The Ward of King Canute Part 23

"Once more, Lord Sebert, be exhorted to turn back," old Morcard spurred forward to offer a last remonstrance as city gates yawned before them.

"Even if the message be genuine, you are putting your life in peril. If men speak rightly, Gloucester Town is no better than a camp of carousing Danes. Is it likely that they care enough about this peace to stick at so small a thing as man-slaying?"

The Etheling replied without slackening his pace: "I do not think they are liable to molest a peaceful traveller. I will take care that I upheave no strife, and I will make all my inquiries of the monks."

"Go a little more slowly, lord, and consider the other side of it," the old knight entreated. "Suppose the message is false,--the black tress around it proves nothing. Suppose the son of Lodbrok has spread a net for you?"

"Then should I keep on my way still more l.u.s.tily," the Lord of Ivarsdale answered, "for his making use of the boy's name to entice me would show that he had discovered our friends.h.i.+p, in which case the youngling would be suffering from his anger."

The old man plucked violently at his beard as the walls loomed clearer before them. "Lord, you have already gone through some risk in leaving home. It is by no means impossible that Edmund will fall upon the Tower during your absence."

"Edmund is too busy with big game at Oxford to have that trouble about such quarry as I," the young man said lightly, "and the Gainer is not likely to stir far from Edmund while land is being distributed." Then, sobering, he gave the other a grave glance over his shoulder. "Even though the errand for danger could not be accomplished, how could I do less than undertake it? Did not the boy go through some risk for me when he betrayed his own countryman to get me out of a hard place? Had they guessed his treason, they would have torn him in pieces. I owe him a debt which it concerns my honor to pay. It lies not on your shoulders, however,--" his gravity gave way to his gay smile,--"if it is more pleasant for you not to enter the city, you may ride back to the hostelry we pa.s.sed, and await me in its shelter."

The old cniht's courage was too well approved to require any defence.

Contenting himself with an indignant grunt, he reined back to his place at the head of the dozen armed servants who formed the Etheling's safeguard, and the young lord galloped on between the bare fields, humming absently under his breath.

"Poor bantling!" he was thinking compa.s.sionately. "I shall be right glad to get sight of him again. I hope he will not betray himself in his joy when he sees me. Anything like showing that one is fond of him is apt to turn him a little soft."

None of these undercurrents was visible in his face however, when, having left his escort in one of the outer courts, he stood at last in the parlor of the Abbey guest-house.

"I am a traveller, reverend brother, journeying from London to Worcester," he said with grave courtesy to the gaunt black-robed monk who admitted him. "And my errand hither is to ask refreshment for myself and my men, as we have been in the saddle since c.o.c.kcrow."

"The brother whose duty it is to attend upon travellers is at this hour in the Chapter House, with the rest of the household," the monk made answer. "When he comes forth, I will acquaint him with your needs. Until then, bide here, and I will bring you a morsel to stay your stomach."

Sebert smiled his satisfaction as the sandals pattered away. He had foreseen this interval of waiting, indeed, he had timed his arrival to gain it,--and it was his design to put it to good use. While he swallowed what he wanted of the wafers and wine which were brought him, he took measure of the reverend servitor, with the result that, as he set down the goblet, he ventured a question.

"From the numbers and heaps of attendants I saw in the outer courts, holy brother, it appears that this season of peace has in no way lessened the tax on your generosity. Is rumor right in declaring the Danish King to be one of the guests of your bounty?"

Either it was the agreeable presence of the young n.o.ble which relaxed the Benedictine's austerity, or else the fact that Sebert had left half his wine in his cup. The holy man answered with unwonted readiness.

"Rumor, which is the mother of lies, has given birth to one truth, n.o.ble stranger. The King whom a chastening Providence has set over the northern half of the Island, has been our guest for the s.p.a.ce of four weeks,--together with the gold-bought English woman who is known as his 'Danish wife.'" The monk's watery eyes were rolled upward in pious disapproval, before he turned them earthward with a sigh of resignation.

"Nevertheless, it is the will of Heaven,--and he is very open-handed with lands and gold when his meals please him." He cast a thirsty glance toward the half-filled goblet which Sebert was absently fingering. "If you have eagerness for a sight of him, you have but to walk through the galleries until you come to the garden in which he is fleeting his time with his women."

"Now I think I should like to take a look at him while I am waiting,"

the Etheling a.s.sented, rising gravely. "Should Edmund be the first to pay the debt of nature, which G.o.d avert! the Dane will become my King also. Is it this door that commands the cloister?"

"The door on your left," the monk corrected; and shuffled away lest some envious chance should s.n.a.t.c.h the cup from him before his thirsty throat could close on the sweet remnant.

At the moment that he was making sure of his booty in the safe darkness of a pa.s.sage, the Lord of Ivarsdale was pursuing his object along the chill enclosure of the gallery. The November sunlight that, unsoftened by any filter of rich-tinted gla.s.s, fell coldly upon the worn stone, showed the carrels beneath the windows to be one and all deserted by their monkish occupants, and he strode along unhampered by curious eye or ear.

"After all this luck," he congratulated himself, "it will go hard with me if I do not either stumble on the youngling himself, or someone who can give me news of him."

He had no more than thought it, when the sound reached him of a door closing somewhere along the next side of the square, followed by the clank of spurred feet coming heavily toward him. As they drew nearer, the rattle of a sword also became audible. Lifting his eyebrows dubiously, the Etheling grasped his own weapon beneath his cloak.

When the feet had brought their owner around the corner into sight, he did not feel that his motion had been a mistaken one, for the man who was advancing was Rothgar Lodbroksson. It flashed through Sebert's mind that the old cniht's forebodings had not been without cause, and that Ivarsdale was in danger of changing masters by a process much quicker than a month's siege. He stared in amazement when the Dane, instead of flas.h.i.+ng out his blade, stopped short with a burst of jeering laughter.

"Here is the Englishman arrived, and he looks small enough now!" he cried in his thunderous voice. "Has it happened that I am to be the bower-thane who is to fetch you in!"

Sebert's grasp tightened around his hilt. Apparently the son of Lodbrok was expecting him! Yet even on a forlorn hope, he deemed it wise not to commit himself. He said with what haughtiness he could muster, "What should a plain traveller want with a bower-thane, Danishman? I stand in more need of the cellarer who is to provide me with a meal."

Another jeering outburst interrupted him. "Now I say nothing against it if you declare yourself looking for sweetmeats! Well, I will be the cellarer, and lead you to them."

"I do not understand you," Sebert said slowly, and quite truthfully.

The Dane grinned at him. "I mean that I will fetch you in to the one who sent you the summons."

"The one who sent you the summons?" Certainly that sounded as though he were using the words to conceal a name. Neither the Etheling's patience nor his temper was long enough to reach below the knee. He made a swift gesture of throwing aside all reserve. "Enough of mystery, Danishman! If the message which I have received was not sent by Fridtjof Frodesson, it was sent by you. Be honest enough to admit it and say plainly what your intention is toward me."

"Fridtjof Frodesson," the Jotun mocked, and his fiery eyes probed the Englishman like knives. "Now since honesty is to your wish, I will go so far as to confess that the word came neither from Frode's son nor from me."

Sebert's foot rang upon the ground. "Say then that the Devil sent it, and a truce to this juggling! Since you know that I am the boy's friend, you understand that any harm he has suffered is a harm to me, and that my sword is equally ready to avenge it."

Much to his surprise, the Dane accorded this challenge no notice whatever. He stood studying the Lord of Ivarsdale with eyes in which malicious amus.e.m.e.nt was growing into open mirth. It came out in another laugh. "Now it would be more unlikely than the wonder which has occurred, yet I begin to believe you! I myself will guide you to your Fridtjof, only for the pleasure of watching your face. The Fates are no such step-mothers after all!" He turned in the direction from which he had come and made the other a sign. "This way, if you dare to follow. I am not afraid to go first, so you need give no thought of the chances of steel between your ribs."

The Etheling took his hand off his weapon with a twinge of shame; but he was not without misgivings as he strode along at Rothgar's heels. Unless the youngling had made a decided change for the worse, what satisfaction could the Jotun expect to get from witnessing their meeting? Before his mind, there rose again the tear-stained boyish face which had bidden him farewell that night at the postern, and his pulses throbbed with a fierce pity.

"He took himself from the one person who was dear to him, poor little cub," he murmured. "If they have maimed him, I swear I will tuck him under my arm and cut my way out though there be a wall of the brutes around him."

His musings came to an end, as the man preceding him stopped suddenly where one of the milky panes broken from the cloister window gave a view of the cloister garden. With the cold November suns.h.i.+ne a hum of voices was coming in, now brightened by peals of laughter, again blurred by the thud of falling quoits. Over the Jotun's shoulder, he caught a glimpse of gorgeous n.o.bles and fair-haired women scattered in graceful groups about a sunny old garden, green in the very face of winter, thanks to the protecting shelter of the gray walls.

Only a glimpse,--for even as he looked, Rothgar caught his cloak and pulled him ahead. "Yonder door is a better place to look through; already it is open, and the shadow inside is thick enough to hide us."

p.r.i.c.ked as he was by a dozen spurs, Sebert offered no resistance. In a moment, they stood just out of reach of the square of light which fell through the open doorway. Framed in carved stone, the quaint old garden with its gravelled paths, its weedless turfs and its background of ivy-hung walls, lay before them like a picture.

In the longest of the oval s.p.a.ces, a group of maidens and warriors were gathered to watch a wonderful flower-faced woman play at quoits under the instruction of a n.o.ble tutor. At every one of her graceful blunders her laughter rang out in fairy music, which was sweetly echoed by her maids; but the men appeared to see nothing but her beauty as she poised herself lightly before them like some s.h.i.+ning azure bird on tiptoe for flight. Sebert paid her the tribute of a quickly drawn breath, even as he took his eyes from her to scan the b.u.t.terfly pages who ran to and fro, recovering the gilded rings. Yellow hair and red hair and brown hair curled on their gaudy shoulders, but no black. In all the picture there was but one figure crowned with such raven locks as had distinguished Fridtjof the Bold, and that figure belonged to a girl standing directly opposite by the mossy curb of the old well, which, guarded by a circle of carefully tended trees, rose like an altar in the centre of the inclosure. Four of the red-cloaked Danish n.o.bles stood about her,--and one of them wore a golden circlet upon the gold of his hair,--but the Etheling's eyes pa.s.sed them almost unheedingly to dwell upon the black-tressed maiden.

Something about her, while it was entirely strange, was yet so absurdly familiar. She was some very high-born lady, there could be no doubt of that, for the delicate fabric of her trailing kirtle was flowered with gold, and gold and coral were twined in the dusky softness of her hair and hung around her neck in a costly chain, which the King was fingering idly as he talked with her. Now she looked up to answer the jesting words, and the man in the pa.s.sage saw her smile and shake back her cl.u.s.tering curls with a gesture so familiar... so familiar...

Rothgar's gloating eyes detected light breaking in his victim's face, incredulity, amazement, consternation; and he began to jeer under his breath. "A great joy is this that you see your Fridtjof again! Why do you not go in boldly and rescue him? Does he not look to be in need of your help?" To stifle his laughter, he m.u.f.fled his head in his cloak and leaned, shaking, against the wall.

Flus.h.i.+ng a deeper and deeper red, the Lord of Ivarsdale stared at the smiling maiden. Just so, a hundred times, she had lifted her sparkling face toward him, and he--fool that he was!--where had been his eyes?

Perhaps it is not strange that after the surprise had faded from his look, the first feeling to show was bitterest mortification. Turning, he forced a laugh between his teeth.

"I do not deny you the right to be amused. You speak truly that she needs no help from me. I will hinder you no longer."

Rothgar leaped forward to bar the pa.s.sage, and the mantle that fell from his face showed no laughter of mouth or eyes. "I have not as yet spoken harm, but it is not sure that I do not mean it," he said. "If you take it in this manner to see how you have been tricked, you may suppose how well I like it to remember the lies she fed to me, who would have staked my life upon her truthfulness. It is not allowed me to take revenge on her for her treachery, but I think I need not spare you, as you got the profit of her falseness."

The Etheling's sword was out while the other was still speaking. "By Saint Mary, do you imagine that I am fearful of you? Never in my life was I more thirsty for fighting."

But Rothgar pushed the blade aside with his naked palm. "Not here, where she could come between. Besides, the King wants a thrust at you first.

Nor have you yet greeted Randalin, Frode's daughter." His hand, which was itching for a sword, began to tear the fur from his cloak, and his lips curved in a grin that had in it little of mirth. "Certainly you would not rob the maiden of the pleasure of seeing the one she has taken so much trouble for?" he mocked.

On the verge of an angry retort, Sebert paused to regard him, a suspicion darting spark-like through his mind. Did the Jotun's words smack of jealousy? It was true that it needed not that to explain their bitterness, and yet--What more natural than that the King's foster-brother should love the King's ward? If it was so, it was small wonder the girl had said that he would slay her when he discovered her unfaithfulness. Unfaithfulness! Sebert started. Had she not in that very word acknowledged a bond? Not only did he love her, but she must have returned his affections. The spark of suspicion flared into a flame.

That would solve so many riddles. For one, her presence in the Danish camp,--for surely, as a chieftain's daughter, she would have been sent on to the care of the Lady of Northampton! Was it not thoroughly in accordance with her elfish wildness to have chosen man's attire and the roughness of camp-life in order to remain near her lover? Her lover! The young n.o.ble's lips curled as he glanced at the warrior beside him, at the coa.r.s.e face under the unkempt locks, at the huge body in its trap-pings of stained gaudiness. Involuntarily, he looked again at the group by the well. She was very winsome in her smiling, and the graceful lines of her trailing robes, their delicacy and soft richness, threw about her all the glamour of rank and state. He clenched his hands at the thought of such treasures thrown down for brutal feet to trample on; and his heart grew hot with anger against her, anger and scorn that were almost loathing, that she who looked so fine should be so poor, so--But he did not finish his thought, for on its heels came another, a recollection that stayed his anger and changed his scorn to compunction.

However dear Rothgar might have been to her, he could be dear no longer, or she would never have betrayed his trust and dared his hate to save Ivarsdale Tower--and its master. Sebert winced and put up his hand to shut out the vision as he realized at whose feet her heart lay now, like a pitiful bruised flower.

Meanwhile, the son of Lodbrok had been drawing heavily on his scant stock of patience. Suddenly, he ran out completely. Seizing the Etheling by the shoulders, before he could raise finger in resistance, he thrust him through the open doorway into the garden, a target for every startled glance. After which, he himself stalked grimly on to await him at the city gate.