One’s own house is best,
Small though it be;
At home is every one his own master.
Bleeding at heart is he
Who has to ask
For food at every mealtide.
Hávamál.
Slowly the bleak light warmed into golden radiance and the touch of
dawn strung the scattered bird-notes into a chain of joyous song.
Passing at last from the forest shades, the men of Ivarsdale came out
into the grassy lane-like road that wound away over the Middlesex
hills.
The Destroyer had not passed this way, it seemed, for the oat-fields
stretched before them in unbroken silvery sheen; and the straight young
corn dared to rustle its green ribbons boastfully. Fowls still
uncaptured crowed lustily in adjacent barnyards; and now and again,
sweet as echoes from elfin horns, came the tinkling music of cow-bells.
Here and there, the little shock-headed boys who were driving their
charges afield paused knee-deep in rosy clover to watch the band ride
by.
“Yon must be a mighty warrior,” they whispered as they stared at the
sober young leader. “Take notice how his eyes gaze straight ahead, as
though he were seeking more people to overcome.” And they spoke
enviously of the red-cloaked page who sat on the croup of the leader’s
white charger.
“See the sword he wears in his gay clothes. Likely he also has been in
battle. He must needs be happy who can strike out into the world like
that.” Envying, they gazed after him until the horses’ hoofs threw up a
yellow wall between.
They would have opened their wide mouths wider had they known that the
red-cloaked page was looking wistfully at them and their kine and the
nodding clover.
“It must be very enjoyable to wander all day in the peace of the
meadows and hear nothing louder than cow-bells,” she was thinking. “It
is good to see creatures that no man is stabbing or doing harm to.”
Through warm sunshine, tempered by fresh breezes, they came yet deeper
into the drowsy farmland. Gradually the yeomen-soldiers, who had been
wrangling over the mystery of Edric’s actions, dropped one by one into
lazy silence, or set their tongues to whistling cleverly turned answers
to the bird-calls in the hedges. Another mile, and from somewhere in
the fields came the swinging chant of a ploughman, as he turned the
soil between the rows of rustling corn,—
“Hail, Mother Earth, thou feeder of folk!
Be thou growing, by goodness of God,
Filled with fodder, the folk to feed.”
Like the unbinding of a spell, the words fell upon the farmer-soldiers.
Dropping every other topic, they began to argue over the crops; and
after that they could not pass a harmless calf tethered to a crab-tree
that they did not quarrel over the breed, nor start a drove of grunting
swine out of the mast but they must lay wagers on the weight.
Running wild in the animation, it was not long before the clamor caught
up with the Etheling where he rode before them in sober reflection. He
smiled faintly as he caught the burden of the disjointed phrases.
“...Twelve stone; I will peril my head upon it!”... “Yorkshire, I tell
you, Yorkshire.”... “A fortnight? It will be ready in a week, or I have
never grown barley corn!”
“I do not believe that a tree-toad can change color more easily,” he
observed to the old cniht who rode at his side. “That Englishmen are
not stout fighters, no man can say, but the love of it is not in their
breasts; while with Northmen—”
“With Northmen,” Morcard added, “to fight is to eat.”
Another faint smile touched Sebert’s mouth as he glanced over his
shoulder at the red-cloaked boy. “After seeing this sprout, that is
easy to believe. Except that time alone when a two-year-old colt kicked
me on the head, I have never had my life threatened by so young a
thing.”
He grew grave again as his glance rested on his captive. “I want you to
tell me something,” he said presently. “You were Canute’s page; I saw
that you accompanied him in battle. I want you to tell me what he is
like in his temper.”
“It would be more easy to tell you what he is unlike,” Randalin
answered slowly; “for in no way whatever is he like your King Edmund.”
She sat awhile in silence, her eyes absently following the course of
the wind over a slope of bending grain. At the foot, it caught a clump
of willow-trees so that they flashed with hidden silver and tossed
their slender arms like dancers. “I think this is the difference, to
tell it shortly,” she said at last; “while it sometimes happens that
Canute is driven by necessity or evil counsels to act deceitfully
toward others, he is always honest in his own mind; while your
Edmund,—I think he lies to himself also.”
Morcard gave out a dry chuckle. “By Saint Cuthbert,” he muttered, “too
much has not been told concerning the sharpness of children!”
But the Etheling made no answer whatever. After he had ridden a long
time staring away across the fields, he met the old man’s eyes gravely.
“It is not alone because I am sore under his tongue, Morcard. Were he
what I had thought him, I would remain quiet under harder words. But he
is not worth enduring from; there is not enough good in him to outweigh
the evil.”
Old Morcard said thoughtfully: “The tree of Cerdic has borne many nuts
with prickly rinds in former times, but there has been wont to be good
meat inside. Since Ethelred, I have been in fear that the tree is dying
at the root.”
They swung over another piece of the road in silence, when the young
man started up and shook himself impatiently. “Wel-a-way! What use to
think of it? For the present, at least, I am a lordless man. Let us
speak of the defences we must begin to raise against Edmund’s coming.”
While they discussed watch-towers and barriers, the horses took them
along at a swinging pace. The heath-clad upland over which they were
passing sloped into another fertile valley, through which a lily-padded
stream ran between rows of drooping willows. Suddenly the Lord of
Ivarsdale broke off with an exclamation.
“It was not in my mind that we could see the old forked elm from here.
Hey, comrades!” he called over his shoulder. “Yonder—to the left—the
old land-mark! Do you see?” His glance, as it came back, took in his
captive. “The first bar of your cage, my hawk. Yonder is the first
boundary of Ivarsdale.”
Every man started up in his saddle, and the cheers they had held back
upon leaving camp burst forth now with added zest. Peering over her
captor’s shoulder, Randalin looked forward anxiously.
Below the plain in whose centre the old elm held up its blasted top to
be silvered by the sun, the land dipped abruptly toward the river, to
rise beyond in a long low hill. Rolling green meadows lay at its foot,
and warm brown fields dotted with thatched farm-houses; and its sides
were checkered with patches of woodland and stretches of golden barley.
Just below the crest, the tower of the Lords of Ivarsdale reared its
gray walls above the surrounding greenery. Far away, a speck through
the dark foliage, the great London road gleamed white; but wooded hills
made a sheltering hedge between, and all around spread the great beech
forest that fostered the markmen’s herds. It was a kingdom to itself,
with the light slanting warmly upon its fertile slopes and the forest
standing like a strong army at its back.
Because it was so peacefully lovely, and because of her utter
weariness, tears welled up under the girl’s heavy lids as she looked.
She said unsteadily, “Saw I never a fairer cage, lord.”
But the Etheling’s eager glance had travelled on; for the first time
the sun was shining out brightly in his face.
“The sight has more cheer than has wine,” he said. “I cannot comprehend
my folly in wanting to leave it. To live one’s own master on one’s own
land, that is the only life!” He looked back at the yeomen with a
sudden smile. “Noise!” he ordered. “Cheer again! it expresses the state
of my feelings. And let your horn sound merrily, Kendred, that they may
know we are coming.”
Amid a joyous tumult, they swept over the terrace-like plain and broke
ranks around the old elm. Evidently it was the disbanding place, for
the yeomen-soldiers, one and all, came crowding around their leader to
press his hand and speak a parting word.
“You have fought with the sword of your tongue, chief!”... “as worthy a
battle as when you strove against the Danes!”... “The spirit of the old
days is not dead while you are alive, Oswald’s son.”... “None now are
born thereto save you alone!”... “Till that time when you send for us,
my chief.”... “One eye on our ploughs and one watching for your
messenger.”... “God keep you in safety, young lord!”
In the meadows beyond the stream, little shepherd boys had heard the
horn and were swarming, spider-like, over the hedges, sending up shrill
shouts. And now women came running across the fields from the
farmhouses, waving their aprons. More children raced behind them; and
then a dozen old men, limping and hobbling on crutches and canes. A
moment, and they were all over the foot-bridge and up the slope; and
the sweet clamor of greetings was added to the tumult. Now it was a
crowd of little brothers throwing themselves upon a big one; now a
blooming lass flinging her arms around her sweetheart’s neck; and
again, a farmer’s little daughter leaping joyously into her father’s
embrace.
In the midst of it, the Lord of Ivarsdale looked around and found that
Fridtjof the page was crying as though his heart would break.
“How! Tears, my Beowulf!” he said in amazement.
She was far beyond words, the girl in the page’s dress; she could only
bury her face deeper in her slender hands and try to control the sobs
that shook her from head to foot.
But it was not long before the young man’s kind-ness divined the source
of her pain. He spoke a quick word to those behind, and waving aside
those before, touched spur to the white horse. In a moment, the good
steed had borne them out of the crowd and down the slope, followed only
by the old cnihts and the dozen armed retainers.
As the hoofs rang hollow on the little bridge that spanned the stream,
the Etheling spoke again in his voice of careless gentleness. “It is
easy to enter into the sorrowfulness of your heart, youngling, and I
think it no dishonor to your courage that you should mourn your kin
with tears; yet I pray you to lay aside as much grief as you can. Bear
in mind that no dungeon is gaping for you.”
She could not speak to him yet, but when he put his hand back to feel
of a strap, she bent and touched the brown fingers gratefully with her
lips. The answer seemed to renew his kindly impulse.
“After all, you should not feel so strange among us,” he said lightly.
“Do you know that it was one of your own countrymen who built the
Tower? Ivar Wide-Fathomer he was named, whence it is still called
Ivarsdale. He was of the stock of Lodbrok, they say; and it is said,
too, that one of his race is even now with Canute. Since Alfred, my
fathers have had possession of it, but it is Danish-built, every stone.
You must make believe that you are coming home.” So he spun on,
carelessly good-humored, as they climbed the wind-ing hill-path.
Across the ditch and through the wide-open gate in the moss-grown
palisade, and they came into a broad grassy space that was more like a
lawn than a court. Ahead of them rose the massive three-storied tower,
built of mighty gray stones without softening wings or adorning spires,
beautiful only in its mantling ivy. From the great door in its side a
crowd of serfs came running, ducking grinning salutations; and they
were followed by a half-dozen old warriors. Seized by a boyish whim,
their master rode past them with no more than a wave of his hand.
“If we make haste, it may be that we can take Hildelitha and Father
Ingulph by surprise,” he laughed, leaping down on the crumbling
doorstep and pulling his captive with him.
In the tunnel-like arch of the great entrance they met another throng,
but he shook them off with good-natured impatience and hurried through
the great guard-room to the winding stairs, that were cut out of the
core of the massive stones. Up and across another mighty hall, and then
up again, and into a great women’s-room, full of looms and
spinning-wheels, where a buxom English housewife and half-a-dozen
red-cheeked maids were gaping over their distaffs at the tale a jolly
old monk was telling between swallows of wine.
He choked in his cup when he saw who stood laughing in the doorway, and
there was a great screaming and scrambling among his audience. Knocking
over her spinning-wheel to get to him, the woman Hildelitha threw her
arms around her young lord’s neck and gave him a hearty smack on either
cheek; while the fat monk sputtered blessings between his paroxysms of
coughing, and the six blooming girls made a screaming circle around
them.
Though he endured it amiably enough, the Etheling appeared in some
haste to offer a diversion. He evaded a second embrace by turning and
beckoning to his shrinking captive.
“Save a little of your greeting for my guest, good nurse. Behold the
fire-eating Dane that I have captured with my own right arm!” As the
red-cloaked figure still hung back, he pulled it gently forward until
the light of the notched candles fell brightly on the face, pitifully
white for all its blood-stains, in the frame of tumbled black tresses.
“A Dane?” the women cried shrilly; then, with equal unanimity, burst
out laughing. Randalin drew a little nearer the Etheling’s sheltering
side. He said half reprovingly, half freakishly, “It would not be well
for you to anger him. He is the page of Canute himself, a real
Wandering Wolf, and recks not whom he attacks. He came near to spitting
Oslac at the battle, and even threatened me.”
“Oslac!” screamed one of the serving-maids, turning very red. “The
murderous little fiend!”
“He deserves to have his neck wrung!” two more cried out.
And Father Ingulph cleared his throat loudly. “Well-fitting is your
charity both toward my teachings and your heart, my son; and
yet—Discretion is the mother of other virtues. To bring one of those
roving children of Satan into a Christian household will lay upon me a
responsibility which—which—” He paused to take a mouthful of wine and
eye the stranger over the goblet rim with much disfavor.
While the maids whispered excitedly in one another’s ears, Hildelitha
began to sniff behind her apron. “I do not see why you wanted to bring
him home, Lord Sebert. You know that Danes are odious to me since my
husband, of holy memory, fell under their axes—most detestable—Yet I
would not anger you, my honey-sweet lord,” she broke off abruptly.
For the Lord of Ivarsdale had suddenly grown very stiff and grave;
there was something curiously haughty in the quiet distinctness of his
words.
“I have brought the boy home by reason of the King’s command that he be
held in safety—and because it was my pleasure to succor him. And I have
fetched him up here in order that you should supply his needs, being
distressed for want of food and drink and healing salves. I am not
pleased that you should meet my wishes in so light and cold a manner. I
desire your love will, as is becoming, receive him kindly and
charitably.”
He raised his hand as the pertest of the maids would have answered him,
and there followed an uncomfortable pause. Then seven gowns swept the
reed-strewn floor as seven courtesies fell, and Hildelitha thrust out
her palm to give the pert maid a resounding box on the ear.
“You have heard your master, hussy! Why do you not exert yourself to
bring food? Elswitha, if you do not want the mate to that, fetch the
salve out of my chest.”
In an instant all was confusion; under cover of it the fat monk
returned to his cup and the young master walked quietly to the door.
Homesick and heartsick, the waif in the page’s dress was left facing
the unfriendly glances. Even in her bravest days, she had never known
what it was to be disliked, and now—! Suddenly she limped after her
friend and caught at his cloak.
“Let me go with you,” she cried. “I beseech it of you! I want not their
service.”
After a moment, the Etheling threw his arm protectingly around the
boyish figure.
“I do not blame you, poor youngling,” he said. “I was wrong to treat
you as a child when you were bred up as a man. You shall have a bed in
the closet off my chamber, and they shall not enter except as you will
it. And you shall eat off my plate and drink from my cup. Come!”