And the others went, and they two were left standing there alone, with no
little awe over them, strange and shy as they had never yet been to each
other. Cissela shuddered, and said in a quick whisper: 'Siur, on your
knees! and pray that these oaths may never clash.'
'Can they, Cissela?' he said.
'O love,' she cried, 'you have loosed my hand; take it again, or I shall
die, Siur!'
He took both her hands, he held them fast to his lips, to his forehead;
he said: 'No, God does not allow such things: truth does not lie; you are
truth; this need not be prayed for.'
She said: 'Oh, forgive me! yet--yet this old chapel is damp and cold even
in the burning summer weather. O knight Siur, something strikes through
me; I pray you kneel and pray.'
He looked steadily at her for a long time without answering, as if he
were trying once for all to become indeed one with her; then said: 'Yes,
it is possible; in no other way could you give up everything.'
Then he took from off his finger a thin golden ring, and broke it in two,
and gave her the one half, saying: 'When will they come together?'
Then within a while they left the chapel, and walked as in a dream
between the dazzling lights of the hall, where the knights sat now, and
between those lights sat down together, dreaming still the same dream
each of them; while all the knights shouted for Siur and Cissela. Even
if a man had spent all his life looking for sorrowful things, even if he
sought for them with all his heart and soul, and even though he had grown
grey in that quest, yet would he have found nothing in all the world, or
perhaps in all the stars either, so sorrowful as Cissela.
They had accepted her sacrifice after long deliberation, they had arrayed
her in purple and scarlet, they had crowned her with gold wrought about
with jewels, they had spread abroad the veil of her golden hair; yet now,
as they led her forth in the midst of the band of knights, her brother
Eric holding fast her hand, each man felt like a murderer when he beheld
her face, whereon was no tear, wherein was no writhing of muscle,
twitching of nerve, wherein was no sorrow-mark of her own, but only the
sorrow-mark which God sent her, and which she _must_ perforce wear.
Yet they had not caught eagerly at her offer, they had said at first
almost to a man: 'Nay, this thing shall not be, let us die altogether
rather than this.' Yet as they sat, and said this, to each man of the
council came floating dim memories of that curse of the burned women, and
its remedy; to many it ran rhythmically, an old song better known by the
music than the words, heard once and again, long ago, when the gusty wind
overmastered the chesnut-boughs and strewed the smooth sward with their
star-leaves.
Withal came thoughts to each man, partly selfish, partly wise and just,
concerning his own wife and children, concerning children yet unborn;
thoughts too of the glory of the old name; all that had been suffered and
done that the glorious free land might yet be a nation.
And the spirit of hope, never dead but sleeping only, woke up within
their hearts: 'We may yet be a people,' they said to themselves, 'if we
can but get breathing time.'
And as they thought these things, and doubted, Siur rose up in the midst
of them and said: 'You are right in what you think, countrymen, and she
is right; she is altogether good and noble; send her forth.'
Then, with one look of utter despair at her as she stood statue-like, he
left the council, lest he should fall down and die in the midst of them,
he said; yet he died not then, but lived for many years afterwards.
But they rose from their seats, and when they were armed, and she royally
arrayed, they went with her, leading her through the dear streets, whence
you always saw the great pine-shadowed mountains; she went away from all
that was dear to her, to go and sit a crowned queen in the dreary marble
palace, whose outer walls rose right up from the weary-hearted sea. She
could not think, she durst not; she feared, if she did, that she would
curse her beauty, almost curse the name of love, curse Siur, though she
knew he was right, for not slaying her; she feared that she might curse
God.
So she thought not at all, steeping her senses utterly in forgetfulness
of the happy past, destroying all anticipation of the future: yet, as
they left the city amid the tears of women, and fixed sorrowful gaze of
men, she turned round once, and stretched her arms out involuntarily,
like a dumb senseless thing, towards the place where she was born, and
where her life grew happier day by day, and where his arms first crept
round about her.
She turned away and thought, but in a cold speculative manner, how it was
possible that she was bearing this sorrow; as she often before had
wondered, when slight things vexed her overmuch, how people had such
sorrows and lived, and almost doubted if the pain was so much greater in
great sorrows than in small troubles, or whether the nobleness only was
greater, the pain not sharper, but more lingering.
Halfway toward the camp the king's people met her; and over the trampled
ground, where they had fought so fiercely but a little time before, they
spread breadth of golden cloth, that her feet might not touch the arms of
her dead countrymen, or their brave bodies.
And so they came at last with many trumpet-blasts to the king's tent, who
stood at the door of it, to welcome his bride that was to be: a noble man
truly to look on, kindly, and genial-eyed; the red blood sprang up over
his face when she came near; and she looked back no more, but bowed
before him almost to the ground, and would have knelt, but that he caught
her in his arms and kissed her; she was pale no more now; and the king,
as he gazed delightedly at her, did not notice that sorrow-mark, which
was plain enough to her own people.
So the trumpets sounded again one long peal that seemed to make all the
air reel and quiver, and the soldiers and lords shouted: 'Hurrah for the
Peace-Queen, Cissela.'
* * * * *
'Come, Harald,' said a beautiful golden-haired boy to one who was plainly
his younger brother, 'Come, and let us leave Robert here by the forge,
and show our lady-mother this beautiful thing. Sweet master armourer,
farewell.'
'Are you going to the queen then?' said the armourer.
'Yea,' said the boy, looking wonderingly at the strong craftsman's eager
face.
'But, nay; let me look at you awhile longer, you remind me so much of one
I loved long ago in my own land. Stay awhile till your other brother
goes with you.'
'Well, I will stay, and think of what you have been telling me; I do not
feel as it I should ever think of anything else for long together, as
long as I live.'
So he sat down again on an old battered anvil, and seemed with his bright
eyes to be beholding something in the land of dreams. A gallant dream it
was he dreamed; for he saw himself with his brothers and friends about
him, seated on a throne, the justest king in all the earth, his people
the lovingest of all people: he saw the ambassadors of the restored
nation, that had been unjustly dealt with long ago; everywhere love, and
peace if possible, justice and truth at all events.
Alas! he knew not that vengeance, so long delayed, must fall at last in
his life-time; he knew not that it takes longer to restore that whose
growth has been through age and age, than the few years of a life-time;
yet was the reality good, if not as good as the dream.
Presently his twin-brother Robert woke him from that dream, calling out:
'Now, brother Svend, are we really ready; see here! but stop, kneel
first; there, now am I the Bishop.'
And he pulled his brother down on to his knees, and put on his head,
where it fitted loosely enough now, hanging down from left to right, an
iron crown fantastically wrought, which he himself, having just finished
it, had taken out of the water, cool and dripping.
Robert and Harald laughed loud when they saw the crown hanging all askew,
and the great drops rolling from it into Svend's eyes and down his
cheeks, looking like tears: not so Svend; he rose, holding the crown
level on his head, holding it back, so that it pressed against his brow
hard, and, first dashing the drops to right and left, caught his brother
by the hand, and said:
'May I keep it, Robert? I shall wear it some day.'
'Yea,' said the other; 'but it is a poor thing; better let Siur put it in
the furnace again and make it into sword hilts.'
Thereupon they began to go, Svend holding the crown in his hand: but as
they were going, Siur called out: 'Yet will I sell my dagger at a price,
Prince Svend, even as you wished at first, rather than give it you for
nothing.'
'Well, for what?' said Svend, somewhat shortly, for he thought Siur was
going back from his promise, which was ugly to him.
'Nay, be not angry, prince,' said the armourer, 'only I pray you to
satisfy this whim of mine; it is the first favour I have asked of you:
will you ask the fair, noble lady, your mother, from Siur the smith, if
she is happy now?'
'Willingly, sweet master Siur, if it pleases you; farewell.'
And with happy young faces they went away; and when they were gone, Siur
from a secret place drew out various weapons and armour, and began to
work at them, having first drawn bolt and bar of his workshop carefully.
Svend, with Harald and Robert his two brethren, went their ways to the
queen, and found her sitting alone in a fair court of the palace full of
flowers, with a marble cloister round about it; and when she saw them
coming, she rose up to meet them, her three fair sons.
Truly as that right royal woman bent over them lovingly, there seemed
little need of Siur's question.
So Svend showed her his dagger, but not the crown; and she asked many
questions concerning Siur the smith, about his way of talking and his
face, the colour of his hair even, till the boys wondered, she questioned
them so closely, with beaming eyes and glowing cheeks, so that Svend
thought he had never before seen his mother look so beautiful.
Then Svend said: 'And, mother, don't be angry with Siur, will you?
because he sent a message to you by me.'
'Angry!' and straightway her soul was wandering where her body could not
come, and for a moment or two she was living as before, with him close by
her, in the old mountain land.
'Well, mother, he wanted me to ask you if you were happy now.'
'Did he, Svend, this man with brown hair, grizzled as you say it is now?
Is his hair soft then, this Siur, going down on to his shoulders in
waves? and his eyes, do they glow steadily, as if lighted up from his
heart? and how does he speak? Did you not tell me that his words led
you, whether you would or no, into dreamland? Ah well! tell him I am
happy, but not so happy as we shall be, as we were. And so you, son
Robert, are getting to be quite a cunning smith; but do you think you
will ever beat Siur?'
'Ah, mother, no,' he said, 'there is something with him that makes him
seem quite infinitely beyond all other workmen I ever heard of.'
Some memory coming from that dreamland smote upon her heart more than the
others; she blushed like a young girl, and said hesitatingly:
'Does he work with his left hand, son Robert; for I have heard that some
men do so?' But in her heart she remembered how once, long ago in the
old mountain country, in her father's house, some one had said that only
men who were born so, could do cunningly with the left hand; and how
Siur, then quite a boy, had said, 'Well, I will try': and how, in a month
or two, he had come to her with an armlet of silver, very curiously
wrought, which he had done with his own left hand.
So Robert said: 'Yea, mother, he works with his left hand almost as much
as with his right, and sometimes I have seen him change the hammer
suddenly from his right hand to his left, with a kind of half smile, as
one who would say, 'Cannot I then?' and this more when he does smith's
work in metal than when he works in marble; and once I heard him say when
he did so, 'I wonder where my first left hand work is; ah! I bide my
time.' I wonder also, mother, what he meant by that.'
She answered no word, but shook her arm free from its broad sleeve, and
something glittered on it, near her wrist, something wrought out of
silver set with quaint and uncouthly-cut stones of little value.
* * * * *
In the council-chamber, among the lords, sat Svend with his six brethren;
he chief of all in the wielding of sword or axe, in the government of
people, in drawing the love of men and women to him; perfect in face and
body, in wisdom and strength was Svend: next to him sat Robert, cunning
in working of marble, or wood, or brass; all things could he make to look
as if they lived, from the sweep of an angel's wings down to the slipping
of a little field-mouse from under the sheaves in the harvest-time. Then
there was Harald, who knew concerning all the stars of heaven and flowers
of earth: Richard, who drew men's hearts from their bodies, with the
words that swung to and fro in his glorious rhymes: William, to whom the
air of heaven seemed a servant when the harp-strings quivered underneath
his fingers: there were the two sailor-brothers, who the year before,
young though they were, had come back from a long, perilous voyage, with
news of an island they had found long and long away to the west, larger
than any that this people knew of, but very fair and good, though
uninhabited.
But now over all this noble brotherhood, with its various gifts hung one
cloud of sorrow; their mother, the Peace-Queen Cissela was dead, she who
had taught them truth and nobleness so well; she was never to see the
beginning of the end that they would work; truly it seemed sad.
There sat the seven brothers in the council chamber, waiting for the
king, speaking no word, only thinking drearily; and under the pavement of
the great church Cissela lay, and by the side of her tomb stood two men,
old men both, Valdemar the king, and Siur.
So the king, after that he had gazed awhile on the carven face of her he
had loved well, said at last:
'And now, Sir Carver, must you carve me also to lie there.' And he
pointed to the vacant space by the side of the fair alabaster figure.
'O king,' said Siur, 'except for a very few strokes on steel, I have done
work now, having carved the queen there; I cannot do this thing for you.'
What was it sent a sharp pang of bitterest suspicion through the very
heart of the poor old man? he looked steadfastly at him for a moment or
two, as if he would know all secrets; he could not, he had not strength
of life enough to get to the bottom of things; doubt vanished soon from
his heart and his face under Siur's pitying gaze; he said, 'Then perhaps
I shall be my own statue,' and therewithal he sat down on the edge of the
low marble tomb, and laid his right arm across her breast; he fixed his
eyes on the eastern belt of windows, and sat quite motionless and silent;
and he never knew that she loved him not.
But Siur, when he had gazed at him for awhile, stole away quietly, as we
do when we fear to waken a sleeper; and the king never turned his head,
but still sat there, never moving, scarce breathing, it seemed.
Siur stood in his own great hall (for his house was large), he stood
before the dais, and saw a fair sight, the work of his own hands.
For, fronting him, against the wall were seven thrones, and behind them a
cloth of samite of purple wrought with golden stars, and barred across
from right to left with long bars of silver and crimson, and edged below
with melancholy, fading green, like a September sunset; and opposite each
throne was a glittering suit of armour wrought wonderfully in bright
steel, except that on the breast of each suit was a face worked
marvellously in enamel, the face of Cissela in a glory of golden hair;
and the glory of that gold spread away from the breast on all sides, and
ran cunningly along with the steel rings, in such a way as it is hard
even to imagine: moreover, on the crest of each helm was wrought the
phoenix, the never-dying bird, the only creature that knows the sun; and
by each suit lay a gleaming sword terrible to look at, steel from pommel
to point, but wrought along the blade in burnished gold that outflashed
the gleam of the steel, was written in fantastic letters the word
'Westward.'
So Siur gazed till he heard footsteps coming; then he turned to meet
them. And Svend and his brethren sat silent in the council chamber, till
they heard a great noise and clamour of the people arise through all the
streets; and then they rose to see what it might be. Meanwhile on the
low marble tomb, under the dim sweeping vault sat, or rather lay, the
king; for, though his right arm still lay over her breast, his head had
fallen forward, and rested now on the shoulder of the marble queen. There
he lay, with strange confusion of his scarlet, gold-wrought robes;
silent, motionless, and dead. The seven brethren stood together on a
marble terrace of the royal palace, that was dotted about on the baluster
of it with white statues: they were helmetted, and armed to the teeth,
only over their armour great black cloaks were thrown.
Now the whole great terrace was a-sway with the crowd of nobles and
princes, and others that were neither nobles or princes, but true men
only; and these were helmetted and wrapped in black cloaks even as the
princes were, only the crests of the princes' helms were wrought
wonderfully with that bird, the phoenix, all flaming with new power,
dying because its old body is not strong enough for its new-found power:
and those on that terrace who were unarmed had anxious faces, some
fearful, some stormy with Devil's rage at disappointment; but among the
faces of those helmed ones, though here and there you might see a pale
face, there was no fear or rage, scarcely even any anxiety, but calm,
brave joy seemed to be on all.
Above the heads of all men on that terrace shone out Svend's brave face,
the golden hair flowing from out of his helmet: a smile of quiet
confidence overflowing from his mighty heart, in the depths of which it
was dwelling, just showed a very little on his eyes and lips.
While all the vast square, and all the windows and roofs even of the
houses over against the palace, were alive with an innumerable sea of
troubled raging faces, showing white, upturned from the under-sea of
their many-coloured raiment; the murmur from them was like the sough of
the first tempest-wind among the pines, and the gleam of spears here and
there like the last few gleams of the sun through the woods when the
black thunder-clouds come up over all, soon to be shone through, those
woods, by the gleam of the deep lightning.
Also sometimes the murmur would swell, and from the heart of it would
come a fierce, hoarse, tearing, shattering roar, strangely discordant, of
'War! War! give us war, O king!'
Then Svend stepping forward, his arms hidden under his long cloak as they
hung down quietly, the smile on his face broadening somewhat, sent from
his chest a mighty, effortless voice over all the raging:
'Hear, O ye people! War with all that is ugly and base; peace with all
that is fair and good.--NO WAR with my brother's people.'
Just then one of those unhelmetted, creeping round about stealthily to
the place where Svend stood, lifted his arm and smote at him with a
dagger; whereupon Svend clearing his right arm from his cloak with his
left, lifted up his glittering right hand, and the traitor fell to the
earth groaning with a broken jaw, for Svend had smitten him on the mouth
a backward blow with his open hand.
One shouted from the crowd, 'Ay, murderer Svend, slay our good nobles, as
you poisoned the king your father, that you and your false brethren might
oppress us with the memory of that Devil's witch, your mother!'
The smile left Svend's face and heart now, he looked very stern as he
said:
'Hear, O ye people! In years past when I was a boy my dream of dreams
was ever this, how I should make you good, and because good, happy, when
I should become king over you; but as year by year passed I saw my dream
flitting; the deep colours of it changed, faded, grew grey in the light
of coming manhood; nevertheless, God be my witness, that I have ever
striven to make you just and true, hoping against hope continually; and I
had even determined to bear everything and stay with you, even though you
should remain unjust and liars, for the sake of the few who really love
me; but now, seeing that God has made you mad, and that his vengeance
will speedily fall, take heed how you cast out from you all that is good
and true-hearted! Once more--which choose you--Peace or War?'
Between the good and the base, in the midst of the passionate faces and
changing colours stood the great terrace, cold, and calm, and white, with
its changeless statues; and for a while there was silence.
Broken through at last by a yell, and the sharp whirr of arrows, and the
cling, clang, from the armour of the terrace as Prince Harald staggered
through unhurt, struck by the broad point on the helmet.
'What, War?' shouted Svend wrathfully, and his voice sounded like a clap
of thunder following the lightning flash when a tower is struck. 'What!
war? swords for Svend! round about the king, good men and true! Sons of
the golden-haired, show these men WAR.'
As he spoke he let his black cloak fall, and up from their sheaths sprang
seven swords, steel from pommel to point only; on the blades of them in
fantastic letters of gold, shone the word WESTWARD.
Then all the terrace gleamed with steel, and amid the hurtling of stones
and whizz of arrows they began to go westward.
* * * * *
The streets ran with blood, the air was filled with groans and curses,
the low waves nearest the granite pier were edged with blood, because
they first caught the drippings of the blood.
Then those of the people who durst stay on the pier saw the ships of
Svend's little fleet leaving one by one; for he had taken aboard those
ten ships whosoever had prayed to go, even at the last moment, wounded,
or dying even; better so, for in their last moments came thoughts of good
things to many of them, and it was good to be among the true.
But those haughty ones left behind, sullen and untamed, but with a
horrible indefinable dread on them that was worse than death, or mere
pain, howsoever fierce--these saw all the ships go out of the harbour
merrily with swelling sail and dashing oar, and with joyous singing of
those aboard; and Svend's was the last of all.
Whom they saw kneel down on the deck unhelmed, then all sheathed their
swords that were about him; and the Prince Robert took from Svend's hand
an iron crown fantastically wrought, and placed it on his head as he
knelt; then he continued kneeling still, till, as the ship drew further
and further away from the harbour, all things aboard of her became
indistinct.
And they never saw Svend and his brethren again.
* * * * *
Here ends what William the Englishman wrote; but afterwards (in the night-
time) he found the book of a certain chronicler which saith:
'In the spring-time, in May, the 550_th_ year from the death of Svend the
wonderful king, the good knights, sailing due eastward, came to a harbour
of a land they knew not: wherein they saw many goodly ships, but of a
strange fashion like the ships of the ancients, and destitute of any
mariners: besides they saw no beacons for the guidance of seamen, nor was
there any sound of bells or singing, though the city was vast, with many
goodly towers and palaces. So when they landed they found that which is
hardly to be believed but which is nevertheless true: for about the quays
and about the streets lay many people dead, or stood, but quite without
motion, and they were all white or about the colour of new-hewn
freestone, yet were they not statues but real men, for they had, some of
them, ghastly wounds which showed their entrails, and the structure of
their flesh, and veins, and bones.
'Moreover the streets were red and wet with blood, and the harbour waves
were red with it, because it dipped in great drops slowly from the quays.
'Then when the good knights saw this, they doubted not but that it was a
fearful punishment on this people for sins of theirs; thereupon they
entered into a church of that city and prayed God to pardon them;
afterwards, going back to their ships, sailed away marvelling.
'And I John who wrote this history saw all this with mine own eyes.'