Harold : the Last of the Saxon Kings — Complete

CHAPTER III

While, full of themselves, Harold and Edith wandered, hand in hand, through the neighbouring glades—while into that breast which had forestalled, at least, in this pure and sublime union, the wife’s privilege to soothe and console, the troubled man poured out the tale of the sole trial from which he had passed with defeat and shame,—Haco drew near to Thyra, and sate down by her side. Each was strangely attracted towards the other; there was something congenial in the gloom which they shared in common; though in the girl the sadness was soft and resigned, in the youth it was stern and solemn. They conversed in whispers, and their talk was strange for companions so young; for, whether suggested by Edith’s song, or the neighbourhood of the Saxon grave-stone, which gleamed on their eyes, grey and wan through the crommell, the theme they selected was of death. As if fascinated, as children often are, by the terrors of the Dark King, they dwelt on those images with which the northern fancy has associated the eternal rest, on—the shroud and the worm, and the mouldering bones—on the gibbering ghost, and the sorcerer’s spell that could call the spectre from the grave. They talked of the pain of the parting soul, parting while earth was yet fair, youth fresh, and joy not yet ripened from the blossom—of the wistful lingering look which glazing eyes would give to the latest sunlight it should behold on earth; and then he pictured the shivering and naked soul, forced from the reluctant clay, wandering through cheerless space to the intermediate tortures, which the Church taught that none were so pure as not for a whole to undergo; and hearing, as it wandered, the knell of the muffled bells and the burst of unavailing prayer. At length Haco paused abruptly and said:

“But thou, cousin, hast before thee love and sweet life, and these discourses are not for thee.”

Thyra shook her head mournfully:

“Not so, Haco; for when Hilda consulted the runes, while, last night, she mingled the herbs for my pain, which rests ever hot and sharp here,” and the girl laid her hand on her breast, “I saw that her face grew dark and overcast; and I felt, as I looked, that my doom was set. And when thou didst come so noiselessly to my side, with thy sad, cold eyes, O Haco, methought I saw the Messenger of Death. But thou art strong, Haco, and life will be long for thee; let us talk of life.”

Haco stooped down and pressed his lips upon the girl’s pale forehead.

“Kiss me too, Thyra.”

The child kissed him, and they sate silent and close by each other, while the sun set.

And as the stars rose, Harold and Edith joined them. Harold’s face was serene in the starlight, for the pure soul of his betrothed had breathed peace into his own; and, in his willing superstition, he felt as if, now restored to his guardian angel, the dead men’s bones had released their unhallowed hold.

But suddenly Edith’s hand trembled in his, and her form shuddered.—Her eyes were fixed upon those of Haco.

“Forgive me, young kinsman, that I forget thee so long,” said the Earl. “This is my brother’s son, Edith; thou hast not, that I remember, seen him before?”

“Yes, yes;” said Edith, falteringly.

“When, and where?”

Edith’s soul answered the question, “In a dream;” but her lips were silent.

And Haco, rising, took her by the hand, while the Earl turned to his sister—that sister whom he was pledged to send to the Norman court; and Thyra said, plaintively:

“Take me in thine arms, Harold, and wrap thy mantle round me, for the air is cold.”

The Earl lifted the child to his breast, and gazed on her cheek long and wistfully; then questioning her tenderly, he took her within the house; and Edith followed with Haco.

“Is Hilda within?” asked the son of Sweyn.

“Nay, she hath been in the forest since noon,” answered Edith with an effort, for she could not recover her awe of his presence.

“Then,” said Haco, halting at the threshold, “I will go across the woodland to your house, Harold, and prepare your ceorls for your coming.”

“I shall tarry here till Hilda returns,” answered Harold, and it may be late in the night ere I reach home; but Sexwolf already hath my orders. At sunrise we return to London, and thence we march on the insurgents.”

“All shall be ready. Farewell, noble Edith; and thou, Thyra my cousin, one kiss more to our meeting again.” The child fondly held out her arms to him, and as she kissed his cheek whispered:

“In the grave, Haco!”

The young man drew his mantle around him, and moved away. But he did not mount his steed, which still grazed by the road; while Harold’s, more familiar with the place, had found its way to the stall; nor did he take his path through the glades to the house of his kinsman. Entering the Druid temple, he stood musing by the Teuton tomb. The night grew deeper and deeper, the stars more luminous and the air more hushed, when a voice close at his side, said, clear and abrupt:

“What does Youth the restless, by Death the still?”

It was the peculiarity of Haco, that nothing ever seemed to startle or surprise him. In that brooding boyhood, the solemn, quiet, and sad experience all fore-armed, of age, had something in it terrible and preternatural; so without lifting his eyes from the stone, he answered:

“How sayest thou, O Hilda, that the dead are still?” Hilda placed her hand on his shoulder, and stooped to look into his face.

“Thy rebuke is just, son of Sweyn. In Time, and in the Universe, there is no stillness! Through all eternity the state impossible to the soul is repose!—So again thou art in thy native land?”

“And for what end, Prophetess? I remember, when but an infant, who till then had enjoyed the common air and the daily sun, thou didst rob me evermore of childhood and youth. For thou didst say to my father, that ‘dark was the woof of my fate, and that its most glorious hour should be its last!’”

“But thou wert surely too childlike, (see thee now as thou wert then, stretched on the grass, and playing with thy father’s falcon!)—too childlike to heed my words.”

“Does the new ground reject the germs of the sower, or the young heart the first lessons of wonder and awe? Since then, Prophetess, Night hath been my comrade, and Death my familiar. Rememberest thou again the hour when, stealing, a boy, from Harold’s house in his absence—the night ere I left my land—I stood on this mound by thy side? Then did I tell thee that the sole soft thought that relieved the bitterness of my soul, when all the rest of my kinsfolk seemed to behold in me but the heir of Sweyn, the outlaw and homicide, was the love that I bore to Harold; but that that love itself was mournful and bodeful as the hwata 209 of distant sorrow. And thou didst take me, O Prophetess, to thy bosom, and thy cold kiss touched my lips and my brow; and there, beside this altar and grave-mound, by leaf and by water, by staff and by song, thou didst bid me take comfort; for that as the mouse gnawed the toils of the lion, so the exile obscure should deliver from peril the pride and the prince of my House—that, from that hour with the skein of his fate should mine be entwined; and his fate was that of kings and of kingdoms. And then, when the joy flushed my cheek, and methought youth came back in warmth to the night of my soul—then, Hilda, I asked thee if my life would be spared till I had redeemed the name of my father. Thy seidstaff passed over the leaves that, burning with fire-sparks, symbolled the life of the man, and from the third leaf the flame leaped up and died; and again a voice from thy breast, hollow, as if borne from a hill-top afar, made answer, ‘At thine entrance to manhood life bursts into blaze, and shrivels up into ashes.’ So I knew that the doom of the infant still weighed unannealed on the years of the man; and I come here to my native land as to glory and the grave. But,” said the young man, with a wild enthusiasm, “still with mine links the fate which is loftiest in England; and the rill and the river shall rush in one to the Terrible Sea.”

“I know not that,” answered Hilda, pale, as if in awe of herself: “for never yet hath the rune, or the fount or the tomb, revealed to me clear and distinct the close of the great course of Harold; only know I through his own stars his glory and greatness; and where glory is dim, and greatness is menaced, I know it but from the stars of others, the rays of whose influence blend with his own. So long, at least, as the fair and the pure one keeps watch in the still House of Life, the dark and the troubled one cannot wholly prevail. For Edith is given to Harold as the Fylgia, that noiselessly blesses and saves: and thou—” Hilda checked herself, and lowered her hood over her face, so that it suddenly became invisible.

“And I?” asked Haco, moving near to her side.

“Away, son of Sweyn; thy feet trample the grave of the mighty dead!”

Then Hilda lingered no longer, but took her way towards the house. Haco’s eye followed her in silence. The cattle, grazing in the great space of the crumbling peristyle, looked up as she passed; the watch-dogs, wandering through the star-lit columns, came snorting round their mistress. And when she had vanished within the house, Haco turned to his steed:

“What matters,” he murmured, “the answer which the Vala cannot or dare not give? To me is not destined the love of woman, nor the ambition of life. All I know of human affection binds me to Harold; all I know of human ambition is to share in his fate. This love is strong as hate, and terrible as doom,—it is jealous, it admits no rival. As the shell and the sea-weed interlaced together, we are dashed on the rushing surge; whither? oh, whither?”

CHAPTER IV

“I tell thee, Hilda,” said the Earl, impatiently, “I tell thee that I renounce henceforth all faith save in Him whose ways are concealed from our eyes. Thy seid and thy galdra have not guarded me against peril, nor armed me against sin. Nay, perchance—but peace: I will no more tempt the dark art, I will no more seek to disentangle the awful truth from the juggling lie. All so foretold me I will seek to forget,—hope from no prophecy, fear from no warning. Let the soul go to the future under the shadow of God!”

“Pass on thy way as thou wilt, its goal is the same, whether seen or unmarked. Peradventure thou art wise,” said the Vala, gloomily.

“For my country’s sake, heaven be my witness, not my own,” resumed the Earl, “I have blotted my conscience and sullied my truth. My country alone can redeem me, by taking my life as a thing hallowed evermore to her service. Selfish ambition do I lay aside, selfish power shall tempt me no more; lost is the charm that I beheld in a throne, and, save for Edith—”

“No! not even for Edith,” cried the betrothed, advancing, “not even for Edith shalt thou listen to other voice than that of thy country and thy soul.”

The Earl turned round abruptly, and his eyes were moist. “O Hilda,” he cried, “see henceforth my only Vala; let that noble heart alone interpret to us the oracles of the future.”

The next day Harold returned with Haco and a numerous train of his house-carles to the city. Their ride was as silent as that of the day before; but on reaching Southwark, Harold turned away from the bridge towards the left, gained the river-side, and dismounted at the house of one of his lithsmen (a franklin, or freed ceorl). Leaving there his horse, he summoned a boat, and, with Haco, was rowed over towards the fortified palace which then rose towards the west of London, jutting into the Thames, and which seems to have formed the outwork of the old Roman city. The palace, of remotest antiquity, and blending all work and architecture, Roman, Saxon, and Danish, had been repaired by Canute; and from a high window in the upper story, where were the royal apartments, the body of the traitor Edric Streone (the founder of the house of Godwin) had been thrown into the river.

“Whither go we, Harold?” asked the son of Sweyn.

“We go to visit the young Atheling, the natural heir to the Saxon throne,” replied Harold in a firm voice. “He lodges in the old palace of our kings.”

“They say in Normandy that the boy is imbecile.”

“That is not true,” returned Harold. “I will present thee to him,—judge.”

Haco mused a moment and said:

“Methinks I divine thy purpose; is it not formed on the sudden, Harold?”

“It was the counsel of Edith,” answered Harold, with evident emotion. “And yet, if that counsel prevail, I may lose the power to soften the Church and to call her mine.”

“So thou wouldest sacrifice even Edith for thy country.”

“Since I have sinned, methinks I could,” said the proud man humbly.

The boat shot into a little creek, or rather canal, which then ran inland, beside the black and rotting walls of the fort. The two Earl-born leapt ashore, passed under a Roman arch, entered a court the interior of which was rudely filled up by early Saxon habitations of rough timber work, already, since the time of Canute, falling into decay, (as all things did which came under the care of Edward,) and mounting a stair that ran along the outside of the house, gained a low narrow door, which stood open. In the passage within were one or two of the King’s house-carles who had been assigned to the young Atheling, with liveries of blue and Danish axes, and some four or five German servitors, who had attended his father from the Emperor’s court. One of these last ushered the noble Saxons into a low, forlorn ante-hall; and there, to Harold’s surprise they found Alred the Archbishop of York, and three thegns of high rank, and of lineage ancient and purely Saxon.

Alred approached Harold with a faint smile on his benign face:

“Methinks, and may I think aright!—thou comest hither with the same purpose as myself, and you noble thegns.”

“And that purpose?”

“Is to see and to judge calmly, if, despite his years, we may find in the descendant of the Ironsides such a prince as we may commend to our decaying King as his heir, and to the Witan as a chief fit to defend the land.”

“Thou speakest the cause of my own coming. With your ears will I hear, with your eyes will I see; as ye judge, will judge I,” said Harold, drawing the prelate towards the thegns, so that they might hear his answer.

The chiefs, who belonged to a party that had often opposed Godwin’s House, had exchanged looks of fear and trouble when Harold entered; but at his words their frank faces showed equal surprise and pleasure.

Harold presented to them his nephew, with whose grave dignity of bearing beyond his years they were favourably impressed, though the good bishop sighed when he saw in his face the sombre beauty of the guilty sire. The group then conversed anxiously on the declining health of the King, the disturbed state of the realm, and the expediency, if possible, of uniting all suffrages in favour of the fittest successor. And in Harold’s voice and manner, as in Harold’s heart, there was nought that seemed conscious of his own mighty stake and just hopes in that election. But as time wore, the faces of the thegns grew overcast; proud men and great satraps 210 were they, and they liked it ill that the boy-prince kept them so long in the dismal ante-room.

At length the German officer, who had gone to announce their coming, returned; and in words, intelligible indeed from the affinity between Saxon and German, but still disagreeably foreign to English ears, requested them to follow him into the presence of the Atheling.

In a room yet retaining the rude splendour with which it had been invested by Canute, a handsome boy, about the age of thirteen or fourteen, but seeming much younger, was engaged in the construction of a stuffed bird, a lure for a young hawk that stood blindfold on its perch. The employment made so habitual a part of the serious education of youth, that the thegns smoothed their brows at the sight, and deemed the boy worthily occupied. At another end of the room, a grave Norman priest was seated at a table on which were books and writing implements; he was the tutor commissioned by Edward to teach Norman tongue and saintly lore to the Atheling. A profusion of toys strewed the floor, and some children of Edgar’s own age were playing with them. His little sister Margaret 211 was seated seriously, apart from all the other children, and employed in needlework.

When Alred approached the Atheling, with a blending of reverent obeisance and paternal cordiality, the boy carelessly cried, in a barbarous jargon, half German, half Norman-French:

“There, come not too near, you scare my hawk. What are you doing? You trample my toys, which the good Norman bishop William sent me as a gift from the Duke. Art thou blind, man?”

“My son,” said the prelate kindly, “these are the things of childhood—childhood ends sooner with princes than with common men. Leave thy lure and thy toys, and welcome these noble thegns, and address them, so please you, in our own Saxon tongue.”

“Saxon tongue!—language of villeins! not I. Little do I know of it, save to scold a ceorl or a nurse. King Edward did not tell me to learn Saxon, but Norman! and Godfroi yonder says, that if I know Norman well, Duke William will make me his knight. But I don’t desire to learn anything more to-day.” And the child turned peevishly from thegn and prelate.

The three Saxon lords interchanged looks of profound displeasure and proud disgust. But Harold, with an effort over himself, approached, and said winningly:

“Edgar the Atheling, thou art not so young but thou knowest already that the great live for others. Wilt thou not be proud to live for this fair country, and these noble men, and to speak the language of Alfred the Great?”

“Alfred the Great! they always weary me with Alfred the Great,” said the boy, pouting. “Alfred the Great, he is the plague of my life! if I am Atheling, men are to live for me, not I for them; and if you tease me any more, I will run away to Duke William in Rouen; Godfroi says I shall never be teased there!”

So saying, already tired of hawk and lure, the child threw himself on the floor with the other children, and snatched the toys from their hands.

The serious Margaret then rose quietly, and went to her brother, and said, in good Saxon:

“Fie! if you behave thus, I shall call you NIDDERING!” At the threat of that word, the vilest in the language—that word which the lowest ceorl would forfeit life rather than endure—a threat applied to the Atheling of England, the descendant of Saxon heroes—the three thegns drew close, and watched the boy, hoping to see that he would start to his feet with wrath and in shame.

“Call me what you will, silly sister,” said the child, indifferently, “I am not so Saxon as to care for your ceorlish Saxon names.”

“Enow,” cried the proudest and greatest of the thegns, his very moustache curling with ire. “He who can be called niddering shall never be crowned king!”

“I don’t want to be crowned king, rude man, with your laidly moustache: I want to be made knight, and have banderol and baldric.—Go away!”

“We go, son,” said Alred, mournfully.

And with slow and tottering step he moved to the door; there he halted, turned back,—and the child was pointing at him in mimicry, while Godfroi, the Norman tutor, smiled as in pleasure. The prelate shook his head, and the group gained again the ante-hall.

“Fit leader of bearded men! fit king for the Saxon land!” cried a thegn. “No more of your Atheling, Alred my father!”

“No more of him, indeed!” said the prelate, mournfully. “It is but the fault of his nurture and rearing,—a neglected childhood, a Norman tutor, German hirelings. We may remould yet the pliant clay,” said Harold.

“Nay,” returned Alred, “no leisure for such hopes, no time to undo what is done by circumstance, and, I fear, by nature. Ere the year is out the throne will stand empty in our halls.”

“Who then,” said Haco, abruptly, “who then,—(pardon the ignorance of youth wasted in captivity abroad!) who then, failing the Atheling, will save this realm from the Norman Duke, who, I know well, counts on it as the reaper on the harvest ripening to his sickle?”

“Alas, who then?” murmured Alred.

“Who then?” cried the three thegns, with one voice, “why the worthiest, the wisest, the bravest! Stand forth, Harold the Earl, Thou art the man!” And without awaiting his answer, they strode from the hall.