Tostig sate in the halls of Bruges, and with him sate Judith, his
haughty wife. The Earl and his Countess were playing at chess, (or
the game resembling it, which amused the idlesse of that age,) and the
Countess had put her lord's game into mortal disorder, when Tostig
swept his hand over the board, and the pieces rolled on the floor.
"That is one way to prevent defeat," said Judith, with a half smile
and half frown.
"It is the way of the bold and the wise, wife mine," answered Tostig,
rising, "let all be destruction where thou thyself canst win not!
Peace to these trifles! I cannot keep my mind to the mock fight; it
flies to the real. Our last news sours the taste of the wine, and
steals the sleep from my couch. It says that Edward cannot live
through the winter, and that all men bruit abroad, there can be no
king save Harold my brother."
"And will thy brother as King give to thee again thy domain as Earl?"
"He must!" answered Tostig, "and, despite all our breaches, with soft
message he will. For Harold has the heart of the Saxon, to which the
sons of one father are dear; and Githa, my mother, when we first fled,
controlled the voice of my revenge, and bade me wait patient and hope
yet."
Scarce had these words fallen from Tostig's lips, when the chief of
his Danish house-carles came in, and announced the arrival of a bode
from England.
"His news? his news?" cried the Earl, "with his own lips let him speak
his news."
The house-carle withdrew but to usher in the messenger, an Anglo-Dane.
"The weight on thy brow shows the load on thy heart," cried Tostig.
"Speak, and be brief."
"Edward is dead."
"Ha? and who reigns?"
"Thy brother is chosen and crowned."
The face of the Earl grew red and pale in a breath, and successive
emotions of envy and old rivalship, humbled pride and fierce
discontent, passed across his turbulent heart. But these died away as
the predominant thought of self-interest, and somewhat of that
admiration for success which often seems like magnanimity in grasping
minds, and something too of haughty exultation, that he stood a King's
brother in the halls of his exile, came to chase away the more hostile
and menacing feelings. Then Judith approached with joy on her brow,
and said:
"We shall no more eat the bread of dependence even at the hand of a
father; and since Harold hath no dame to proclaim to the Church, and
to place on the dais, thy wife, O my Tostig, will have state in far
England little less than her sister in Rouen."
"Methinks so will it be," said Tostig. "How now, nuncius? why lookest
thou so grim, and why shakest thou thy head?"
"Small chance for thy dame to keep state in the halls of the King;
small hope for thyself to win back thy broad earldom. But a few weeks
ere thy brother won the crown, he won also a bride in the house of thy
spoiler and foe. Aldyth, the sister of Edwin and Morcar, is Lady of
England; and that union shuts thee out from Northumbria for ever."
At these words, as if stricken by some deadly and inexpressible
insult, the Earl recoiled, and stood a moment mute with rage and
amaze. His singular beauty became distorted into the lineaments of a
fiend. He stamped with his foot, as he thundered a terrible curse.
Then haughtily waving his hand to the bode, in sign of dismissal, he
strode to and fro the room in gloomy perturbation.
Judith, like her sister Matilda, a woman fierce and vindictive,
continued, by that sharp venom that lies in the tongue of the sex, to
incite still more the intense resentment of her lord. Perhaps some
female jealousies of Aldyth might contribute to increase her own
indignation. But without such frivolous addition to anger, there was
cause eno' in this marriage thoroughly to complete the alienation
between the King and his brother. It was impossible that one so
revengeful as Tostig should not cherish the deepest animosity, not
only against the people that had rejected, but the new Earl that had
succeeded him. In wedding the sister of this fortunate rival and
despoiler, Harold could not, therefore, but gall him in his most
sensitive sores of soul. The King, thus, formally approved and
sanctioned his ejection, solemnly took part with his foe, robbed him
of all legal chance of recovering his dominions, and, in the words of
the bode, "shut him out from Northumbria for ever." Nor was this even
all. Grant his return to England; grant a reconciliation with Harold;
still those abhorred and more fortunate enemies, necessarily made now
the most intimate part of the King's family, must be most in his
confidence, would curb and chafe and encounter Tostig in every scheme
for his personal aggrandisement. His foes, in a word, were in the
camp of his brother.
While gnashing his teeth with a wrath the more deadly because he saw
not yet his way to retribution,--Judith, pursuing the separate thread
of her own cogitations, said:
"And if my sister's lord, the Count of the Normans, had, as rightly he
ought to have, succeeded his cousin the Monk-king, then I should have
a sister on the throne, and thou in her husband a brother more tender
than Harold. One who supports his barons with sword and mail, and
gives the villeins rebelling against them but the brand and the cord."
"Ho!" cried Tostig, stopping suddenly in his disordered strides, "kiss
me, wife, for those words! They have helped thee to power, and lit me
to revenge. If thou wouldst send love to thy sister, take graphium
and parchment, and write fast as a scribe. Ere the sun is an hour
older, I am on my road to Count William."