Part 3 (2/2)

And King Edward looked a king! The habitual lethargic meekness had vanished from his face, and the large crown threw a shadow, like a frown, over his brow. His spirit seemed to have risen from the weight it took from the sluggish blood of his father, Ethelred the Unready, and to have remounted to the brighter and earlier sources of ancestral heroes. Worthy in that hour he seemed to boast the blood and wield the sceptre of Athelstan and Alfred. [77]

Thus spoke the King: ”Right worthy and beloved, my ealdermen, earls, and thegns of England; n.o.ble and familiar, my friends and guests, counts and chevaliers of Normandy, my mother's land; and you, our spiritual chiefs, above all ties of birth and country, Christendom your common appanage, and from Heaven your seignories and fiefs,--hear the words of Edward, the King of England under grace of the Most High. The rebels are in our river; open yonder lattice, and you will see the piled s.h.i.+elds glittering from their barks, and hear the hum of their hosts. Not a bow has yet been drawn, not a sword left its sheath; yet on the opposite side of the river are our fleets of forty sail--along the strand, between our palace and the gates of London, are arrayed our armies. And this pause because G.o.dwin the traitor hath demanded truce and his nuncius waits without. Are ye willing that we should hear the message? or would ye rather that we dismiss the messenger unheard, and pa.s.s at once, to rank and to sail, the war-cry of a Christian king, 'Holy Crosse and our Lady!'”

The King ceased, his left hand grasping firm the leopard head carved on his throne, and his sceptre untrembling in his lifted hand.

A murmur of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, the war-cry of the Normans, was heard amongst the stranger-knights of the audience; but haughty and arrogant as those strangers were, no one presumed to take precedence, in England's danger, of men English born.

Slowly then rose Alred, Bishop of Winchester, the worthiest prelate in all the land. [78]

”Kingly son,” said the bishop, ”evil is the strife between men of the same blood and lineage, nor justified but by extremes, which have not yet been made clear to us. And ill would it sound throughout England were it said that the King's council gave, perchance, his city of London to sword and fire, and rent his land in twain, when a word in season might have disbanded yon armies, and given to your throne a submissive subject, where now you are menaced by a formidable rebel. Wherefore, I say, admit the nuncius.”

Scarcely had Alred resumed his seat, before Robert the Norman prelate of Canterbury started up,--a man, it was said, of worldly learning-- and exclaimed: ”To admit the messenger is to approve the treason. I do beseech the King to consult only his own royal heart and royal honour. Reflect-- each moment of delay swells the rebel hosts, strengthens their cause; of each moment they avail themselves to allure to their side the misguided citizens. Delay but proves our own weakness; a king's name is a tower of strength, but only when fortified by a king's authority. Give the signal for--war I call it not--no--for chastis.e.m.e.nt and justice.”

”As speaks my brother of Canterbury, speak I,” said William, Bishop of London, another Norman.

But then there rose up a form at whose rising all murmurs were hushed.

Grey and vast, as some image of a gone and mightier age towered over all, Siward, the son of Beorn, the great Earl of Northumbria.

”We have naught to do with the Normans. Were they on the river, and our countrymen, Dane or Saxon, alone in this hall, small doubt of the King's choice, and niddering were the man who spoke of peace; but when Norman advises the dwellers of England to go forth and slay each other, no sword of mine shall be drawn at his hest. Who shall say that Siward of the Strong Arm, the grandson of the Berserker, ever turned from a foe? The foe, son of Ethelred, sits in these halls; I fight thy battles when I say Nay to the Norman! Brothers-in-arms of the kindred race and common tongue, Dane and Saxon long intermingled, proud alike of Canute the glorious and Alfred the wise, ye will hear the man whom G.o.dwin, our countryman, sends to us; he at least will speak our tongue, and he knows our laws. If the demand he delivers be just, such as a king should grant, and our Witan should hear, woe to him who refuses; if unjust be the demand, shame to him who accedes. Warrior sends to warrior, countryman to countryman; hear we as countrymen, and judge as warriors. I have said.”

The utmost excitement and agitation followed the speech of Siward,-- unanimous applause from the Saxons, even those who in times of peace were most under the Norman contagion; but no words can paint the wrath and scorn of the Normans. They spoke loud and many at a time; the greatest disorder prevailed. But the majority being English, there could be no doubt as to the decision; and Edward, to whom the emergence gave both a dignity and presence of mind rare to him, resolved to terminate the dispute at once. He stretched forth his sceptre, and motioning to his chamberlain, bade him introduce the nuncius. [79]

A blank disappointment, not unmixed with apprehensive terror, succeeded the turbulent excitement of the Normans; for well they knew that the consequences, if not condition, of negotiations, would be their own downfall and banishment at the least;--happy, it might be, to escape ma.s.sacre at the hands of the exasperated mult.i.tude.

The door at the end of the room opened, and the nuncius appeared. He was a st.u.r.dy, broad-shouldered man, of middle age, and in the long loose garb originally national with the Saxon, though then little in vogue; his beard thick and fair, his eyes grey and calm--a chief of Kent, where all the prejudices of his race were strongest, and whose yeomanry claimed in war the hereditary right to be placed in the front of battle.

He made his manly but deferential salutation to the august council as he approached; and, pausing midway between the throne and door, he fell on his knees without thought of shame, for the King to whom he knelt was the descendant of Woden, and the heir of Hengist. At a sign and a brief word from the King, still on his knees, Vebba, the Kentman, spoke.

”To Edward, son of Ethelred, his most gracious king and lord, G.o.dwin, son of Wolnoth, sends faithful and humble greeting, by Vebba, the thegn-born. He prays the King to hear him in kindness, and judge of him with mercy. Not against the King comes he hither with s.h.i.+ps and arms; but against those only who would stand between the King's heart and the subject's: those who have divided a house against itself, and parted son and father, man and wife.”

At those last words Edward's sceptre trembled in this hand, and his face grew almost stern.

”Of the King, G.o.dwin but prays with all submiss and earnest prayer, to reverse the unrighteous outlawry against him and his; to restore him and his sons their just possessions and well-won honours; and, more than all, to replace them where they have sought by loving service not unworthily to stand, in the grace of their born lord and in the van of those who would uphold the laws and liberties of England. This done-- the s.h.i.+ps sail back to their haven; the thegn seeks his homestead and the ceorl returns to the plough; for with G.o.dwin are no strangers; and his force is but the love of his countrymen.”

”Hast thou said?” quoth the King.

”I have said.”

”Retire, and await our answer.”

The Thegn of Kent was then led back into an ante-room, in which, armed from head to heel in ring-mail, were several Normans whose youth or station did not admit them into the council, but still of no mean interest in the discussion, from the lands and possessions they had already contrived to gripe out of the demesnes of the exiles;--burning for battle and eager for the word. Amongst these was Mallet de Graville.

The Norman valour of this young knight was, as we have seen, guided by Norman intelligence; and he had not disdained, since William's departure, to study the tongue of the country in which he hoped to exchange his mortgaged tower on the Seine, for some fair barony on the Humber or the Thames.

While the rest of his proud countrymen stood aloof, with eyes of silent scorn, from the homely nuncius, Mallet approached him with courteous bearing, and said in Saxon: ”May I crave to know the issue of thy message from the reb--that is from the doughty Earl?”

”I wait to learn it,” said Vebba, bluffly.

”They heard thee throughout, then?”

”Throughout.”

”Friendly Sir,” said the Sire de Graville, seeking to subdue the tone of irony habitual to him, and acquired, perhaps, from his maternal ancestry, the Franks. ”Friendly and peace-making Sir, dare I so far venture to intrude on the secrets of thy mission as to ask if G.o.dwin demands, among other reasonable items, the head of thy humble servant --not by name indeed, for my name is as yet unknown to him--but as one of the unhappy cla.s.s called Normans?”

”Had Earl G.o.dwin,” returned the nuncius, ”thought fit to treat for peace by asking vengeance, he would have chosen another spokesman. The Earl asks but his own; and thy head is not, I trow, a part of his goods and chattels.”

”That is comforting,” said Mallet. ”Marry, I thank thee, Sir Saxon; and thou speakest like a brave man and an honest. And if we fall to blows, as I suspect we shall, I should deem it a favour of our Lady the Virgin if she send thee across my way. Next to a fair friend I love a bold foe.”

Vebba smiled, for he liked the sentiment, and the tone and air of the young knight pleased his rough mind, despite his prejudices against the stranger.

Encouraged by the smile, Mallet seated himself on the corner of the long table that skirted the room, and with a debonnair gesture invited Vebba to do the same; then looking at him gravely, he resumed: ”So frank and courteous thou art, Sir Envoy, that I yet intrude on thee my ignorant and curious questions.”

”Speak out, Norman.”

”How comes it, then, that you English so love this Earl G.o.dwin?--Still more, why think you it right and proper that King Edward should love him too? It is a question I have often asked, and to which I am not likely in these halls to get answer satisfactory. If I know aught of your troublous history, this same Earl has changed sides oft eno'; first for the Saxon, then for Canute the Dane--Canute dies, and your friend takes up arms for the Saxon again. He yields to the advice of your Witan, and sides with Hardicanute and Harold, the Danes--a letter, nathless, is written as from Emma, the mother to the young Saxon princes, Edward and Alfred, inviting them over to England, and promising aid; the saints protect Edward, who continues to say aves in Normandy--Alfred comes over, Earl G.o.dwin meets him, and, unless belied, does him homage, and swears to him faith. Nay, listen yet. This G.o.dwin, whom ye love so, then leads Alfred and his train into the ville of Guildford, I think ye call it,--fair quarters enow. At the dead of the night rush in King Harold's men, seize prince and follower, six hundred men in all; and next morning, saving only every tenth man, they are tortured and put to death. The prince is born off to London, and shortly afterwards his eyes are torn out in the Islet of Ely, and he dies of the anguis.h.!.+ That ye should love Earl G.o.dwin withal may be strange, but yet possible. But is it possible, cher Envoy, for the King to love the man who thus betrayed his brother to the shambles?”

”All this is a Norman fable,” said the Thegn of Kent, with a disturbed visage; ”and G.o.dwin cleared himself on oath of all share in the foul murder of Alfred.”

”The oath, I have heard, was backed,” said the knight drily, ”by a present to Hardicanute, who after the death of King Harold resolved to avenge the black butchery; a present, I say, of a gilt s.h.i.+p, manned by fourscore warriors with gold-hilted swords, and gilt helms.--But let this pa.s.s.”

”Let it pa.s.s,” echoed Vebba with a sigh. ”b.l.o.o.d.y were those times, and unholy their secrets.”

”Yet answer me still, why love you Earl G.o.dwin? He hath changed sides from party to party, and in each change won lords.h.i.+ps and lands. He is ambitious and grasping, ye all allow; for the ballads sung in your streets liken him to the thorn and the bramble, at which the sheep leaves his wool. He is haughty and overbearing. Tell me, O Saxon, frank Saxon, why you love G.o.dwin the Earl? Fain would I know; for, please the saints (and you and your Earl so permitting), I mean to live and die in this merrie England; and it would be pleasant to learn that I have but to do as Earl G.o.dwin, in order to win love from the English.”

The stout Vebba looked perplexed; but after stroking his beard thoughtfully, he answered thus: ”Though of Kent, and therefore in his earldom, I am not one of G.o.dwin's especial party; for that reason was I chosen his bode. Those who are under him doubtless love a chief liberal to give and strong to protect. The old age of a great leader gathers reverence, as an oak gathers moss. But to me, and those like me, living peaceful at home, shunning courts, and tempting not broils, G.o.dwin the man is not dear-- it is G.o.dwin the thing.”

”Though I do my best to know your language,” said the knight, ”ye have phrases that might puzzle King Solomon. What meanest thou by 'G.o.dwin the thing'?”

”That which to us G.o.dwin only seems to uphold. We love justice; whatever his offences, G.o.dwin was banished unjustly. We love our laws; G.o.dwin was dishonoured by maintaining them. We love England, and are devoured by strangers; G.o.dwin's cause is England's, and-- stranger, forgive me for not concluding.”

Then examining the young Norman with a look of rough compa.s.sion, he laid his large hand upon the knight's shoulder and whispered: ”Take my advice--and fly.”

”Fly!” said De Graville, reddening. ”Is it to fly, think you, that I have put on my mail, and girded my sword?”

”Vain--vain! Wasps are fierce, but the swarm is doomed when the straw is kindled. I tell you this--fly in time, and you are safe; but let the King be so misguided as to count on arms, and strive against yon mult.i.tude, and verily before nightfall not one Norman will be found alive within ten miles of the city. Look to it, youth! Perhaps thou hast a mother--let her not mourn a son!”

Before the Norman could shape into Saxon sufficiently polite and courtly his profound and indignant disdain of the counsel, his sense of the impertinence with which his shoulder had been profaned, and his mother's son had been warned, the nuncius was again summoned into the presence-chamber. Nor did he return into the ante-room, but conducted forthwith from the council--his brief answer received--to the stairs of the palace, he reached the boat in which he had come, and was rowed back to the s.h.i.+p that held the Earl and his sons.

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