At dawn, Harold woke from uneasy and broken slumbers, and his eyes
fell upon the face of Hilda, large, and fair, and unutterably calm, as
the face of Egyptian sphinx.
"Have thy dreams been prophetic, son of Godwin?" said the Vala.
"Our Lord forfend," replied the Earl, with unusual devoutness.
"Tell them, and let me read the rede; sense dwells in the voices of
the night."
Harold mused, and after a short pause, he said:
"Methinks, Hilda, I can myself explain how those dreams came to haunt
me."
Then raising himself on his elbow, he continued, while he fixed his
clear penetrating eyes upon his hostess:
"Tell me frankly, Hilda, didst thou not cause some light to shine on
yonder knoll, by the mound and stone, within the temple of the
Druids?"
But if Harold had suspected himself to be the dupe of some imposture,
the thought vanished when he saw the look of keen interest, even of
awe, which Hilda's face instantly assumed.
"Didst thou see a light, son of Godwin, by the altar of Thor, and over
the bautastein of the mighty dead? a flame, lambent and livid, like
moonbeams collected over snow?"
"So seemed to me the light."
"No human hand ever kindled that flame, which announces the presence
of the Dead," said Hilda, with a tremulous voice; "though seldom,
uncompelled by the seid and the rune, does the spectre itself warn the
eyes of the living."
"What shape, or what shadow of shape, does that spectre assume?"
"It rises in the midst of the flame, pale as the mist on the mountain,
and vast as the giants of old; with the saex, and the spear, and the
shield, of the sons of Woden.--Thou hast seen the Scin-laeca,"
continued Hilda, looking full on the face of the Earl.
"If thou deceivest me not," began Harold, doubting still.
"Deceive thee! not to save the crown of the Saxon dare I mock the
might of the dead. Knowest thou not--or hath thy vain lore stood in
place of the lore of thy fathers--that where a hero of old is buried,
his treasures lie in his grave; that over that grave is at times seen
at night the flame that thou sawest, and the dead in his image of air?
Oft seen in the days that are gone, when the dead and the living had
one faith--were one race; now never marked, but for portent, and
prophecy, and doom:--glory or woe to the eyes that see! On yon knoll,
Aesc (the first-born of Cerdic, that Father-King of the Saxons,) has
his grave where the mound rises green, and the stone gleams wan by the
altar of Thor. He smote the Britons in their temple, and he fell
smiting. They buried him in his arms, and with the treasures his
right hand had won. Fate hangs on the house of Cerdic, or the realm
of the Saxon, when Woden calls the laeca of his son from the grave."
Hilda, much troubled bent her face over her clasped hands, and,
rocking to and fro, muttered some runes unintelligible to the ear of
her listener. Then she turned to him, commandingly, and said:
"Thy dreams now, indeed, are oracles, more true than living Vala could
charm with the wand and the rune: Unfold them."
Thus adjured, Harold resumed:
"Methought, then, that I was on a broad, level plain, in the noon of
day; all was clear to my eye, and glad to my heart. I was alone and
went on my way rejoicing. Suddenly the earth opened under my feet,
and I fell deep, fathom-deep;--deep, as if to that central pit, which
our heathen sires called Niffelheim--the Home of Vapour--the hell of
the dead who die without glory. Stunned by the fall, I lay long,
locked as in a dream in the midst of a dream. When I opened my eyes,
behold, I was girt round with dead men's bones; and the bones moved
round me, undulating, as the dry leaves that wirble round in the winds
of the winter. And from midst of them peered a trunkless skull, and
on the skull was a mitre, and from the yawning jaws a voice came
hissing, as a serpent's hiss, 'Harold, the scorner, thou art ours!'
Then, as from the buzz of an army, came voices multitudinous, 'Thou
art ours!' I sought to rise, and behold my limbs were bound, and the
gyves were fine and frail, as the web of the gossamer, and they
weighed on me like chains of iron. And I felt an anguish of soul that
no words can speak--an anguish both of horror and shame; and my
manhood seemed to ooze from me, and I was weak as a child new born.
Then suddenly there rushed forth a freezing wind, as from an air of
ice, and the bones from their whirl stood still, and the buzz ceased,
and the mitred skull grinned on me still and voiceless; and serpents
darted their arrowy tongues from the eyeless sockets. And, lo, before
me stood (O Hilda, I see it now!) the form of the spectre that had
risen from yonder knoll. With his spear, and saex, and his shield, he
stood before me; and his face, though pale as that of one long dead,
was stern as the face of a warrior in the van of armed men; he
stretched his hand, and he smote his saex on his shield, and the clang
sounded hollow; the gyves broke at the clash--I sprang to my feet, and
I stood side by side with the phantom, dauntless. Then, suddenly, the
mitre on the skull changed to a helm; and where the skull had grinned,
trunkless and harmless, stood a shape like War, made incarnate;--a
Thing above giants, with its crest to the stars and its form an
eclipse between the sun and the day. The earth changed to ocean, and
the ocean was blood, and the ocean seemed deep as the seas where the
whales sport in the North, but the surge rose not to the knee of that
measureless image. And the ravens came round it from all parts of the
heaven, and the vultures with the dead eyes and dull scream. And all
the bones, before scattered and shapeless, sprung to life and to form,
some monks and some warriors; and there was a hoot, and a hiss, and a
roar, and the storm of arms. And a broad pennon rose out of the sea
of blood, and from the clouds came a pale hand, and it wrote on the
pennon, 'Harold, the Accursed!' Then said the stern shape by my side,
'Harold, fearest thou the dead men's bones?' and its voice was as a
trumpet that gives strength to the craven, and I answering,
'Niddering, indeed, were Harold, to fear the bones of the dead!'"
"As I spoke, as if hell had burst loose, came a gibber of scorn, and
all vanished at once, save the ocean of blood. Slowly came from
the north, over the sea, a bird like a raven, save that it was blood-
red, like the ocean; and there came from the south, swimming towards
me, a lion. And I looked to the spectre; and the pride of war had
gone from its face, which was so sad that methought I forgot raven and
lion, and wept to see it. Then the spectre took me in its vast arms,
and its breath froze my veins, and it kissed my brow and my lips, and
said, gently and fondly, as my mother in some childish sickness,
'Harold, my best beloved, mourn not. Thou hast all which the sons of
Woden dreamed in their dreams of Valhalla!' Thus saying, the form
receded slowly, slowly, still gazing on me with its sad eyes. I
stretched forth my hand to detain it, and in my grasp was a shadowy
sceptre. And, lo! round me, as if from the earth, sprang up thegns
and chiefs, in their armour; and a board was spread, and a wassail was
blithe around me. So my heart felt cheered and light, and in my hand
was still the sceptre. And we feasted long and merrily; but over the
feast flapped the wings of the blood-red raven, and over the blood-red
sea beyond, swam the lion, near and near. And in the heavens there
were two stars, one pale and steadfast, the other rushing and
luminous; and a shadowy hand pointed from the cloud to the pale star,
and a voice said, 'Lo, Harold! the star that shone on thy birth.' And
another hand pointed to the luminous star, and another voice said,
'Lo, the star that shone on the birth of the victor.' Then, lo! the
bright star grew fiercer and larger; and, rolling on with a hissing
sound, as when iron is dipped into water, it rushed over the disc of
the mournful planet, and the whole heavens seemed on fire. So
methought the dream faded away, and in fading, I heard a full swell of
music, as the swell of an anthem in an aisle; a music like that which
but once in my life I heard; when I stood on the train of Edward, in
the halls of Winchester, the day they crowned him king."
Harold ceased, and the Vala slowly lifted her head from her bosom, and
surveyed him in profound silence, and with a gaze that seemed vacant
and meaningless.
"Why dost thou look on me thus, and why art thou so silent?" asked the
Earl.
"The cloud is on my sight, and the burthen is on my soul, and I cannot
read thy rede," murmured the Vala. "But morn, the ghost-chaser, that
waketh life, the action, charms into slumber life, the thought. As
the stars pale at the rising of the sun, so fade the lights of the
soul when the buds revive in the dews, and the lark sings to the day.
In thy dream lies thy future, as the wing of the moth in the web of
the changing worm; but, whether for weal or for woe, thou shalt burst
through thy mesh, and spread thy plumes in the air. Of myself I know
nought. Await the hour when Skulda shall pass into the soul of her
servant, and thy fate shall rush from my lips as the rush of the
waters from the heart of the cave."
"I am content to abide," said Harold, with his wonted smile, so calm
and so lofty; "but I cannot promise thee that I shall heed thy rede,
or obey thy warning, when my reason hath awoke, as while I speak it
awakens, from the fumes of the fancy and the mists of the night."