A king in the olden time ruled over a mighty nation: a proud man he must
have been, any man who was king of that nation: hundreds of lords, each a
prince over many people, sat about him in the council chamber, under the
dim vault, that was blue like the vault of heaven, and shone with
innumerable glistenings of golden stars.
North, south, east, and west spread that land of his, the sea did not
stop it; his empire clomb the high mountains, and spread abroad its arms
over the valleys of them; all along the sea-line shore cities set with
their crowns of towers in the midst of broad bays, each fit, it seemed,
to be a harbour for the navies of all the world.
Inland the pastures and cornlands lay, chequered much with climbing, over-
tumbling grape vines, under the sun that crumbled their clods, and drew
up the young wheat in the spring-time, under the rain that made the long
grass soft and fine, under all fair fertilising influences: the streams
leapt down from the mountain tops, or cleft their way through the ridged
ravines; they grew great rivers, like seas each one.
The mountains were cloven, and gave forth from their scarred sides wealth
of ore and splendour of marble; all things this people that King Valdemar
ruled over could do; they levelled mountains, that over the smooth roads
the wains might go, laden with silk and spices from the sea: they drained
lakes, that the land might yield more and more, as year by year the
serfs, driven like cattle, but worse fed, worse housed, died slowly,
scarce knowing that they had souls; they builded them huge ships, and
said that they were masters of the sea too; only, I trow the sea was an
unruly subject, and often sent them back their ships cut into more pieces
than the pines of them were, when the adze first fell upon them; they
raised towers, and bridges, and marble palaces with endless corridors
rose-scented, and cooled with welling fountains.
They sent great armies and fleets to all the points of heaven that the
wind blows from, who took and burned many happy cities, wasted many
fields and valleys, blotted out from the memory of men the names of
nations, made their men's lives a hopeless shame and misery to them,
their women's lives disgrace, and then came home to have flowers thrown
on them in showers, to be feasted and called heroes.
Should not then their king be proud of them? Moreover they could fashion
stone and brass into the shapes of men; they could write books; they knew
the names of the stars, and their number; they knew what moved the
passions of men in the hearts of them, and could draw you up cunningly,
catalogues of virtues and vices; their wise men could prove to you that
any lie was true, that any truth was false, till your head grew dizzy,
and your heart sick, and you almost doubted if there were a God.
Should not then their king be proud of them? Their men were strong in
body, and moved about gracefully--like dancers; and the purple-black,
scented hair of their gold-clothed knights seemed to shoot out rays under
the blaze of light that shone like many suns in the king's halls. Their
women's faces were very fair in red and white, their skins fair and half-
transparent like the marble of their mountains, and their voices sounded
like the rising of soft music from step to step of their own white
palaces.
Should not then their king be proud of such a people, who seemed to help
so in carrying on the world to its consummate perfection, which they even
hoped their grandchildren would see?
Alas! alas! they were slaves--king and priest, noble and burgher, just as
much as the meanest tasked serf, perhaps more even than he, for they were
so willingly, but he unwillingly enough.
They could do everything but justice, and truth, and mercy; therefore
God's judgments hung over their heads, not fallen yet, but surely to fall
one time or other.
For ages past they had warred against one people only, whom they could
not utterly subdue; a feeble people in numbers, dwelling in the very
midst of them, among the mountains; yet now they were pressing them
close; acre after acre, with seas of blood to purchase each acre, had
been wrested from the free people, and their end seemed drawing near; and
this time the king, Valdemar, had marched to their land with a great
army, to make war on them, he boasted to himself, almost for the last
time.
A walled town in the free land; in that town, a house built of rough,
splintery stones; and in a great low-browed room of that house, a grey-
haired man pacing to and fro impatiently: 'Will she never come?' he says,
'it is two hours since the sun set; news, too, of the enemy's being in
the land; how dreadful if she is taken!' His great broad face is marked
with many furrows made by the fierce restless energy of the man; but
there is a wearied look on it, the look of a man who, having done his
best, is yet beaten; he seemed to long to be gone and be at peace: he,
the fighter in many battles, who often had seemed with his single arm to
roll back the whole tide of fight, felt despairing enough now; this last
invasion, he thought, must surely quite settle the matter; wave after
wave, wave after wave, had broken on that dear land and been rolled back
from it, and still the hungry sea pressed on; they must be finally
drowned in that sea; how fearfully they had been tried for their sins.
Back again to his anxiety concerning Cissela, his daughter, go his
thoughts, and he still paces up and down wearily, stopping now and then
to gaze intently on things which he has seen a hundred times; and the
night has altogether come on.
At last the blast of a horn from outside, challenge and
counter-challenge, and the wicket to the court-yard is swung open; for
this house, being in a part of the city where the walls are somewhat
weak, is a little fortress in itself, and is very carefully guarded. The
old man's face brightened at the sound of the new comers, and he went
toward the entrance of the house where he was met by two young knights
fully armed, and a maiden. 'Thank God you are come,' he says; but stops
when he sees her face, which is quite pale, almost wild with some sorrow.
'The saints! Cissela, what is it?' he says. 'Father, Eric will tell
you.' Then suddenly a clang, for Eric has thrown on the ground a richly-
jewelled sword, sheathed, and sets his foot on it, crunching the pearls
on the sheath; then says, flinging up his head,--'There, father, the
enemy is in the land; may that happen to every one of them! but for my
part I have accounted for two already.' 'Son Eric, son Eric, you talk
for ever about yourself; quick, tell me about Cissela instead: if you go
on boasting and talking always about yourself, you will come to no good
end, son, after all.' But as he says this, he smiles nevertheless, and
his eye glistens.
'Well, father, listen--such a strange thing she tells us, not to be
believed, if she did not tell us herself; the enemy has suddenly got
generous, one of them at least, which is something of a disappointment to
me--ah! pardon, about my self again; and that is about myself too. Well,
father, what am I to do?--But Cissela, she wandered some way from her
maidens, when--ah! but I never could tell a story properly, let her tell
it herself; here, Cissela!--well, well, I see she is better employed,
talking namely, how should I know what! with Siur in the window-seat
yonder--but she told us that, as she wandered almost by herself, she
presently heard shouts and saw many of the enemy's knights riding quickly
towards her; whereat she knelt only and prayed to God, who was very
gracious to her; for when, as she thought, something dreadful was about
to happen, the chief of the knights (a very noble-looking man, she said)
rescued her, and, after he had gazed earnestly into her face, told her
she might go back again to her own home, and her maids with her, if only
she would tell him where she dwelt and her name; and withal he sent three
knights to escort her some way toward the city; then he turned and rode
away with all his knights but those three, who, when they knew that he
had quite gone, she says, began to talk horribly, saying things whereof
in her terror she understood the import only: then, before worse came to
pass came I and slew two, as I said, and the other ran away 'lustily with
a good courage'; and that is the sword of one of the slain knights, or,
as one might rather call them, rascally caitiffs.'
The old man's thoughts seemed to have gone wandering after his son had
finished; for he said nothing for some time, but at last spoke
dejectedly:
'Eric, brave son, when I was your age I too hoped, and my hopes are come
to this at last; you are blind in your hopeful youth, Eric, and do not
see that this king (for the king it certainly was) will crush us, and not
the less surely because he is plainly not ungenerous, but rather a good,
courteous knight. Alas! poor old Gunnar, broken down now and ready to
die, as your country is! How often, in the olden time, thou used'st to
say to thyself, as thou didst ride at the head of our glorious house,
'this charge may finish this matter, this battle must.' They passed
away, those gallant fights, and still the foe pressed on, and hope, too,
slowly ebbed away, as the boundaries of our land grew less and less:
behold this is the last wave but one or two, and then for a sad farewell
to name and freedom. Yet, surely the end of the world must come when we
are swept off the face of the earth. God waits long, they say, before He
avenges his own.'
As he was speaking, Siur and Cissela came nearer to him, and Cissela, all
traces of her late terror gone from her face now, raising her lips to his
bended forehead, kissed him fondly, and said, with glowing face,
'Father, how can I help our people? Do they want deaths? I will die. Do
they want happiness? I will live miserably through years and years, nor
ever pray for death.'
Some hope or other seemed growing up in his heart, and showing through
his face; and he spoke again, putting back the hair from off her face,
and clasping it about with both his hands, while he stooped to kiss her.
'God remember your mother, Cissela! Then it was no dream after all, but
true perhaps, as indeed it seemed at the time; but it must come quickly,
that woman's deliverance, or not at all. When was it that I heard that
old tale, that sounded even then true to my ears? for we have not been
punished for nought, my son; that is not God's way. It comes across my
memory somehow, mingled in a wonderful manner with the purple of the
pines on the hillside, with the fragrance of them borne from far towards
me; for know, my children, that in times past, long, long past now, we
did an evil deed, for our forefathers, who have been dead now, and
forgiven so long ago, once mad with rage at some defeat from their
enemies, fired a church, and burned therein many women who had fled
thither for refuge; and from that time a curse cleaves to us. Only they
say, that at the last we may be saved from utter destruction by a woman;
I know not. God grant it may be so.'
Then she said, 'Father, brother, and you, Siur, come with me to the
chapel; I wish you to witness me make an oath.'
Her face was pale, her lips were pale, her golden hair was pale; but not
pale, it seemed, from any sinking of blood, but from gathering of
intensest light from somewhere, her eyes perhaps, for they appeared to
burn inwardly.
They followed the sweeping of her purple robe in silence through the low
heavy-beamed passages: they entered the little chapel, dimly lighted by
the moon that night, as it shone through one of the three arrow-slits of
windows at the east end. There was little wealth of marble there, I
trow; little time had those fighting men for stone-smoothing. Albeit,
one noted many semblances of flowers even in the dim half-light, and here
and there the faces of BRAVE men, roughly cut enough, but grand, because
the hand of the carver had followed his loving heart. Neither was there
gold wanting to the altar and its canopy; and above the low pillars of
the nave hung banners, taken from the foe by the men of that house,
gallant with gold and jewels.
She walked up to the altar and took the blessed book of the Gospels from
the left side of it, then knelt in prayer for a moment or two, while the
three men stood behind her reverently. When she rose she made a sign to
them, and from their scabbards gleamed three swords in the moonlight;
then, while they held them aloft, and pointed toward the altar, she
opened the book at the page whereon was painted Christ the Lord dying on
the cross, pale against the gleaming gold: she said, in a firm voice,
'Christ God, who diedst for all men, so help me, as I refuse not life,
happiness, even honour, for this people whom I love.'
Then she kissed the face so pale against the gold, and knelt again.
But when she had risen, and before she could leave the space by the
altar, Siur had stepped up to her, and seized her hurriedly, folding both
his arms about her; she let herself be held there, her bosom against his;
then he held her away from him a little space, holding her by the arms
near the shoulder; then he took her hands and laid them across his
shoulders, so that now she held him.
And they said nothing; what could they say? Do you know any word for
what they meant?
And the father and brother stood by, looking quite awe-struck, more so
they seemed than by her solemn oath. Till Siur, raising his head from
where it lay, cried out aloud:
'May God forgive me as I am true to her! hear you, father and brother?'