The Ward of King Canute Part 28

"Down the lane on your left, n.o.ble one. You can see where the wall of the King's garden makes one side of Paternoster Row. You can reach the Cheapside along the road also," he added, "if you do not turn in your way until you come where the Churchyard joins the Folk--"

"Turn then to the left."

They obeyed her, but their gay chatter died on their lips. If the road bore none of the repulsiveness of the shambles, it was still little more cheerful than the graveyard. On their right, an ice-stiffened marsh reached to the great City wall, while a remnant of the primeval beech forest lay along their left, leafless, wind-lashed and groaning. Ahead, behind its walls and above its gardens of cl.u.s.tering fruit-trees, rose the towers and gilded spires of the King's Palace.

As they neared the arched gateway, red with the cloaks of the royal guards, it seemed to Randalin that an icy hand had closed about her heart. The blood was ebbing from Elfgiva's face, and it could be seen that she was forced to keep moistening her lips with her tongue.

Nearer--now they were in front of the entrance--All at once, the lady thrust a spur into her horse as he was slackening his pace in obedience to her tightened rein.

"To the goldsmiths' first," she ordered. "On our way back--" Her words were lost on the frosty wind.

The master of the first booth in the row of wretched little stalls was humped with steaming breath over a brazier of glowing coals. He leaped to greet such splendid ladies with a profusion of salaams and a mouthful of pretty speeches that brought some of the color back to Elfgiva's cheeks.

"Do not have me in contempt, Tata," she admonished with a laugh of some unsteadiness. "It is not certain that I am going to belie you to the guards, or that I have lost faith in your sign. Let me sharpen my weapon for some s.p.a.ce among these precious things, and it may be that I shall go hence panting for the field."

"Ah, gracious lady, you must needs buy my whole stock," the merchant cried with ingratiating smiles, "for I can never endure to sell to another what I have once seen near your face."

Elfgiva laughed beautifully then, and the Danish girl took a fresh grip upon her patience. Certainly the jewelled bugs, the golden snakes, the strands of amber and jet and pearl, seemed to act as tonics upon the Northampton lady. If she had not traded away, at the first two stalls, every ornament in her possession, she would have investigated each booth in the square. She came out in bubbling spirits to the waiting horses and the half-frozen guards.

"This Cheapside is a very fairy garden," she prattled, lingering with her foot in the hand of the kneeling groom. "Everything in beds and rows as they were herbs,--milk down this lane, soap down that, jewels, fabrics--" She turned with a sudden inspiration. "Maidens, would not this be a merry thought? To find out where the fabrics are kept and try some cloth of gold against these pearls?"

As the servile murmur answered, Randalin's brow darkened. Cloth of gold and pearls,--when a wolf was tearing at her heart! She spoke desperately, "I wish that the way to the fabrics might lie past the King's House, lady."

The King's wife sent her a glance, half resentful, half questioning.

"Why do you say that?"

"Because if Canute could see you as you look now, with your cheeks a-flower and that ermine, like snow, upon your hair, there is nothing in the world he could refuse you."

Elfgiva's mouth curved bewitchingly. "You speak as though you had jewels to sell. What fine manners they have, these London merchants! Tell me, Candida, Leonorine, does she speak the truth? On your crosses, has not the cold reddened my nose? Or pinched the bloom off my lips?"

If the murmur that answered lacked any heartiness, their mistress did not perceive it, for every man within earshot swelled it with rea.s.surance,--thinking perhaps of the hot spiced wine in the King's cups.

After a moment of hesitation, she flew up to her saddle like a bird.

"Do you all think so?" she laughed. "Certainly I never felt in l.u.s.tier spirits. I declare that I will try it. Hasten, before the roses wilt in my cheeks. Forward! To the Palace!"

Chapter XXVI. In The Judgment Hall

Strong is the bar That must be raised To admit all.

Ha'vama'l.

While he kept a firm hold upon the spear which he had dropped like a gilded bar across the door, the English sentinel repeated for the tenth time his respectful denial: "I will take it upon me to admit you to the gallery, n.o.ble lady; but you were the Queen herself, I dare not let you in to the lower part. There be none but men with the King, and it is not fitting--"

"And is the son of a Saxon serf to decide where it is fitting for me to go?" the Lady of Northampton demanded, facing him in a tempest of angry beauty. "Whatsoever you shall do by my direction, dog, will in all respects be available to your credit. Let me through to my husband, or I can tell you that you will find your wariness terribly misplaced!"

The guard discreetly held his tongue,--but he likewise held his position. Elfgiva's bosom was beginning to heave in hysterical menace when a second soldier, lounging against the wall behind the first, ventured a soothing word.

"For your own safety, n.o.ble one, ask it not. The King is listening to a quarrel between an Englishman and a Dane; and by reason of it, there are many in the room whose tempers may--"

Randalin, who alone of all the maidens had remained undauntedly at her mistress' elbow, caught that elbow in a vice-like grip. "Take the gallery, then, lady!" she urged in a piercing whisper. "The gallery, as quick as you can."

As an angry cat wounds whoever is nearest, Elfgiva scratched her in the same undertone. "Stupid! Do you imagine that the only Englishman who has part in the world is the one you showed yourself a fool for? Do you not understand that if I let them a.s.sign me to some dark gallery, Canute will not be able to see me?"

It did not appear that the girl so much as felt the claws. Her eyes had a look of strained listening as they gazed past the sentinel and across the ante-room to the great curtained doorway. "He will succeed better in seeing you through a dim light than through a stone wall," she returned.

Biting her lips, the fair Tyrant of Northampton measured the man through her lashes. He might have been of the same material as his spear for all the sign he showed of yielding. She could not understand such defiance, and, like mysteries in general, it awed even while it angered her.

Affecting to draw herself up in disdain, she really gave back a step.

"Perhaps it would be wise to put off our visit until a day that there is a man at the door instead of a blockhead--"

Randalin's arm was an iron barrier behind her. "Now I do not know where you think the power to do that will come from!" she hissed in her ear.

"Do you not see that if you go back to your grooms and let them know that you have not got enough honor with the King to gain an entrance, they will never dare do your bidding again? Do you not see that you must do one of two things, or now win, or now lose?"

Apparently Elfgiva saw. After a moment's bridling, she whirled back with an angry flounce of her draperies. "The gallery, then, dog! I shall reach my lord's ear from that, which will be an unlucky thing for you."

Saluting in silence, the guard drew back to let her pa.s.s, at the same time signing to a row of men-at-arms standing motionless as pillars against the stone wall of the ante-room. With a rattle and clank they came to life, and the little band of five kirtles, surrounded and led, was marched to a low side-door which gave in upon a short flight of stone steps, white-frosted now with the dampness and their distance from the fire. At the head of the flight, another door gave entrance to a narrow pa.s.sage that probably reached the length of the hall below, though it seemed to the s.h.i.+vering women to extend the length of the Palace itself. A third door, ending this corridor, admitted them to the gallery that ran across the upper end of the hall.

As she pa.s.sed the threshold Elfgiva exclaimed in vexation, for the light of the log fire, whose rudely carved chimney-piece broke the long side-wall, succ.u.mbed at the balcony's lower edge to the shadows of the raftered ceiling, and all above was wrapped in soft twilight. "He cannot tell me from a monster," she fumed, letting herself sink into a faded tapestry chair, standing forgotten amid a pile of mouldering cus.h.i.+ons.

The three English girls, pressing timidly to her side, answered with indistinct murmurs which she could interpret to suit her pleasure. The Danish girl made her no reply whatever. Half kneeling, half sitting upon the cus.h.i.+ons, her head was already bent over the gallery's edge, and the scene below had claimed her eye and ear to the exclusion of all else.

Whatever its shortcomings as a show-case, the balcony was excellently adapted both for spectators and for eavesdroppers, its distance from the floor being little more than twice a man's height, while the fire which doled its light so stingily, lavished a glory of brightness on the spot where the King's ma.s.sive chair stood beside the chimney-piece. After one petulant glance, even Elfgiva's pique gave way to a curiosity that gradually drew her forward to the very edge of her seat and held her there, the three maids crouching at her feet.

Encircled by a martial throng, so ma.s.sed and indistinct that they made a background like embroidered tapestry, three figures were the centre of attention,--the figure of the young King in his raised chair, and the forms of the Dane and the Angle who fronted each other before his footstool. s.h.i.+elded from the heat by his palm, Canute's face was in the shadow, and the giant shape of the son of Lodbrok was a blot against the flames, but the glare lay strong on Sebert of Ivarsdale, revealing a picture that caused one spectator to catch her breath in a sob. Equally aloof from English thane and Danish n.o.ble, the Etheling in the palace of his native king stood a stranger and alone, while his swordless sheath showed him to be also a prisoner. He bore himself proudly, one of his blood could scarcely have done otherwise, but his fine face was white with misery, and despair darkened his eyes as they stared unseeingly before him.

As well as though he had put his thoughts into words, the girl who loved him knew that his mind was back in the peaceful manor between the hills, foreseeing its desecration by barbarian hands, foretasting the ruin of those who looked to him for protection. From the twilight of the balcony, she stretched out her arms to him in a pa.s.sion of yearning pity, and all of selfishness that had been in her grief faded from it utterly, as her heart sent forth a second prayer.

"Oh, Thou G.o.d, forget what I asked for myself! Think only of helping him, of comforting him, and I will love Thee as though Thou hadst done it to me. Help him! Help him!"

Answering a question from the King, Rothgar began to speak, his heavy voice seeming to fill all the s.p.a.ce from floor to ceiling: "By all the laws of war, King Canute, the Odal of Ivarsdale should come to me. The first son of Lodbrok took the land before ever this Angle's kin had seen it. He built the tower that stands on it, and the name it bears to this day is the name of his giving. Under Guthrum, a weak-kneed son of his lost it to the English Alfred, and we fell out of our fortunes with the tipping of the scales, and Angles have sat since then in the seat of Lodbrok's sons. But now the scales have risen again. Under Canute, Ivarsdale, with all other English property, comes back to Danish hands.

By all the laws of war, my kinsman's inheritance should be my share of the spoil."

Ending roundly, he drew himself up in an att.i.tude of bold a.s.surance.

Wherever a group of scarlet cloaks made a bright patch upon the human arras, there was a flutter of approval. Even the braver of the English n.o.bles, who for race-pride alone might have supported Sebert in a valid claim, saw nothing to do now but to draw away, with a silent interchange of shrugs and headshakes, and leave him to his doom.

In the shadow of his hand, Canute nodded slowly. "By all the laws of war," he affirmed, "your kinsman's inheritance should be your share of the spoil."

Again an approving murmur rose from Danish throats; and Rothgar was opening his lips to voice a grateful answer, when a gesture of the royal hand checked him.

"Recollect, however, that just now I am not only a war-chief, but also a law-man. I think it right, therefore, to hear what the Englishman has to say for his side. Sebert Oswaldsson, speak in your defence."

Not even a draft appeared to stir the human tapestry about them. Sebert started like a man awakened from sleep, when he realized that every eye was hanging upon him. Swiftly, his glance pa.s.sed around the circle, from the averted faces of his countrymen to the foreign master on the throne, then bitterly he bent his head to his fate.

"I have nothing to say. Your justice may most rightly be meted out."

"Nothing to say?" The King's measured voice sounded sharply through the hush. For the first time, he lowered his hand and bent forward where the fire-glow could touch him.

As she caught sight of his face Elfgiva shrank and clutched at her women. "Ah, Saints, I am thankful now that it is dark!" she murmured.