Hotter than fire
Love for five days burns
Between false friends;
But is quenched
When the sixth day comes,
And friendship is all impaired.
Hávamál.
From Edgeware, where the Watling Street left the Middlesex Forest to
cross the barren heath known as Tyburn Lane, the great road was crowded
with travellers. A small portion of them—messengers, soldiers, and
hunting parties—were riding northward, but the great mass was facing
the City whither they were pressing to warm themselves in the glow of
the Coronation. On foot, on horseback, in wagons and on crutches, they
were as motley a throng as had ever trod the Roman stones; and the
respectable element among them was by no means large enough to leaven
the lump. Sometimes a group of merchants was to be seen, conducting
loaded wagons; sometimes, a thane’s pompous thane, ensheathed in his
retinue; while occasionally, as they neared the New Gate, the crowd was
swelled by squads of the lesser Cheapside dealers making the daily
pilgrimage from their country dwellings to their stalls in the City.
But these were as scattered islands in the stream of half drunken
seamen, masterless thralls, wolf-eyed beggars, paupers, vagabonds and
criminals, who were pushing toward London in hopes of pleasure or gain
or for want of another goal.
Amid such a rabble, and as out of place as a swarm of butterflies in
frost-silvered air, a band of high-born women was to be seen
approaching the City this early December morning. Gorgeously attired
pages, hardly more warlike than the women, made a blooming hedge around
them, while a sufficiently strong guard of men-at-arms protected them
from actual harm, but from impudent comment and ribald jest there was
no defence. Their hoods were pulled down as before a storm, their
mantles drawn up above their chins; and all but two of them appeared to
be trying to shrink into their gilded saddles.
The two who rode at their head, however, looked to be of a different
mettle. Indeed, in the quality of her courage, each appeared to differ
from the other, though muffling folds blotted out anything like
individuality. The shorter of the two, while she rode with gracefully
drooping head, had left her face practically uncovered, seemingly
unconscious of the half slighting, half pitying admiration elicited by
its pathetic beauty. The other, who showed no more than the tip of her
nose, held her head bravely erect, while, even through her wrappings,
the straightness of her back breathed haughtiness.
Yet it was not to the pensive fair one that a timid companion appealed
for comfort, when a temporary damming of the stream pressed those who
led, back upon those who followed. She stretched out an en-treating
hand toward the girl with the haughtily carried head.
“Randalin! What will he do—the King—when he finds that we have fooled
Ulf Jarl, and come hither against his command?”
The Danish girl laughed recklessly. “Little do I care, Candida, to tell
it truthfully. Nothing can be worse than sitting in that Abbey. Here at
least there is a chance that something may happen to help us to forget
that we are alive.”
Candida shook the cloak she had grasped. “But you expect that he will
be angry! You told Elfgiva not to undertake the journey because of it.
And you were able to say the soothest about his temper.”
“I was obliged to tell her that to be honest,” Randalin answered, and
again there was a little wildness in her laugh, “but I should have gone
stone-mad if she had not come.” Yet, as her horse commenced to bear her
forward once more, she consented to speak more encouragingly across the
widening space. “If his humor is right, it may be that nothing
disagreeable will happen. She is very fair to look at,—it may be that
his mind will change at the sight of her. Think that you will sleep in
the Palace to-night.”
Catching this last phrase, as her Valkyria came abreast of her, Elfgiva
spoke pettishly: “You see fit to sing a different tune from what you
did when you tried to hinder me from this undertaking. I should have
brighter hopes if I had not given ear to your advice to send a
messenger ahead. If I could have come upon him before he had time to
work himself into a hostile temper—”
Her attention wandered as a couple of tipsy soldiers elbowed themselves
between the guards only to catch a nearer glimpse of her face, after
which they allowed themselves to be thrust back, shouting drunken
toasts to her beauty.
“Is it your wish that I help you to lower your hood, lady?” the Danish
girl made offer.
Elfgiva’s half smile deepened into a laugh. “Not so, not so!” she said.
“What! Have you seen so much of war and battle axes that you have
forgotten the ways that are pleasing to men? Yet methinks you must
needs have taken notice that, always before he goes into battle, a
soldier tests the sharpness of his weapon. It is to that end that I
endure the gaze of these serfs,—to test the power of my face.”
“It would not be unadvisable for you to whet your wits as well,”
Frode’s daughter muttered scornfully, and somewhat rashly, since
Elfgiva’s wits had been sharp enough to guess the significance of her
hand-maiden’s interview with the young English noble, and the knowledge
had given her a weapon which she was skilful in using.
“Has the sharpness of your mind brought you so much success then, my
sweet?” she inquired with her faultless smile; and had the satisfaction
of seeing her rebel shrink into silence like a child before a rod.
The crowding of the highway became more noticeable as they neared the
point where the Watling Street swerved from its old course, toward the
ford and the little Isle of Thorns, to bend eastward toward the New
Gate. Some obstruction at the forking of the roads impeded their
progress almost to a walk. After a brief experience of it, Elfgiva
spoke impatiently to the nearest soldier.
“Why does it become more crowded when two paths open before us? Why
does it not happen that some of these cattle turn down the old way?”
The man shook his head. “I do not think there is much likelihood of
that, lady; since the Bridge was built, no one has wanted to use the
ford; and there is little else to take that way for, unless you are
going to service in the West Minster or to the Monastery.”
“Wanted!” the Lady of Northampton repeated in the extremity of scorn.
“Bid them turn into that road at once. They stand some chance of their
faces getting clean if they take the ford,—if they also get drowned
matters very little. Tell them, seek what they may seek, to take that
way instantly, or the King shall punish them for interfering with their
betters.”
The man pushed up his leather cap to scratch his head. He was not
unacquainted with her custom of sweeping the Northamptonshire serfs off
any road she wished to possess, but that struck him as being somewhat
easier than dispersing a Coronation mob at the gates of London; and yet
to defy her—that was harder than either of them! It was an
interposition of his good angel that at this moment provided a
diversion.
Randalin broke from her silence with an exclamation: “Thorkel! Yonder!”
Less than fifty paces ahead of them, the grizzled head of the King’s
foster-father rose steeple-like above the crowd, while the mighty
shoulders of the King’s foster-brother made a bulwark beside it, and
the gilded helms of the King’s guard formed a palisade around them. The
obstacle in the way was nothing less than a royal detachment drawn up
in waiting beside the road.
Elfgiva’s frown relaxed; for the first time in many days she let the
liquid music of her laughter trickle forth. “Be blithesome in your
minds, maidens!” she called gayly over her shoulder. “Friends are at
hand to take charge of us.”
Taking into consideration what they had expected, the attention was so
flattering that at first they scarcely dared believe it; but its truth
was proved the moment Thorkel turned his head and saw them coming. At
his command, the line of gilded helms quickly drew out across the road
in a barrier which once more dammed the human stream to overflowing. A
break in the middle allowed the party from Gloucester to filter
through; then the opening closed behind them; the line bent at either
end, and they moved as between walls, guarded against any further
jostling or rude contact. Elfgiva sparkled with delight and greeted the
Tall One with more affability than she had ever before deigned his
gruffness.
“Since my royal lord came not himself to meet us,” she said
graciously,—and pushing her hood entirely back so that he might get the
full benefit of her face, “he has well honored us in his messengers,
than whom no persons could be more welcome. I pray you, tell me without
delay how it stands with his health and his fortunes.”
Turning from a muttered word to the soldier at his side, Thorkel
answered her with his usual curtness. “He thrives well, but his time is
full of great matters. To-day he is with the English Witan. Yesterday
they chose him to be their king. To-morrow he is to be crowned.”
“To-morrow? And he would have let me remain in ignorance!” The Lady of
Northampton was unable to repress a start of anger, though she turned
it as soon as possible into a plaintive sigh. “Let me be thankful that
my arrival is not too late. I cannot tell you how we have been beset
with hardships!” Whereupon, she instantly began telling him, giving
free rein to eyes and lips and all the graceful tricks of her hands. It
did not disturb her in the least that he rode beside her in silence,
when she had observed that from under the bristling thatch of his brows
his gaze never left her face.
So complete was her preoccupation that she dis-regarded another
thing,—the highway along which they were travelling. It was Randalin
who first awoke to a consciousness that the noise of the rabble had
become very faint behind them, that no sounds at all broke the
stillness ahead of them, that the uneven weed-grown path they were
treading was very different from the smooth hardness of the Watling
Street. Fens on either side of them, a low hill to the front—was this
the way to London? For the first time, she spoke to the son of Lodbrok,
who had silently taken his place at her side.
“This is not the Watling Street! Yet we have not turned—Where are we?”
Rothgar gnawed at his heavy moustache as though the answer were
difficult to frame; and before he had time to evolve it, Elfgiva, who
had caught the exclamation, had broken off her prattle.
“That is true! The crowd has disappeared—the stones are overlaid with
weeds—” In her bewilderment, she reined in her horse and would have
stopped to look about her, if Thorkel’s hand upon her bridle had not
compelled her to remain in motion.
“You are still on the Watling Street,” he said harshly. “It is only
that this is the old bed of it that has not been used much since the
Bridge was built. Besides the ford, it leads also to Saint Peter’s
Monastery on Thorney—”
Stung with fear, she tried to snatch the lines from him. “I am not
going to a monastery! I am going to the Palace.”
As a cliff stands against the fretting of waves, his grasp stood
against hers; and his voice was as immovable as his hand. “Certainly
you are going to a palace, you did not let me carry out my meaning.
Adjoining the Monastery there is a dwelling-place which was once a
house for travellers, that King Edgar himself has slept in—”
“It is a prison you are taking me to!” Her voice rose in a shriek. “It
is a prison! You are mocking me I will scream for help!”
His smile mocked her openly then. “By all means,”—he assented,—“and see
how much it will profit you.”
She realized then that walls were for shutting people in as well as for
shutting people out, and she could have screamed for very temper. Yet
she made one more attempt before giving way. Abandoning her struggle
for the lines, she let her little gloved hands alight like fluttering
birds upon his mailed arm, and summoned all the eloquence of her beauty
into her heavenly eyes.
“No, sooner would I trust to you,” she murmured. “You could not
mistreat me so! I beseech it of you, take me to the Palace where the
King is.”
On what she based her belief that he was incapable of thwarting her is
not quite clear, for he had never taken the trouble to hide the fact
that he considered her a nuisance, and her civil marriage with the King
a piece of youthful folly on Canute’s part. Sinister satisfaction was
in his tone when he answered her.
“The Palace where the King is,” he said, “is the Palace for a Queen.”
At first, it seemed that she would either scratch out his eyes or throw
herself from her saddle. But in the end she did neither, for a sense of
her helplessness turned her faint. To one who has always ruled
undisputed, there is something benumbing in the first collision with
the pitiless hand of Force. “If I had the good luck to see a bee caught
in a brier, I should wish your death,” she threatened. But she said it
under her breath; and after that, rode with drooping head and eyes that
saw nothing of the scene before her.
When the road had left the fens, it climbed a low hill, beyond which it
entered a wood. A brook was the further boundary of the wood, and
across its brawling brown water a rude stone bridge continued their
path, and linked the bank with the little Isle of Thorns. Nature must
have had a prison in mind when she constructed this island, Elfgiva
thought with a shiver. A low sandy hillock rising amid three streams or
water, the high tide would have cut it off completely but for the
friendly arm which the Watling Street extended to it from the Tot Hill,
while a thicket of brambles and briers edged it like a natural prison
wall. Nor had man forgotten such defences, she found when they had
passed a gap in the thorny hedge; a fence of stone rose sheer before
them and extended on either hand as far as eye could reach. In the
fence was a great gate of black oak, which a black-robed Benedictine
presently opened to their summons.
Now for the first time, Thorkel took his hand from her rein. “I will go
no farther,” he said. “You are expected, and one of the monks will be
your guide. It lies only across the court and through one more door.”
His lips curled in their cruel smile as he motioned her forward. “Go in
and take possession. It is not sure how soon the King will get time to
come to you. His mood has not been very playful lately. Rothgar’s sword
has scarcely had time to go to bed in its sheath—”
“The King is occupied with great matters,” Rothgar’s heavy voice bore
down the old man’s thinner tones. “It is not only that he has to be
crowned and make laws. He has many Englishmen to dispose of, and much
land to divide up among his following.”
While Elfgiva’s glance passed him uncomprehendingly, Randalin lifted
startled eyes. When she saw that he was looking directly at her, she
knew that it was no chance shaft, but an arrow aimed at her heart. The
time had come that he had looked forward to, when Canute should get the
kingship over the English, and Ivarsdale should come back to the race
that had built it. And it was all fair, quite fair, quite within the
rules of the game at which she herself had played. She had not a word
to offer as she lowered her eyes and let her horse follow the others as
it would. There was satisfaction on the lips of each of the King’s
deputies as they rode cityward that day.