A King's Comrade Part 20

"I might ask you the same," I said, laughing. "I have not learned to keep up a feast overlong in the camps of Carl, however, and I was for my bed."

"Nay, but a walk will bring sleep," he said. "I have my rounds to make, and I shall be glad of a companion. Come with me awhile."

So we visited the guard, and with them spoke of the fires I had seen, and laughed at the fears of those who had lighted them.

"All very well to laugh," said the captain at the gate; "but if the Welsh are out, it will be ill for any one who will ride westward tonight. Chapman, or priest, or beggar man, he is likely to find a broad arrow among his ribs first, and questioned as to what his business may be afterward."

Then we went along the ramparts to the rearward gate; and it seemed as if Gymbert had somewhat on his mind, for he fell silent now and then, for no reason which I could fathom. However, he asked me a few questions about the life in Carl's court, and so on, until he learned that I was a Wess.e.x man, and that I was not going back to him.

"Then you are at a loose end for the time?" he said. "Why not take service here with Offa?"

"I am for home so soon as this is over," I said. "If all is well there, I have no need to serve any man."

"So you have not been home yet," he said slowly, as if turning over some thought in his mind. "What if I asked you to help me in some small service here and now? You are free, and no man's man, as one may say."

"Nor do I wish to be," I answered dryly.

I did not like this Gymbert.

"No offence," he said quickly. "You are a Frank as one may say, and a stranger, and such an one may well be useful in affairs of state which need to be kept quiet. I could, an you will, put you in the way of some little profit, on the business of the queen, as I think."

"Well, if the queen asks me to do her a service, that may be. These matters do not come from second hand, as a rule."

He glanced sidewise at me quickly, and I minded the face of another queen, whose hand had been on my arm while she had spoken to me with the tears in her eyes.

"Right," he said, laughing uneasily. "But if one is told to seek for, say, a messenger?"

"I am a thane," I said. "To a thane even a queen may speak directly."

"You Wess.e.x folk are quick-tempered; or is that a Frankish trick you have picked up?" he sneered. "Nay, but I will not offend you."

Then he was silent for a time while we walked on. I thought that the queen had hardly sent a message to me in that way, and that he had made some mistake. I would leave him as soon as we turned back toward the hall. We were alone on the rampart, with the stables below us on one side and the high stockading on the other; and then he dropped that subject, and talked of my home going in all friendly wise.

"There are always chances," he said. "Come and take service with Offa if aught goes amiss at home."

"I have promised to go to Ethelbert, if so I must," I answered, thinking to end his seemingly idle talk.

I had put up with it because I was his guest in a way, seeing that he was the marshal, and it does not do to offend needlessly those who hold one's comfort in their hands.

End his talk this did, suddenly, and why I could not tell.

"Why," he said, "then you are his man after all! I deemed that you had but ridden westward with him for your own convenience."

"So it was, more or less," I said, somewhat surprised at his tone.

And when I looked at him his face seemed white in the moonlight.

"Of his kindness he bade me bear him company."

But he made no answer, and half he halted and made as if to speak.

Again he went on, but said naught until we came to the steps which led down from the rampart to the rear gate. On the top of them he turned and said in a low voice, staying me with his hand on my arm:

"Say naught to any man of what I said concerning a state need of the queen's, for mayhap I took too much on myself when I spoke thereof; there may be no need after all."

I laughed a little, for I did but think that he had been trying to make out that he held high honour in the counsels of Quendritha, out of vanity, not knowing what my rank was.

"If she does send for me, I shall remember it, not else," I answered.

And then, as he had the guard to visit, I left him, and went across the broad street, from the gate to the hall through the huts, back to my lodging. There I found Father Selred, and together we waited for Sighard. Erling sat on the settle by the door, with his weapons laid handy to him, on guard.

"All seems well, father," I said; "there is naught but friendliness here."

"Well indeed," he answered. "It is good to hear the talk of priests and n.o.bles alike; they know the worth of our young king."

"Well, and what is the talk of the housecarls, Erling?" I asked.

"Good also," he growled. "But I would that I kenned the talk of her of whom I have seen overmuch in the days gone by."

Then he remembered that of this matter Father Selred knew nothing, and he swore under his breath at his own foolishness; but the good father had not heard him, or his rough Danish prevented his understanding.

"What says he of the men?" he asked.

And when I told him he was well content, saying that from high to low all had a warm welcome for our king.

But even now Offa rises from the table and leaves the hall, all men rising with him. So he pa.s.ses out of the door on the high place and seeks his own chamber, and there to him comes Quendritha.

"I have dreamed a dream, my king," she says, standing before him, for he has thrown himself into a great chair, wearily. "I have dreamed that your realm stretched from here on the Wye and the mountains of the Welsh even to the sea that bounds the lands from the Wash to the Thames. What shall that portend?"

"A wedding, and a son-in-law whom you may bend to your will,"

answers the king; but his eyes are bright, and there comes a flash into them.

That would be a mighty realm indeed, greater than any which had yet been in our land. If the East Anglian levies were his, he would march across Wales at their head, with the Mercian hosts to right and left of him. He might even wrest Northumbria from the hold of her kings.

Quendritha sees that flash, and knows that the cup has done its work. The mind of the king is full of imaginings. So she sits by him, and her voice seems to blend with his thoughts, and he does not hinder her as she sets before him the might and glory of the kingdom that would be his if that dream were true. And so she wakes the longing for it in the mind of Offa, and plays on it until he is half bent to her will; and her will is that the dream should come true, and that shortly.

Then at last she says, "And all this is but marred because of a niddering lad who will leave the hall at a feast for the whining of the priests yonder! In truth, a meet leader of men, and one who will be a source of strength to our realm! It makes me rage to think that but he is in the way. It is ill for his own land, as it seems to me."

"Ay, wife," says Offa. "But he is in the way, and there is an end thereof."

"He is in your hand, and there are those who would say that Heaven itself has set him there. Listen. He hunts with you tomorrow. Have you never heard of an arrow which went wide of its mark--by mischance?"

Again the eyes of the king flash, but he does not look on the queen.

"Who would deem it mischance?" he says. "No man. And I were dishonoured evermore."

"Not your arrow, not yours, but another's--mayhap yonder Frank's.

He is a stranger, and would care naught if reward was great; then afterward he should be made to hold his peace."

And at that she smiles evilly. A stray Frank's life was naught to her if he was in her way.