A Prince of Cornwall Part 3

Then my father armed himself in haste and went out. The night was very dark, and it was raining a little. Stuf had shut the stockade gates, which were strong enough, and had reared a ladder against the timbers that he might look over.

Close to the ladder stood Owen, armed also, for he had been out to see that all was quiet and that the men were on guard.

"There are men everywhere," he said. "I would we had some light."

"Heave a torch on the straw stack," my father answered; "there will be enough then."

The stack was outside the stockade, and some twenty yards from its corner. One of the men ran to the hall and brought a torch from its socket on the wall, and handed it to Stuf, who threw it fairly on the stack top, from the ladder. It blazed up fiercely as it went through the air, and from the men who beset us there rose a howl as they saw it. Several ran and tried to reach it with their spears, but they were not in time. The first damp straws of the thatch hissed for a moment, dried, and burst into flame, and then nought could stop the burning. The red flames gathered brightness every moment, lighting up two sides of the stockading, in the midst of which the hall stood. Then an arrow clicked on Stuf's helm, and he came down into shelter.

"This is a strange affair, Master," he said. "I have seen three men whom I know well among them."

"Who are they?"

"Wisborough men--freemen of Erpwald's."

My father and Owen looked at one another. Words my father knew he should have to put up with, after today, from Erpwald, but this seemed token of more than words only.

Then came the blast of a horn from outside, and a strange voice shouted that the thane must come and speak with those who called him. So my father went to the gate and answered from within it:

"Here am I. What is all the trouble?"

"Open the gate, and you shall know."

"Not so, Thane," cried one of our men, who was peering through the timbers of the stockade. "Now that I can see, I have counted full fifty men, and they are waiting as if to rush in."

Then said my father:

"Maybe we will open the gate when we are sure you are friends. One may be forgiven for doubting that when you come thus at midnight to a peaceful house."

"We are friends or not, as you choose, Aldred," the voice answered.

"I am Erpwald, Woden's priest, and I am here to stay wrong to the Asir of which I have heard."

"I will not pretend not to know what you mean, Erpwald," answered my father. "But this, as it seems to me, is a matter that concerns me most of all."

"If it concerns not Woden's priest, whom shall it concern?"

answered Erpwald. "It is true, then, that you have left the Asir to follow the way of the thralls, led aside by that Welshman you have with you?"

"It is true enough that I am a Christian," said my father steadily.

"As for leaving the Asir, that is not to be said of one whose line goes back to Woden, his forefather. But I cannot wors.h.i.+p him any longer. Forefather of mine he may be, but not a G.o.d."

"Ho! that is all I needed to hear. Now, I will not mince matters with you, Aldred. Either you give up this foolishness, or I am here to make you do so."

Now, my father looked round at the men and saw that all the house-carles and one or two from the village were in the courtyard, fifteen of them altogether, besides himself and Owen. They were all Christian men, and they stood in a sort of line behind him across the closed gate with their faces set, listening.

"Don't suppose that there is any help coming to you from the village," said the hard voice from outside. "There is a guard over every house."

"Erpwald," said my father, "it is a new thing that any man should be forced to quit his faith here in Suss.e.x. Nor is it the way of a thane to fall on a house at night in outlaw fas.h.i.+on. Ina the king will have somewhat to say of this."

"If there is one left to tell him, that is," came back the reply.

"There will not be shortly, unless I have your word that tomorrow you come to me at Wisborough and make such atonement to the Asir as you may, quitting your new craze."

Then said Stuf, the leader of the house-carles, growling:

"That is out of the question, and he knows it. He means to fall on us, else had he spoken to you elsewhere first, Thane. It seems to me that here we shall die."

He looked round on his fellows, and they nodded, and one set his helm more firmly on his head, and another tightened his belt, and one or two signed the cross on their broad chests, but not one paled, though they knew there was small hope for them if Erpwald chose to storm the house. The court was light as day with the flames of the stack by this time.

"What think you of this, Owen," my father said.

"That it is likely that we must seal our faith with our blood, brother," he answered. "Yet I think that there is more in this than heathenism, in some way."

"There is an old feud of no account," said my father, "but I would not think hardly of Erpwald. After all, he was Woden's priest, and is wroth, as I myself might have been. It is good to die thus, and but for the boy I would be glad."

"I do not think that he will be harmed," said Owen, "even if the worst comes to the worst."

"Well, if I fall, try to get him hence. After that maybe Erpwald will be satisfied. I set him in your charge, brother, for once you have saved him already. Fail me not."

Owen held out his hand and took his.

"I will not fail you," he said--"if I live after you."

Now from outside the voices began to be impatient, and Erpwald had been crying to my father to be speedy, unheeded. But in the midst of the growing shouts of the heathen my father turned to the men and asked them if they were content to die with him for the faith.

And with one accord they said that they would.

Then with a thundering crash a great timber beam was hurled against the gate, shaking its very posts with the force of the six men who wielded it at a run, and in the silence that fell as they drew back Erpwald cried:

"For the last time, Aldred, will you yield?"

But he had no answer, and after a short s.p.a.ce the timber crashed against the gate again and again. And across it waited our few, silent and ready for its falling.

I heard all this in the closed chamber, and the red light of the fire shone across the slit whence the light and fresh air came into it, but it was too high for me to look out of. I got up and dressed myself then, for no reason but that I must be doing something. I waxed excited with the noise and flickering light, and no one came near me. My old nurse was the only woman in the house, for the married house-carles lived in the village, and I daresay she slept through it all in her own loft. There was no thunderstorm that could ever wake her.

At this time my father sent a few of the men to the back of the house, that they might try at least to keep off the foe from climbing the stockade and so falling on them in the rear. But the timbers were high, and the ditch outside them full of water, and as it happened there was no attack thence.

Erpwald watched the back indeed, but all his force was bent on the gate.

It was not long before that fell, cras.h.i.+ng inwards, and across it strode the heathen priest into the gap. He was fully armed, and wore the great golden ring of the temple--all that was left him of his old surroundings since Ethelwalch the king, who sent Wilfrith to us, had destroyed the building that stood with the image of Woden in it hard by his house. Men used to take oath on that ring, as do we on the Book of the Gospels, and they held it holier than the oaken image of the G.o.d itself. I do not think that any man had seen it since that time until this night.

Now Erpwald stood for a moment in the gate, with his men hard behind him, expecting a rush at him, as it would seem. But our folk stood firm in the line across the courtyard, shoulder to shoulder, with my father and Owen before them. So they looked at one another.

Then Erpwald slipped the golden ring from his arm and held it up.

There may have been some thought in his mind that my father was hesitating yet.

"By the holy ring I adjure you, Aldred, for the last time, to return to the Asir," he said loudly.

My father shook his head only, but Stuf the house-carle, who had stood beside him at the font this morning, had another answer which was strange enough.

"This for the ring!" he said.