For The White Christ Part 54

"Dear hero, you should speak evil of no one."

"True, sweetheart; I should not judge even the witch's daughter. Yet her laughter lacks the ring of that which springs from a kindly heart.

Nor do I like the manner in which she looks at the king."

"Surely, Olvir, you misjudge the maiden. All during Lent she has been very kind and gentle. Look; here are the mushrooms which she told Pepin and Karl to gather for our mother."

"Loki,--a Roman dis.h.!.+ Yet the act was to be praised," admitted Olvir, and he stared curiously at the salver borne past by one of the pages.

"I see it was not enough of honor to the ugly elf-stools that they should be gathered by a king's sons. They must be served in a golden bowl with a spoon of silver."

"Do not mock, dear. The cook is from Ravenna, and very skilled in his art. He bakes the spoon with the food, and if there should chance to be any poisonous mushroom with the others, he knows that the spoon will blacken."

"Better trust to good flesh and grain, and leave such dishes to the Romans and Greeks," rejoined Olvir, and he turned with sudden remembrance to his neglected trencher.

But his appet.i.te, always moderate, was soon satisfied, and he was turning again to Rothada, when, startling as a thunderbolt from a clear sky, the king's voice broke in upon the laughter of the guests, harsh and strained with alarm: "Bring water! bring water quickly! The queen is ill! Mother of G.o.d, she swoons!"

In the sudden hush which followed, all heard the sibilant voice of Fastrada echoing the king's cry: "The queen swoons! Run, fetch the leech!--Kosru, the leech!"

Then all at the table sprang up together, and Liutrad and Worad rushed away in search of the Magian. With his own hands Karl had laid his queen upon the dais. About his stooping form gathered the dames and maidens; while the lords, grave and silent with anxiety, drew together at the far end of the hall. Olvir followed Rothada to the outer line of the women; but Gerold alone pushed in through their midst.

As the Swabian knelt beside his sister, Liutrad came thrusting Kosru before him into the hall. The Magian was deathly pale, and trembled visibly as Liutrad and Worad bore him forward between them. Yet he had not lost his power of speech.

"Stay!" he interposed in a quavering voice, as, at a sign from the king, Fastrada and the other bower-maidens sought to raise the queen. "Stay, maidens! I would first learn what our gracious dame has eaten."

"What we have all eaten," replied Karl, quickly.

"But more, lord king," called out Olvir. "How of the elf-stools?"

"The mushrooms!" muttered Gerold, and he sprang up to point out the little golden bowl, still on the board beside his sister's trencher.

Kosru tottered forward and clutched the bowl in his claw-like fingers.

Breathlessly the onlookers watched while he sniffed at the shreds in the bottom of the dish and placed one of them upon his tongue. Almost instantly he spewed it out again.

"Ahriman!" he cried, and he turned to the king, his face a sickly yellow.

"Speak out!" commanded Karl, sternly.

"_Ai_! I feared it, lord king. Queen Hildegarde has eaten poisonous fungi."

"Yet the silver was untarnished. I saw it myself."

"But listen, lord king," replied the leech, so huskily that few could follow his words; "the test is not certain. There is a most deadly fungus, so like the harmless kind--"

"Who gathered the venomous mess?" demanded Karl, harshly.

"Your two eldest sons, sire," replied Fastrada.

"King of Heaven!" The great Frank's head bent forward, and he signed to the bower-maidens: "Bear her hence."

Out of the great hall and through the long corridors to her bower, they bore the swooning queen. The guests, following at a respectful distance, waited without the door, where they could soonest hear any word sent out from the sick-chamber.

Within the bower, husband and brother knelt side by side at the foot of Hildegarde's couch, wrestling in agonized prayer; while around them the maidens and tiring-women stood silently weeping, or, at the bidding of the leech, glided hastily about in the service of their beloved mistress.

But though Kosru made trial of drug after drug, all alike failed to rouse Hildegarde from her death-like stupor. Hour by hour the night dragged through its dreary length, and Kosru began to shake his head.

With all but infinite slowness, the grey dawn came stealing in upon the silent watchers,--the dawn of the last day that Hildegarde, the beloved queen, should abide with her dear lord. As the first red arrows of sunrise shot up the eastern sky, Rothada glided out from the bower and came to place her hand in Olvir's. Her face was very sad, and tears shone in the violet eyes.

"All is over!" murmured Olvir, in a broken whisper. But Rothada shook her head.

"No, no; she still breathes. Yet the leech has given up all hope. He promises only to rouse her before the end. He has already given the drug. I come to call Abbot Fulrad for the last offices of Holy Church."

Groans of despair burst from the lips of the waiting liegeman; but Olvir turned silently, and went with Rothada to the chapel. They halted in the doorway, and gazed out over the kneeling congregation to the high altar. There was no need of word or sign. Very solemnly Fulrad took up the vessel of sacred oil, and came down from the chancel. As he pa.s.sed from among them the soft-voiced choristers sobbed out the wailing notes of the _Miserere_, and the grief-stricken congregation prostrated themselves in hopeless sorrow. But only Rothada and Olvir followed the abbot along the silent pa.s.sages and in through the entrance to the bower.

Within the sick-room there had been a change. Beside the couch were gathered all the king's children, and Hildegarde, very faint, but fully conscious, was taking the last farewell of her dear ones. The end was very near.

Fulrad raised his tear-stained face, and advanced, with all the solemnity of his office, to administer the last rites of Holy Church.

Tremulous but clear, his voice p.r.o.nounced the words of the sacrament, and with the holy oil he anointed the head and hands and feet of the dying queen. Then, the holy rite ended, he turned and went back to the chapel. As the slow, heavy tread of his sandals died away down the pa.s.sage, Karl rose up and signed to the sobbing attendants.

"Let all go out but those of kin," he said.

Obediently the maidens and women took a last look at their mistress, and crept away to seek comfort for their grief in the chapel. Behind them followed Fastrada and Kosru the leech, with downcast eyes; while last of all came Olvir, his dark face aglow with the spiritual light that shone in the eyes of Hildegarde. He paused at the door, overcome with yearning to linger inside; and as Fastrada and the cowering leech glided out before him, his wish was answered by the king: "Turn again, Olvir.

She speaks your name."

In a moment the Northman was back beside Rothada. Hildegarde had kissed her own children for the last time, and, at a sign from Karl, they were being led from the bower. She now turned her gaze to the grief-stricken figure of Pepin Hunchback, and all bent forward to catch her faintly murmured words: "Son of Himiltrude,--no less my son. Cherish him, dear lord!"

"As G.o.d gives me wisdom, beloved," answered Karl.

The boy bent and kissed the lips of the gentle dame who had been to him as his own mother; then, sobbing bitterly, he ran from the bower. In his place knelt Rothada, and on either side of her Gerold and Olvir.

Already Hildegarde's mild eyes were darkening; but she turned her gaze to the three, and a smile shone on her pallid cheeks.

"Gerold--brother," she whispered, "G.o.d has blessed you. Yours shall ever be a life of honor. Rothada--Olvir, my daughter--my son,--love is yours. Be happy, as I have been happy with my dear lord. Karl--come to me--"

Silently the three rose and gave place to the king. He knelt and drew his beloved into his great arms, and she nestled to him with the sigh of a tired child.

Then the others went softly out of the bower, and left the king alone with his dead.

CHAPTER XV

All the field with the blood of the fighters Flowed, from whence first the great Sun-star of morning-tide, Lamp of the Lord G.o.d, Lord everlasting, Glode over earth, till the glorious creature Sunk to her setting.

BATTLE OF BRUNANBURH.

With all the solemn pomp of church and state they bore the dead queen through the budding woods to Metz, and there laid her to rest in the crypt of the great domchurch,--the Basilica of Saint Arnulf her forefather. The beggar crouching on the steps saw the great king pa.s.s in with bowed head and fingers tugging at his beard, and knew that there is a grief which comes to both high and low, which enters alike palace halls and the hovel of the serf.

But deep as was Karl's sorrow, once that he had turned away from the tomb of his beloved queen, he set about the opening of the Saxon campaign with added determination. Used as were his liegemen to the tremendous energy of his movements, never before had they seen him bend all to his will with such resistless force. To put away the anguish of his grief, he threw himself headlong into the war-game, and welcomed the fresh tidings of ravages which served to inflame his wrath against the forest-dwellers.