Brief was the sojourn of Tostig at the court of Rouen; speedily made
the contract between the grasping Duke and the revengeful traitor.
All that had been promised to Harold, was now pledged to Tostig--if
the last would assist the Norman to the English throne.
At heart, however, Tostig was ill satisfied. His chance conversations
with the principal barons, who seemed to look upon the conquest of
England as the dream of a madman, showed him how doubtful it was that
William could induce his Quens to a service, to which the tenure of
their fiefs did not appear to compel them; and at all events, Tostig
prognosticated delays, that little suited his fiery impatience. He
accepted the offer of some two or three ships, which William put at
his disposal, under pretence to reconnoitre the Northumbrian coasts,
and there attempt a rising in his own favour. But his discontent was
increased by the smallness of the aid afforded him; for William, ever
suspicious, distrusted both his faith and his power. Tostig, with all
his vices, was a poor dissimulator, and his sullen spirit betrayed
itself when he took leave of his host.
"Chance what may," said the fierce Saxon, "no stranger shall seize the
English crown without my aid. I offer it first to thee. But thou
must come to take it in time, or----"
"Or what?" asked the Duke, gnawing his lip.
"Or the Father race of Rou will be before thee! My horse paws
without. Farewell to thee, Norman; sharpen thy swords, hew out thy
vessels, and goad thy slow barons."
Scarce had Tostig departed, ere William began to repent that he had so
let him depart: but seeking counsel of Lanfranc, that wise minister
reassured him.
"Fear no rival, son and lord," said he. "The bones of the dead are on
thy side, and little thou knowest, as yet, how mighty their fleshless
arms! All Tostig can do is to distract the forces of Harold. Leave
him to work out his worst; nor then be in haste. Much hath yet to be
done--cloud must gather and fire must form, ere the bolt can be
launched. Send to Harold mildly, and gently remind him of oath and of
relics--of treaty and pledge. Put right on thy side, and then----"
"Ah, what then?"
"Rome shall curse the forsworn--Rome shall hallow thy banner; this be
no strife of force against force, but a war of religion; and thou
shalt have on thy side the conscience of man, and the arm of the
Church."
Meanwhile, Tostig embarked at Harfleur; but instead of sailing to the
northern coasts of England, he made for one of the Flemish ports: and
there, under various pretences, new manned the Norman vessels with
Flemings, Fins, and Northmen. His meditations during his voyage had
decided him not to trust to William; and he now bent his course, with
fair wind and favouring weather, to the shores of his maternal uncle,
King Sweyn of Denmark.
In truth, to all probable calculation, his change of purpose was
politic. The fleets of England were numerous, and her seamen
renowned. The Normans had neither experience nor fame in naval
fights; their navy itself was scarcely formed. Thus, even William's
landing in England was an enterprise arduous and dubious. Moreover,
even granting the amplest success, would not this Norman Prince, so
profound and ambitious, be a more troublesome lord to Earl Tostig than
his own uncle Sweyn?
So, forgetful of the compact at Rouen, no sooner had the Saxon lord
come in presence of the King of the Danes, than he urged on his
kinsman the glory of winning again the sceptre of Canute.
A brave, but a cautious and wily veteran, was King Sweyn; and a few
days before Tostig arrived, he had received letters from his sister
Githa, who, true to Godwin's command, had held all that Harold did and
counselled, as between himself and his brother, wise and just. These
letters had placed the Dane on his guard, and shown him the true state
of affairs in England. So King Sweyn, smiling, thus answered his
nephew Tostig:
"A great man was Canute, a small man am I: scarce can I keep my Danish
dominion from the gripe of the Norwegian, while Canute took Norway
without slash and blow [222]; but great as he was, England cost him
hard fighting to win, and sore peril to keep. Wherefore, best for the
small man to rule by the light of his own little sense, nor venture to
count on the luck of great Canute;--for luck but goes with the great."
"Thine answer," said Tostig, with a bitter sneer, "is not what I
expected from an uncle and warrior. But other chiefs may be found
less afraid of the luck of high deeds."
"So," saith the Norwegian chronicler, "not just the best friends, the
Earl left the King," and went on in haste to Harold Hardrada of
Norway.
True Hero of the North, true darling of War and of Song, was Harold
Hardrada! At the terrible battle of Stiklestad, at which his brother,
St. Olave, had fallen, he was but fifteen years of age, but his body
was covered with the wounds of a veteran. Escaping from the field, he
lay concealed in the house of a Bonder peasant, remote in deep
forests, till his wounds were healed. Thence, chaunting by the way,
(for a poet's soul burned bright in Hardrada,) "That a day would come
when his name would be great in the land he now left," he went on into
Sweden, thence into Russia, and after wild adventures in the East,
joined, with the bold troop he had collected around him, that famous
body-guard of the Greek emperors [223], called the Vaeringers, and of
these he became the chief. Jealousies between himself and the Greek
General of the Imperial forces, (whom the Norwegian chronicler calls
Gyrger,) ended in Harold's retirement with his Vaeringers into the
Saracen land of Africa. Eighty castles stormed and taken, vast
plunder in gold and in jewels, and nobler meed in the song of the
Scald and the praise of the brave, attested the prowess of the great
Scandinavian. New laurels, blood-stained, new treasures, sword-won,
awaited him in Sicily; and thence, rough foretype of the coming
crusader, he passed on to Jerusalem. His sword swept before him
Moslem and robber. He bathed in Jordan, and knelt at the Holy Cross.
Returned to Constantinople, the desire for his northern home seized
Hardrada. There he heard that his nephew Magnus, the illegitimate son
of St. Olave, had become King of Norway,--and he himself aspired to a
throne. So he gave up his command under Zoe the empress; but, if
Scald be believed, Zoe the empress loved the bold chief, whose heart
was set on Maria her niece. To detain Hardrada, a charge of mal-
appropriation, whether of pay or of booty, was brought against him.
He was cast into prison. But when the brave are in danger, the saints
send the fair to their help! Moved by a holy dream, a Greek lady
lowered ropes from the roof of the tower to the dungeon wherein
Hardrada was cast. He escaped from the prison, he aroused his
Vaeringers, they flocked round their chief; he went to the house of
his lady Maria, bore her off to the galley, put out into the Black
Sea, reached Novgorod, (at the friendly court of whose king he had
safely lodged his vast spoils,) sailed home to the north: and, after
such feats as became sea-king of old, received half of Norway from
Magnus, and on the death of his nephew the whole of that kingdom
passed to his sway. A king so wise and so wealthy, so bold and so
dread, had never yet been known in the north. And this was the king
to whom came Tostig the Earl, with the offer of England's crown.
It was one of the glorious nights of the north, and winter had already
begun to melt into early spring, when two men sate under a kind of
rustic porch of rough pine-logs, not very unlike those seen now in
Switzerland and the Tyrol. This porch was constructed before a
private door, to the rear of a long, low, irregular building of wood
which enclosed two or more courtyards, and covering an immense space
of ground. This private door seemed placed for the purpose of
immediate descent to the sea; for the ledge of the rock over which the
log-porch spread its rude roof, jutted over the ocean; and from it a
rugged stair, cut through the crag, descended to the beach. The
shore, with bold, strange, grotesque slab, and peak, and splinter,
curved into a large creek; and close under the cliff were moored seven
warships, high and tall, with prows and sterns all gorgeous with
gilding in the light of the splendid moon. And that rude timber
house, which seemed but a chain of barbarian huts linked into one, was
a land palace of Hardrada of Norway; but the true halls of his
royalty, the true seats of his empire, were the decks of those lofty
war-ships.
Through the small lattice-work of the windows of the loghouse, lights
blazed; from the roof-top smoke curled; from the hall on the other
side of the dwelling, came the din of tumultuous wassail, but the
intense stillness of the outer air, hushed in frost, and luminous with
stars, contrasted and seemed to rebuke the gross sounds of human
revel. And that northern night seemed almost as bright as (but how
much more augustly calm, than) the noon of the golden south!
On a table within the ample porch was an immense bowl of birchwood,
mounted in silver, and filled with potent drink, and two huge horns,
of size suiting the mighty wassailers of the age. The two men seemed
to care nought for the stern air of the cold night--true that they
were wrapped in furs reft from the Polar bear. But each had hot
thoughts within, that gave greater warmth to the veins than the bowl
or the bearskin.
They were host and guest; and as if with the restlessness of his
thoughts, the host arose from his seat, and passed through the porch
and stood on the bleak rock under the light of the moon; and so seen,
he seemed scarcely human, but some war-chief of the farthest time,--
yea, of a time ere the deluge had shivered those rocks, and left beds
on the land for the realm of that icy sea. For Harold Hardrada was in
height above all the children of modern men. Five ells of Norway made
the height of Harold Hardrada [224]. Nor was this stature accompanied
by any of those imperfections in symmetry, nor by that heaviness of
aspect, which generally render any remarkable excess above human
stature and strength rather monstrous than commanding. On the
contrary, his proportions were just; his appearance noble; and the
sole defect that the chronicler remarks in his shape, was "that his
hands and feet were large, but these were well made." [225]
His face had all the fair beauty of the Norseman; his hair, parted in
locks of gold over a brow that bespoke the daring of the warrior and
the genius of the bard, fell in glittering profusion to his shoulders;
a short beard and long moustache of the same colour as the hair,
carefully trimmed, added to the grand and masculine beauty of the
countenance, in which the only blemish was the peculiarity of one
eyebrow being somewhat higher than the other [226], which gave
something more sinister to his frown, something more arch to his
smile. For, quick of impulse, the Poet-Titan smiled and frowned
often.
Harold Hardrada stood in the light of the moon, and gazing
thoughtfully on the luminous sea. Tostig marked him for some moments
where he sate in the porch, and then rose and joined him.
"Why should my words so disturb thee, O King of the Norseman?"
"Is glory, then, a drug that soothes to sleep?" returned the
Norwegian.
"I like thine answer," said Tostig, smiling, "and I like still more to
watch thine eye gazing on the prows of thy war-ships. Strange indeed
it were if thou, who hast been fighting fifteen years for the petty
kingdom of Denmark, shouldst hesitate now, when all England lies
before thee to seize."
"I hesitate," replied the King, "because he whom Fortune has
befriended so long, should beware how he strain her favour too far.
Eighteen pitched battles fought I in the Saracen land, and in every
one was a victor--never, at home or abroad, have I known shame and
defeat. Doth the wind always blow from one point?--and is Fate less
unstable than the wind?"
"Now, out on thee, Harold Hardrada," said Tostig the fierce; "the good
pilot wins his way through all winds, and the brave heart fastens fate
to its flag. All men allow that the North never had warrior like
thee; and now, in the mid-day of manhood, wilt thou consent to repose
on the mere triumph of youth?"
"Nay," said the King, who, like all true poets, had something of the
deep sense of a sage, and was, indeed, regarded as the most prudent as
well as the most adventurous chief in the Northland,--"nay, it is not
by such words, which my soul seconds too well, that thou canst entrap
a ruler of men. Thou must show me the chances of success, as thou
wouldst to a grey-beard. For we should be as old men before we
engage, and as youths when we wish to perform."
Then the traitor succinctly detailed all the weak points in the rule
of his brother. A treasury exhausted by the lavish and profitless
waste of Edward; a land without castle or bulwark, even at the mouths
of the rivers; a people grown inert by long peace, and so accustomed
to own lord and king in the northern invaders, that a single
successful battle might induce half the population to insist on the
Saxon coming to terms with the foe, and yielding, as Ironsides did to
Canute, one half of the realm. He enlarged on the terror of the
Norsemen that still existed throughout England, and the affinity
between the Northumbrians and East Anglians with the race of Hardrada.
That affinity would not prevent them from resisting at the first; but
grant success, and it would reconcile them to the after sway. And,
finally, he aroused Hardrada's emulation by the spur of the news, that
the Count of the Normans would seize the prize if he himself delayed
to forestall him.
These various representations, and the remembrance of Canute's
victory, decided Hardrada; and, when Tostig ceased, he stretched his
hand towards his slumbering warships, and exclaimed:
"Eno'; you have whetted the beaks of the ravens, and harnessed the
steeds of the sea!"