Early should rise
He who has few workers,
And go his work to see to;
Greatly is he retarded
Who sleeps the morn away;
Wealth half depends on energy.
Hávamál.
It was August, when Mother Earth had nearly completed her task of
providing for her children, and the excitement of a mighty work drawing
to its close was in the air; when the sun-warmed stillness was a-quiver
with the pulse of growing things coming to their strength, and every
cloudless day held in its golden heart a song of exultation. The grassy
space around the Tower, which was wont to be thronged with joyous
idlers, was to-day almost deserted. A single groom lounged in the shade
of the wide-spreading trees as he kept a lazy eye on the croppings of
two saddled horses, and an endless chain of fagot-laden serfs plodded
joylessly across the open. On one side of the great entrance arch a
half-dozen of the manor poor gabbled and basked in the sun while they
waited to receive their daily dole of food; on the other, a dark-locked
foreign page sat on the mossy step abiding the coming of his master.
Leaning back with one arm bent carelessly behind his head and one hand
caressing a shaggy hound that pressed against his knee, the boy’s
far-away gaze was designed to intimate his haughty oblivion to the
castle-world in general and the movements of the almsfolk in
particular. Seeing which, the people on the other side of the step had
laid aside any reserve they might have felt and were indulging their
curiosity with cheerful freedom.
“Six weeks he has been here, and this is the first good look I have had
at him,” the buzzing whispers ran. “It is said that they were obliged
to catch him between shields before they could take him.”... “Such hair
on a Dane is more rare than a white crow.”... “I believe no good of any
one with locks of that color.”... “Tibby, the weaving-woman, says he is
skilful in magic.”... “It is by reason of that, that he has become my
lord’s darling.”... “Why is he not in the hall, then, while the
ethel-born is sitting at table?”... “Perhaps his luck is beginning to
fail him.”... “Perhaps he has fallen out of favor.”
The two old men who offered these last suggestions chuckled with
malicious enjoyment, and two of the old women mumbled with their
toothless gums as though tasting sweet morsels; but the third drew
herself up with a kind of grotesque coquetry.
“You can tell by the green silk of his tunic that he is of some
quality,” she reproved them. “Danishmen are ever the ones to adorn
themselves. It occurs to my mind how, in Edgar’s time, when I was a
girl, one was quartered in my father’s house. He changed his raiment
once a day and bathed every Sunday. I used to comb his yellow hair when
I took in his ale, of a morning.” Long after her voice had passed into
a rattle, she stood in a simpering revery, her palsied hands resting
heavily upon her stick, her blinking eyes fixed on the picturesque
young foreigner musing in the sunshine.
Then the voice of the steward sounded sharply in the archway. There was
an eager catching up of bags and baskets, a shuffling forward of
unsteady feet, and the goody came out of her day-dream to throw herself
into the strife over a jar of peppered broth.
The Danish page bent to pillow a very red cheek on the soft cushion of
the dog’s head, then drew back and straightened himself stiffly as a
strapping serving-lass, flagon-laden, came out of the door behind him.
She saw the motion and looked down with a teasing laugh. “Aha, young
Fridtjof! How do you like being sent to cool your heels on the doorstep
while your master eats? What! I think that the next time you thrust
your foot out to trip me up as I hand my lord his ale, you will attend
to keeping it under your stool.”
Young Fridtjof regarded her with a kind of righteous indignation. “And
I think that the next time you will look where you are going, even if
it happen that it is Lord Sebert’s ale you are bearing. Silly jades,
that cannot come nigh him without biting your lips or sparkling your
eyes! I wonder he does not clap masks over your faces.”
“And I wonder he does not clap rods to your back,” the lass retorted
with sudden spite. She flounced past him down the step, on her way to
the great lead-roofed storehouse that flanked the forest side of the
Tower.
The boy looked after her sternly. “It is likely that you will be less
pert of tongue after I tell what I found out in the corn-bins
yesterday,” he said.
The maid whirled. “What did you find out, you mischief-full brat?”
He continued to stroke the dog’s head in dignified silence. “If you
mean the—the brown-cloaked beggar, let me inform you that that is
naught.”
Busying himself with pulling burrs from the hound’s ears, the page
began to hum softly.
She came a step nearer, and her voice wheedled. “It was only that he
was distressed for want of drink, poor fellow, and followed me into the
storehouse when he saw me go in to fill the master’s flagon. It was
naught but a swallow. My lord would be the last to grudge a harmless
body—”
“Harmless?” the page said sternly. “Did I not hear him tell you the
same as that he was an English spy?”
The girl abandoned the last shred of her dignity, to come and stand
before him, nervously fingering her apron. “For the dear saints’ sake,
let no one hear you say that, good Fridtjof! Alas, how you have got it
twisted! He is an Englishman who bent his head for food in the evil
days. And now they that bought him will not set him loose, so he has
cast off their yoke and fled to the Danes to get freedom and fortune.
He was on his way to join your people when he stopped to beg food. I
could not be so hard of heart as to refuse, though Hildelitha’s hand
would be hot about my ears did she suspect it. Say that you will hold
your tongue, sweet lad, and I will make boot with anything you like.”
He was very deliberate about it, the page, pursing his rosy mouth into
any number of judicial puckers; but at last he conceded, “Now, since
you know for certain that he is not one of Edmund’s spies,—and you are
so penitent, as is right,”—pausing, he regarded her severely,—“if I do
promise, will you make a bargain to put an end to your silly behavior
toward my lord? Will you undertake to deliver his dishes into my hands,
and leave it for me to pass his cup?”
“Yes, in truth; by Father Ingulph’s book!” the maid cried, wringing her
hands.
The page made her a magnanimous gesture. “In that case I will not be so
mean as to refuse you,” he consented. And he sat smiling to himself in
sly content after she had hurried away.
Emboldened by that smile, the dog suddenly laid aside his soberness of
demeanor. Pouncing upon a fagot which had fallen from one of the loads,
he brought it in his teeth, with shining eyes and much frantic
tail-wagging, and rubbed it against his friend’s knee. He had not
miscalculated. The boy’s smile deepened easily into a laugh, and he
leaped to his feet to accept the challenge. Seizing the stick, he put
all the strength of his lithesome body into an effort to make off with
it, while the great hound braced himself, with a rapture of rumbling
growls and short delighted barks. So they tussled, back and forth, this
way and that, amid a merry tumult of barking and laughter,—such a
tumult that neither heard the steps that both were waiting for, when at
last those steps came briskly through the archway. The first they knew
of it, the Lord of Ivarsdale was standing under the lintel, chatting
with those who came behind him.
With lips yet parted by their breathless laughter, the lad straightened
quickly from his sport, and stood shaking back his tumbling curls and
mopping his hot face, in which the rich color glowed through the tanned
skin like the velvety red on a golden peach. When, for one flashing
instant, they encountered a keen glance from the young lord, the color
deepened, and the iris-blue eyes suddenly brimmed over with mischievous
sparkles; then the black lashes were lowered demurely, and the page,
retreating to his place beside the step, signified only deference and
decorum.
Followed by old Morcard and the fat monk, the Etheling descended from
the doorway and stood on the broad step, shading his eyes from the
glare of brilliant light while he looked about him with evident
pleasure in the fairness of the day.
“Now is the time to lay by a store of sweet memories against the stress
of winter weather,” he said. “Whither do you go to harvest the
sunshine, father?”
The monk pulled his round red face to a devout length. “Why, there is a
good woman at the other end of the dale, my son, that labors under a
weakness of her limbs; and I have bethought me that it would be a
Christian act to fetch her this holy relique I wear about my neck, that
she may lay it upon the afflicted members and perhaps, aided by my
exhortations, experience some relief.”
“If the question may be permitted me, whither do you betake yourself,
my lord?” the old cniht asked.
With the light wand he carried, the young man made a gesture quite
around the horizon. “Everywhere and nowhere. After I have been to see
what they are doing with that portion of the palisade which I bade them
repair as soon as they had finished the barrier, I am—”
“That is something that had clean fallen out of my mind to tell you,
Lord Sebert,” Morcard spoke up hastily. “Yesterday, before you had got
in from hunting, Kendred of Hazelford came, as spokesman for the rest,
to say that inasmuch as the Barn Month is well begun, it will not be
possible for them to labor more upon the building; and, by your leave,
they will put off this, which is not pressing, until after the time of
the harvest.”
It was several moments before the Etheling spoke, and then his voice
was noticeably deliberate. “Oh!” he said, “so they ask my leave, but
stop at their pleasure?”
“My lord!”—the old man looked at him in surprise—“they act only
according to custom. Surely you would not have them neglect the
harvest, which waits no man’s leisure, to put to their hands as
laborers when there is no present need, now that they have completed
the barriers by the stream? What present harm because the drain off the
hill has rotted the palisade? All of that part is toward the forest.
How? Do you expect some Grendel of the March to fall upon us from that
direction?”
The Etheling smiled against his will. “Our foe would needs be a Grendel
to reach us from that side.” He struck the wand sharply against his
riding-boots. “Oh, it is not that I think the work so pressing.”
“In the Fiend’s name, what then is the cause of your distemper?” Father
Ingulph inquired impatiently, as he finished the girding-up of his
robes and picked up his staff preparatory to setting forth.
After a moment, the young noble began to laugh. “Why, to tell it
frankly, methinks it is more temper than distemper. That they should
take it upon them to decide how much of my order is necessary—” He let
a pause finish for him, and suddenly he turned with a flourish of gay
defiance: “I will tell you how I am going to spend my morning, Morcard.
I am going to ride over every acre that is under my hand and see how
much I can spare for loan-land. And when I have found out, I will rent
every furlong to boors who shall be bound to pay me service, not when
it best pleases them, but whensoever I stand in need of it.”
Rubbing his chin, the monk heard him in silence; but the old warrior
grew momentarily grave. “Take care that you seem not over proud, young
lord. It is in such a mood that Edmund creates thanes.”
It may be that the Etheling’s eyes widened for an instant, but directly
after he laughed with gay perverseness. “Is it?” he said. “Then, for
the first time in six weeks, I see that the Ironside is cunning in
thought.”
Shaking his head, Father Ingulph moved down the step. “Nay, if you are
in that humor, my son, I waste no breath. Speed you well, and may you
wax in wisdom!” With a gesture, half paternal, half respectful, he
betook himself across the grass to the gate.
Old Morcard turned and stepped up into the doorway, from which he
looked down indulgently upon his laughing master. “It happened
formerly, Lord Sebert, that I knew how to command your earnestness, and
that speedily; but that time has long gone by. Methinks I can
accomplish more among the watchmen upon the platform. By your leave, my
lord!” Bowing, he disappeared in the dark tunnel of the archway, and
the Etheling was left alone save for the graceful figure awaiting him
beside the step. The instant he moved, it sprang forward.
“Lord, is it your wish that I get the horses?”
As the old man had looked down upon the young one, so now the young man
stood looking down upon the boy, regarding him with tolerant severity.
“You most mischief-full elf!” he said. “It would be treating you
deservedly were I to leave you at home.”
It did not appear that the lad was seriously cast down; a betraying
dimple came out and played in his cheek, though his mouth struggled for
gravity. “That is unjustly spoken, lord,” he protested. “Did I not bear
my punishment with befitting penitence?”
“Penitence!” the Etheling gave one of the small ears a menacing pull as
he descended to the grass. “What! Do you think I did not see your
antics with the dog? You made a jest of the matter, you pixie!”
The page sobered. “I think it great luck that I could, Lord Sebert!
Your servants were eager in making a jest of me when they got the
courage from your displeasure.”
But Lord Sebert reached out the wand and gave him a gentle stroke
across the shoulders.
“Take that for your foolishness,” he said lightly. “What matters their
babble when you know how safe you sit in my favor?”
Through lowered lashes the boy stole him a glance, half mischievous,
half coaxing. “How safe, lord?” he murmured.
But the Etheling only laughed at him, as he drew up his long
riding-boots and readjusted his belt. “Safe enough so that I forgive
you some dozen floggings a day, you imp; and choose you for my comrade
when I should be profiting by the companionship of your betters. Waste
no more golden moments on whims, youngling, but go bid them fetch the
horses, and we will have another day of blithe wandering.”
Blithe they were, in truth, as they cantered through shaded lanes and
daisied meadows, nothing too small to be of interest or too slight to
give them pleasure. An orchard of pears, whose ripening they were
watching with eager mouths, a group of colts almost ready for the
saddle,—for the young master the fascination of ownership gave them all
a value; while another fascination made his companion hang on his least
word, respond to his lightest mood.
By grassy commons and rolling meadows sweet with clustering haycocks,
they came at last to the crest of the hill that guarded the eastern end
of the dale. The whole round sweep of the horizon lay about them in an
unbroken chain of ripening vineyards and rich timber-land, of
grain-fields and laden orchards; not one spot that did not make
glorious pledges to the harvest time. Drinking its fairness with his
eyes, the lord of the manor sighed in full content. “When I see how
fine a thing it is to cause wealth to be where before was nothing, I
cannot understand how I once thought to find my pleasure only in
destroying,” he said. “Next month, when the barley beer is brewed, we
will have a harvest feast plentiful enough to flesh even your bones,
you bodkin!”
The Danish page laughed as he dodged the plaguing wand. “It is true
that you owe something to my race, lord. He had great good sense, the
Wide-Fathomer, to stretch his strips of oxhide around this dale and
turn it into an odal.”
“Nay now, it was Alfred who had sense to take it away from him,” the
Etheling teased.
But the boy shook back his long tresses in airy defiance. “Then will
Canute be foremost in wisdom, for soon he will get it back, together
with all England. Remember who got the victory last week at Brentford,
lord.”
In the midst of his exulting, a cloud came over the young Englishman’s
smile. “I would I knew the truth concerning that,” he said slowly. “The
man who passes to-day says one thing; whoso comes to-morrow tells
another story. Yet since Canute is once more free to beset London—” He
did not finish, and for a while it appeared as though he did not see
the sunlit fields his eyes were resting on.
But suddenly the boy broke in upon him with a burst of stifled
laughter. “Look, lord! In yonder field, behind the third haycock!”
The moment that he had complied, laughter banished the Etheling’s
meditations. Cozily ensconced in the soft side of a haycock was Father
Ingulph, a couple of jovial harvesters sprawled beside him, a fat skin
of ale in his hands on its way to his mouth. As the pair on the hilltop
looked down, one of the trio began to bellow out a song that bore no
resemblance whatever to a hymn. Keeping under cover of the bushes, the
eavesdroppers laughed with malicious enjoyment.
“But I will make him squirm for that!” the Etheling vowed. “I will tell
him that your paganism has made spells over me so that I cannot tell a
holy relique from an ale-skin; and a bedridden woman looks to me like
two strapping yeomen. I will, I swear it!”
“And I shall be able to hold it against him as a shield, the next time
he is desirous to fret me about taking a new belief,” the boy rejoiced.
But presently Sebert’s remarks began to take a new tone. “They have the
appearance of relishing what they have in that skin,” he observed
first. And then, “I should not mind putting my own teeth into that
bread-and-cheese.” And at last, “By Saint Swithin, lad, I think they
have more sense than we, that linger a half-hour’s ride from food with
a noonday sun standing in the sky! It is borne in upon me that I am
starving.”
Backing his horse out of the brush, he was putting him about in great
haste, when the boy leaped in his stirrups and clapped his hands.
“Lord, we need not be a half-hour from food! Yonder, across the
stubble, is a farmhouse. If you would consent that I might use your
name, then would I ride thither and get their best, and serve it to you
here in the elves’ own feast-hall.”
The answer was a slap on the green shoulders that nearly tumbled their
owner from the saddle. “Now, I was right to call you elf, for you have
more than human cleverness!” the Etheling cried gayly. “Do so, by all
means, dear lad; and I promise in return that I will tell every
puffed-up dolt at home that you are the blithest comrade who ever
fitted himself to man’s moods. There, if that contents you, give wings
to your heels!”