When consciousness came to my eyes again, everything around me was
altered and strange. The very air I drew in with my faint breaths had
a taste of the unknown about it, an impalpable something that was not
before, speaking of change and novelty. As for surroundings, it was
only dimly that any fashioned themselves before those dull and sleepy
eyes of mine that hesitated, as they drowsily turned about, whether to
pronounce this object and that true material substance, or still the
idle fantasy of dreams.
As time went on certainty developed out of doubt, and I found myself
speculating on as strangely furnished a chamber as any one was ever in.
All round the wall hung the implements of many occupations in bunches
and knots. Here the rude tools of husbandry were laid aside, the
mattock and the flail; the woodman’s axe and the neatherd’s goad, just
as though they had been suspended on the wall by some invisible laborer
after a good day’s work. Yonder were a sheaf of arrows and a stout bow
strangely shaped, a hunting horn, and there again a long withy peeled
for fishing, and a broad, rusty iron sword (that truly looked as if it
had not been used for some time) over against a leash for dogs, and a
herdsman’s cowl, with other strange things festooning the walls of this
dim little place.
Among these possessions of some many-minded men were shelves I noted
with clay vessels of sorts upon them, and bunches of dried herbs and
roots and apples put by for the winter, and, more curious still, in the
safest niche away in the quietest corner were stored up in many tiers
more than a score of vellums and manuscripts, all neatly rolled and
tagged with colored ribbons, and wound in parchments and embroidered
gold and colored leathers, forming such a library of learning as only
the very studious could possess in those days. Beyond them were flasks
and essences, and dried herbs, and ink-horns, and sheafs of uncut reeds
for writing, with such other various items as astonished me by their
incongruous complexity and novelty.
All these lay in the shadows most commendable to my weakly eyes. As for
the center of the room, I now began to notice it was a brilliant golden
haze, a nebulous cloud of yellow light, to my enfeebled sense without
form or meaning, whence emerged constantly a thin metallic hammering,
as though it might be some kindly invisible spirit were forging a
golden idea into a human hope behind that shining veil.
I shut my eyes for a minute or two to rest them, and then looked again.
The haze had now concentrated itself into a circle of light, radiating,
as I perceived, from a lamp hung from the low roof, and under that
pale, modest radiance, seated at a trestle table, was a venerable
white-bearded old man. Never, so far, perhaps, in long centuries of
intercourse with brave but licentious peoples, had a face like his
been before me. It was restful to look at, a new page in history it
seemed, full of a peace which had hitherto passed all understanding and
a dignity beyond description or definition. Before him, on the board,
was a brilliant mass of shining white metal, and, as he eagerly bent
over it, absorbed in his work, his thin and scholarly hands, wielding
a chisel and a mallet and obeying the art that was in his soul, caused
the rhythmed hammering I had noticed, while they forced with loving
zeal the bright chips and spiral flakes from the splendid dazzling
crucifix he was shaping.
And all behind that lean and kindly anchorite the black shadows
flickered on the walls of his lonely cell, and his little fire of
sticks burned dimly on the open hearth, and the shining dust of his
labor sparkled in his grizzly beard as brightly as the reverent
pleasure in his eyes while the symbol before him took form and shape.
So pleasant was he to look upon, I could have left him long
undisturbed, but presently a sigh involuntarily escaped me. Thereon,
looking up for the first time from his work, the recluse peered all
round him into the recesses, and, seeing nothing, fell to his task
once more. Again I sighed, and then he arose without emotion or fear,
and stared intently into the shadows where I lay. In vain I essayed to
speak--my tongue clove to my mouth, and naught but a husky rattle broke
the stillness. At that sound he took down the lamp and came forward,
wonder and astonishment working in his face; and when, as the light
shone on me, with a great effort my head was turned to one side, even
that placid monk started back and stood trembling a little by the table.
But he soon mastered his weakness and advanced again, muttering, as he
did so, excitedly to himself, “He was right! He was right!” And when at
last my tongue was loosened I said:
“Who was right, thou gray-bearded chiseler?”
“Who? Why, Alfred. Alfred, the son of Ethelwulf, the son of
Egbert--Alfred the great Thane of England!”
“One of your British Princelings, I suppose,” I muttered huskily. “And
wherein was he so right?”
“He was right, O marvelous returner from the dim seas of the past,
in that he prophesied your return! To him you owe this shelter and
preservation.”
“All this may be so, my host,” I replied, beginning to feel more myself
again; “but it matters not. I fought a stubborn fight last night, and I
was carried away by a midnight torrent. If you have sheltered and dried
me, and”--with a sudden sinking of my voice--“if you have protected
the little maid I had with me, then I am grateful to you, Alfred or
no Alfred,” and I threw off a mountain of moldy-seeming rags and
coverlets, and staggered up.
But that worthy monk was absolutely dumb with astonishment, and as I
tottered to my feet, holding out to him a gaunt, trembling hand, brown
with the dust of ages, and drunkenly reeled across his floor, he edged
away, while the long hair of his silvery head bristled with wonder.
“My son, my son!” he gasped at length, over the shining crucifix; “this
is not so; none of us know the beginning of that sleep you have slept;
that night of yours is of immeasurable antiquity. History has forgotten
your very battles, and your maid, I fear, has long since passed into
common, immaterial dust.”
This was too much, and suddenly, overwhelmed by the tide of hot
Phœnician passion, I shook my fist in his face, and swearing in my
bitter Roman that he lied, that he was a grizzle-bearded villain with a
heart as black as his tongue, I staggered to the doorway, and pushing
wide the hinges tottered out on to a grassy promontory just as the
primrose flush of day was breaking over the hilltops. There, holding
on to a post, for my legs were very weak and frail, and peering into
the purple shadows, I lifted my voice in anger and fear, and shouted in
that green loneliness, “Numidea! Numidea!” then waited with a beating,
beating heart until--thin, sullen, derisive--from the hills across the
ravine came back the soulless response:
“Numidea! Numidea!”
I could not believe it. I would not think they could not hear, and
stamping in my impatience, “Electra!” I shouted, “Numidea! ’tis
Phra--Phra the friendless who calls to you!” then again bent an ear to
listen, until, from the void shadows of the purple hills, through the
pale vapors of the morning mist, there came again in melancholy-wise
the answer:
“’Tis Phra, Phra the friendless who calls to you!”--and I dropped my
face into my hands and bent my head and dimly knew then that I was
jettisoned once more on the shore of some unknown and distant time!
It was of no use to grieve; and when the kindly hand of the monk was
placed upon my shoulder I submitted to his will, and was led back to
the cell, and there he gave me to drink of a sweet, thin decoction that
greatly soothed these high-strung nerves.
Then many were the questions that studious man would have me answer,
and busy his wonder and awe at my assertions.
“What Emperor rules here now?” I said, lying melancholy on my elbow on
the couch.
“None, my son. There are no Emperors but the Sovereign Pontiff now--may
St. Peter be his guide!”
“No Emperor! Why, old man, Honorius held sway in Rome that night I went
to sleep!”
“Honorius!” said the monk, incredulously stopping his excited pacings
to stare at me; and he took down a portly tome of history and ran his
fingers over the leaves, until, about midway through that volume, they
settled on a passage.
“Look! look! you marvelous man!” he cried; “all this was history before
you slumbered; and all this, nigh as much again, has been added while
you slept! Five hundred years of solid life!--a thousand changing
seasons has the germ of existence been dormant in that mighty bulk of
yours! Oh! ’tis past belief, and had you not been my lodger for so long
a time, though all so short in comparison, I would not hear of it.”
“And how has the world spun all this period?” I said, with dense
persistence. “Who is Consul now in Gaul? And are all my jolly friends
of the Tenth Legion still quartered where I left them?”--and I
mentioned the name of the town by which Electra lived.
“I tell thee, youth,” the priest replied quite hotly, “there is no
Consul, there are no legions. All your barbarous Romans are long since
swept to hell, and the noble Harold is here anointed King of Saxon
England.”
“I never heard of him,” I said coldly.
“Perhaps not, but, by the cowl of St. Dunstan! he flourishes
nevertheless,” responded my saintly entertainer.
“And is this Harold of yours successor to the other Thane, Alfred, whom
you describe as taking such a kindly interest in me?”
“Yes; but many generations separate them. It was the great Bretwalda
you have mentioned who, tradition says, once found you inanimate, yet
living, in a fisherman’s hut where he sheltered one day from a storm,
and, struck by the marvel and the tale of the poor folk that their
ancestors had long ago dragged you from a swollen river in their nets,
and that you slumbered on without alteration or change from year to
year, from father to son, there on your dusty shelf in their peat smoke
and broken gear, he bought and gave you to the holy Prelate at the
blessed Cathedral of Canterbury, whence you came a few months ago into
my hands. All else there is to know, my strangely gifted son,” the monk
went on, “is locked in the darkness of that long slumber, and such acts
of your other life as your vacant mind may recall.”
This seemed a wonderful thing, very briefly told, but it was obviously
all there was to hear, and sufficient after a style. The old man said
that, having a mind for curiosities, and observing me once in danger of
being broken up as rubbish by careless hands, he had claimed me, and
brought the strange living mummy here to his cell “on the hill Senlac,
by the narrow English straits.”
“That, inscrutable one,” he added with a twinkle in his eye, “was only
some months ago, and the mess I made my hut in cleaning and wiping you
down was wonderful. Yonder little stream you hear prattling in the
valley ran dusty for hours with your washings, and your form was one
shapeless bulk of cobwebs and dishonored wrappings. Many a time as I
peeled from you the alternate layers of peat smoke and rags with which
generations of neglect had shrouded that body, did I think to roll you
into the valley as you were, and see what proportions the weather and
the crows would make of it. But better counsels prevailed, and for
seven days you have been free and daily rubbed with scented oils!”
I thanked him meetly, and hoped I had not been a reluctant patient?
“A more docile never breathed.”
“Not an expensive lodger afterward?”
“Never was there one more frugal, nor one who less criticized his
entertainment!”
Then it was the good monk’s turn, and his wise and kindly eyes sparkled
with pleasure and astonishment as I told him in gratitude such tales
of the early times--drew for him such brilliant, fiery pictures on the
dark background of the past--illumined and vivified his dry histories
with the colors of my awakening memory, and set all the withered
puppets of his chronicles a-dancing in the tinsel and the glitter of
their actual lives; until, over the lintel of his doorway and under
the lappets of his roof, there came the first thin, fine fingers of
the morning sunshine, trickling into our dim arena thronged thus with
shadowy imagery, and playing lovingly, about the great silver crucifix
that lay thus ablaze under it in the gloom! Then I slept again for two
days and two nights as lightly and happily as a child.
* * * * *
When I awoke I was both hungry and well. Indeed, it was the scent of
breakfast that roused me. But, alas! the meal was none of mine. The
little table had been cleared, and at it, on clean white napkins, were
places for three or four people. There were wooden platters with steel
knives upon them, oaten loaves, great wooden tankards of wine and mead,
with fish and fowl flesh in abundance. Surely my entertainer was going
to turn out a jolly fellow, now the night’s vigils were over! But as
I speculated in my retired couch there fell the beat of marching men,
a clatter of arms outside and a shouting of many voices in clamorous
welcome, the ringing of stirrup-irons and the champing of bits, and
then, to my infinite astonishment, in stalked as comely a man as I had
ever seen, and leading by the hand a fair, pale, black-haired girl, who
looked jaded and red in her eyes.
“There, my Adeliza,” he said; “now dry those lashes of yours and cheer
up. What! A Norman girl like you, and weeping because two hosts stand
faced for battle! What will our Saxon maids say to these shining drops?”
“Oh, Harold!” the girl exclaimed, “it is not conflict I fear, or I
would not have come hither to you, braving your anger; but think of the
luckless chance that brings my father from Normandy in arms against
my Saxon love! Think of my fears, think how I dread that either side
should win--surely grief so complicated should claim pardon for these
simple tears.”
“Well, well,” said he--whom I, unobserved in the shadows, now
recognized as the English monarch himself--“if we are bound to die, we
can do so but once, and at least we will breakfast first,” and down
he sat, signing the girl to get herself another stool in rough Saxon
manner.
And a very good meal he made of it, putting away the toasted ortolans
and cheese, and waging war with his fingers and dagger upon all the
viands, washing them down with constant mighty draughts from the wooden
flagons, and this all in a jolly, light-hearted way that was very
captivating. Ever and anon he called to the “churls” outside, or gave a
hasty order to his captains with his mouth full of meat and bread, or
put some dainty morsel into the idle fingers of his damsel, as though
breakfasting was the chief thing in life, and his kingdom were not
tottering to the martial tread of an invader.
But even gallant Harold, the last King of the Saxons, had finished
presently, and then donning his pointed casque and his flowing
silken-filigreed cloak, thrusting his whinger into his jeweled girdle,
he threw his round steel target on his back--then held out both
his arms. Whether or not his Norman love, the reluctant seal of a
broken promise, had always loved him, it is not for me to say, but,
woman-like, she loved him at the losing, and flew to him and was
enfolded tight into his ample chest, and mixed her raven tresses with
his yellow English hair, and sobbed and clung to him, and took and gave
a hundred kisses, and was so sweet and tearful that my inmost heart was
moved.
When Harold had gone out, and when presently the clatter of arms and
shouting proved he was moving off to the field of eventful battle,
Adeliza the proud bowed her head upon the table, and abandoned herself
to so wild a grief that I was greatly impelled to rise and comfort her.
But she would not be consoled, even by the ministrations of two of her
waiting maidens, who soon entered the place; and seeing this I took an
opportunity when all three were blending their tears to slip out into
the open air.
There I found my friendly Saxon monk in great tribulation, with a
fragment of vellum in his hand.
“Ah, my son,” he said--“the very man. Look here, the air is heavy with
event. Yonder, under the sheen of the sun, William of Normandy is
encamped with sixty thousand of his cruel adventurers, and there, down
there among the trees, you see the gallant Harold and his straggling
array, sorry and muddy with long marching, on the way to oppose them.
But the King has not half his force with him, nor a fourth as many as
he needs! Take this vellum, and, if you ever put a buskin in speed
to the grass, run now for the credit of England and for the sake of
history--run for that ridge away there behind us, where you will find
the good Earl of Mercia and several thousand men encamped--and, if not
asleep, most probably stuffing themselves with food and drink,” he
added bitterly under his breath. “Give him this, and say Harold will
not be persuaded, say that unless the reserves march at once the fight
will be fought without them--and then I think Dane and Saxon will be
chaff before the wind of retribution. Run! my son--run for the good
cause, and for Saxon England!”
Without a word I took the vellum and crammed it into my bosom and
spun round on my heels and fled down the hillside, and breasted the
dewy tangles of fern and brambles, and glided through the thickets,
and flying from ridge to ridge, and leaping and running as though the
silver wings of Mercury were on my heels, in an hour I dashed up the
far hillside, and, panting and exhausted, threw down the missive under
the tawny beard of the great Earl himself.
That scion of Saxon royalty was, as the monk had foreseen, absorbed in
the first meal of the day, but he was too much of a soldier, though,
like all his race, a desperate good trencherman, to let such a matter
as my errand grow cold, and no sooner had he read the scroll and put me
a shrewd question or two than the order went forth for his detachments
to arm and march at once. But only a captain of many fights knows how
slow reluctant troops can be in such case. Surely, I thought, as I
stood by with crossed arms watching the preparations it was none of my
business to help--surely a nation, though gallant enough, which quits
its breakfast board so tardily, and takes such a perilous time to
cross-garter its legs, and buckle on its blades, and peak its beard,
and tag out its baldric so nicely, when the invader is on foot--surely
such a nation is ripe to the fall! And these comely English troops
were doubly weary this morning, for they were fresh, as one of them
told me, from a hard fight in the far north of the kingdom, where
Harold had just overthrown and slain Hardrada, King of Norway, and the
unduteous Tosti, Harold’s own brother. Less wonder, then, I found them
travel-stained and weary, no marvel for the once they were so slow to
my fatal invitation.
It was noon before the English Earl led off the van of his men, and
an hour later before I had seen the last of them out of the camp and
followed reflective in the rear--a place that never yet sorted with
my mood--wondering, with the happy impartiality of my circumstances,
whether it were best this morning to be invader or invaded.
When we had gone a mile or two through the leafy tangles, a hush fell
upon the troop with which I rode, and then with a shout we burst into
a run, for up from the valley beyond came the unmistakable sound of
conflict and turmoil. We breasted the last ridge, I and two hundred
men, and there, suddenly emerging into the open, was the bloody valley
of Senlac beneath us, and the sunny autumn sea beyond, and at our
feet right and left the wail and glitter and dust of nearly finished
battle--Harold had fought without us, and we saw the quick-coming
forfeit he had to pay.
The unhappy Saxons down there on the pleasant grassy undulations and
among the yellow gorse and ling stood to it like warriors of good
mettle, but already the day was lost. The Earl and his tardy troops had
been merged into the general catastrophe, and my handful would have
been of naught avail. The English array was broken and formless, galled
by the swarming Norman bowmen, the twang of whose strings we could
mark even up here, and fiercely assailed by foot and horsemen. In the
center alone the English stood stubbornly shoulder to shoulder around
the peaked flag, at whose foot Harold himself was grimly repelling the
ceaseless onset of the foeman.
But alas for Harold, alas for the curly-headed son of Ethelwulf, and
all the Princes and Peers with him!
We saw a mighty mass of foreign cavalry creeping round the shoulder
of the hill, like the shadow of a raincloud upon a sunny landscape:
we saw the thousand gonfalons of the spoilers fluttering in the wind:
we saw the glitter on the great throng of northern chivalry that
crowded after the black charger of William of Normandy and the sacred
flag--accursed ensign--that Toustain held aloft: we saw their sweeping
charge, and then when it was passed, the battle was gone and done, the
Saxon power was a hundred little groups dying bravely in different
corners of the field.
The men with me that luckless afternoon melted away into the woods,
and I turned my steps once more to the little hill above Senlac and my
hermit’s cell.
There the ill news had been brought by a wounded soldier, and the women
were filling the evening air with cries and weeping. All that night
they wept and wailed, Harold’s wife leading them, and when dawning came
nothing would serve but she must go and find her husband’s body. Much
the good monk tried to dissuade her, but to no purpose, and swathing
herself in a man’s long cloak, with one fair maiden likewise disguised,
and me for a guide, before there was yet any light in the sky the brave
Norman girl set out.
And sorry was our errand and grim our success. The field of battle was
deserted, save of dead and dying men. On the dark wind of the night
went up to heaven from it a great fitful groan, as all the wounded
groaned in unison to their unseen miseries. Alas! those tender charges
of mine had never seen till now the harvest field of war laid out with
its swaths of dead and dying! Often they hesitated on that gloomy walk
and hid their faces as the fitful clouds drifted over the scene, and
the changing light and shadows seemed to put a struggling ghastly life
into the heaps of mangled corpses. Everywhere, as we threaded the mazes
of destruction or stepped unwitting in the darkness into pools of blood
and mire, were dead warriors in every shape and contortion, lying all
asprawl, or piled up one on top of another, or sleeping pleasantly in
dreamless dissolution against the red sides of stricken horses. And
many were the pale, blood-besmeared faces of Princes and chiefs my
white-faced ladies turned up to the starlight, and many were the sodden
yellow curls they lifted with icy fingers from the dead faces of thanes
and franklins, until in an hour the Norman girl, who had gone a little
apart from us, suddenly stood still, and then up to the clear, black
vault of heaven there went such a clear, piercing shriek as hushed even
the very midnight sorrows of the battlefield itself.
The King was found!
And Editha, the handmaiden, too, made her find presently, for there,
over the dead Prince’s feet, their left hands still clasping each as
when they had died, were her father and her two stalwart brothers.
Never did silenter courtiers than we six sit at a monarch’s feet until
the day should break; and then we who lived covered the comely faces
with the hems of their Saxon tunics, and were away as fast as we could
go to the Norman camp, that the poor Princess-girl might beg a trophy
of her victorious father.
We entered the camp without harm, but had to stand by until the
Conqueror should leave his tent and enter the rough shelter that had
already been erected for him. Here, while we waited, a young knight,
guessing Editha’s sex through her long cloak, roughly pulled down the
kerchief she was holding across her face. Whereupon I struck him so
heavily with my fist that, for a minute, he reeled back against the
horse he was leading, and then out came his falchion, and out came
mine, and we fell upon each other most heartily.
But before a dozen passes had been made the bystanders separated us,
and at the same moment the Normans set up a shout, and the brand-new
English tyrant strode out of his tent, and, encircled by a glittering
throng, entered the open audience-hall. Adeliza dropped her white veil
as he sat himself down, and called to him, and ran to the foot of his
chair, and wept and knelt, so that even the stern son of Robert the
Devil was moved, and took her to him, and stroked her hair, and soothed
and called her, in Norman-French, his pretty daughter, and promised her
the first boon she could think of.
And that boon was the body of Harold _Infelix_.
Turn back the pages of history, and you will see that she had her wish,
and Waltham Abbey its kingly patron.[1]
[1] Exact historians say it was Harold’s mother who found his body upon
the field of battle, and offered William its weight in gold for it. But
our narrator ought to know the truth better than any of them.
Meanwhile, a knight led the weeping Princess away to her father’s
tent, but when I and Editha would have followed two iron-coated rogues
crossed their halberds in our path.
“Not so fast there, my bulky champion!” called William the Bastard to
me. “What is this I heard about your striking a Norman for glancing at
yonder silly Saxon wench? By St. Denis! your girls will have to learn
to be more lenient! Whence come you? What was your father’s name?”
“I hardly know,” I said, without thinking.
“Ah! a too common ignorance nowadays!” sneered the Conqueror, turning
to his laughing knights.
Whereon wrathfully I replied: “At least, my father never mistook, under
cover of the night, a serving-wench for a Princess!”
The shaft took the soldier in a very tender spot, and his naturally
sallow countenance blanched slowly to a hideous yellow as a smile went
round the steel circle of his martial courtiers at my too telling
answer. Yet even then I could not but do his iron will justice for
the stern resolution with which the passion was restrained in that
cold and cruel face, and when he turned and spoke in the ear of his
marshal standing near there was no tremor of anger or compassion in
the inflexible voice with which he ordered me to be taken outside and
hanged “to the nearest tree that will bear him” in ten minutes.
“As for the Saxon wench----Here, Des Ormeux”--turning to a grim villain
in steel harness at his side--“this girl has a good fief, they say: she
and it are yours for the asking!”
“My mighty liege,” said the Norman, dropping on one knee, “never was
a gift more generously given. I will hold the land to your eternal
service, and make the maid free of my tent to-day, and to-morrow we
will look up a priest for the easing of her conscience.”
Loudly the assembled soldiers laughed as Des Ormeux pounced upon the
shrieking Editha and bore her out of one door, while, in spite of
my fierce struggles to get at him, I was hustled into the open from
another.
They dragged me into a green avenue between the huts of the invader’s
camp while they went for a rope to hang me with. And as I stood thus
loosely guarded and waiting among them, down the Norman ravisher came
pacing toward us on his war-horse, bound toward his tent, with my white
Saxon flower fast gripped in front of him.
Oh, but he was proud to think himself possessed of a slice of fair
English soil so easily, and to have his courtship made so simple for
him, and he looked this way and that, with an accursed grin upon his
face, no more heeding the tears and struggles of his victim than the
falcon cares for the stricken pigeon’s throes. When they came opposite
to us Editha saw me and threw out her hands and shrieked to me, and,
when I turned away my eyes and did not move, surely it seemed as
though her heart would have broken.
Three more paces the war-horse made, and then, with the spring of a
leopard thirsting for blood, I was alongside of him, another bound
and I was on the crupper behind, and there, quicker than thought,
quicker than the lightning strikes down the pine-tree, I had lifted
the Norman’s steel shoulder-plate, and stabbed him with my long, keen
dagger so fiercely in the back that the point came out under his
mid-rib, and the red blood spurted to his horse’s ears. Quicker, too,
than it takes to tell I had gripped the maiden from the spoiler’s dying
hands, and, pushing his bloody body from the saddle, had thrown my own
legs over the crescent peak, and before the gaping scullion soldiers
comprehended my bold stroke for freedom I had turned the horse’s head
and was thundering through the camp toward the free green woods beyond.
And we reached them safely; a rascal or two let fly their cross-bows at
us as we fled by, and I heard the bolts hum merrily past my ears, but
they did no harm; and there was mounting and galloping and shouting,
but the mailed Normans were wonderfully slow in their stirrups! I
laughed to see them scrambling and struggling into their seats, two or
three men to every warrior who got safely up, and we soon left them far
behind. Down into the dip we rode, my good horse spurning in his stride
the still fresh bodies of yesterday’s fighters, and spinning the empty
helmets, and clattering through all the broken litter of the bitter
contest, until we swept up the inland slopes into the stunted birch
and hazels, and then--turning for a moment to shake my fist at the
nearest of the distant Normans--I headed into the leafy shelter, and
was speedily free from all chance of pursuit.
Then, and not before, was there time to take a glance at my beautiful
prize, lying so gentle and light upon my breast. Alas! every tint of
color had gone from her fair features, and she lay there in my arms,
fainting and pulseless. I loosened her neckscarf. “So!” I said, “fair
Saxon blossom, this is destiny, and you and I are henceforth to be
joined together by the wondrous links of fate”--and, stooping down as
we paced through the pleasant green and white flicker of the silent
wood, I endorsed the immutable will of chance with a kiss upon her
forehead.
Presently she recovered, and all that day we rode forward through the
endless vistas of the southern woods by bridle tracks and swine paths,
until at nightfall, far from other shelters, we halted among the rocks
and hollows of a little eminence. No doubt my gentle comrade would
have preferred a more peopled habitation, but there was none in all
that mighty wilderness, so she, like a wise girl, submitted without
complaint to that which she could not avoid.
There was naught much to tell you of this evening, but it lives forever
in my memory for one particular which consorted strangely with the
thoughts the flight with and rescue of Editha had aroused. I had found
her a roomy hollow in the rocks, and there had cut with my dagger and
made a bed of rushes, built a fire, and got her some roots to eat, and
when darkness fell we talked for a time by the cheerful blaze.
Without surprise I heard that though true Saxon in name and face, there
was some British blood in her veins--a fact, indeed, of which I had
been certain without her assurance. Then she went on to tell, with
tearful pauses, of the home and broad lands of which she was now lady
paramount, as well as of the gallant kinsman lying out yonder dead in
the night dew, and wept and sighed in gentle melancholy, yet without
the wild, inconsolable grief latter times have taught to women, until
presently those tearful blue eyes grew heavier and heavier, and the
shapely chin dropped in grief and weariness upon her white breast, and
Editha of Voewood slept in the hands of the stranger.
Then I went out and looked at the blackness of the night. Over the
somber forest the shadowy pall of the evening was spread, and a
thousand stars gleamed brightly on every hand. Very still and strange
was that unbroken fastness after the red turmoil of yesterday, with
nothing disturbing the silence but the cry of an owl to its mate across
the coppices, the tinkle of a falling streamlet, and now and then the
long, hungry howling of a wolf, or, nearer by, the sharp barking of
the foxes. I fed my horse, then went in and pulled the fire together,
and fell a-ruminating, my chin on my hands, upon a hundred episodes of
happiness and fear.
“Oh, strange eternal powers who set the goings and comings of humanity,
what is the meaning of this wild riddle you are reading me?” I said
presently aloud to myself. “Oh! Hapi and Amenti, dark goddesses of the
Egyptians--oh! Atropos, Lachesis, Clotho, fatal sisters whom the Romans
dread--Mista, Skogula, Zernebock, of these dark Saxon shadows--why am I
thus chosen for this uncertain immortality, when will this long drama,
this changeful history of my being, end?”
As I muttered thus to myself I glanced at the white girl sleeping in
the ruddy blaze, and saw her chest heave, and then--strange to tell,
stranger to hear--with a sound like the whisper of a distant sea her
lips parted, and there came unmistakably the word:
“Never!”
Perhaps she was but dreaming of that amorous Norman’s fierce proposals,
and so again I mused.
“Is it possible some unfinished spell of that red high priestess of
the Druids plays this sport with me? Is it possible Blodwen’s abiding
affection--stronger than time and changes--accompanies me from age
to age in these her sweet ambassadors forever crossing my path? Tell
me, you comely sleeper, tell me your embassy, which is it that lasts
longest, life or love?”
Slowly again, to my surprise, those lips were parted, and across the
silent cavern came, beyond mistake or question, the word--“Love!”
At this very echo of my thoughts I stared hard at her who answered so
appropriately, but there could be no doubt Editha was asleep with an
unusually deep and perfect forgetfulness, and when I had assured myself
of this it was only possible for me to suppose those whispered words
were some delusion, the echo of my questioning.
Again I brooded, and then presently looked up, and there--by Thor and
Odin! ’twas as I write it--between me and the bare earth and tangled
rootlets of the cavern side, over against the fitful sparkle of the
fire, was a thin impalpable form that oscillated gently to the draughts
creeping along the floor, and grew taller and taller, and took mortal
air and shape, and rose out of nebulous indistinctness into a fine
ethereal substance, and was clothed and visaged by the concentration of
its impalpable material, and there at last, smiling and gentle, in the
flicker of the camp-fire, the gray shadow of my British Princess stood
before me!
That man was never brave who has not feared, and then for a moment I
feared, leaping to my feet and staggering back against the wall under
the terrible sweetness of those eyes that burned into my being with a
relentless fire that I could not have shunned if I would, and would not
if I could. For some time I was thus motionless and fascinated, and
then the gentle shadow, who had been regarding me intently, appeared
to perceive the cause of my enthrallment, and lifting a shapely arm of
lavender-colored essence for a minute veiled the terrible bewitchment
of her face. Shrewd, observant shadow! As she did so I was myself
again--my blood welled into my empty veins, my heart knocked fiercely
at my ribs, and when Blodwen lowered her hand there seemed to me
endless enchantment but nothing dreadful in the glance of kindly wonder
with which her eyes met mine.
Surely it was as strange an encounter as ever there had been--the
little rocky recess all ruddy and shadowy in the dancing flames; the
silent white Saxon girl there on the heaped-up rushes, her breast
heaving like a summer sea with a long, smooth undulation; and I against
the stones, one hand on my dagger and the other outspread fearful
on the wall, scarce knowing whether I were brave or not, while over
against the eddying smoke--calm, passive, happy, immutable, was that
winsome presence, shining in our dusky shelter with a tender violet
light, such as was never kindled by mortal means.
When I found voice to speak I poured forth my longings and pent-up
spirit in many a reckless question, but to all of them the Princess
made no answer. Then I spread my arms and thought to grasp her, and
ever as they nearly closed upon her she moved backward, now here and
now there, mocking my foolish hope and passing impalpable over the
floor, always gentle and compassionate, until the uselessness of the
pursuit at last dawned upon me, and I stood irresolute.
I little doubt that immaterial immortal would have mustered courage or
strength to speak to me presently, but the sleeping girl sighed heavily
at this moment and seemed so ill at ease that, without a thought, I
turned to look at her. When my eyes sought the opposite side of the
fire again the presence was not half herself: under my very glance she
was being absorbed once more by the dusky air. To let her go like
that was all against my will, and, leaping to those printless feet,
“Princess! Wife!” I called, “stay another moment!” and as I said it I
swept my arms round the last vestige of her airy kirtle, and drew into
my bosom an armful of empty air!
She had gone, and not a sign was left--not a palm’s breadth of that
lovely sheen shone against the wall as I arose ashamed from my knee and
noticed Editha was awaking.
“My kind protector,” said that damsel, “I have been feeling so
strange--not dreaming quite, but feeling as though some one were
borrowing existence of me, yet leaving in my body the blood and pulse
of life. Now, how can this be? I must surely have been very tired
yesterday.”
“No doubt you were, fair franklin,” I answered. “Yesterday was such a
day as well excuses your weariness. Sleep again, and when the sun rises
in an hour you shall rise with it as fresh as any of the little birds
that already preen themselves.” So she slept--and presently I too.
* * * * *
All the next day we rode on through endless glades and briery paths
toward Editha’s home, and as we went, I afoot and she meekly perched
upon our mighty Norman charger, I wooed her with a brevity which the
times excused, and poured my nimble lover wit into ears accustomed only
to the sluggish flattery of woodland thanes and princely swineherds.
And first she blushed and would not listen, and then she sighed and
switched the low wet boughs of oak and hazel as we passed along, and
then she let me say my say with downcast, averted eyes, and a sweet
reluctance which told me I might stoutly push the siege.
As we went we picked up now and then a straggling soldier or two from
the fight behind us, and now and then a petty chieftain joined us,
until presently we wound through the bracken toward Voewood, a very
goodly train.
Editha had got a palfrey and I my horse again; but as she neared her
home the thought of its desolation weighed heavier and heavier upon her
tender nature. She would not eat and would not speak, and at last took
her to crying, and so cried until we saw, aglint through the oak-stems,
a very fair homestead and ample, with broad lands around, and kine and
deer about it, and all that could make it fair and pleasant. This was
her Voewood; and when the servants came running to meet us (knowing
nothing of the fight or its results, and thinking we were their master
and his sons come again) with waving caps and shouts of pleasure, it
was too much for the overwrought girl. She threw up her white hands,
and, with a cry of pain and grief, slipped fainting from her palfrey
before us all.
Then might you have seen a score of saddles featly emptied to the
service of the heiress! Down jumped Offa the Dane, whose unchanged
doublet was still red to his chin with mud and Norman gore. Down
jumped Edred and Egbert, those blue-eyed brothers who had left their
lands by the northern sea a month ago to follow Harold’s luckless
banner; Torquil, the grim, and Wulfhere of the white beard, sprang
to the ground: and Clywin the fair Welsh princeling, and his shadow,
Idwal ap Cynan, the harper-warrior, vaulted to their feet--spent and
battle-weary as they were, with many another. But, lighter and quicker
than any of them, Phra the Phœnician had leaped to earth, and stood
there astride of the senseless girl, his hand upon his dagger-hilt, and
scowling round that soldier circle wrathful to think that any other but
he should touch her!
Then he took her up, as if it were a mother with a sleeping babe,
and the serfs uncapped and stood back on either hand, and the grim
warriors fell in behind, and so Editha came home, her loose arms
hanging down and her long bright hair all adrift over the broad
shoulders of the strangest, most many-adventured soldier in that motley
band.