Harold started, opened his arms, and the outlaw fell upon his breast.
No sound was heard save a single sob, and so close was breast to breast, that you could not say from whose heart it came. Then the outlaw wrenched himself from the embrace, and murmured, And Hacomy sonmotherless, fatherlesshostage in the land of the stranger! Thou wilt rememberthou wilt shield him; thou be to him mother, father in the days to come! So may the saints bless thee! With these words he sprang down the hillock.
Harold bounded after him; but Sweyn, halting, said, mournfully, Is this thy promise? Am I so lost that faith should be broken even with thy fathers son?
At that touching rebuke, Harold paused, and the outlaw passed his way alone. As the last glimpse of his figure vanished at the turn of the road, whence, on the second of May, the Norman Duke and the Saxon King had emerged side by side, the short twilight closed abruptly, and up from the far forestland rose the moon.
Harold stood rooted to the spot, and still gazing on the space, when the Vala laid her hand on his arm.
Behold, as the moon rises on the troubled gloaming, so rises the fate of Harold, as yon brief, human shadow, halting between light and darkness, passes away to night. Thou art now the first-born of a House that unites the hopes of the Saxon with the fortunes of the Dane.
Thinkest thou, said Harold, with a stern composure, that I can have joy and triumph in a brothers exile and woe?
Not now, and not yet, will the voice of thy true nature be heard; but the warmth of the sun brings the thunder, and the glory of fortune wakes the storm of the soul.
Kinswoman, said Harold, with a slight curl of his lip, by me at least have thy prophecies ever passed as the sough of the air; neither in horror nor with faith do I think of thy incantations and charms; and I smile alike at the exorcism of the shaveling and the spells of the Saga. I have asked thee not to bless mine axe, nor weave my sail. No runic rhyme is on the sword-blade of Harold. I leave my fortunes to the chance of mine own cool brain and strong arm. Vala, between thee and me there is no bond.
The Prophetess smiled loftily.
And what thinkest thou, O self-dependent! what thinkest thou is the fate which thy brain and thine arm shall will?
The fate they have won already. I see no Beyond. The fate of a man sworn to guard his country, love justice, and do right.
The moon shone full on the heroic face of the young Earl as he spoke; and on its surface there seemed nought to belie the noble words. Yet, the Prophetess, gazing earnestly on that fair countenance, said, in a whisper, that, despite a reason singularly sceptical for the age in which it had been cultured, thrilled to the Saxons heart, Under that calm eye sleeps the soul of thy sire, and beneath that brow, so haught and so pure, works the genius that crowned the kings of the north in the lineage of thy mother the Dane.
Peace! said Harold, almost fiercely; then, as if ashamed of the weakness of his momentary irritation, he added, with a faint smile, Let us not talk of these matters while my heart is still sad and away from the thoughts of the world, with my brother the lonely outlaw. Night is on us, and the ways are yet unsafe; for the kings troops, disbanded in haste, were made up of many who turn to robbers in peace. Alone, and unarmed, save my ateghar, I would crave a nights rest under thy roof; andhe hesitated, and as light blush came over his cheekand I would fain see if your grandchild is as fair as when I last looked on her blue eyes, that then wept for Harold ere he went into exile.
Her tears are not at her command, nor her smiles, said the Vala, solemnly; her tears flow from the fount of thy sorrows, and her smiles are the beams from thy joys. For know, O Harold! that Edith is thine earthly Fylgia; thy fate and her fate are as one. And vainly as man would escape from his shadow, would soul wrench itself from the soul that Skulda hath linked to his doom.
Harold made no reply; but his step, habitually slow, grew more quick and light, and this time his reason found no fault with the oracles of the Vala.
CHAPTER V
As Hilda entered the hall, the various idlers accustomed to feed at her cost were about retiring, some to their homes in the vicinity, some, appertaining to the household, to the dormitories in the old Roman villa.
It was not the habit of the Saxon noble, as it was of the Norman, to put hospitality to profit, by regarding his guests in the light of armed retainers. Liberal as the Briton, the cheer of the board and the shelter of the roof were afforded with a hand equally unselfish and indiscriminate; and the doors of the more wealthy and munificent might be almost literally said to stand open from morn to eve.
As Harold followed the Vala across the vast atrium, his face was recognised, and a shout of enthusiastic welcome greeted the popular Earl. The only voices that did not swell that cry, were those of three monks from a neighbouring convent, who choose to wink at the supposed practices of the Morthwyrtha 97, from the affection they bore to her ale and mead, and the gratitude they felt for her ample gifts to their convent.
One of the wicked House, brother, whispered the monk.
Yea; mockers and scorners are Godwin and his lewd sons, answered the monk.
And all three sighed and scowled, as the door closed on the hostess and her stately guest.
Two tall and not ungraceful lamps lighted the same chamber in which Hilda was first presented to the reader. The handmaids were still at their spindles, and the white web nimbly shot as the mistress entered. She paused, and her brow knit, as she eyed the work.
But three parts done? she said, weave fast, and weave strong.
Harold, not heeding the maids or their task, gazed inquiringly round, and from a nook near the window, Edith sprang forward with a joyous cry, and a face all glowing with delightsprang forward, as if to the arms of a brother; but, within a step or so of that noble guest, she stopped short, and her eyes fell to the ground.
Harold held his breath in admiring silence. The child he had loved from her cradle stood before him as a woman. Even since we last saw her, in the interval between the spring and the autumn, the year had ripened the youth of the maiden, as it had mellowed the fruits of the earth; and her cheek was rosy with the celestial blush, and her form rounded to the nameless grace, which say that infancy is no more.
He advanced and took her hand, but for the first time in his life in their greetings, he neither gave nor received the kiss.
You are no child now, Edith, said he, involuntarily; but still set apart, I pray you, some remains of the old childish love for Harold.
Ediths charming lips smiled softly; she raised her eyes to his, and their innocent fondness spoke through happy tears.
But few words passed in the short interval between Harolds entrance and his retirement to the chamber prepared for him in haste. Hilda herself led him to a rude ladder which admitted to a room above, evidently added, by some Saxon lord, to the old Roman pile. The ladder showed the precaution of one accustomed to sleep in the midst of peril, for, by a kind of windlass in the room, it could be drawn up at the inmates will, and, so drawn, left below a dark and deep chasm, delving down to the foundations of the house; nevertheless the room itself had all the luxury of the time; the bedstead was quaintly carved, and of some rare wood; a trophy of armsthough very ancient, sedulously polishedhung on the wall. There were the small round shield and spear of the earlier Saxon, with his vizorless helm, and the short curved knife or saex 98, from which some antiquarians deem that the Saxish men take their renowned name.
Edith, following Hilda, proffered to the guest, on a salver of gold, spiced wines and confections; while Hilda, silently and unperceived, waved her seid-staff over the bed, and rested her pale hand on the pillow.
Nay, sweet cousin, said Harold, smiling, this is not one of the fashions of old, but rather, methinks, borrowed from the Frankish manners in the court of King Edward.
Not so, Harold, answered Hilda, quickly turning; such was ever the ceremony due to Saxon king, when he slept in a subjects house, ere our kinsmen the Danes introduced that unroyal wassail, which left subject and king unable to hold or to quaff cup, when the board was left for the bed.
Thou rebukest, O Hilda, too tauntingly, the pride of Godwins house, when thou givest to his homely son the ceremonial of a king. But, so served, I envy not kings, fair Edith.
He took the cup, raised it to his lips, and when he placed it on the small table by his side the women had left the chamber, and he was alone. He stood for some minutes absorbed in reverie, and his soliloquy ran somewhat thus:
Why said the Vala that Ediths fate was inwoven with mine? And why did I believe and bless the Vala, when she so said? Can Edith ever be my wife? The monk-king designs her for the cloisterWoe, and well-a-day! Sweyn, Sweyn, let thy doom forewarn me! And if I stand up in my place and say, Give age and grief to the cloisteryouth and delight to mans hearth, what will answer the monks? Edith cannot be thy wife, son of Godwin, for faint and scarce traced though your affinity of blood, ye are within the banned degrees of the Church. Edith may be wife to another, if thou wilt,barren spouse of the Church or mother of children who lisp not Harolds name as their father. Out on these priests with their mummeries, and out on their war upon human hearts!
His fair brow grew stern and fierce as the Norman Dukes in his ire; and had you seen him at the moment you would have seen the true brother of Sweyn. He broke from his thoughts with the strong effort of a man habituated to self-control, and advanced to the narrow window, opened the lattice, and looked out.
The moon was in all her splendour. The long deep shadows of the breathless forest chequered the silvery whiteness of open sward and intervening glade. Ghostly arose on the knoll before him the grey columns of the mystic Druid,dark and indistinct the bloody altar of the Warrior god. But there his eye was arrested; for whatever is least distinct and defined in a landscape has the charm that is the strongest; and, while he gazed, he thought that a pale phosphoric light broke from the mound with the bautastein, that rose by the Teuton altar. He thought, for he was not sure that it was not some cheat of the fancy. Gazing still, in the centre of that light there appeared to gleam forth, for one moment, a form of superhuman height. It was the form of a man, that seemed clad in arms like those on the wall, leaning on a spear, whose point was lost behind the shafts of the crommell. And the face grew in that moment distinct from the light which shimmered around it, a face large as some early gods, but stamped with unutterable and solemn woe. He drew back a step, passed his hand over his eyes, and looked again. Light and figure alike had vanished; nought was seen save the grey columns and dim fane. The Earls lip curved in derision of his weakness. He closed the lattice, undressed, knelt for a moment or so by the bedside, and his prayer was brief and simple, nor accompanied with the crossings and signs customary in his age. He rose, extinguished the lamp, and threw himself on the bed.
The moon, thus relieved of the lamp-light, came clear and bright through the room, shone on the trophied arms, and fell upon Harolds face, casting its brightness on the pillow on which the Vala had breathed her charm. And Harold sleptslept longhis face calm, his breathing regular: but ere the moon sunk and the dawn rose the features were dark and troubled, the breath came by gasps, the brow was knit, and the teeth clenched.
BOOK IV.
THE HEATHEN ALTAR AND THE SAXON CHURCH
CHAPTER I
While Harold sleeps, let us here pause to survey for the first time the greatness of that House to which Sweyns exile had left him the heir. The fortunes of Godwin had been those which no man not eminently versed in the science of his kind can achieve. Though the fable which some modern historians of great name have repeated and detailed, as to his early condition as the son of a cow-herd, is utterly groundless 99, and he belonged to a house all-powerful at the time of his youth, he was unquestionably the builder of his own greatness. That he should rise so high in the early part of his career was less remarkable than that he should have so long continued the possessor of a power and state in reality more than regal.
But, as has been before implied, Godwins civil capacities were more prominent than his warlike. And this it is which invests him with that peculiar interest which attracts us to those who knit our modern intelligence with the past. In that dim world before the Norman deluge, we are startled to recognise the gifts that ordinarily distinguish a man of peace in a civilised age.
His father, Wolnoth, had been Childe 100 of the South Saxons, or thegn of Sussex, a nephew of Edric Streone, Earl of Mercia, the unprincipled but able minister of Ethelred, who betrayed his master to Canute, by whom, according to most authorities, he was righteously, though not very legally, slain as a reward for the treason.
I promised, said the Dane king, to set thy head higher than other mens, and I keep my word. The trunkless head was set on the gates of London.
Wolnoth had quarrelled with his uncle Brightric, Edrics brother, and before the arrival of Canute, had betaken himself to the piracy of a sea chief, seduced twenty of the kings ships, plundered the southern coasts, burnt the royal navy, and then his history disappears from the chronicles; but immediately afterwards the great Danish army, called Thurkells Host, invaded the coast, and kept their chief station on the Thames. Their victorious arms soon placed the country almost at their command. The traitor Edric joined them with a power of more than 10,000 men; and it is probable enough that the ships of Wolnoth had before this time melted amicably into the armament of the Danes. If this, which seems the most likely conjecture, be received, Godwin, then a mere youth, would naturally have commenced his career in the cause of Canute; and as the son of a formidable chief of thegns rank, and even as kinsman to Edric, who, whatever his crimes, must have retained a party it was wise to conciliate, Godwins favour with Canute, whose policy would lead him to show marked distinction to any able Saxon follower, ceases to be surprising.
The son of Wolnoth accompanied Canute in his military expedition to the Scandinavian continent, and here a signal victory, planned by Godwin and executed solely by himself and the Saxon band under his command, without aid from Canutes Danes, made the most memorable military exploit of his life, and confirmed his rising fortunes.
Edric, though he is said to have been low born, had married the sister of King Ethelred; and as Godwin advanced in fame, Canute did not disdain to bestow his own sister in marriage on the eloquent favourite, who probably kept no small portion of the Saxon population to their allegiance. On the death of this, his first wife, who bore him but one son 101 (who died by accident), he found a second spouse in the same royal house; and the mother of his six living sons and two daughters was the niece of his king, and sister of Sweyn, who subsequently filled the throne of Denmark. After the death of Canute, the Saxons predilections in favour of the Saxon line became apparent; but it was either his policy or his principles always to defer to the popular will as expressed in the national council; and on the preference given by the Witan to Harold the son of Canute over the heirs of Ethelred, he yielded his own inclinations. The great power of the Danes, and the amicable fusion of their race with the Saxon which had now taken place, are apparent in this decision; for not only did Earl Leofric, of Mercia, though himself a Saxon (as well as the Earl of Northumbria, with the thegns north of the Thames), declare for Harold the Dane, but the citizens of London were of the same party; and Godwin represented little more than the feeling of his own principality of Wessex.