When consciousness came to my eyes again, everything around me was altered and strange. The very air I drew in with my faint breaths had a taste of the unknown about it, an impalpable something that was not before, speaking of change and novelty. As for surroundings, it was only dimly that any fashioned themselves before those dull and sleepy eyes of mine that hesitated, as they drowsily turned about, whether to pronounce this object and that true material substance, or still the idle fantasy of dreams.
As time went on certainty developed out of doubt, and I found myself speculating on as strangely furnished a chamber as any one was ever in. All round the wall hung the implements of many occupations in bunches and knots. Here the rude tools of husbandry were laid aside, the mattock and the flail; the woodman’s axe and the neatherd’s goad, just as though they had been suspended on the wall by some invisible laborer after a good day’s work. Yonder were a sheaf of arrows and a stout bow strangely shaped, a hunting horn, and there again a long withy peeled for fishing, and a broad, rusty iron sword (that truly looked as if it had not been used for some time) over against a leash for dogs, and a herdsman’s cowl, with other strange things festooning the walls of this dim little place.
Among these possessions of some many-minded men were shelves I noted with clay vessels of sorts upon them, and bunches of dried herbs and roots and apples put by for the winter, and, more curious still, in the safest niche away in the quietest corner were stored up in many tiers more than a score of vellums and manuscripts, all neatly rolled and tagged with colored ribbons, and wound in parchments and embroidered gold and colored leathers, forming such a library of learning as only the very studious could possess in those days. Beyond them were flasks and essences, and dried herbs, and ink-horns, and sheafs of uncut reeds for writing, with such other various items as astonished me by their incongruous complexity and novelty.
All these lay in the shadows most commendable to my weakly eyes. As for the center of the room, I now began to notice it was a brilliant golden haze, a nebulous cloud of yellow light, to my enfeebled sense without form or meaning, whence emerged constantly a thin metallic hammering, as though it might be some kindly invisible spirit were forging a golden idea into a human hope behind that shining veil.
I shut my eyes for a minute or two to rest them, and then looked again. The haze had now concentrated itself into a circle of light, radiating, as I perceived, from a lamp hung from the low roof, and under that pale, modest radiance, seated at a trestle table, was a venerable white-bearded old man. Never, so far, perhaps, in long centuries of intercourse with brave but licentious peoples, had a face like his been before me. It was restful to look at, a new page in history it seemed, full of a peace which had hitherto passed all understanding and a dignity beyond description or definition. Before him, on the board, was a brilliant mass of shining white metal, and, as he eagerly bent over it, absorbed in his work, his thin and scholarly hands, wielding a chisel and a mallet and obeying the art that was in his soul, caused the rhythmed hammering I had noticed, while they forced with loving zeal the bright chips and spiral flakes from the splendid dazzling crucifix he was shaping.
And all behind that lean and kindly anchorite the black shadows flickered on the walls of his lonely cell, and his little fire of sticks burned dimly on the open hearth, and the shining dust of his labor sparkled in his grizzly beard as brightly as the reverent pleasure in his eyes while the symbol before him took form and shape.
So pleasant was he to look upon, I could have left him long undisturbed, but presently a sigh involuntarily escaped me. Thereon, looking up for the first time from his work, the recluse peered all round him into the recesses, and, seeing nothing, fell to his task once more. Again I sighed, and then he arose without emotion or fear, and stared intently into the shadows where I lay. In vain I essayed to speak—my tongue clove to my mouth, and naught but a husky rattle broke the stillness. At that sound he took down the lamp and came forward, wonder and astonishment working in his face; and when, as the light shone on me, with a great effort my head was turned to one side, even that placid monk started back and stood trembling a little by the table.
But he soon mastered his weakness and advanced again, muttering, as he did so, excitedly to himself, “He was right! He was right!” And when at last my tongue was loosened I said:
“Who was right, thou gray-bearded chiseler?”
“Who? Why, Alfred. Alfred, the son of Ethelwulf, the son of Egbert—Alfred the great Thane of England!”
“One of your British Princelings, I suppose,” I muttered huskily. “And wherein was he so right?”
“He was right, O marvelous returner from the dim seas of the past, in that he prophesied your return! To him you owe this shelter and preservation.”
“All this may be so, my host,” I replied, beginning to feel more myself again; “but it matters not. I fought a stubborn fight last night, and I was carried away by a midnight torrent. If you have sheltered and dried me, and”—with a sudden sinking of my voice—“if you have protected the little maid I had with me, then I am grateful to you, Alfred or no Alfred,” and I threw off a mountain of moldy-seeming rags and coverlets, and staggered up.
But that worthy monk was absolutely dumb with astonishment, and as I tottered to my feet, holding out to him a gaunt, trembling hand, brown with the dust of ages, and drunkenly reeled across his floor, he edged away, while the long hair of his silvery head bristled with wonder.
“My son, my son!” he gasped at length, over the shining crucifix; “this is not so; none of us know the beginning of that sleep you have slept; that night of yours is of immeasurable antiquity. History has forgotten your very battles, and your maid, I fear, has long since passed into common, immaterial dust.”
This was too much, and suddenly, overwhelmed by the tide of hot Phœnician passion, I shook my fist in his face, and swearing in my bitter Roman that he lied, that he was a grizzle-bearded villain with a heart as black as his tongue, I staggered to the doorway, and pushing wide the hinges tottered out on to a grassy promontory just as the primrose flush of day was breaking over the hilltops. There, holding on to a post, for my legs were very weak and frail, and peering into the purple shadows, I lifted my voice in anger and fear, and shouted in that green loneliness, “Numidea! Numidea!” then waited with a beating, beating heart until—thin, sullen, derisive—from the hills across the ravine came back the soulless response:
“Numidea! Numidea!”
I could not believe it. I would not think they could not hear, and stamping in my impatience, “Electra!” I shouted, “Numidea! ’tis Phra—Phra the friendless who calls to you!” then again bent an ear to listen, until, from the void shadows of the purple hills, through the pale vapors of the morning mist, there came again in melancholy-wise the answer:
“’Tis Phra, Phra the friendless who calls to you!”—and I dropped my face into my hands and bent my head and dimly knew then that I was jettisoned once more on the shore of some unknown and distant time!
It was of no use to grieve; and when the kindly hand of the monk was placed upon my shoulder I submitted to his will, and was led back to the cell, and there he gave me to drink of a sweet, thin decoction that greatly soothed these high-strung nerves.
Then many were the questions that studious man would have me answer, and busy his wonder and awe at my assertions.
“What Emperor rules here now?” I said, lying melancholy on my elbow on the couch.
“None, my son. There are no Emperors but the Sovereign Pontiff now—may St. Peter be his guide!”
“No Emperor! Why, old man, Honorius held sway in Rome that night I went to sleep!”
“Honorius!” said the monk, incredulously stopping his excited pacings to stare at me; and he took down a portly tome of history and ran his fingers over the leaves, until, about midway through that volume, they settled on a passage.
“Look! look! you marvelous man!” he cried; “all this was history before you slumbered; and all this, nigh as much again, has been added while you slept! Five hundred years of solid life!—a thousand changing seasons has the germ of existence been dormant in that mighty bulk of yours! Oh! ’tis past belief, and had you not been my lodger for so long a time, though all so short in comparison, I would not hear of it.”
“And how has the world spun all this period?” I said, with dense persistence. “Who is Consul now in Gaul? And are all my jolly friends of the Tenth Legion still quartered where I left them?”—and I mentioned the name of the town by which Electra lived.
“I tell thee, youth,” the priest replied quite hotly, “there is no Consul, there are no legions. All your barbarous Romans are long since swept to hell, and the noble Harold is here anointed King of Saxon England.”
“I never heard of him,” I said coldly.
“Perhaps not, but, by the cowl of St. Dunstan! he flourishes nevertheless,” responded my saintly entertainer.
“And is this Harold of yours successor to the other Thane, Alfred, whom you describe as taking such a kindly interest in me?”
“Yes; but many generations separate them. It was the great Bretwalda you have mentioned who, tradition says, once found you inanimate, yet living, in a fisherman’s hut where he sheltered one day from a storm, and, struck by the marvel and the tale of the poor folk that their ancestors had long ago dragged you from a swollen river in their nets, and that you slumbered on without alteration or change from year to year, from father to son, there on your dusty shelf in their peat smoke and broken gear, he bought and gave you to the holy Prelate at the blessed Cathedral of Canterbury, whence you came a few months ago into my hands. All else there is to know, my strangely gifted son,” the monk went on, “is locked in the darkness of that long slumber, and such acts of your other life as your vacant mind may recall.”
This seemed a wonderful thing, very briefly told, but it was obviously all there was to hear, and sufficient after a style. The old man said that, having a mind for curiosities, and observing me once in danger of being broken up as rubbish by careless hands, he had claimed me, and brought the strange living mummy here to his cell “on the hill Senlac, by the narrow English straits.”
“That, inscrutable one,” he added with a twinkle in his eye, “was only some months ago, and the mess I made my hut in cleaning and wiping you down was wonderful. Yonder little stream you hear prattling in the valley ran dusty for hours with your washings, and your form was one shapeless bulk of cobwebs and dishonored wrappings. Many a time as I peeled from you the alternate layers of peat smoke and rags with which generations of neglect had shrouded that body, did I think to roll you into the valley as you were, and see what proportions the weather and the crows would make of it. But better counsels prevailed, and for seven days you have been free and daily rubbed with scented oils!”
I thanked him meetly, and hoped I had not been a reluctant patient?
“A more docile never breathed.”
“Not an expensive lodger afterward?”
“Never was there one more frugal, nor one who less criticized his entertainment!”
Then it was the good monk’s turn, and his wise and kindly eyes sparkled with pleasure and astonishment as I told him in gratitude such tales of the early times—drew for him such brilliant, fiery pictures on the dark background of the past—illumined and vivified his dry histories with the colors of my awakening memory, and set all the withered puppets of his chronicles a-dancing in the tinsel and the glitter of their actual lives; until, over the lintel of his doorway and under the lappets of his roof, there came the first thin, fine fingers of the morning sunshine, trickling into our dim arena thronged thus with shadowy imagery, and playing lovingly, about the great silver crucifix that lay thus ablaze under it in the gloom! Then I slept again for two days and two nights as lightly and happily as a child.
When I awoke I was both hungry and well. Indeed, it was the scent of breakfast that roused me. But, alas! the meal was none of mine. The little table had been cleared, and at it, on clean white napkins, were places for three or four people. There were wooden platters with steel knives upon them, oaten loaves, great wooden tankards of wine and mead, with fish and fowl flesh in abundance. Surely my entertainer was going to turn out a jolly fellow, now the night’s vigils were over! But as I speculated in my retired couch there fell the beat of marching men, a clatter of arms outside and a shouting of many voices in clamorous welcome, the ringing of stirrup-irons and the champing of bits, and then, to my infinite astonishment, in stalked as comely a man as I had ever seen, and leading by the hand a fair, pale, black-haired girl, who looked jaded and red in her eyes.
“There, my Adeliza,” he said; “now dry those lashes of yours and cheer up. What! A Norman girl like you, and weeping because two hosts stand faced for battle! What will our Saxon maids say to these shining drops?”
“Oh, Harold!” the girl exclaimed, “it is not conflict I fear, or I would not have come hither to you, braving your anger; but think of the luckless chance that brings my father from Normandy in arms against my Saxon love! Think of my fears, think how I dread that either side should win—surely grief so complicated should claim pardon for these simple tears.”
“Well, well,” said he—whom I, unobserved in the shadows, now recognized as the English monarch himself—“if we are bound to die, we can do so but once, and at least we will breakfast first,” and down he sat, signing the girl to get herself another stool in rough Saxon manner.
And a very good meal he made of it, putting away the toasted ortolans and cheese, and waging war with his fingers and dagger upon all the viands, washing them down with constant mighty draughts from the wooden flagons, and this all in a jolly, light-hearted way that was very captivating. Ever and anon he called to the “churls” outside, or gave a hasty order to his captains with his mouth full of meat and bread, or put some dainty morsel into the idle fingers of his damsel, as though breakfasting was the chief thing in life, and his kingdom were not tottering to the martial tread of an invader.
But even gallant Harold, the last King of the Saxons, had finished presently, and then donning his pointed casque and his flowing silken-filigreed cloak, thrusting his whinger into his jeweled girdle, he threw his round steel target on his back—then held out both his arms. Whether or not his Norman love, the reluctant seal of a broken promise, had always loved him, it is not for me to say, but, woman-like, she loved him at the losing, and flew to him and was enfolded tight into his ample chest, and mixed her raven tresses with his yellow English hair, and sobbed and clung to him, and took and gave a hundred kisses, and was so sweet and tearful that my inmost heart was moved.
When Harold had gone out, and when presently the clatter of arms and shouting proved he was moving off to the field of eventful battle, Adeliza the proud bowed her head upon the table, and abandoned herself to so wild a grief that I was greatly impelled to rise and comfort her. But she would not be consoled, even by the ministrations of two of her waiting maidens, who soon entered the place; and seeing this I took an opportunity when all three were blending their tears to slip out into the open air.
There I found my friendly Saxon monk in great tribulation, with a fragment of vellum in his hand.
“Ah, my son,” he said—“the very man. Look here, the air is heavy with event. Yonder, under the sheen of the sun, William of Normandy is encamped with sixty thousand of his cruel adventurers, and there, down there among the trees, you see the gallant Harold and his straggling array, sorry and muddy with long marching, on the way to oppose them. But the King has not half his force with him, nor a fourth as many as he needs! Take this vellum, and, if you ever put a buskin in speed to the grass, run now for the credit of England and for the sake of history—run for that ridge away there behind us, where you will find the good Earl of Mercia and several thousand men encamped—and, if not asleep, most probably stuffing themselves with food and drink,” he added bitterly under his breath. “Give him this, and say Harold will not be persuaded, say that unless the reserves march at once the fight will be fought without them—and then I think Dane and Saxon will be chaff before the wind of retribution. Run! my son—run for the good cause, and for Saxon England!”
Without a word I took the vellum and crammed it into my bosom and spun round on my heels and fled down the hillside, and breasted the dewy tangles of fern and brambles, and glided through the thickets, and flying from ridge to ridge, and leaping and running as though the silver wings of Mercury were on my heels, in an hour I dashed up the far hillside, and, panting and exhausted, threw down the missive under the tawny beard of the great Earl himself.
That scion of Saxon royalty was, as the monk had foreseen, absorbed in the first meal of the day, but he was too much of a soldier, though, like all his race, a desperate good trencherman, to let such a matter as my errand grow cold, and no sooner had he read the scroll and put me a shrewd question or two than the order went forth for his detachments to arm and march at once. But only a captain of many fights knows how slow reluctant troops can be in such case. Surely, I thought, as I stood by with crossed arms watching the preparations it was none of my business to help—surely a nation, though gallant enough, which quits its breakfast board so tardily, and takes such a perilous time to cross-garter its legs, and buckle on its blades, and peak its beard, and tag out its baldric so nicely, when the invader is on foot—surely such a nation is ripe to the fall! And these comely English troops were doubly weary this morning, for they were fresh, as one of them told me, from a hard fight in the far north of the kingdom, where Harold had just overthrown and slain Hardrada, King of Norway, and the unduteous Tosti, Harold’s own brother. Less wonder, then, I found them travel-stained and weary, no marvel for the once they were so slow to my fatal invitation.
It was noon before the English Earl led off the van of his men, and an hour later before I had seen the last of them out of the camp and followed reflective in the rear—a place that never yet sorted with my mood—wondering, with the happy impartiality of my circumstances, whether it were best this morning to be invader or invaded.
When we had gone a mile or two through the leafy tangles, a hush fell upon the troop with which I rode, and then with a shout we burst into a run, for up from the valley beyond came the unmistakable sound of conflict and turmoil. We breasted the last ridge, I and two hundred men, and there, suddenly emerging into the open, was the bloody valley of Senlac beneath us, and the sunny autumn sea beyond, and at our feet right and left the wail and glitter and dust of nearly finished battle—Harold had fought without us, and we saw the quick-coming forfeit he had to pay.
The unhappy Saxons down there on the pleasant grassy undulations and among the yellow gorse and ling stood to it like warriors of good mettle, but already the day was lost. The Earl and his tardy troops had been merged into the general catastrophe, and my handful would have been of naught avail. The English array was broken and formless, galled by the swarming Norman bowmen, the twang of whose strings we could mark even up here, and fiercely assailed by foot and horsemen. In the center alone the English stood stubbornly shoulder to shoulder around the peaked flag, at whose foot Harold himself was grimly repelling the ceaseless onset of the foeman.
But alas for Harold, alas for the curly-headed son of Ethelwulf, and all the Princes and Peers with him!
We saw a mighty mass of foreign cavalry creeping round the shoulder of the hill, like the shadow of a raincloud upon a sunny landscape: we saw the thousand gonfalons of the spoilers fluttering in the wind: we saw the glitter on the great throng of northern chivalry that crowded after the black charger of William of Normandy and the sacred flag—accursed ensign—that Toustain held aloft: we saw their sweeping charge, and then when it was passed, the battle was gone and done, the Saxon power was a hundred little groups dying bravely in different corners of the field.
The men with me that luckless afternoon melted away into the woods, and I turned my steps once more to the little hill above Senlac and my hermit’s cell.
There the ill news had been brought by a wounded soldier, and the women were filling the evening air with cries and weeping. All that night they wept and wailed, Harold’s wife leading them, and when dawning came nothing would serve but she must go and find her husband’s body. Much the good monk tried to dissuade her, but to no purpose, and swathing herself in a man’s long cloak, with one fair maiden likewise disguised, and me for a guide, before there was yet any light in the sky the brave Norman girl set out.
And sorry was our errand and grim our success. The field of battle was deserted, save of dead and dying men. On the dark wind of the night went up to heaven from it a great fitful groan, as all the wounded groaned in unison to their unseen miseries. Alas! those tender charges of mine had never seen till now the harvest field of war laid out with its swaths of dead and dying! Often they hesitated on that gloomy walk and hid their faces as the fitful clouds drifted over the scene, and the changing light and shadows seemed to put a struggling ghastly life into the heaps of mangled corpses. Everywhere, as we threaded the mazes of destruction or stepped unwitting in the darkness into pools of blood and mire, were dead warriors in every shape and contortion, lying all asprawl, or piled up one on top of another, or sleeping pleasantly in dreamless dissolution against the red sides of stricken horses. And many were the pale, blood-besmeared faces of Princes and chiefs my white-faced ladies turned up to the starlight, and many were the sodden yellow curls they lifted with icy fingers from the dead faces of thanes and franklins, until in an hour the Norman girl, who had gone a little apart from us, suddenly stood still, and then up to the clear, black vault of heaven there went such a clear, piercing shriek as hushed even the very midnight sorrows of the battlefield itself.
The King was found!
And Editha, the handmaiden, too, made her find presently, for there, over the dead Prince’s feet, their left hands still clasping each as when they had died, were her father and her two stalwart brothers.
Never did silenter courtiers than we six sit at a monarch’s feet until the day should break; and then we who lived covered the comely faces with the hems of their Saxon tunics, and were away as fast as we could go to the Norman camp, that the poor Princess-girl might beg a trophy of her victorious father.
We entered the camp without harm, but had to stand by until the Conqueror should leave his tent and enter the rough shelter that had already been erected for him. Here, while we waited, a young knight, guessing Editha’s sex through her long cloak, roughly pulled down the kerchief she was holding across her face. Whereupon I struck him so heavily with my fist that, for a minute, he reeled back against the horse he was leading, and then out came his falchion, and out came mine, and we fell upon each other most heartily.
But before a dozen passes had been made the bystanders separated us, and at the same moment the Normans set up a shout, and the brand-new English tyrant strode out of his tent, and, encircled by a glittering throng, entered the open audience-hall. Adeliza dropped her white veil as he sat himself down, and called to him, and ran to the foot of his chair, and wept and knelt, so that even the stern son of Robert the Devil was moved, and took her to him, and stroked her hair, and soothed and called her, in Norman-French, his pretty daughter, and promised her the first boon she could think of.
And that boon was the body of Harold Infelix.
Turn back the pages of history, and you will see that she had her wish, and Waltham Abbey its kingly patron.[1]
Meanwhile, a knight led the weeping Princess away to her father’s tent, but when I and Editha would have followed two iron-coated rogues crossed their halberds in our path.
“Not so fast there, my bulky champion!” called William the Bastard to me. “What is this I heard about your striking a Norman for glancing at yonder silly Saxon wench? By St. Denis! your girls will have to learn to be more lenient! Whence come you? What was your father’s name?”
“I hardly know,” I said, without thinking.
“Ah! a too common ignorance nowadays!” sneered the Conqueror, turning to his laughing knights.
Whereon wrathfully I replied: “At least, my father never mistook, under cover of the night, a serving-wench for a Princess!”
The shaft took the soldier in a very tender spot, and his naturally sallow countenance blanched slowly to a hideous yellow as a smile went round the steel circle of his martial courtiers at my too telling answer. Yet even then I could not but do his iron will justice for the stern resolution with which the passion was restrained in that cold and cruel face, and when he turned and spoke in the ear of his marshal standing near there was no tremor of anger or compassion in the inflexible voice with which he ordered me to be taken outside and hanged “to the nearest tree that will bear him” in ten minutes.
“As for the Saxon wench——Here, Des Ormeux”—turning to a grim villain in steel harness at his side—“this girl has a good fief, they say: she and it are yours for the asking!”
“My mighty liege,” said the Norman, dropping on one knee, “never was a gift more generously given. I will hold the land to your eternal service, and make the maid free of my tent to-day, and to-morrow we will look up a priest for the easing of her conscience.”
Loudly the assembled soldiers laughed as Des Ormeux pounced upon the shrieking Editha and bore her out of one door, while, in spite of my fierce struggles to get at him, I was hustled into the open from another.
They dragged me into a green avenue between the huts of the invader’s camp while they went for a rope to hang me with. And as I stood thus loosely guarded and waiting among them, down the Norman ravisher came pacing toward us on his war-horse, bound toward his tent, with my white Saxon flower fast gripped in front of him.
Oh, but he was proud to think himself possessed of a slice of fair English soil so easily, and to have his courtship made so simple for him, and he looked this way and that, with an accursed grin upon his face, no more heeding the tears and struggles of his victim than the falcon cares for the stricken pigeon’s throes. When they came opposite to us Editha saw me and threw out her hands and shrieked to me, and, when I turned away my eyes and did not move, surely it seemed as though her heart would have broken.
Three more paces the war-horse made, and then, with the spring of a leopard thirsting for blood, I was alongside of him, another bound and I was on the crupper behind, and there, quicker than thought, quicker than the lightning strikes down the pine-tree, I had lifted the Norman’s steel shoulder-plate, and stabbed him with my long, keen dagger so fiercely in the back that the point came out under his mid-rib, and the red blood spurted to his horse’s ears. Quicker, too, than it takes to tell I had gripped the maiden from the spoiler’s dying hands, and, pushing his bloody body from the saddle, had thrown my own legs over the crescent peak, and before the gaping scullion soldiers comprehended my bold stroke for freedom I had turned the horse’s head and was thundering through the camp toward the free green woods beyond.
And we reached them safely; a rascal or two let fly their cross-bows at us as we fled by, and I heard the bolts hum merrily past my ears, but they did no harm; and there was mounting and galloping and shouting, but the mailed Normans were wonderfully slow in their stirrups! I laughed to see them scrambling and struggling into their seats, two or three men to every warrior who got safely up, and we soon left them far behind. Down into the dip we rode, my good horse spurning in his stride the still fresh bodies of yesterday’s fighters, and spinning the empty helmets, and clattering through all the broken litter of the bitter contest, until we swept up the inland slopes into the stunted birch and hazels, and then—turning for a moment to shake my fist at the nearest of the distant Normans—I headed into the leafy shelter, and was speedily free from all chance of pursuit.
Then, and not before, was there time to take a glance at my beautiful prize, lying so gentle and light upon my breast. Alas! every tint of color had gone from her fair features, and she lay there in my arms, fainting and pulseless. I loosened her neckscarf. “So!” I said, “fair Saxon blossom, this is destiny, and you and I are henceforth to be joined together by the wondrous links of fate”—and, stooping down as we paced through the pleasant green and white flicker of the silent wood, I endorsed the immutable will of chance with a kiss upon her forehead.
Presently she recovered, and all that day we rode forward through the endless vistas of the southern woods by bridle tracks and swine paths, until at nightfall, far from other shelters, we halted among the rocks and hollows of a little eminence. No doubt my gentle comrade would have preferred a more peopled habitation, but there was none in all that mighty wilderness, so she, like a wise girl, submitted without complaint to that which she could not avoid.
There was naught much to tell you of this evening, but it lives forever in my memory for one particular which consorted strangely with the thoughts the flight with and rescue of Editha had aroused. I had found her a roomy hollow in the rocks, and there had cut with my dagger and made a bed of rushes, built a fire, and got her some roots to eat, and when darkness fell we talked for a time by the cheerful blaze.
Without surprise I heard that though true Saxon in name and face, there was some British blood in her veins—a fact, indeed, of which I had been certain without her assurance. Then she went on to tell, with tearful pauses, of the home and broad lands of which she was now lady paramount, as well as of the gallant kinsman lying out yonder dead in the night dew, and wept and sighed in gentle melancholy, yet without the wild, inconsolable grief latter times have taught to women, until presently those tearful blue eyes grew heavier and heavier, and the shapely chin dropped in grief and weariness upon her white breast, and Editha of Voewood slept in the hands of the stranger.
Then I went out and looked at the blackness of the night. Over the somber forest the shadowy pall of the evening was spread, and a thousand stars gleamed brightly on every hand. Very still and strange was that unbroken fastness after the red turmoil of yesterday, with nothing disturbing the silence but the cry of an owl to its mate across the coppices, the tinkle of a falling streamlet, and now and then the long, hungry howling of a wolf, or, nearer by, the sharp barking of the foxes. I fed my horse, then went in and pulled the fire together, and fell a-ruminating, my chin on my hands, upon a hundred episodes of happiness and fear.
“Oh, strange eternal powers who set the goings and comings of humanity, what is the meaning of this wild riddle you are reading me?” I said presently aloud to myself. “Oh! Hapi and Amenti, dark goddesses of the Egyptians—oh! Atropos, Lachesis, Clotho, fatal sisters whom the Romans dread—Mista, Skogula, Zernebock, of these dark Saxon shadows—why am I thus chosen for this uncertain immortality, when will this long drama, this changeful history of my being, end?”
As I muttered thus to myself I glanced at the white girl sleeping in the ruddy blaze, and saw her chest heave, and then—strange to tell, stranger to hear—with a sound like the whisper of a distant sea her lips parted, and there came unmistakably the word:
“Never!”
Perhaps she was but dreaming of that amorous Norman’s fierce proposals, and so again I mused.
“Is it possible some unfinished spell of that red high priestess of the Druids plays this sport with me? Is it possible Blodwen’s abiding affection—stronger than time and changes—accompanies me from age to age in these her sweet ambassadors forever crossing my path? Tell me, you comely sleeper, tell me your embassy, which is it that lasts longest, life or love?”
Slowly again, to my surprise, those lips were parted, and across the silent cavern came, beyond mistake or question, the word—“Love!”
At this very echo of my thoughts I stared hard at her who answered so appropriately, but there could be no doubt Editha was asleep with an unusually deep and perfect forgetfulness, and when I had assured myself of this it was only possible for me to suppose those whispered words were some delusion, the echo of my questioning.
Again I brooded, and then presently looked up, and there—by Thor and Odin! ’twas as I write it—between me and the bare earth and tangled rootlets of the cavern side, over against the fitful sparkle of the fire, was a thin impalpable form that oscillated gently to the draughts creeping along the floor, and grew taller and taller, and took mortal air and shape, and rose out of nebulous indistinctness into a fine ethereal substance, and was clothed and visaged by the concentration of its impalpable material, and there at last, smiling and gentle, in the flicker of the camp-fire, the gray shadow of my British Princess stood before me!
That man was never brave who has not feared, and then for a moment I feared, leaping to my feet and staggering back against the wall under the terrible sweetness of those eyes that burned into my being with a relentless fire that I could not have shunned if I would, and would not if I could. For some time I was thus motionless and fascinated, and then the gentle shadow, who had been regarding me intently, appeared to perceive the cause of my enthrallment, and lifting a shapely arm of lavender-colored essence for a minute veiled the terrible bewitchment of her face. Shrewd, observant shadow! As she did so I was myself again—my blood welled into my empty veins, my heart knocked fiercely at my ribs, and when Blodwen lowered her hand there seemed to me endless enchantment but nothing dreadful in the glance of kindly wonder with which her eyes met mine.
Surely it was as strange an encounter as ever there had been—the little rocky recess all ruddy and shadowy in the dancing flames; the silent white Saxon girl there on the heaped-up rushes, her breast heaving like a summer sea with a long, smooth undulation; and I against the stones, one hand on my dagger and the other outspread fearful on the wall, scarce knowing whether I were brave or not, while over against the eddying smoke—calm, passive, happy, immutable, was that winsome presence, shining in our dusky shelter with a tender violet light, such as was never kindled by mortal means.
When I found voice to speak I poured forth my longings and pent-up spirit in many a reckless question, but to all of them the Princess made no answer. Then I spread my arms and thought to grasp her, and ever as they nearly closed upon her she moved backward, now here and now there, mocking my foolish hope and passing impalpable over the floor, always gentle and compassionate, until the uselessness of the pursuit at last dawned upon me, and I stood irresolute.
I little doubt that immaterial immortal would have mustered courage or strength to speak to me presently, but the sleeping girl sighed heavily at this moment and seemed so ill at ease that, without a thought, I turned to look at her. When my eyes sought the opposite side of the fire again the presence was not half herself: under my very glance she was being absorbed once more by the dusky air. To let her go like that was all against my will, and, leaping to those printless feet, “Princess! Wife!” I called, “stay another moment!” and as I said it I swept my arms round the last vestige of her airy kirtle, and drew into my bosom an armful of empty air!
She had gone, and not a sign was left—not a palm’s breadth of that lovely sheen shone against the wall as I arose ashamed from my knee and noticed Editha was awaking.
“My kind protector,” said that damsel, “I have been feeling so strange—not dreaming quite, but feeling as though some one were borrowing existence of me, yet leaving in my body the blood and pulse of life. Now, how can this be? I must surely have been very tired yesterday.”
“No doubt you were, fair franklin,” I answered. “Yesterday was such a day as well excuses your weariness. Sleep again, and when the sun rises in an hour you shall rise with it as fresh as any of the little birds that already preen themselves.” So she slept—and presently I too.
All the next day we rode on through endless glades and briery paths toward Editha’s home, and as we went, I afoot and she meekly perched upon our mighty Norman charger, I wooed her with a brevity which the times excused, and poured my nimble lover wit into ears accustomed only to the sluggish flattery of woodland thanes and princely swineherds. And first she blushed and would not listen, and then she sighed and switched the low wet boughs of oak and hazel as we passed along, and then she let me say my say with downcast, averted eyes, and a sweet reluctance which told me I might stoutly push the siege.
As we went we picked up now and then a straggling soldier or two from the fight behind us, and now and then a petty chieftain joined us, until presently we wound through the bracken toward Voewood, a very goodly train.
Editha had got a palfrey and I my horse again; but as she neared her home the thought of its desolation weighed heavier and heavier upon her tender nature. She would not eat and would not speak, and at last took her to crying, and so cried until we saw, aglint through the oak-stems, a very fair homestead and ample, with broad lands around, and kine and deer about it, and all that could make it fair and pleasant. This was her Voewood; and when the servants came running to meet us (knowing nothing of the fight or its results, and thinking we were their master and his sons come again) with waving caps and shouts of pleasure, it was too much for the overwrought girl. She threw up her white hands, and, with a cry of pain and grief, slipped fainting from her palfrey before us all.
Then might you have seen a score of saddles featly emptied to the service of the heiress! Down jumped Offa the Dane, whose unchanged doublet was still red to his chin with mud and Norman gore. Down jumped Edred and Egbert, those blue-eyed brothers who had left their lands by the northern sea a month ago to follow Harold’s luckless banner; Torquil, the grim, and Wulfhere of the white beard, sprang to the ground: and Clywin the fair Welsh princeling, and his shadow, Idwal ap Cynan, the harper-warrior, vaulted to their feet—spent and battle-weary as they were, with many another. But, lighter and quicker than any of them, Phra the Phœnician had leaped to earth, and stood there astride of the senseless girl, his hand upon his dagger-hilt, and scowling round that soldier circle wrathful to think that any other but he should touch her!
Then he took her up, as if it were a mother with a sleeping babe, and the serfs uncapped and stood back on either hand, and the grim warriors fell in behind, and so Editha came home, her loose arms hanging down and her long bright hair all adrift over the broad shoulders of the strangest, most many-adventured soldier in that motley band.