To a good friend’s
The paths lie direct,
Though he be far away.
Hávamál.
So Sebert of Ivarsdale went to his tower unhindered; and the rest of
the winter nights, while the winds of the Wolf Month howled about the
palisades, he listened undisturbed to his harper; and the rest of the
winter days he trod in peace the homely routine of his lordship,—in
peace and in absent-eyed silence.
“The old ways are clean fallen out of England, and it becomes a man to
consider diligently how he will order his future,” he told Hildelitha
and the old cniht when they inquired the reason for his abstraction.
Perhaps it was the future that was engrossing his mind, but sometimes
it came to him dimly as a strange thing how so small a matter as a slip
of a girl in a page’s dress could loom so large that there was no
corner of manor or tower but recalled some trick of her tossing curls,
some echo of her ringing laughter. The platform whereon they had walked
in the moonlight, facing death together, he shunned as he would have
shunned a grave; and the postern where they had parted was haunted
ground. Did he tramp across the snow-crusted fields, memory clothed
them again in nodding grain, and between the golden walls a figure in
elfin green flitted like a will o’ the wisp. Did he outsit the maids
and men around his hearth and watch the dying fire with no other
companions than his sleeping dogs, fancy placed a scar-let-cloaked
figure on the cushion at his feet and raised at his knee a face of
sweetest friendliness, whose flower-blue eyes brightened or gloomed in
response to his lightest mood... Once more he heard the harp-notes that
told of the wood-nymph’s sorrow;... once more he heard his laughing
denunciation;... again there looked back at him the wounded eyes...
Whenever this vision rose before him, he stirred in his chair and
turned his face from the light.
“May heaven grant that she is not remembering it!” he would murmur. And
for a while he would see her as he had left her in the garden, holding
herself so bravely erect in her shining robes, her white cheeks mocking
at her smiling lips. A great well of pity would spring in his breast,
drowning his heart with its pent-up gushing, and the waters would rise,
rise, until they had touched his eyes. But always before they brimmed
over, another change would come. Slowly, the rigid figure before him
would relax into an attitude of idle grace, the white cheeks would
regain their color, the eyes their brightness, and—presto! she stood
before him as he had seen her from the passage, a high-born maid among
her kind, favored by the King, guarded by her lover. When he reached
this point, he always rose with an abruptness that swept his goblet to
the floor and awakened the sleeping dogs.
“Fool!” he would spurn himself. “Mad puffed-up fool! Keep in mind that
she has her consolers, while you have only your wound. If she could
stake her all upon the son of Lodbrok and then give him up at the turn
of the wheel, is it in any way likely that she is dead with tears for
you? What? It may easily be that she has had a new love for every month
that has passed.”
As the winter wore on, he grew restless in his solitude, restless and
sullen as the waters of the little stream in their prison of ice. He
told himself that when the spring came he would feel more settled; but
when on one of his morning rides he came upon the first crocus, lifting
its golden cup toward the sun, it only gave to his pointless
restlessness a poisoned barb. Involuntarily his first thought was, “It
would look like a spark of fire in the dusk of her hair.” When he
realized what he had said, he planted the great fore-foot of his horse
squarely on the innocent thing and crushed it back into the earth; but
it had done its work, for after that he knew that neither the promise
of the springtime nor the fullness of the harvest would bring him any
pleasure, since his eyes must see them alone.
“The next time they sing the ‘Romance of King Offa,’ before me, I will
not hold back my sympathy,” he scorned himself, “for at last I
understand how it is possible for an elf to lure a man’s reason off its
seat and leave him a dreaming dolt.”
Like a new lease of life it came to him when the last of the April days
brought the long-delayed summons to the King. The old cniht, who
considered that a command to military service could be justified only
by imminent national destruction, was deeply incensed when he learned
that the call was to no more than an officership in the new body of
Royal Guards, but the young lord checked him with even a touch of
impatience.
“What a throng of many words, my friend Morcard, have you spoken! Did
you learn naught from the palisade that gave way because churls paid me
their service when and how they would?” he demanded. “Now let me inform
you that I have got that lesson by heart, and hereafter no king shall
have that trouble about me. At sunrise, I ride back with the
messenger.” And he maintained this view so firmly that his face was
rather stern as he spent the night settling matters of ploughing and
planting and pasturage with the indignant old servitor.
But the next morning, after he had set forth and found how every mile
lengthening behind him lightened the burden of his depression, a kind
of joy rose phoenix-like out of the gray ashes of duty.
“If I had continued there, I should have become feeble in mind,” he
said. “Now, since I have got out of that tomb that she haunts, it may
be that I can follow my art more lustily.” And suddenly his sternness
melted into a great warmth, toward the strapping soldier riding beside
him, toward the pannier-laden venders swinging along in their tireless
dog-trot, even toward the beggar that hobbled out of the ditch to
waylay him. “To live out in the world, where you are pulled into
others’ lives whether you will or no, is the best thing to teach people
to forget,” he said. “Solitude has comfort only for those who have no
sorrows, for Solitude is the mother of remembrance.”
He got genuine enjoyment out of the hour that he was obliged to sit in
the ante-room, waiting to be admitted to the King. On one side of him,
a group was discussing a Danish rebellion that seemed to be somewhere
in progress; on the other, men were speculating on the chances of a
Norman invasion,—news of keenest interest was flying thick as bees in
June; and the coming and going of the red-cloaked warriors, the
occasional passing of some great noble through the throng, stimulated
him like wine.
“Praise to the Saint who has brought me into a life where there are no
women!” he told himself. “Yes! Oh, yes! Here once more I shall rule my
thoughts like a man.” When a page finally came to summon him, he
followed with buoyant step and so gallant a bearing that more than one
turned to look at him as he passed.
“Yonder goes the new Marshal,” he heard one say to another, and gave
the words a fleeting wonder.
The bare stone hall into which the boy ushered him was the same room in
which he had had his last audience, and now as then the King sat in the
great carved chair by the chimney-piece, but other things were so
changed that inside the threshold the Etheling checked his swinging
stride to gaze incredulously. No soldiers were to be seen but the
sentinels that had been placed beside the doorways, stiff as their
gilded pikes, and they counted strictly in the class with the ebony
footstools and other furnishings. The knots of men, scattered here and
there in buzzing discussion, were all dark-robed merchants and
white-bearded judges, while around the table under the window a dozen
shaven-headed monks were working busily with writing tools. The King
himself was no longer armored, but weapon-less and clad in velvet.
Stopping uncertainly, Sebert took from his head the helmet which he had
worn, soldier fashion, into the presence of his chief, and into his
salutation crept some of the awe that he had felt for Edmund’s
kingship, before he knew how weak a man held up the crown.
Certainly Edmund had never received a greeting with more of formal
dignity than the young Dane did now, while Edmund could never have
spoken what followed with this grim directness which sent every word
home like an arrow to its mark.
“Lord of Ivarsdale, before I speak further I think it wise that we
should make plain our minds to each other. Some say that you are apt to
be a hard man to deal with because you bend to obedience only when the
command is to your liking. I want to know if this is true of you?”
Half in surprise, half in embarrassment, the Etheling colored high, and
his words were some time coming; but when at last they reached his
lips, they were as frank as Canute’s own. “Lord King,” he made answer,
“that some truth is in what you have heard cannot be gainsaid; for a
king’s thane I shall never be, to crouch at a frown and caper according
to his pleasure. What service I pay to you, I pay as an odal-man to the
State for which you stand. Yet I will say this,—that I think men will
find me less unruly than formerly, for, as I have accepted you for my
chief, so am I willing to render you obedience in any manner soever you
think right to demand it. This I am ready to swear to.”
Canute’s fist struck his chair-arm lightly. “Nothing more to my mind
has occurred for a long time, and I welcome it! Better will both of us
succeed if we declare openly that friendship between us must always be
rather shallow. I love not men of your nature, neither is it possible
for me to forget what you have cost me. Hatred would come much easier
to me,—and I will not deny that you will feel it if ever you give me
fair cause for anger.” For an instant an edge of his Viking savagery
made itself felt through his voice; then faded as quickly into cold
courtesy. “As to this which I now offer you, however, I think few are
proud enough to find fault about it, for I have called you hither to be
a Marshal of the kingdom and to have the rule over my Guards. Men from
many lands will be among them, and it is a great necessity that I have
at their head a man I can trust, while it is also pleasing to the
English that that man be an Englishman. Concerning the laws which I
shall make to govern them, Eric Jarl will tell you later.”
“Marshal!” That then was what the mutter in the ante-room had meant.
Sebert would not have been young and a soldier if he had not felt keen
delight tingle through every nerve. Indeed, his pleasure was so great
that he dared say little in acknowledgment, lest it betray him into too
great cordiality toward this stern young ruler who, though in reality a
year younger than he, seemed to have become many years his senior. He
said shortly, “If I betray your trust, King Canute, let me have no
favor! Is it your intention to have me make ready now against this
incursion of the Normans, of which men are—”
He did not finish his question, for the King raised his hand
impatiently.
“It is not likely that swords will have any part in that matter, Lord
Marshal. There is another task in store for you than to fight
Normans,—and it may be that you will think it beneath your rank, for
instead of the State, it concerns me and my life, which someone has
tried to take. Yet I expect you will see that my death would be little
gainful to England.” A second curt gesture cut short Sebert’s rather
embarrassed protest. “Here are no fine words needed. Listen to the
manner in which the deed was committed. Shortly before the end of the
winter, it happened that Ulf Jarl saw the cook’s scullion pour
something into a broth that was intended for me to eat. Suspecting
evil, he forced the fellow instead to swallow it, and the result was
that, that night, the boy died.”
The Etheling exclaimed in horror: “My lord! know you whence he got it?”
“You prove a good guesser to know that it was not his crime,” the King
said dryly. “A little while ago, I found out that he got it from the
British woman who is nurse to Elfgiva of Northampton.” To this, the new
Marshal volunteered no answer whatever, but drew his breath in sharply
as though he found himself in deep water; and the King spoke on. “I did
not suspect the Lady of Northampton of having evil designs toward me,
because—because she is more prosperous in every respect while I am
alive; and now that belief is proved true, for I am told for certain
that, the day before the British woman gave the boy the liquid, a
Danishman gave the British woman an herb to make a drink of.” He
paused, and his voice became slower and much harder, as though he were
curbing his feelings with iron. “Since you have heard the Norman
rumor,” he said, “it is likely that you have heard also of the
discontent among the Danes, who dislike my judgments; but in case you
have not, I will tell you that an abundance of them have betaken
themselves to a place in the Middlesex forest where they live
outlaws,—and their leader is Rothgar Lodbroksson.”
To motion back a man who was approaching him with a paper, he turned
away for a moment; and Sebert was glad of the excuse to avoid meeting
his glance. Not until now had he understood what the judgment in his
favor had cost the judge, and his heart was suddenly athrob with many
emotions. “In no way is it strange that I am hateful to him,” he
murmured. “But by Saint Mary, _he_ is of the sort that is worth
enduring from!”
He inclined his head in devoted attention as the King turned back,
lowering his tone to exclude all but the man before him. “Even less
than I believe it of Elfgiva of Northampton, do I believe it of Rothgar
Lodbroksson, that he would seek my life. But often that happens which
one least expects, and it is time that I use forethought for myself.
Now I know of no man in the world who is better able to help my case
than you.”
“I!” the Etheling ejaculated. Suddenly it occurred to him to suspect
that his new-sworn vow of obedience was about to be put genuinely to
the test, and he drew himself up stiffly, facing the King. But Canute
was tracing idle patterns on the carving of his chair-arm.
“Listen, Lord of Ivarsdale,” he said quietly. “It is unadvisable for me
to stir up further rebellion among the Danes by accusing them of things
which it is not certain they have done, and even though I seized upon
these women it would not help; while I cannot let the matter continue,
since one thing after another, worse and worse, would be caused by it.
The only man who can end it, while keeping quiet, is the one who has
the friendship of the only woman among them to whose honor I would risk
my life. I mean Randalin, Frode’s daughter.”
Whether or not he heard Sebert’s exclamation, he spoke on as though it
had not been uttered. “One thing is, that she knows nothing of a plot;
for did she so, she would have warned me had it compelled her to swim
the Thames to reach me. But she must be able to tell many tidings that
we wish to know, with regard to the use they make of their jewels, and
the Danes who visit them, and such matters, which might be got from her
without letting her suspect that she is telling news. Now you are the
one person who might do this without making any fuss, and it is my will
therefore that you go to her as soon as you can. Your excuse shall be
that the Abbot has in his keeping some law-parchments which I have the
wish to see, but while you are there, I want you to renew your
friendship with her and find out these things for me. By obeying me in
this, you will give the State help where it is most needed and hard to
get.” When that was out, he raised his head and met the Etheling’s eyes
squarely, and it was plain to each of them that the moment had come
which must, once and forever, decide their future relations.
It was a long time that the Lord of Ivarsdale stood there, the pride of
his rank, and the prejudice of his blood, struggling with his new
convictions, his new loyalty. But at last he took his eyes from the
King’s to bow before him in noble submission.
“This is not the way of fighting that I am used to, King Canute,” he
said, “and I will not deny that I had rather you had set me any other
task; but neither can I deny that, since you find you have need of my
wits rather than of my sword, it is with my wits that it behooves me to
serve you. Tell me clearly what is your command, and neither
haughtiness nor self-will shall hinder me from fulfilling it.”