Part 30 (2/2)

There fell a little uneasy silence after that outburst of the king's, but I felt that I had not yet heard all that they would tell me. So we waited for the old king to speak, and at last he turned suddenly to the princess, setting his thin white hand on her shoulder, and said:

”Now tell Oswald what foolishness brought you here, Nona, daughter of Howel, that he may say what he thinks thereof.”

”Maybe he also will think it foolishness, King Gerent,” she said in her low clear voice. ”But however that may be, I will tell him, for in what I have to say may be help. I cannot tell, but because it might be so I begged my father to bring me hither. It was all that I could do for my G.o.dfather.”

There was just a little quiver in her lip as she said this, and the fierce old king's face softened somewhat.

”Nay,” he said, ”I meant no unkindness. I forgot that it is not right to speak to a child as to grown warriors. It is long since there was a lady about the place who is one of us.”

Then Nona smiled wanly, and set her hand on that of the old king, and kept it there while she spoke.

”Indeed, Thane, it may be foolishness, and now perhaps as time goes on it begins to seem so to me. Once, as I know now, on the night when Owen first slept in his new house on the moor, I dreamed that he was in sore danger, for I seemed to see shadows of men creeping everywhere round the house that I have never set eyes on; and again, on the next night, and that was the night of the burning, I saw the house in flames, and men fought and fell around it among the flickering shadows, but I did not seem to see Owen. And then on the next night, soon after I first slept, I woke trembling with the most strange dream of all. I think that the light had hardly gone from the west, but the moon had not yet risen. I dreamed that I stood at the end of a narrow valley, whose sides were of tall cliffs of rough grey stone, and in the depth of the valley I saw a great menhir standing on the farther side of a black pool. And all the surface of the pool was rippling as if somewhat had disturbed it, and set upright in the ground on this side was a sword, like to that which King Ina gave you, Thane--ay, that which you wear now, not like my father's swords. And I thought that I heard one call on your name.”

Now I heard Jago stifle a cry behind me, and as for myself I stood silent, biting my lip that I might know that I was not dreaming also, and I saw that Howel was looking at me in a wondering way, while Gerent glowered at me. All the time that she had been speaking, Nona had looked on the ground, in some fear lest we should smile at this which had been called foolishness, and I was glad when the king broke the silence with a short laugh.

”Well, Oswald, what think you of this? On my word, it seems that you half believe in the foolishness that some hold concerning dreams.”

”I would not hold this so,” said Howel,--”seeing that she has dreamed of things that did take place, as we know too well.”

”Fire and fighting? Things, forsooth, that every village girl on the Saxon marches is frayed with every time she sleeps.”

So said Gerent, and I answered him:

”Foolishness I cannot call this, either, Lord King. I also have seen the same in the night watches. I have seen pool and menhir, and the cliffs that hem them, even as the princess saw them. And I woke with the voice of Owen in my ears.”

”Dreams, dreams!” the old king said. ”Go to, you do but tell me these trifles to please me, and as if to give me hope that in such an unheard-of place we shall find him whom we have lost. Say no more, but go your ways on the morrow and search. And may you find your dream valley and what is therein.”

He rose up impatiently, and Howel gave him his arm from the room.

Jago followed him, and when the heavy curtain fell across the doorway, Nona, who had risen with Gerent, turned to me.

”I am sure now that there we shall find Owen,” she said, with a new light of hope in her eyes. ”And also I am sure that at the bottom of all the matter is Morfed the priest.”

”It was a needed warning against him that I had from your hand, Princess,” I said; ”now let me thank you for it.”

”I am glad you had it safely, for indeed I feared for you with those people on the s.h.i.+p with you. What has become of them?”

I told her the fate of Dunwal, so far as I knew it. I did not then know that Gerent had put an end to his plotting once for all two days after Owen was lost. As for his daughter, I knew no more than Jago told the ealdorman.

Then she said: ”Now I would ask you to speak to my father, that he would let me go with you to Dartmoor, that I may help you search. I do not like to be far from him, but he says there may be danger.

Which makes me the more anxious not to leave him, as you may suppose.”

She smiled, but as I made no answer she went on:

”And maybe Owen will need nursing when you find him. They say he was sorely wounded. Ay, I am sure we shall find him, else why did we have these strange visions? And I think that were he not disabled altogether he would have won to freedom in some way.”

”It is that wounding that makes me fear the worst,” I said in a low voice; for indeed the thought of Owen as hurt, in the care, or want of care, of those who hated him, was not easy to be borne. ”It is my fear that we shall be too late.”

”Nay, but you must not fear that,” she said quickly. ”That is no sort of mind in which you have to set to work. I will think rather that they have carried him to some safe tending. There will be time enough to dread the worst when it is certain. There was nought in the dreams to make us think that he was dead.”

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