It was the eve of the 5th of January--the eve of the day announced to
King Edward as that of his deliverance from earth; and whether or not
the prediction had wrought its own fulfilment on the fragile frame and
susceptible nerves of the King, the last of the line of Cerdic was
fast passing into the solemn shades of eternity.
Without the walls of the palace, through the whole city of London, the
excitement was indescribable. All the river before the palace was
crowded with boats; all the broad space on the Isle of Thorney itself,
thronged with anxious groups. But a few days before the new-built
Abbey had been solemnly consecrated; with the completion of that holy
edifice, Edward's life itself seemed done. Like the kings of Egypt,
he had built his tomb.
Within the palace, if possible, still greater was the agitation; more
dread the suspense. Lobbies, halls, corridors, stairs, ante-rooms,
were filled with churchmen and thegns. Nor was it alone for news of
the King's state that their brows were so knit, that their breath came
and went so short. It is not when a great chief is dying, that men
compose their minds to deplore a loss. That comes long after, when
the worm is at its work, and comparison between the dead and the
living often rights the one to wrong the other. But while the breath
is struggling, and the eye glazing, life, busy in the bystanders,
murmurs, "Who shall be the heir?" And, in this instance, never had
suspense been so keenly wrought up into hope and terror. For the news
of Duke William's designs had now spread far and near; and awful was
the doubt, whether the abhorred Norman should receive his sole
sanction to so arrogant a claim from the parting assent of Edward.
Although, as we have seen, the crown was not absolutely within the
bequests of a dying king, but at the will of the Witan, still, in
circumstances so unparalleled, the utter failure of all natural heirs,
save a boy feeble in mind as body, and half foreign by birth and
rearing; the love borne by Edward to the Church; and the sentiments,
half of pity half of reverence, with which he was regarded throughout
the land;--his dying word would go far to influence the council and
select the successor. Some whispering to each other, with pale lips,
all the dire predictions then current in men's mouths and breasts;
some in moody silence; all lifted eager eyes, as, from time to time, a
gloomy Benedictine passed in the direction to or fro the King's
chamber.
In that chamber, traversing the past of eight centuries, enter we with
hushed and noiseless feet--a room known to us in many a later scene
and legend of England's troubled history, as "THE PAINTED CHAMBER,"
long called "THE CONFESSOR'S." At the farthest end of that long and
lofty space, raised upon a regal platform, and roofed with regal
canopy, was the bed of death.
At the foot stood Harold; on one side knelt Edith, the King's lady; at
the other Alred; while Stigand stood near--the holy rood in his hand--
and the abbot of the new monastery of Westminster by Stigand's side;
and all the greatest thegns, including Morcar and Edwin, Gurth and
Leofwine, all the more illustrious prelates and abbots, stood also on
the dais.
In the lower end of the hall, the King's physician was warming a
cordial over the brazier, and some of the subordinate officers of the
household were standing in the niches of the deep-set windows; and
they--not great eno' for other emotions than those of human love for
their kindly lord--they wept.
The King, who had already undergone the last holy offices of the
Church, was lying quite quiet, his eyes half closed, breathing low but
regularly. He had been speechless the two preceding days; on this he
had uttered a few words, which showed returning consciousness. His
hand, reclined on the coverlid, was clasped in his wife's who was
praying fervently. Something in the touch of her hand, or the sound
of her murmur, stirred the King from the growing lethargy, and his
eyes opening, fixed on the kneeling lady.
"Ah?" said he faintly, "ever good, ever meek! Think not I did not
love thee; hearts will be read yonder; we shall have our guerdon."
The lady looked up through her streaming tears. Edward released his
hand, and laid it on her head as in benediction. Then motioning to
the abbot of Westminster, he drew from his finger the ring which the
palmer had brought to him [217], and murmured scarce audibly:
"Be this kept in the House of St. Peter in memory of me!"
"He is alive now to us--speak--" whispered more than one thegn, one
abbot, to Alred and to Stigand. And Stigand, as the harder and more
worldly man of the two, moved up, and bending over the pillow, between
Alred and the King, said:
"O royal son, about to win the crown to which that of earth is but an
idiot's wreath of withered leaves, not yet may thy soul forsake us.
Whom commendest thou to us as shepherd to thy bereaven flock? whom
shall we admonish to tread in those traces thy footsteps leave below?"
The King made a slight gesture of impatience; and the Queen, forgetful
of all but her womanly sorrow, raised her eye and finger in reproof
that the dying was thus disturbed. But the stake was too weighty, the
suspense too keen, for that reverent delicacy in those around; and the
thegns pressed on each other, and a murmur rose, which murmured the
name of Harold.
"Bethink thee, my son," said Alred, in a tender voice tremulous with
emotion; "the young Atheling is too much an infant yet for these
anxious times."
Edward signed his head in assent.
"Then," said the Norman bishop of London, who till that moment had
stood in the rear, almost forgotten amongst the crowd of Saxon
prelates, but who himself had been all eyes and ears. "Then," said
Bishop William, advancing, "if thine own royal line so fail, who so
near to thy love, who so worthy to succeed, as William thy cousin, the
Count of the Normans?"
Dark was the scowl on the brow of every thegn, and a muttered "No, no:
never the Norman!" was heard distinctly. Harold's face flushed, and
his hand was on the hilt of his ateghar. But no other sign gave he of
his interest in the question.
The King lay for some moments silent, but evidently striving to re-
collect his thoughts. Meanwhile the two archprelates bent over him--
Stigand eagerly, Alred fondly.
Then raising himself on one arm, while with the other he pointed to
Harold at the foot of the bed, the King said:
"Your hearts, I see, are with Harold the Earl: so be it." At those
words he fell back on his pillow; a loud shriek burst from his wife's
lips; all crowded around; he lay as the dead.
At the cry, and the indescribable movement of the throng, the
physician came quick from the lower part of the hall. He made his way
abruptly to the bedside, and said chidingly, "Air, give him air." The
throng parted, the leach moistened the King's pale lips with the
cordial, but no breath seemed to come forth, no pulse seemed to beat;
and while the two prelates knelt before the human body and by the
blessed rood, the rest descended the dais, and hastened to depart.
Harold only remained; but he had passed from the foot to the head of
the bed.
The crowd had gained the centre of the hall, when a sound that
startled them as if it had come from the grave, chained every
footstep--the sound of the King's voice, loud, terribly distinct, and
full, as with the vigour of youth restored. All turned their eyes,
appalled; all stood spell-bound.
There sate the King upright on the bed, his face seen above the
kneeling prelates, and his eyes bright and shining down the Hall.
"Yea," he said, deliberately, "yea, as this shall be a real vision or
a false illusion, grant me, Almighty One, the power of speech to tell
it."
He paused a moment, and thus resumed:
"It was on the banks of the frozen Seine, this day thirty-and-one
winters ago, that two holy monks, to whom the gift of prophecy was
vouchsafed, told me of direful woes that should fall on England; 'For
God,' said they, 'after thy death, has delivered England into the hand
of the enemy, and fiends shall wander over the land.' Then I asked in
my sorrow, 'Can nought avert the doom? and may not my people free
themselves by repentance, like the Ninevites of old?' And the
Prophets answered, 'Nay, nor shall the calamity cease, and the curse
be completed, till a green tree be sundered in twain, and the part cut
off be carried away; yet move, of itself, to the ancient trunk, unite
to the stem, bud out with the blossom, and stretch forth its fruit.'
So said the monks, and even now, ere I spoke, I saw them again, there,
standing mute, and with the paleness of dead men, by the side of my
bed!"
These words were said so calmly, and as it were so rationally, that
their import became doubly awful from the cold precision of the tone.
A shudder passed through the assembly, and each man shrunk from the
King's eye, which seemed to each man to dwell on himself. Suddenly
that eye altered in its cold beam; suddenly the voice changed its
deliberate accent; the grey hairs seemed to bristle erect, the whole
face to work with horror; the arms stretched forth, the form writhed
on the couch, distorted fragments from the lips: "Sanguelac!
Sanguelac!--the Lake of Blood," shrieked forth the dying King, "the
Lord hath bent his bow--the Lord hath bared his sword. He comes down
as a warrior to war, and his wrath is in the steel and the flame. He
boweth the mountains, and comes down, and darkness is under his feet!"
As if revived but for these tremendous denunciations, while the last
word left his lips the frame collapsed, the eyes set, and the King
fell a corpse in the arms of Harold.
But one smile of the sceptic or the world-man was seen on the paling
lips of those present: that smile was not on the lips of warriors and
men of mail. It distorted the sharpened features of Stigand, the
world-man and the miser, as, passing down, and amidst the group, he
said, "Tremble ye at the dreams of a sick old man?" [218]