"Will you not observe my feelings, if you have none of your own?" she demanded. "Leonorine, take those wretched dogs out of my hearing. Dearwyn, lay aside your nonsense and go ask Gurth if he has heard anything yet of Teboen." She stamped again, angrily, as her eye went from one to another of the merry-makers. "I suppose it would gladden all of you to feel safe from her hand, but I will plainly tell you that if harm has happened to her, you will find a lair-bear pleasanter company than I shall be."

The dull red that mottled her face and neck was a danger signal whose warning her attendants had learned to heed, and they scattered precipitately. Only the old cellarer, herding his gorgeous flock with waving arms, ventured to address her.

"Is it the British woman you are enquiring after, lady? The woman who comes to the lane-gate, of a morning, to get new milk for your drinking?"

Elfgiva turned quickly. "Yes,—Teboen my nurse. Have you seen her?" "I saw her between cockcrowing and dawn, noble one, when I let down the bars for the cattle to come in to the milking. The herd-boy who drives them said something to her,—it seemed to me that he named a Danish name and said that person was waiting in the wood to speak with her,—whereat she set down her pitcher and went up the lane. I have not seen her since."

The lady's little white hands beat the air like a frightened child's. "Three candles have burned out since then; it is certain that evil has befallen her. Never since I was born has she left me for so long. I—" She paused to gaze eagerly toward a figure that at this moment appeared in the low arch of the door-way. "Tata! do you bring me news of her?"

Though she shook her head, Randalin's manner was full of suppressed excitement as she advanced. "Not of her, lady, yet tidings, great tidings! The King has sent—"

"His Marshal again? I will not see him."

"Nay, the Marshal but accompanies the messenger. In truth, lady, it is my belief that the token has accomplished its mission. The message is brought by Thorkel Jarl, as this has not been done before."

"Earl Thorkel?" Elfgiva cried. "By the Saints, it can be nothing less than the token!" She dropped down upon the rustic seat that stood under the green canopy of the old apple tree and sat there a long time, staring at the grass, her cheeks paling and flushing by turns. Presently, she drew a deep breath of relief. "I was foolish to fret myself over Teboen. Since she is clever enough to bring this to pass, she is clever enough to take care of herself. Without doubt it was the Danish wizard, and he informed her of some new herb, and she has gone to fetch it."

After a while, an enchanting smile touched her lips. "Surely, a rose garden is a fitting place to receive the ambassadors of a lover," she said, and straightened herself on her rustic throne, sweeping her draperies into more graceful folds. "Bring them to me here, ladybird. Candida, fetch hither the lace veil from my bower, and call the other maids as you go, and all the pages you can find. Since Teboen is not by, I want all of you behind me. I cannot help it that the Tall One always gives me the feeling of a lamb before a wolf."

Even had the likeness never occurred to her before, it would not have been strange if she had thought of it to-day as, followed by the Marshal and preceded by their fair usher, the old warrior came across the grass to the little court under the apple tree. The keenness of the hooded eyes that looked out at her from his grizzled locks, the gleam of the white teeth between his bearded lips as he greeted her, was unmistakably wolfish. She relapsed into a kind of lamb-like tremor as she invited them to be seated and commanded the attendance of her cup-bearer. When she caught sight of the misery of discomfort in Sebert's frank face, she lost her voice entirely and waited in utter silence while they drank their wine.

Yet Thorkel's manner was unwontedly genial when at last he broached his errand. "You lack the eagerness that is to be expected, lady," he said as he gave his mouth a last polish with the delicate napkin. "How comes it that you have not guessed I bring you a message from the King?"

She answered doubtfully that the King had not behaved to her so that his messages were apt to be anticipated with much pleasure.

"But it has never occurred that I brought you this kind of news before," he tempted her. "Will it not interest you to hear that at last the Palace is ready for a Queen?"

That startled her a little out of her wariness, crying the last two words after him with an eagerness of inflection that was as pathetic as though her heart were concerned.

His lips gave out a flash as he nodded. "A Queen. Canute is going to give the Angles a 'gift of the elves.'"

For an instant, she was betrayed into believing him, and bent forward, her flushing face transfigured with delight. She was starting to speak when the Etheling rose abruptly from his seat.

"Lord Thorkel," he said angrily, "this cat-play would bring you little thanks from your King, nor will I longer endure it. I pray you to explain without delay that the name of 'Elfgiva' is borne also by Emma of Normandy."

Then the old man snarled as a wolf does whose bone has been seized. "Lord of Ivarsdale, you act in the thoughtless way of youth. I was bringing the matter gently—"

But the young man accomplished his purpose in spite of the elder. He did not address the King's wife—indeed, he refrained even from looking at her—but he spoke swiftly to the dark-haired girl who stood beside the seat. "Randalin, I beg you to tell your lady that Elfgiva Emma, who is Ethelred's widow and the Lady of Normandy, arrives at Dover to-morrow to be made Queen of the English."

As all expected, the Lady of Northampton started up shrieking defiance, screaming that it should not be so, that the King was her husband and the soldiers would support her if the monks would not, that he was hers, hers,-and more to that effect, until the plunging words ran into each other and tears and laughter blotted out the last semblance of speech. That she would end by swooning or attacking them with her hands those who knew her best felt sure, and maids and pages crept out of her reach as hunters stand off from a wounded boar. But at the point where her voice gave out and she whirled to do one or perhaps both of these, her eyes fell on the house-door, and her expression changed from rage to amazement and from amazement to horror. Catching Randalin's arm in fear, not anger, she began to gasp over and over the name of Teboen the nurse.

Those whose glance had not followed hers, thought her mad and shrank farther; but the eyes of those who saw what she did reflected her look. In the doorway the British woman was standing, wagging her head in time to a silly quavering song that she was singing with lips so distorted as to be almost unrecognizable. Her once florid face was ashen gray, and now as she quitted the door post and came toward them she reeled in her walk, stumbling over stones and groping blindly with her huge bony hands. But still she kept on singing, with twisted lips that strove to simper, and once she tried to sway her ungainly body into an uncouth dancing-step that brought her floundering to her knees.

"A devil has possession of her," Elfgiva shrieked. "Take her out of my sight, or I shall go mad! Take her away—take her away!" Shrieking in wildest terror she fled before her, and for a moment the garden seemed given over to a grotesque game of blind-man's buff as women and boys scattered with renewed screaming at each approach of the ghastly face. It did not stop until the two soldiers who had been made keepers of the wretched creature came running out of the house and led her away.

Then it was Thorkel's sardonic voice that brought the Lady of Northampton back to herself. "Now, is this how you take the sight of your own handiwork? Or is it because you regret that the King is not in this plight? One mouthful and no more has she had of the blood of the coiled snake."

Stopping where she was, Elfgiva gazed at him, and with a dawning comprehension came back her interrupted fury. "The coiled snake," she repeated slowly; and after that, in a rush of words, "Then it was you who enticed her away and mistreated her? But what does it concern you that I sent a snake? Where saw you it? How knew you it had blood?" Without waiting for an answer, she turned upon the Marshal, her lids contracted into narrow slits behind which her eyes raged like prisoned animals. "It is you who are to blame for this! You who miscarried my message. You have betrayed me, and I tell you—" Hysterical tears broke her voice, but she pieced it together with her temper and went on telling him all the bitter things she could think of, while he stood before her in the grim silence of one who has long foreseen the disagreeable aspects of his undertaking and made up his mind to endurance.

When she stopped for breath, he said steadily, "I declare with truth that you cannot dislike what I have done much more than I, Lady of Northampton. I hope it will be an excuse with you, as it is a comfort to me, that instead of fetching you into trouble—"

Thorkel took the words from his lips, and no longer with sinister deliberation but with a ferocity that showed itself in the gathering swiftness of his speech. "Trouble—yes! By the Hammer of Thor, I think you deserve to have trouble! Had any of your witches' brew done harm to the King, I can tell you that you would not have lived much longer. What! Are the plans of men to be upset by your baby face, and a king-dom lost because a little fool chooses to play with poison as a child with fire?"

"Poison?" she screamed. She had been facing him with whitening lips, and now the little breath that she had left went from her in a sharp cry. "Not poison; love-philtres! To win him back! Love-philtres,—can you not hear?"

"Love-philtres!" The old warrior's voice made the words bite with contempt. "Did the mouthful she swallowed have that effect upon your woman? Or do you think you planted love in the breasts of the dead scullions? Had you seen their writhings I think you would have called it by another name."

He was standing over her now, and she was cowering before him, her shaking hands rising as though to ward off his eyes. "I meant no harm," she was wailing with stiff lips. "The scroll said not a word that it was hurtful. Do not kill me. I meant no—" The word ended in an inarticulate sound and she swayed backward.

It was Randalin who caught and eased her down upon the rustic chair, and Randalin who turned upon the Tall One. "Saw I never a meaner man!" she cried. "Certainly I think Loke was less wolf-minded than you. You know very well that if Teboen had thought it would become a cause of harm to her, she would have refused to swallow it. I will go to the King myself and tell him how despisable you are." She stamped her foot at the united ministry of the Kingdom as she turned her back upon its representatives to speak reassuringly to her mistress.

Her lover did not blame her that her flashing eyes seemed to include him among the objects of their wrath. He said fiercely to the Jarl, "For God's sake, tell her that no one suspects her of seeking his life, and give her his true message, or I will go and hang myself for loathing."

"Tell her yourself!" the old Dane snapped. "It is seen that you are as rabbit-hearted as the boy who makes her such an offer. Were I in his place, I would have them all drowned for a litter of wauling kittens." He looked very much indeed like a wolf in a sheepfold as he stamped to and fro, grinding his spurred heels into the patches of clover and growling in his beard.

The young soldier had been known to ride into battle with a happier face, but the sudden gritting of his teeth implied that he would do anything to get the matter over with; and having braved the outburst of hysterics that redoubled at his approach, he managed to slip a soothing word into the lull.

"Lady, the King sends you none but good greetings. It would make you feel better if you would listen to them."

"Then he—he does not blame me for this?" Elfgiva quavered at last.

"He does not blame you," the Marshal hastened to reassure her. "And in token thereof he sends you your heart's desire."

Plainly, the elves had endowed their "gift" with a wit to match her soul. Her beautiful eyes were simple as an injured child's as she raised them to his, "can that be, lord, when Emma of Normandy is to get the crown of England? A woman ten years older than he, to put the best face on it! Who can expect me to bear with this insult?" Her scorn went so far toward reviving her that for the first time she drew herself away from the support of her women, and even made one of them a sign to rearrange the locks she had disturbed.

Lest it revive her beyond the point of docility, Sebert spoke the rest of his message in some haste. "It is true, noble one, that for state reasons the King has consented to this union with Emma of Normandy, who will bring him the friendship of Duke Richard besides causing pleasure to the English. But the crown of Denmark is also at his disposal, lady, and this he purposes to bestow upon your son Sven, for whom he has much love. And it is his will and pleasure that you accompany the boy across the sea and, together with the earls of his guardianship, hold the power for him until his hands shall be big enough to grasp it alone. For this he gives you the name of 'queen' and all the honor you shall desire." He paused, more at the wonder of watching her face than because he had finished.

It was as though a rainbow had been set in her showery eyes. "He purposes this?" she murmured; and rose out of her seat in a kind of ecstasy,—then caught at its back, glooming with doubt. "I cannot believe it,—it is too beautiful. Swear that you are not mocking me."

"I swear it," he said gravely, but his lips curled a little as he watched her delight bring back her color, her smiles, her every fairy charm.

Throwing her arms about Dearwyn, who chanced to be nearest, she kissed her repeatedly. "Think, mouse,—a queen! a queen! It was not for naught that I dreamed an eagle flew over my head. Ah, how I shall cherish the dear little one who has brought me this!" With her pleasure overflowing as of old in rippling laughter, she turned to greet the King's foster-father who came stalking toward her. "Now your ill humor no longer appears strange to me, noble wolf, than which no better proof could be had that I have come into good fortune! I pray you tell me when I am to leave, and who goes with me, and every word of the plan, for I could eat them like sweets."

"Ulf Jarl will feed your ears later," Thorkel said gruffly. "Your safety on the road is the charge of this battle-sapling." He jerked his head toward the young Marshal. "You will leave for Northampton this afternoon, to get the boy—and to get rid of you before the Lady of Normandy arrives."

The shaft fell pointless as she turned her sparkling face toward her women. "You hear that, my lambs? This afternoon,—not one more night in this prison! You cannot apply yourselves too soon to the packing, Candida, Leonorine. And I must see if Teboen's wits have come back to her. If she should not be restored to them, that would be one bee in the honey. Randalin, learn what disposal is to be made of you, and that, quickly. Nobles, if I am not yet enough queen to dismiss you, still am I queen enough to depart without your leave. I desire you will thank your King as is becoming; and tell him that I am right glad he was not poisoned,—and I trust he will not wish he had been, after he has seen his ancient bride." Chiming the sweet bells of her laughter, she glided away among her excited attendants, the silver mockery reaching them after she had vanished into the house.

Randalin awoke to a sense of bewilderment. "It is true that I do not know where to go, now that this place is upset."

The question was repeated in her lover's attitude; but Thorkel Jarl answered it, coming between them and drawing her aside.

"I will remedy that," he said. "My men are to fetch you to the Palace so soon as ever your lady has left. The King has a use for you." The rest he spoke into her ear, but its effect was to blanch her cheeks and cause her hands to clasp each other in terror as she started back.

"I cannot!" she cried. "I cannot." "You must," he said harshly. "Or you will do little credit to the blood that is in you. Do you no longer think your father and brother of any importance?"

"They are pitiless to demand it of me," she murmured, and buried her face in her hands.

Anger leaped from the young noble's eyes as, in his turn, he came between her and the Jarl. He said forcefully, "No one shall ask anything of you that you do not want, nor shall any king compel you. Yet I think I have a right to know what his will is with you."

"You have not," the Dane contradicted. "Do you think the King's purposes are to be opened to the sight of every Angle who becomes his man? Nor have you ally right soever over her who is the King's ward. End this talk, maiden, and give me your promise to be obedient."

She gave it in a cry of despair, "I must—I know I must!" then sought to make peace with her lover by laying caressing hands on his breast. "And he is right, love, that I ought not to tell any one. It is another one of those things that you must trust."

But for once the Etheling's will did not bend to her coaxing; his mouth was doggedly set as he looked down upon her. "I trust no man I do not know," he answered, "and I do not know Canute the man,—nor do I greatly like what I have heard of him, or this plan of sending me from the City at this time. You have no cause to reproach me with lack of faith in you, Randalin, for when every happening—even your own words—made it appear as if it were love for Rothgar Lodbroksson which brought you into the camp, I looked into your eyes and believed them against all else." In the intensity of the living present he forgot the dead past—until he saw its ghosts troop like gray shadows across her face.

"Love for Rothgar Lodbroksson?" she repeated, drawing back. "Then you did believe that I could love Rothgar?" Her voice rose sharply. "You believed that I followed him!"

Too late he saw what he had done. "I said that I did not believe it," he cried hastily. "What I thought at first in my bewilderment,—that could not be called belief." Now it was the present that he had forgotten in the past, as he strove desperately to recapture the phantoms and thrust them back into their graves.

But she did not seem to hear his explanation as she stood there gazing at him, her mind leaping lightning-like from point to point. "It was that which made you behave so strangely in the garden," she said, and she spoke each phrase with a kind of breathless finality. "You thought that I—I was like those—those other women in the camp." As he tried to take her hand she drew farther away, and stood looking at him out of eyes that were like purple shadows in her white face. It was with a little movement of anger that she came to herself at last. "And what are you thinking of me now? Do you clare to dream that the King—" Turning, she confronted the old warrior fiercely. "Thorkel Jarl, I ask you to tell the Lord of Ivarsdale as quick as you can what the King wants with me."

"That I will not do," the Jarl said quickly. "You know no prudence, maiden. The Lord of Ivarsdale is also English; a mishap might occur if—"

She flung the words at him; "I care not if it lose Canute his crown! If you will not risk it, I will tell him that the King settles to-night with Edric of Mercia and his men, and that it is to witness the punishment of my kinsmen's murderer that he has sent for me. As for my camp-life, ask Rothgar himself, or Elfgiva, or the King—or any soldier of the host! Of them all, you alone have thought such thoughts of me." She flung up her hands against him in a kind of heart-broken rage. "You! To whose high-mindedness I trusted everything I have!" Hiding her face, she ran from them, sobbing, into the house.



Chapter XXXI. The Twilight of The Gods

Circumspect and reserved Every man should be, And wary in trusting friends; Of the words That a man says to another He often pays the penalty. Ha'vama'l.

Waking to tapestried walls and jewelled lanterns and a strange splendor of furnishings, Randalin experienced a moment of wild bewilderment. What had happened to the low-ceiled dormitory with its bare wall-spaces splotched with dampness? What had become of the row of white beds, with Dearwyn's rosy face on the next pillow? And she herself—why was she lying on the outside of the covers, with all her clothes on, a cramped aching heap? Rising on her elbow, she gazed wonderingly at the frowzy woman stretched near her on a pallet. It was not until the woman turned over, puffing out her fat cheeks in a long breath, that the girl on the bed recognized her and knew what room this was and remembered what had happened to separate to-day from all the yesterdays of her life. Falling down upon the pillows, she lay with her face hidden among them, living over with the swift sharpness of a renewed brain the scenes of the previous night.

As she had seen it from the gallery where the King's soldiers had hidden her, she saw again the great stone hail, enshrining a feasting-table around which a throng of nobles in their gorgeous dresses and their jewels and their diadems made a glittering halo. At the farther end, the King sat in his shining gilded chair. Just below her, was Edric of Mercia with Norman Leofwinesson beside him. She could not see their faces for their backs were toward her, but now and again the Gainer's velvet voice rose blandly, and each time she was seized with shuddering. How was it possible that he did not feel disaster in the air? To her it seemed that the very torch-flames hissed warnings above the merriment, while the occasional pauses were so heavy with doom that their weight was well-nigh unendurable; at each, she was forced to fight down a mad impulse to scream and scatter the hush.

Then the light from the taper which a page was holding behind Norman of Baddeby fell upon the gemmed collar that was his principal ornament, and the sight wrought a subtle change in her mood. The collar had been her father's; she could not look at it without seeing again his ruddy old face with its grim mouth and faded kindly eyes. Beside this vision rose another,—the vision of this beloved face dead in the moonlight, with Fridtjof's near it, his brave smile frozen on his young lips. From that moment, softness and shrinking died out in her bearing as out of her heart, and her blood was turned to fire within her,—the liquid fire of the North. Hour after hour, she sat in rigid waiting while the endless line of servants ran to and fro with their silver dishes and the merriment grew and spread and the clinking came faster and louder and the voices grew thicker and wilder.

When the wave of good-will and fellowship had reached its height, like one who would ride in upon its crest the Gainer rose to his feet and began speaking to the King. His manner was less smoothly deferential than when addressing Edmund, she noticed, affecting more the air of bluff frankness which one might who wished to disarm any suspicion of flattering; but she could not hear what he said because of the noise around him. The first words she heard distinctly were Canute's, as he paused with upraised goblet to look at the Mercian. Like an arrow his voice cleft the uproar, so that here and there men checked the speech on their lips to look at him, and their neighbors, observing them, paused also, until the lull extended from corner to corner.

"Strangely do you ask," he said. "Why should I give you more than Edmund gave you?"

She had no difficulty in hearing Edric this time. Aggressively honest, his words rang out with startling sharpness: "Because it was for you that I went against Edmund, and from faithfulness to you that I afterwards destroyed him."

Out of the stillness that followed, a voice cried, "Are you mad?" and there was the grating of chairs thrust hastily back. But, after a great wrench, her heart stood still within her as through the madness she perceived the purpose. As well as Edric of Mercia she knew that the young Viking's vulnerable point was his longing for his own self-esteem, a craving so unreckoning in its fervor that—should he have the guilty consciousness the traitor counted on—rather than endure his own reproach for cowardice he would be equal to the wild brazenness of flinging the avowal in the teeth of his assembled court. Her pulses began to pound in a furious dance as the same flash of intuition showed her the rock upon which the Gainer's audacious steering was going to wreck him.

For no skulking guilt was in the face of the new King of England as he met the startled glances, but instead a kind of savage joy that widened his nostrils and drew his lips away from his teeth in a terrible smile.

"Now much do I thank whatever god has moved you to open speech," he said, "for with every fibre of my body have I long wanted to requite you for that faithfulness. Knowing that you were coming to-night to ask it, I have the reward ready. Never was recompense given with a better will." Leaping to his feet, he hurled the goblet in his hand against the opposite wall so that it was shattered on the stone behind the embroidered hangings. At the signal the tapestry was lifted, and in the light stood Eric of Norway, leaning on a mighty battle-axe. To him the King cried in a loud voice, all the irony gone from it, leaving it awful as the voice of Thor at Ragnarok. "Do your work where all can see you, Eric Jarl, that no man shall accuse me of being afraid to bear my deeds. And let Norman Leofwinesson die with his lord for the slaying of Frode of Avalcomb."

A roar of hideous sound—a confusion of overturned lights, of screeching servants, of writhing struggling bodies—above it all, the vision of that glittering axe poised in the air—then flashing downward,—Randalin's recollections blurred, ran together, and faded out in broken snatches.

She recalled a brief space of something like sleep-walking as the soldiers led her through branching corridors to this room, and fetched for her attendant the only woman available, a wench they had taken from trencher-washing in the royal kitchen. She remembered irritably rejecting the woman's clumsy services and sending her to sleep on her pallet, while she herself walked to and fro with her surging thoughts until sheer physical exhaustion forced her to throw herself upon the bed. After that she remembered—nothing.

"I am glad that I did not disgrace my kin by screaming or fainting," she reflected now, as she raised herself stiffly. "I am glad I did that much credit to my name." She flushed as her hand, touching the pillow, found it wet, and for an instant the bearing of her head was less erect. "I do not remember what I dreamed," she murmured, "but full well I know that it was not because Norman Leofwinesson is slain that I shed tears in my sleep." For a while she drooped there, her eyes on the open window, outside of which a robin was singing blithely among the cherries. But all at once she seized the pillow with a kind of fierceness, and turned it over and piled the others on top of it, crying under her breath, "How dared he! How dared he! I will shed no tears for him while I am awake. I will remember only that I am my father's daughter and the Lady of Avalcomb."

Proudly as became an odal-woman, she followed the page when he came at last to call her to the royal presence. The great stone hall in which the King awaited the arrival of his Norman bride was the same room in which he had feasted the night before, but tables and dishes now were gone, gold-weighted tapestries hung once more over the door by which Eric of Norway had made his entrance, and a rich-hued rug from an Eastern loom lay over the spot where she had seen the axe rise and fall. Crossing the threshold, the commonplaceness of it all clashed so discordantly with the scene in her memory that for an instant she grew faint and clung to the curtains between which she was passing. That death should leave so little trace, that the spot which one night was occupied by a headsman, the next, should hold a bride, made her fancy reel with horror even while she pulled herself together sternly.

"This is life as in truth it is," she said. "It is well that I understand at last how terrible everything really is, and how little anything matters." Forcing herself to tread the rug with steady step, she came where the King stood by an open window. He was as changed as the room, though in honor of his bride he wore again state robes of silk and cloth-of-gold, for the fire of the Northern lights was gone out of his face, leaving it dull and lustreless. In the garden below, a minstrel was making hay in the sun of the royal glance by a rapid improvising of flattering verses which he was shouting lustily to his twanging harp, but now the King's hand rose curtly.

"Your imagination has no small power, friend, yet save some virtues in case you should want to sing to me again," he advised as he tossed down a coin and turned away.

His ward courtesied deeply before him. "For your justice, King Canute, I give you thanks drawn from the bottom of my heart," she said.

"I welcome you to your own, Lady of Avalcomb," he answered as he returned her salutation. Leaning against the window frame he stood a long while looking at her in silence,—so long that she was startled when at last he spoke. "Yet for the good of the realm, I must lay on your odal one burden, Frode's daughter."

"What is that, King?"

"It is that before the year is out you take a husband who shall be able to defend your land in time of need."

Her white cheeks went very red before him and then grew very pale again, while her breast rose and fell convulsively. But she clasped her hands over it as though to still its protest and, suddenly, she flung up her head in a kind of trembling defiance. "What does it matter? King, I know what a Danish woman owes her race. Choose you the man and this shall, like other things, be as you wish."

It was evident that her answer took him by surprise, for he bent from the wall to observe her. "I choose!" he repeated. "Have you then no choice?"

She tried to say "No"; she tried desperately to say it; but already her courage was crumbling under her. All at once she took her hands from her breast to hold them out pleadingly, and her voice was broken: "Lord, let me go back to Avalcomb—now—to-day!"

"Wherefore to-day?" he asked. "I had thought you would remain here for a while and get honor from Queen Emma." A moment he looked away from her, out of the window at the drifting clouds. "I can tell you, Frode's daughter, that while she is noble in her birth, she is still nobler in her mind," he said gravely. "Little would there be in her service for you to take ill. I think it possible that she might be highly helpful to you. There is that about her which makes the good in one come out and bask like a snake in the sun, while the evil slinks away shadow-like—"

She interrupted him with a cry that was half a sob. "Lord King, I cannot bear it to see more people that are strange to me! Since I left my father's house I have felt the starkness of strangers, and now—now I can endure it no longer. My heart within me is as though it were bruised black and blue. Let me go back where all know me,—where none will hold me off at arm's length to challenge me with his eyes, but all love me and place faith in me because they know me. Lord, give me leave to go home,—I pray it of you! Beseech it of you!" Entreating, she would have fallen at his feet if he had not caught her hands and stayed her.

He did not release them immediately but tightened his grasp as his eyes, grown suddenly keen, searched her face. His voice dropped low. "Randalin, it is very unlikely that Elfgiva's scratches have brought you to this. Do you stand in need of reminding that any man who has angered you has angered me? That my sword lies under your hand?"

Her face seemed to have become glass before him, through which he looked into the innermost chambers of her mind. Terror-stricken, she snatched her hands away to cover it. "No, no!" she cried wildly. "I am angry with no one. I have found fault with no one. Draw no sword for me—only let me go!"

Again he turned from her and stood looking out at the clouds; but when at last he spoke, his voice was the gentlest she had ever heard it. "You are wise in this, as in other things, Frode's daughter," he said, "and you shall certainly have your way. I take it that I am your guardian to protect you from harm, not to force you into things you do not want. Soldiers I can trust shall go with you, in case there be danger from Norman's people, and for women—"

She spoke up eagerly, "There is an old nun at Saint Mildred's, King, who loves me. I think she would come to me until others could be found."

"Go then," he granted. "Thorkel shall see to it that men and horses are ready when you are." He held out his hand, but when she took it in both of hers and would have saluted it reverently, he would not let her but instead raised her fingers to his lips. An odd note was in his voice. "Heavy is it for my tongue to say farewell to you, Frode's daughter," he said, "for your friendship has surpassed most other things in pleasantness to me."

Frank liking mingled with gratitude and reverence as she looked up at him. "I have got great kindness and favor from you, King Canute; I pray that you will be very happy with your Queen."

A moment he pressed his lips to her hand; then gently set it free. "I give you thanks," he returned, "but happiness is for me to wish you. The best you can ask for me is that sometime I shall become what you believed me to be the day you came to me at Scoerstan."

She tried to tell him that she believed him that now,—but something in her forbade the untruth. She could do no more than leave him, with a mute gesture of farewell.

Perhaps her gaze was not quite clear as she crossed the room, for she did not see that the door-curtains were moving until she was close upon them, when they were thrust apart to admit the form of Rothgar Lodbroksson. Stifling a gasp, she shrank behind a tall chair.

He did not see her, however, for his eyes were fastened upon the King, who had turned back to the window. He had cast aside the splendor of the royal guards, wearing over his steel shirt a kirtle of blue that made his florid face seem redder and gave to his fiery hair a hotter glow. Two sentinels carrying shining pikes had followed him in, uncertainly, and now one plucked at his arm. But the Jotun shook him off to stride forward, clanking his heels with intentional noisiness upon the stone floor.

At the clatter the King looked around, and the tone in which he spoke his friend's name had in it more of passion than all the lover's phrases he had ever paid Elfgiva's ears. At the same time, he made a sharp sign to the two sentinels. "Get back to your posts," he said.

Hesitating they saluted and unwilling they wheeled, while one spoke bluntly over his shoulder. "It would be better to let us stay, King, if you please. You are weaponless."

"Go," Canute repeated. In a moment the doors beyond the curtain had closed behind them, and the two men were alone save for the girl hiding forgotten in the shadow of the chair.

Rothgar laughed jarringly. "Whatever has been told about you, you have not yet been accounted a coward. But I do not see how you know I shall not kill you. I have dreamed of it not a few times."

Something like a veil seemed to fall over the King's face; from behind it he spoke slowly as he moved away to the dais upon which his throne-chair stood, and mounted the steps. "The same dream has come to me, but never has it occurred to me to seek you out to tell you of it."

"No such purpose had I," the Jotun said with a touch of surliness. Pulling a bag from under his belt, he shook out of it upon the floor a mane of matted yellow hair. "If you want to know my errand, it is to bring you this. Yesterday it came to my ears that one of my men was suspected of having tried to give you poison through your wife's British thrall. I got them before me and questioned them, and the Scar-Cheek boasted of having done it. This is his hair. If you remember anything about the fellow, you understand that he was not alive when I took it from him."

The King looked immovably at the yellow mass. "You have behaved in a chieftain-like way and I thank you for it," he said. "But I would have liked it better if you had come to me about the judgment that raised this wall between us—"

Rothgar's throat gave out a savage sound. "Tempt me not! I am no sluggish wolf."

But Canute spoke on: "What I expected that day was that you would come to me, as friend comes to friend, and with my loose property I would redeem from you every stick and stone which my kingship had forced me to hold back. Not more than they have called me coward, have men ever called me stingy—"

"And when have men called me greedy?" the Jotun bellowed. "Your thoughts have got a bad habit of lying about me if they say that it was greed for land which made me take your judgment angrily. Except for the honor of my stock, what want I with land while I have a ship to bear me? I tell you, now as heretofore, that it was your treachery which unsheathed a sword between us."

"Rothgar my brother,—" the veil was rent from the King's face and he had stepped from the dais and seized the other by the shoulders as though he would wrestle bodily with him,—"by the Holy Ring, I swear that I have never betrayed you! If you grudge not the land to the Englishman, you have no cause to grudge him anything under Ymer's skull. Can a man change his blood?—for so much a part of me is my friendship for you. Time never was when it was not there, and it would be as possible to fill my veins with Thames water as to put an Englishman into your place. Can you not understand—"

But Rothgar's hand had fallen upon the other's breast and pushed him backward so that he was forced to catch at the chair-arm to save himself from falling. "Never get afraid about that," he sneered. "Since we slept in one cradle, I have been a thick-headed Thrym and your Loke's wit has fooled me into doing your bidding and fighting your battles and giving you my toil and my limbs and my faith, but wisdom has grown in me at last. You undertake too steep a climb when you try to make me believe in your love while before my eyes you give to the man I hate my lands and the woman you had promised me and my place above your men—" His rage choked him so that he was obliged to break off and stand drawing his sword from his sheath and slamming it back with a sharp sound. His voice came back in a hoarse roar. "When I reckon up the debt against you, I know that the only thing to wipe it out would be your life. Not taken by poison nor underhandedly, but torn out of your deceitful body as we stand face to face. If I could do that, it might be that my anger would be quenched." Again he drew his blade half out,—and this time he did not shove it back. His huge body seemed to draw itself together, crouching, as he leaned forward. "Why do you stand there looking as though you thought you were Odin? Do you think to blunt my weapon with your eyes? Why do you tempt me?"

The King had not moved away from the chair against which he had staggered, and the prints of his nails were on its arm. He was as though he had hardened to stone. "To show you that I am stronger than you, though I face you with bare hands," he said. "To show you that you dare not kill me."

"Dare not!" Rothgar's laughter was a hideous thing as he cleared at a bound the space between them. His sword was full-drawn now. "Shout for your guards! It may be that they will get here in time."

But the King neither gave back nor raised his voice. "I will not," he said, "nor will I lift hand against you. Never shall you have it to say that I forgot you had endangered your life for mine. On your head it shall be to break the blood-oath."

Now they were breast to breast. In her mind, the girl in the shadow flung open the doors and shrieked to the sentinels and roused the Palace; in her body, she stood spellbound, voiceless, breathless.

Still Rothgar did not strike. It was the King who spoke this time also. "Among the sayings of men in Norway," he said coldly, "there is one they tell of a traitor who carried a sword of death against his King, but lacked the boldness to use it before the King's face. So he begged his lord to wrap a cloak around his head that he might get the courage to ask a boon. When that had been done, he stabbed. Do you want me to cover my eyes?"

With a hoarse cry, Rothgar flung his sword back to his sheath, recoiling,—there was even a kind of fear in his manner: "A fool would I be, to set your ghost free to follow me with that look on its face! Keep your life—and instead I will torture every Angle I can get under my grip, for it is they who have turned a great hero into a nithing—may they despise you as you have despised your people for their sakes!" Invoking the curse with a sweep of his handless arm, he strode from the room.

Randalin did not see when he passed her, for her eyes were on the King as he stood looking after his foster-brother.

"Ah, God, what a terrible world hast Thou made!" she murmured, as she put up her hands to ease the swelling agony in her throat. "No longer will I try to live in it. I will go to the Sisters and remain with them always."

Through the doors opening before the Jotun there came in a sudden buzz of laughing voices, while a breeze brought through the window a ringing of bells and a clarioning of approaching horns. Upon the girl in the shadow and the King on the dais, the sounds fell like the dissolving of a spell. She ran swiftly to the little door behind the tapestry and let herself out unseen, unheard. The King mounted the throne he had won and sat there in regal state, facing the throng of splendid courtiers trooping in to give him their wedding greetings.



Chapter XXXII. In Time's Morning

He wins who woos. Ha'vama'l.

The hot glare of a July sun was on the stones of the Watling Street and July winds were driving hosts of battling dust-clouds along the highway, but in the herb garden of Saint Mildred's cool shadows lay over the dew-beaded grass and all was restfulness and peace. The voice of the girl who was following Sister Wynfreda from mint clump to parsley bed, from fennel to rue, was not much louder than the droning of the bees in the lavender.

"If it be true as you say,—" she was speaking with the passionate bitterness of wounded youth,—"if it be true that in his place anyone would have believed what he believed, then is this a very hateful world and I want no further part in it."

Over the fragrant leaves which she was touching as fondly as if they had been children's faces, Sister Wynfreda gently shook her head. "Think not that it is altogether through the world's evil-heartedness, dear child. Think rather that it is because mankind is not always brave and shrinks from disappointment, that it dares not believe in good until good is proved."

"I know that one dares not always believe in happiness," the girl conceded slowly, "for when my happiness was like a green swelling wave, white fear sprang from the crest of it and it fell—Sister, did that forebode my sorrow?"

Awhile, the nun's eyes widened and paled as eyes that see a vision, but at last she bowed her head to trace a cross upon her breast. "Not so; it is God's wisdom," she said, "else would the world be so beautiful that we would never hunger after heaven."

Mechanically, Randalin's hands followed hers through the holy sign; then she clasped them before her to wring them in impatient pain. "That is so long to go hungry, Sister! I shall be past my appetite." Dropping down beside the other, her slim young fingers began to imitate the gnarled old ones as they weeded and straightened. "I wonder at it, Sister Wynfreda, that you do not urge me to creep in with you. A year ago, you wanted it when I wanted it not; but now when I am willing, you hold me off."

"Is it clear before your mind that you are willing, my daughter?" the nun asked gently. As she drew herself to her feet with the aid of a bush, the cramping of her feeble stiffened muscles contracted her face in momentary pain, but her eyes were serene as the altar lamps. "It lies upon you to remember, little sister, that those who would serve God around the altar must not go thither only because the world has mistreated them and they would cast it off to avenge the smart. She who puts on the yoke of Christ must needs do so because it is the thing she would desire of all, were all precious things spread out for her choosing. Can you look into my eyes and say that it would be so with you?"

Where she knelt before her, the girl suddenly threw her arms around the woman and hid her face in the faded robes. The frail hand stroked the dark hair affectionately. "Think not that I would upbraid you with it, child as dear as my own heart. When the Power that took you from me led you back again, and I read what God's fingers had written on your face that before was like a lineless parchment, I could not find it in my mind to wish you otherwise. I felt only shame for the weakness of my faith, and joy past all telling."

Under the soothing hand, Randalin's sobs slowly ceased; when at last she raised her wet eyes there was no longer rebellion in them but only youth's measureless despair. "Sister, now as always, I want to do what you would have me—but I am so full of grief! Must I go back to Avalcomb and begin all over again? It seems to me that my life stretches before me no more alluringly than yonder dusty road, that runs straight on, on, over vast spaces but always empty."

The beauty that had been Sister Wynfreda's hovered now about her mouth as fragrance around a dead rose. Her gaze was on a branch above them where a little brown bird, calling plaintively, was slipping from her nest. Over the wattled edge, two tiny brown heads were peeping like fuzzy beech-nut rinds. "I wonder," she said, "what those little creatures up there will think when a few months hence the blue sky becomes leaden, such that no one of them ever before recollected it so dark, and the sun that is wont to creep to them through the leaves has gone out like a candle before the winter winds? By reason of their youth, I suppose they will judiciously conclude with themselves that there is never going to be any blue sky again, that their lives will stretch before them in a dark-hued stress of weather, empty of all save leafless trees and frozen fields. My fledgeling, will they not be a little ashamed of their short-sightedness when the spring has brought back the sun?"

The girl's lips parted before her quickening breath, and the old nun smiled at her tenderly as she moved away with her hands full of the green symbols of healing. "Settle not the whole day of your life at its morning, most dear child, but live it hour by hour," she said. "If you would be of use now, go gather the flowers for the Holy Table, and when themselves have drawn in holiness from the spot, then shall you bring them to the sick woman over the hill."

"Yes, Sister," the girl said submissively. But when she had crossed the daisied grass and opened the wicket gate and came out into the fragrant lane, something seemed to divide her mind with the roses, for though she sent one glance toward the hedge, she sent another to the spot beyond—where the lane gave out upon the great Street to the City—and after she had walked a little way toward the flowers, she turned and walked a long way toward the road, until she had come where her eyes could follow its white track far away over the hills.

"I wonder if I shall ever hunger for heaven as I hunger for the sight of him," she murmured as she gazed.

But whatever the valleys might hold, the hillsides showed her nothing; sighing, she turned back. "It seems to me," she said, "that if we could have little tastes of heaven as we went along, then would there still be enough left and the road would seem much shorter." Sighing, she set to work upon the roses, that had twined themselves in a kindly veil over the bushes.

Standing so, it happened that she did not see the horseman who was just gaining the crest of the nearest hill between her and the City. The wind being from her, she did not even hear the hoof-beats until the horse had turned from the glare of the sun into the shadow of the fern-bordered lane. The first she knew of it, she glanced over her shoulder and saw the red-cloaked figure riding toward her along the grass-grown path.

As naturally as a flower opens its heart at the coming of the sun, she leaned toward him, breathing his name; then in an impulse equally natural, as he leaped from his saddle before her, she drew back and half averted her face, flickering red and white like the blossoms she was clasping to her breast.

He stopped abruptly, a short stretch of grass still between them, wand it soothed her bruised pride a little that there was no longer any confident ease in his manner but only hesitation and uncertainty. His voice was greatly troubled as he spoke: "Never can I forgive myself for having wounded you, sweetheart, yet had I hoped that you might forgive me, because I knew not what I did and because I have suffered so sorely for it."

"You have suffered," she repeated with a little accent of bitterness.

"I beseech you by my love that you do not doubt it!" Hesitation gave way before a warmth of reproach. "For a man to know that he has wounded what he would have died to shield—that he has wronged where he would have given his life to honor—that it may be he has lost what is body and soul to him,—what else is that but suffering?"

It was only a very little that her face turned toward him, and he could not see how her downcast eyes were taking fire from his voice. He stood looking at her in despair, until something in the poise of her head taught him a new rune among love's spells. Drawing softly near her, he spoke in noblest conciliation: "Is it your pride that cannot pardon me, Lady of Avalcomb? Do I seem to sue for grace too boldly because I forget to make my body match the humbleness of my heart? Except in prayer or courtesy, we are not loose of knee, we Angles, but I would stoop as low as I lowest might if that could make you kinder, dear one." Baring his head, he knelt down at her feet,—and the difference between this and the time when he had bent before her in the Abbey, was the difference between tender jest and tenderest earnest. "Thus then do I ask you to give me back your love," he said gently,—and would have said more but that she turned, stirred to a kind of generous shame.

"It needs not that, lord! I know you did not mean it. And they have told me that—that I have no right to be angry with you—" She broke off, as looking into his face she saw something that startled her into forgetfulness of all else. "Why are your cheeks so hollow?" she demanded. "And so gray—as though you had lost blood? Lord, what has come near you?"

He could not conceal the sudden pleasure he got out of her alarm for him, even while he answered as lightly as he could that it was no more than the fatigue of his three days in the saddle; and a lack of food, perhaps, as he had been somewhat pressed for time; and a lack of sleep because of—

But she was a warrior's daughter, and she would not be put off. Coming close to him, she pulled aside the dusty cloak, hot as a live coal in the glare of the day, and there—behold!—there were blood stains on the breast of his blue kirtle. Forgetful of everything else, she flung her arms around him as though to shield him. "Sebert, you are wounded! What is it?"

Nothing that troubled him very much, apparently, for his haggard face had grown radiant with gladness. Yet he was enough afraid of the reaction to answer her as gravely as possible: "It is Rothgar Lodbroksson, whom I met coming from the City as I was journeying back from my errand in Northampton. Little affection has ever passed between us, and this time something more than usual seemed to have stirred him against me, for—"

"He tried to kill you!" The words were not a question but a breathless assertion as she remembered the Jotun's last threat.

"He tried to kill me," the Marshal assented quietly. "And his blade did manage to pierce my mail; he is a giant in strength as in other things. But it cut no more than flesh; and after that, Fortune wheeled not toward him."

"You slew him!" Her lips were white as she gasped it, but he knew now that it was no love for the Jotun that moved her, and he answered promptly to her unspoken thought: "No, sweet,—for the King's sake, I spared him. Before this, his men have taken him aboard his ship and England is rid of him."

Murmuring broken phrases of thanksgiving, she stood holding the cloak she had grasped, but he dreaded too much the moment of her awakening to await its coming inactive. Slipping his arms around her, he began to speak swiftly, the moment her silence gave him an opening.

"Never did I blame Rothgar much for his enmity against me, and now I thank him for this cut as for a gift, for through it I know that at least you have not outlawed me from your love. Dear one, as you are not unkind to so slight a thing as this wound in my flesh, so neither be without pity for the one that is so much deeper, in my heart! As the scratch stayed your anger for a while, so, in the gentleness of love, let this which is mortal stay it for all time."

With his arms around her, she could not shrink very far away,—nor was it seen that she tried to,—but all at once her words came in uneven rushes: "How can I hold anger against you when, with every breath, my lips sigh for your kisses? Yet let no one wonder at it that I am frightened... You cannot conceive what a lurking place for terrors the world looks to me! Never, I think, shall I see men sitting together that I shall not suspect them of having murder in their hearts. Never shall I see two friends clasp hands but my mind will run forward to a time when they shall part in wrath and loneliness. Nay, even of the sound of my own voice I am afraid, lest whomsoever is hearing it—for all that he speak me fair—be twisting the words in his mind into evils I have not dreamed of. Sebert, I do not reproach you with it! I think it all the fault of my own blunders,—and therein I find a new terror. That one should suffer for wrong-doing is to be looked for, but if one is to be dealt with so unsparingly only for making mistakes, who knows where his position is or what to expect? Oh, my best friend, make me brave or I am likely to die only through fearing to live! With my ignorance my boldness went from me, until now my courage is lowly as a willow leaf. Love, make me brave again!" Trusting, in her very declaration of distrust, she clung to him to save her from herself.

It was in the briar-pricked fingers, which he was pressing against his cheek, that he found his answer. Suddenly he spread them out in his palm before her, laughing with joyful lightness. "Randalin, the thorns wounded your hands the while that you stripped yonder hedge, but did you stop for that? If I can prove to you that all these dark days you have been but plucking roses, can you not bravely bear with the pricks?"

Putting her gently from him, he gathered up the spoils she had let fall, picking from among them with great care the fairest of either kind, while she, catching his mood, watched him April-faced. "This," he said gaily, "is the red rose of my heart. Battle-fields lay between us and tower walls, and the way was long and hard to find, yet can you deny, my elf, that you came in and plucked it and wore it away in your hair,—to keep or to cast aside as pleased you?"

Smiles and tears growing together, she caught the blossom from him and pressed it to her lips. "I will wear it in my bosom," she answered, "for my breast has been empty—since the day I saw you first."

Smiling, he held out the white rose, but his mood had deepened until now he looked down upon her as he had looked down upon her in the moonlit forest. "This, beloved, is the symbol of my faith," he said. "Your eyes took it from me that day at even-song. I hold it the dearer of the two, for with it goes my honor that is as stainless as its petals. It is worth more than life to me,—is it not worth some pricks to you?"

She took it from him reverently, to lay it beside the other, and as her face was too proud for fear so was it too tender for jesting. "I am more honored," she told him, "than Canute by his crown; and I will live as bravely to defend them."

But as he would have caught her to him, she leaned back suddenly to stretch a hand toward a dark-robed figure standing under the moss-grown arch, and her pride melted into a laugh of breathless happiness. "Sister Wynfreda, you were very right," she called softly, "the world can be so beautiful that one has no hunger for heaven."

THE END