and instructor as well as playfellow.
Edgar had recently completed one of his great works, the building of
Corfe Castle, and now whenever he was in Wessex preferred it as a
residence, since he loved best that part of England with its wide moors
and hunting forests, and its neighbourhood to the sea and to Portland
and Poole water. He had been absent for many weeks on a journey to
Northumbria, and the last tidings of his movements were that he was on
his way to the south, travelling on the Welsh border, and intended
visiting the Abbot of Glastonbury before returning to Dorset. This
religious house was already very great in his day; he had conferred many
benefits on it, and contemplated still others.
It was summer time, a season of great heats, and Elfrida with the two
little princes often went to the coast to spend a whole day in the open
air by the sea. Her favourite spot was at the foot of a vast chalk down
with a slight strip of woodland between its lowest slope and the beach.
She was at this spot one day about noon where the trees were few and
large, growing wide apart, and had settled herself on a pile of cushions
placed at the roots of a big old oak tree, where from her seat she could
look out over the blue expanse of water. But the hamlet and church close
by on her left hand were hidden by the wood, though sounds issuing from
it could be heard occasionally--shouts and bursts of laughter, and at
times the music of a stringed instrument and a voice singing. These
sounds came from her armed guard and other attendants who were speeding
the idle hours of waiting in their own way, in eating and drinking and
in games and dancing. Only two women remained to attend to her wants,
and one armed man to keep watch and guard over the two boys at their
play.
They were not now far off, not above fifty yards, among the big trees;
but for hours past they had been away out of her sight, racing on their
ponies over the great down; then bathing in the sea, Edward teaching his
little brother to swim; then he had given him lessons in tree-climbing,
and now, tired of all these exertions, and for variety's sake, they were
amusing themselves by standing on their heads. Little Ethelred had tried
and failed repeatedly, then at last, with hands and head firmly planted
on the sward, he had succeeded in throwing his legs up and keeping them
in a vertical position for a few seconds, this feat being loudly
applauded by his young instructor.
Elfrida, who had witnessed this display from her seat, burst out
laughing, then said to herself: O how I love these two beautiful boys
almost with an equal love, albeit one is not mine! But Edward must be
ever dear to me because of his sweetness and his love of me and, even
more, his love and tender care of my darling. Yet am I not wholly free
from an anxious thought of the distant future. Ah, no, let me not think
of such a thing! This sweet child of a boy-father and girl-mother--the
frail mother that died in her teens--he can never grow to be a proud,
masterful, ambitious man--never aspire to wear his father's crown!
Edgar's first-born, it is true, but not mine, and he can never be king.
For Edgar and I are one; is it conceivable that he should oppose me in
this--that we that are one in mind and soul shall at the last be divided
and at enmity? Have we not said it an hundred times that we are one? One
in all things except in passion. Yet this very coldness in me in which I
differ from others is my chief strength and glory, and has made our two
lives one life. And when he is tired and satiated with the common beauty
and the common passions of other women he returns to me only to have his
first love kindled afresh, and when in love and pity I give myself to
him and am his bride afresh as when first he had my body in his arms, it
is to him as if one of the immortals had stooped to a mortal, and he
tells me I am the flower of womankind and of the world, that my white
body is a perfect white flower, my hair a shining gold flower, my mouth
a fragrant scarlet flower, and my eyes a sacred blue flower, surpassing
all others in loveliness. And when I have satisfied him, and the tempest
in his blood has abated, then for the rapture he has had I have mine,
when, ashamed at his violence, as if it had been an insult to me, he
covers his face with my hair and sheds tears of love and contrition on
my breasts. O nothing can ever disunite us! Even from the first, before
I ever saw him, when he was coming to me I knew that we were destined to
be one. And he too knew it from the moment of seeing me, and knew that I
knew it; and when he sat at meat with us and looked smilingly at the
friend of his bosom and spoke merrily to him, and resolved at the same
time to take his life, he knew that by so doing he would fulfil my
desire, and as my knowledge of the betrayal was first, so the desire to
shed that abhorred blood was in me first. Nevertheless, I cannot be free
of all anxious thoughts, and fear too of my implacable enemy and
traducer who from a distance watches all my movements, who reads Edgar's
mind even as he would a book, and what he finds there writ by me he
seeks to blot out; and thus does he ever thwart me. But though I cannot
measure my strength against his, it will not always be so, seeing that
he is old and I am young, with Time and Death on my side, who will like
good and faithful servants bring him to the dust, so that my triumph
must come. And when he is no more I shall have time to unbuild the
structure he has raised with lies for stones and my name coupled with
some evil deed cut in every stone. For I look ever to the future, even
to the end to see this Edgar, with the light of life shining so brightly
in him now, a venerable king with silver hair, his passions cool, his
strength failing, leaning more heavily on me; until at last, persuaded
by me, he will step down from the throne and resign his crown to our
son--our Ethelred. And in him and his son after him, and in his son's
sons we shall live still in their blood, and with them rule this kingdom
of Edgar the Peaceful--a realm of everlasting peace.
Thus she mused, until overcome by her swift, crowding thoughts and
passions, love and hate, with memories dreadful or beautiful, of her
past and strivings of her mind to pierce the future, she burst into a
violent storm of tears so that her frame was shaken, and covering her
eyes with her hands she strove to get the better of her agitation lest
her weakness should be witnessed by her attendants. But when this
tempest had left her and she lifted her eyes again, it seemed to her
that the burning tears which had relieved her heart had also washed away
some trouble that had been like a dimness on all visible nature, and
earth and sea and sky were glorified as if the sunlight flooding the
world fell direct from the heavenly throne, and she sat drinking in pure
delight from the sight of it and the soft, warm air she breathed.
Then, to complete her happiness, the silence that reigned around her was
broken by a sweet, musical sound of a little bird that sang from the
tree-top high above her head. This was the redstart, and the tree under
which she sat was its singing-tree, to which it resorted many times a
day to spend half an hour or so repeating its brief song at intervals of
a few seconds--a small song that was like the song of the redbreast,
subdued, refined and spiritualised, as of a spirit that lived within the
tree.
Listening to it in that happy, tender mood which had followed her tears,
she gazed up and tried to catch sight of it, but could see nothing but
the deep-cut, green, translucent, clustering oak leaves showing the blue
of heaven and shining like emeralds in the sunlight. O sweet, blessed
little bird, she said, are you indeed a bird? I think you are a
messenger sent to assure me that all my hopes and dreams of the distant
days to come will be fulfilled. Sing again and again and again; I could
listen for hours to that selfsame song.
But she heard it no more; the bird had flown away. Then, still
listening, she caught a different sound--the loud hoof-beats of horses
being ridden at furious speed towards the hamlet. Listening intently to
that sound she heard, on its arrival at the hamlet, a sudden, great cry
as if all the men gathered there had united their voices in one cry; and
she stood up, and her women came to her, and all together stood silently
gazing in that direction. Then the two boys who had been lying on the
turf not far off came running to them and caught her by the hands, one
on each side, and Edward, looking up at her white, still face, cried,
Mother, what is it you fear? But she answered no word. Then again the
sound of hoofs was heard and they knew the riders were now coming at a
swift gallop to them. And in a few moments they appeared among the
trees, and reining up their horses at a distance of some yards, one
sprang to the ground, and advancing to the queen, made his obeisance,
then told her he had been sent to inform her of Edgar's death. He had
been seized by a sudden violent fever in Gloucestershire, on his way to
Glastonbury, and had died after two days' illness. He had been
unconscious all the time, but more than once he had cried out, On to
Glastonbury! and now in obedience to that command his body was being
conveyed thither for interment at the abbey.
VIII
She had no tears to shed, no word to say, nor was there any sense of
grief at her loss. She had loved him--once upon a time; she had always
admired him for his better qualities; even his excessive pride and
ostentation had been pleasing to her; finally she had been more than
tolerant of his vices or weaknesses, regarding them as matters beneath
her attention. Nevertheless, in their eight years of married life they
had become increasingly repugnant to her stronger and colder nature. He
had degenerated, bodily and mentally, and was not now like that shining
one who had come to her at Wherwell Castle, who had not hesitated to
strike the blow that had set her free. The tidings of his death had all
at once sprung the truth on her mind that the old love was dead, that it
had indeed been long dead, and that she had actually come to despise
him.
But what should she do--what be--without him! She had been his queen,
loved to adoration, and he had been her shield; now she was alone, face
to face with her bitter, powerful enemy. Now it seemed to her that she
had been living in a beautiful peaceful land, a paradise of fruit and
flowers and all delightful things; that in a moment, as by a miracle, it
had turned to a waste of black ashes still hot and smoking from the
desolating flames that had passed over it. But she was not one to give
herself over to despondency so long as there was anything to be done.
Very quickly she roused herself to action, and despatched messengers to
all those powerful friends who shared her hatred of the great
archbishop, and would be glad of the opportunity now offered of wresting
the rule from his hands. Until now he had triumphed because he had had
the king to support him even in his most arbitrary and tyrannical
measures; now was the time to show a bold front, to proclaim her son as
the right successor, and with herself, assisted by chosen councillors to
direct her boy, the power would be in her hands, and once more, as in
King Edwin's day, the great Dunstan, disgraced and denounced, would be
compelled to fly from the country lest a more dreadful punishment should
befall him. Finally, leaving the two little princes at Corfe Castle, she
travelled to Mercia to be with and animate her powerful friends and
fellow-plotters with her presence.
All their plottings and movements were known to Dunstan, and he was too
quick for them. Whilst they, divided among themselves, were debating and
arranging their plans, he had called together all the leading bishops
and councillors of the late king, and they had agreed that Edward must
be proclaimed as the first-born; and although but a boy of thirteen, the
danger to the country would not be so great as it would to give the
succession to a child of seven years. Accordingly Edward was proclaimed
king and removed from Corfe Castle while the queen was still absent in
Mercia.
For a while it looked as if this bold and prompt act on the part of
Dunstan would have led to civil war; but a great majority of the nobles
gave their adhesion to Edward, and Elfrida's friends soon concluded that
they were not strong enough to set her boy up and try to overthrow
Edward, or to divide England again between two boy kings as in Edwin and
Edgar's early years.
She accordingly returned discomfited to Corfe and to her child, now
always crying for his beloved brother who had been taken from him; and
there was not in all England a more miserable woman than Elfrida the
queen. For after this defeat she could hope no more; her power was gone
past recovery--all that had made her life beautiful and glorious was
gone. Now Corfe was like that other castle at Wherwell, where Earl
Athelwold had kept her like a caged bird for his pleasure when he
visited her; only worse, since she was eight years younger then, her
beauty fresher, her heart burning with secret hopes and ambitions, and
the great world where there were towns and a king, and many noble men
and women gathered round him yet to be known. And all these things had
come to her and were now lost--now nothing was left but bitterest
regrets and hatred of all those who had failed her at the last. Hatred
first of all and above all of her great triumphant enemy, and hatred of
the boy king she had loved with a mother's love until now, and cherished
for many years. Hatred too of herself when she recalled the part she had
recently played in Mercia, where she had not disdained to practise all
her fascinating arts on many persons she despised in order to bind them
to her cause, and had thereby given cause to her monkish enemy to charge
her with immodesty. It was with something like hatred too that she
regarded her own child when he would come crying to her, begging her to
take him to his beloved brother; carried away with sudden rage, she
would strike and thrust him violently from her, then order her women to
take him away and keep him out of her sight.
Three years had gone by, during which she had continued living alone at
Corfe, still under a cloud and nursing her bitter revengeful feeling in
her heart, until that fatal afternoon on the eighteenth day of March,
978.
The young king, now in his seventeenth year, had come to these favourite
hunting-grounds of his late father, and was out hunting on that day. He
had lost sight of his companions in a wood or thicket of thorn and
furze, and galloping in search of them he came out from the wood on the
further side; and there before him, not a mile away, was Corfe Castle,
his old beloved home, and the home still of the two beings he loved best
in the world--his step-mother and his little half-brother. And although
he had been sternly warned that they were his secret enemies, that it
would be dangerous to hold any intercourse with them, the sight of the
castle and his craving to look again on their dear faces overcame his
scruples. There would be no harm, no danger to him and no great
disobedience on his part to ride to the gates and see and greet them
without dismounting.