Part 24 (1/2)
”It is no light matter that I have to speak of,” he said, ”but I will get to the point straightway. What do you remember of your old home, Eastdean?”
Now the thoughts of old days there that had sprung afresh in my mind in the parting with Owen, made me ready to answer that at once.
”Little, my King. I was but ten years old when we fled,” I answered therefore.
”That is likely. But would you go back there? As the Thane of Eastdean, I mean; for I know that you would wish to see the place where your father lies.”
I could not answer him this at once, for it was indeed a matter that needed thought. So I said, and he turned to his writings with a nod and left me to myself.
In all these thoughts of mine, pleasant as they were with some memories, it had never come to me to wish that the lands were mine again. Save for that one thing of which Ina spoke, and for the pleasantness of seeing old scenes again, I had never cared to go back. Owen had not spoken of the lands that should have been mine for years, and even as he talked with me and Gerent he had not seemed to remember that old loss at all. Gerent had done so, saying that I should be back there, but even that did not stir me now. I was of the court, and here I had my place, and all my life was knit with the ways of the atheling guard and the ordering of the house-carles under Owen. If I were to turn from all this to become a forest thane it would be banishment.
And then I thought of Owen, and how this would take me yet farther from him. I would sooner, if I must be sent from Ina, go to him and find what home I might on the lands of Tregoz in wild Dartmoor. And then the thought of leaving Ina, who had cared for me since I was a child, was almost as terrible.
”I would not leave you, my King,” I said at last.
Ina looked up at me with a smile, but was silent, stroking his beard as was his way when thinking, looking past me out of the narrow window to the great Tor that towered beyond the new abbey buildings.
”Think!” he said at last--”partings must come, and lands are not to be had lightly. Erpwald's brother, who held Eastdean, is dead.”
”I need no lands,” I answered. ”The ways of a captain of your house-carles are good to me, and I need no more. If I took those lands from your hand, my King, needs must that I gave up all the life with you. Sooner would I let the land go and bide with you.
Yet if I must needs take them, be it as you will.”
”It is a great thing that you speak so lightly of giving up,” he answered gravely; ”Erpwald, the heathen, was willing to risk his life for those lands, and he held them dear. And a captain of the king's house-carles will always look to be rewarded for service with lands. In time you will seek the same.”
”That time has not yet come to me, King Ina.”
”Eastdean lies in my hand here,” he said, taking up a parchment with a great seal on it. ”I may give it to whom I will, but you are the lawful heir who should hold it from me. If it goes not to you, it may be that one whom you would not shall have it.”
Then I said, not seeing at all what the king would have me do, but thinking that he deemed me foolish for not taking the lands straightway:
”Let me bide with you even yet for a while. When the time comes that I must leave you I must go to Owen, and neither he nor I care for aught but to be here. He must leave you because of duty, and if this is indeed choice with me, let me choose to stay. It is nought to me who holds the lands, save only that it might be one who will tend the grave of my father.”
Then said Ina, looking into my face and smiling, as if well pleased:
”The choice is free, my Thane, and I should be wrong if I did not say that I am glad to hear you choose thus. I have missed you in these days, and I have work here for you yet. It was in my mind that thus you would choose, and I am glad. Let it be so. I need one to take the place of Owen, as second in command of the household, as one may say, and that you must do for me henceforward.
”Nay,” he said quickly, raising his hand as I tried to find some words of thanks for this honour; ”you know the ways of Owen, and men know you, and it will be as if there had been no change, and that will mean that we shall have no grumbling in the palace, and the right men will be sent to do what they are best fitted for--and all that, so that there will be quiet about the court as ever. It is a matter off my mind, let me tell you, and no thanks are needed.”
So he laughed and let me kiss his hand, patting me on the shoulder as I rose, and then bade me sit down again. He had yet more to say.
”With Erpwald who is dead, men would hold that you had a blood feud. That is done with; but his son yet lives. I do not think it is your way, or Owen's, to hold that a feud must be carried on in the old heathen way of our forefathers.”
”Most truly not,” I said. ”What ill has a son of Erpwald done to me or mine?”
”None! Nay, rather has he done well, for I know that he has honoured the grave of your father, and even now is ready to do what he can to make amends for the old wrong. He brought me this.”
He took up the parchment that he had shewn me before. It was a grant of the manors of Eastdean to Erpwald, gained by those means of utmost craft whereby the king thought that indeed the last of our line had perished by other hands than those of the heathen thane.
”Honest and straightforward and Christian-like is this young Erpwald,” the king said. ”Well brought up by his Christian mother, if not very ready or brilliant in his ways. Now he has learned how his father came into the lands, and though he might well have held them after his uncle on this grant, he has come hither to set the matter in my hands. 'It is not fair,' quoth he, 'that I should hold them if one is left of the line of Ella. I should not sleep easily in my bed. Nevertheless, I will buy them if so be that one is left to sell them to me.' So he sighed, for the place is his home.”
”All these years it has been no trouble to me that Erpwald's brother has held the place, my King. It will be no trouble to think that a better Erpwald holds them yet.”