Alfgar the Dane or the Second Chronicle of Aescendune Part 15

"O Bertric, Bertric!" he cried, "intercede for me, pray for me."

He fell on his knees, and did not rise until the temptation was conquered, and then he walked steadily into the great vaulted room, of Roman construction, which served as the banqueting hall, and took his usual place by his father's side.

Oh, how hollow the mirth and revelry that night! How he loathed the singing, the drunken shouting, the fierce imprecation over the wine cup--the sensuality, which now distinguished his bloodthirsty companions. The very knives he saw used for their meals had served as daggers to despatch the wounded or the helpless prisoner. The eyes, now weak with debauch, had glowed with the maniacal fury of the berserkir in the battlefield. Was this the glory of manhood? Nay, rather of wolves and bears.

Then he looked up at Sweyn, the murderer of his father, and marvelled that his hand was yet so steady--his head so clear. This apostate parricide! never would he live to kiss the hand of such a man; better die at once, while yet pure from innocent blood. This his Christianity had taught him.

"Minstrel," cried the fierce king, "sing us some stirring song of the days of old; plenty of the fire of the old Vikings in it."

A strange minstrel, a young gleeman, had been admitted that night--one whose chain and robes bespoke him of the privileged cla.s.s--and he sang in a voice which thrilled all the revellers into awed silence. He sang of the battle, of the joy of conquest, and the glories of Valhalla, where deceased warriors drank mead from the skulls of vanquished foes. And then he sang of the cold and snowy Niffelheim, where in regions of eternal frost the cowardly and guilty dead mourned their weak and wasted lives. In words of terrific force he painted their agony, where Hela, of horrid countenance, reigned supreme; where the palace was Anguish, Famine the board, Delay and Vain Hope the waiters, Precipice the threshold, and Leanness the bed.

But in the innermost chamber of this awful home was the abode of Raging Despair; and in the final verse of his terrible ode the scald sang:

"Listen to the ceaseless wail, Listen to the frenzied cry Of anguish, horror, and amaze; Would ye know from whom they come, Tell me, warriors, would ye know?"

Here he paused, after throwing intense emphasis on the last words, till he had concentrated the attention of all, and the king gazed--absorbed--then he continued:

"There wave on wave of bitter woe Overwhelms the parricide."

The king started from his seat. He was about to launch his battle-axe through the air in search of the daring minstrel, when the same dread expression of unutterable agony we have before mentioned pa.s.sed over his face; he trembled as an aspen, and sank, as one paralysed, into his chair, while his glaring eyes seemed to behold some horrid apparition unseen by all beside. The warriors now turned in their wrath to seek the daring or unfortunate minstrel, but he was gone.

Alfgar had seen the apostate in his moment of retributive agony, and he shuddered.

"Better death, far better," he murmured, "than a fate like this. G.o.d keep me firm to Him."

The king had by this time recovered his usual composure, but his rage and fury were the more awful that the outbreak was suppressed.

"Sit down, my warriors, disturb not the feast. What if your king has been insulted in his own banquet hall? there are hands enow to avenge him without unseemly tumult. Let us drink like the heroes in Valhalla. Meanwhile let the minstrel be sought and brought before us, and he shall make us sport in a different mode."

The "rista oern" whispered one in his ear.

The ferocious king nodded, and his eyes sparkled with the expected gratification of his fierce cruelty. Meanwhile warriors were searching all the precincts of the camp for the destined victim.

Nearly half-an-hour had pa.s.sed, and the king was getting impatient, for nearly all the chieftains were getting too drunk to appreciate the spectacle he designed for them.

"Why do the men delay?" he cried; "let them bring in the minstrel."

Still he came not; and at length the searchers were forced, one after the other, to confess their failure.

"It is well," said the king; "but it was the insult of a Christian, and shall be washed out in Christian blood. Anlaf, produce thy son."

"Nay, nay, not now," cried Sidroc and others, for they saw that Sweyn was already drunk, and consideration for Anlaf made them interfere. "Not now; tomorrow, tomorrow."

"Nay, tonight, tonight."

"Drink first, then, and drown care," said Sidroc, and gave the brutal tyrant a bowl of rich mead.

He drank, drank until it was empty, then fell back and reposed with an idiotic smile superseding the ferocious expression his face had so lately worn. Meanwhile a hand was laid upon Alfgar's shoulder, and a keen bright eye met his own, as if to read his inmost thoughts.

"Come with me, or my father will disgrace himself."

It was Canute.

He led Alfgar forth into the courtyard.

"Thou dost not seem to fear death," said the boy prince.

"It would be welcome now."

"So some of our people sometimes say, but the motive is different; tell me what is the secret of this Christianity?"

Just then Sidroc and Anlaf came out from the hall and saw the two together. Sidroc seemed annoyed, and led the young prince away, while Anlaf seized the opportunity to whisper to his son:

"My son, I can do no more for thee; I see thou wilt persist in thine obstinacy. I release thee from thy promise given to me; escape if thou canst, or die in the attempt; but bring not my grey hairs to contempt on the morrow."

At this moment, Sidroc having seen Canute to the royal quarters, returned.

"Sidroc," said Anlaf, "I cannot any longer be the jailor of my unhappy and rebellious son. Let him be confined till the morrow. I shall ask leave of absence from Sweyn, and now I deliver Alfgar to your care."

"I accept the charge," said Sidroc; "follow me, Alfgar, son of Anlaf."

Alfgar followed pa.s.sively. He could not help looking as if to take leave of his father; but Anlaf stood as mute and pa.s.sionless as a statue. Sidroc reached a party of the guard, and bade them confine the prisoner in the dungeon beneath the ruined eastern tower.

"Listen to my last words, thou recreant boy; Sweyn will send for thee early in the morning before the a.s.sembled host; it will be the day of St. Brice; and even were he not now mad with rage, there would be no mercy for a Christian on that day. Thou must yield, or die by the severest torture, compared with which the death of thy late companion under the archers' shafts was merciful. Be warned!"

CHAPTER XI. THE GLEEMAN.

It was a low dungeon, built of that brick which we still recognise as of Roman manufacture, in the foundations of what had been the eastern tower of the ancient fortification. The old pile had been badly preserved by the Saxon conquerors, but it had been built of that solid architecture which seems almost to defy the a.s.saults of time, and which in some cases, after fifteen centuries, preserves all its characteristics, and promises yet to preserve them, when our frailer erections lie crumbled in the dust.

The roof was semicircular, and composed of minute bricks, seeming to form one solid ma.s.s; the floor of tiling, arranged in patterns, which could still be obscurely traced by the light of the lamp left by the charity of Sidroc to the prisoner; for the dungeon was of bad reputation; lights had been seen there at unearthly hours, when the outer door was fast and no inmate existed.

There were two long narrow windows at the end, unbarred, for they were too small for the human body to pa.s.s through them; they looked upon the valley and, river beneath, for although the dungeon was below the level of the courtyard, it was above that of the neighbourhood.

The prisoner strode up and down the limited area, wrestling with self, bending the will by prayer to submit to ignominy and pain, for he knew now that his father had abandoned him, and that he had to apprehend the worst; still he did not regret the choice he had made, and he felt, as he prayed, peace and confidence descend like heavenly dew upon his soul. Mechanically he cast his eyes around the cell, and tried to trace out the pattern of the flooring, when he saw that the central figure, around which the circles and squares converged, was justice, with the scales, and the motto, "Fiat just.i.tia." He knew the meaning of the words, for Father Cuthbert had taught him some Latin, and the conviction flashed upon him that, sooner or later, all the wrong and evil about him would be righted by the power of a judge as omnipotent as unerring. And this thought made him the more reconciled to the apparent injustice of which he was the victim, and he prayed for his father, that G.o.d would enlighten him with the true light.

"Perhaps before he dies he may yet think of me without shame."

For the shame which he unwillingly brought upon a father who was stern, yet not unkind or void of parental love, was the bitterest ingredient in the cup.

And so the hours rolled on, which brought the dreaded morn nearer and nearer; and the victim, comforted by prayer, but without hope in this world, slept, and thought no longer of the torturer's knife, or felt the cruel antic.i.p.ations which would rack the waiting mind.

And while he slept he was wakened, yet but partly wakened, by a voice which seemed to belong to the borderland 'twixt sleep and waking.

"Alfgar, son of Anlaf, sleepest thou?"

"Surely I dream," thought he, and strove to sleep again.

"Alfgar, son of Anlaf, sleepest thou?"