Part 10 (1/2)

”Have I not told thee, son of G.o.dwin,” said the Vala, solemnly, ”that Edith's skein of life was inwoven with thine? Dost thou deem that my charms have not explored the destiny of the last of my race? Know that it is in the decrees of the fates that ye are to be united, never more to be divided. Know that there shall come a day, though I can see not its morrow, and it lies dim and afar, which shall be the most glorious of thy life, and on which Edith and fame shall be thine,--the day of thy nativity, on which hitherto all things have prospered with thee. In vain against the stars preach the mone and the priest: what shall be, shall be. Wherefore, take hope and joy, O Children of Time! And now, as I join your hands, I betroth your souls.”

Rapture unalloyed and unprophetic, born of love deep and pure, shone in the eyes of Harold, as he clasped the hand of his promised bride. But an involuntary and mysterious shudder pa.s.sed over Edith's frame, and she leant close, close, for support upon Harold's breast. And, as if by a vision, there rose distinct in her memory a stern brow, a form of power and terror--the brow and the form of him who but once again in her waking life the Prophetess had told her she should behold. The vision pa.s.sed away in the warm clasp of those protecting arms; and looking up into Harold's face, she there beheld the mighty and deep delight that transfused itself at once into her own soul.

Then Hilda, placing one hand over their heads, and raising the other towards heaven, all radiant with bursting stars, said in her deep and thrilling tones: ”Attest the betrothal of these young hearts, O ye Powers that draw nature to nature by spells which no galdra can trace, and have wrought in the secrets of creation no mystery so perfect as love,--Attest it, thou temple, thou altar!--attest it, O sun and O air! While the forms are divided, may the souls cling together--sorrow with sorrow, and joy with joy. And when, at length, bride and bridegroom are one,--O stars, may the trouble with which ye are charged have exhausted its burthen; may no danger molest, and no malice disturb, but, over the marriage-bed, s.h.i.+ne in peace, O ye stars!”

Up rose the moon. May's nightingale called its mate from the breathless boughs; and so Edith and Harold were betrothed by the grave of the son of Cerdic. And from the line of Cerdic had come, since Ethelbert, all the Saxon kings who with sword and with sceptre had reigned over Saxon England.

BOOK VI.

AMBITION.

CHAPTER I.

There was great rejoicing in England. King Edward had been induced to send Alred the prelate [139] to the court of the German Emperor, for his kinsman and namesake, Edward Atheling, the son of the great Ironsides. In his childhood, this Prince, with his brother Edmund, had been committed by Canute to the charge of his va.s.sal, the King of Sweden; and it has been said (though without sufficient authority), that Canute's design was, that they should be secretly made away with. The King of Sweden, however, forwarded the children to the court of Hungary; they were there honourably reared and received. Edmund died young, without issue. Edward married a daughter of the German Emperor, and during the commotions in England, and the successive reigns of Harold Harefoot, Hardicanute, and the Confessor, had remained forgotten in his exile, until now suddenly recalled to England as the heir presumptive of his childless namesake. He arrived with Agatha his wife, one infant son, Edgar, and two daughters, Margaret and Christina.

Great were the rejoicings. The vast crowd that had followed the royal visitors in their procession to the old London palace (not far from St. Paul's) in which they were lodged, yet swarmed through the streets, when two thegns who had personally accompanied the Atheling from Dover, and had just taken leave of him, now emerged from the palace, and with some difficulty made their way through the crowded streets.

The one in the dress and short hair imitated from the Norman,--was our old friend G.o.drith, whom the reader may remember as the rebuker of Taillefer, and the friend of Mallet de Graville; the other, in a plain linen Saxon tunic, and the gonna worn on state occasions, to which he seemed unfamiliar, but with heavy gold bracelets on his arms, long haired and bearded, was Vebba, the Kentish thegn, who had served as nuncius from G.o.dwin to Edward.

”Troth and faith!” said Vebba, wiping his brow, ”this crowd is enow to make plain roan stark wode. I would not live in London for all the gauds in the goldsmith's shops, or all the treasures in King Edward's vaults. My tongue is as parched as a hay-field in the weyd-month. [140] Holy Mother be blessed! I see a c.u.men-hus [141] open; let us in and refresh ourselves with a horn of ale.”

”Nay, friend,” quoth G.o.drith, with a slight disdain, ”such are not the resorts of men of our rank. Tarry yet awhile, till we arrive near the bridge by the river-side; there, indeed, you will find worthy company and dainty cheer.”

”Well, well, I am at your hest, G.o.drith,” said the Kent man, sighing; ”my wife and my sons will be sure to ask me what sights I have seen, and I may as well know from thee the last tricks and ways of this burly-burly town.”

G.o.drith, who was master of all the fas.h.i.+ons in the reign of our lord King Edward, smiled graciously, and the two proceeded in silence, only broken by the st.u.r.dy Kent man's exclamations; now of anger when rudely jostled, now of wonder and delight when, amidst the throng, he caught sight of a gleeman, with his bear or monkey, who took advantage of some s.p.a.ce near convent garden, or Roman ruin, to exhibit his craft; till they gained a long low row of booths, most pleasantly situated to the left of this side London bridge, and which was appropriated to the celebrated cookshops, that even to the time of Fitzstephen retained their fame and their fas.h.i.+on.

Between the shops and the river was a s.p.a.ce of gra.s.s worn brown and bare by the feet of the customers, with a few clipped trees with vines trained from one to the other in arcades, under cover of which were set tables and settles. The place was thickly crowded, and but for G.o.drith's popularity amongst the attendants, they might have found it difficult to obtain accommodation. However, a new table was soon brought forth, placed close by the cool margin of the water, and covered in a trice with tankards of hippocras, pigment, ale, and some Gascon, as well as British wines: varieties of the delicious cake- bread for which England was then renowned; while viands, strange to the honest eye and taste of the wealthy Kent man, were served on spits.

”What bird is this?” said he, grumbling.

”O enviable man, it is a Phrygian attagen [142] that thou art about to taste for the first time; and when thou hast recovered that delight, I commend to thee a Moorish compound, made of eggs and roes of carp from the old Southweorc stewponds, which the cooks here dress notably.”

”Mooris.h.!.+--Holy Virgin!” cried Vebba, with his mouth full of the Phrygian attagen, ”how came anything Moorish in our Christian island?”

G.o.drith laughed outright.

”Why, our cook here is Moorish; the best singers in London are Moors. Look yonder! see those grave comely Saracens!”

”Comely, quotha, burnt and black as a charred pine-pole!” grunted Vebba; ”well, who are they?”

”Wealthy traders; thanks to whom, our pretty maids have risen high in the market.” [143]

”More the shame,” said the Kent man; ”that selling of English youth to foreign masters, whether male or female, is a blot on the Saxon name.”

”So saith Harold our Earl, and so preach the monks,” returned G.o.drith. ”But thou, my good friend, who art fond of all things that our ancestors did, and hast sneered more than once at my Norman robe and cropped hair, thou shouldst not be the one to find fault with what our fathers have done since the days of Cerdic.”

”Hem,” said the Kent man, a little perplexed, ”certainly old manners are the best, and I suppose there is some good reason for this practice, which I, who never trouble myself about matters that concern me not, do not see.”

”Well, Vebba, and how likest thou the Atheling? he is of the old line,” said G.o.drith.

Again the Kent man looked perplexed, and had recourse to the ale, which he preferred to all more delicate liquor, before he replied: ”Why, he speaks English worse than King Edward! and as for his boy Edgar, the child can scarce speak English at all. And then their German carles and cnehts!--An I had known what manner of folk they were, I had not spent my mancuses in running from my homestead to give them the welcome. But they told me that Harold the good Earl had made the King send for them: and whatever the Earl counselled must, I thought, be wise, and to the weal of sweet England.”

”That is true,” said G.o.drith with earnest emphasis, for, with all his affectation of Norman manners, he was thoroughly English at heart, and now among the staunchest supporters of Harold, who had become no less the pattern and pride of the young n.o.bles than the darling of the humbler population,--”that is true--and Harold showed us his n.o.ble English heart when he so urged the King to his own loss.”

As G.o.drith thus spoke, nay, from the first mention of Harold's name, two men richly clad, but with their bonnets drawn far over their brows, and their long gonnas so worn as to hide their forms, who were seated at a table behind G.o.drith and had thus escaped his attention, had paused from their wine-cups, and they now listened with much earnestness to the conversation that followed.

”How to the Earl's loss?” asked Vebba.

”Why, simple thegn,” answered G.o.drith, ”why, suppose that Edward had refused to acknowledge the Atheling as his heir, suppose the Atheling had remained in the German court, and our good King died suddenly,-- who, thinkest thou, could succeed to the English throne?”

”Marry, I have never thought of that at all,” said the Kent man, scratching his head.

”No, nor have the English generally; yet whom could we choose but Harold?”

A sudden start from one of the listeners was checked by the warning finger of the other; and the Kent man exclaimed: ”Body o' me! But we have never chosen king (save the Danes) out of the line of Cerdic. These be new cranks, with a vengeance; we shall be choosing German, or Saracen, or Norman next!”

”Out of the line of Cerdic! but that line is gone, root and branch, save the Atheling, and he thou seest is more German than English. Again I say, failing the Atheling, whom could we choose but Harold, brother-in-law to the King: descended through Githa from the royalties of the Norse, the head of all armies under the Herr-ban, the chief who has never fought without victory, yet who has always preferred conciliation to conquest--the first counsellor in the Witan--the first man in the realm--who but Harold? answer me, staring Vebba?”

”I take in thy words slowly,” said the Kent man, shaking his head, ”and after all, it matters little who is king, so he be a good one. Yes, I see now that the Earl was a just and generous man when he made the King send for the Atheling. Drink-hael! long life to them both!”

”Was-hael,” answered G.o.drith, draining his hippocras to Vebba's more potent ale. ”Long life to them both! may Edward the Atheling reign, but Harold the Earl rule! Ah, then, indeed, we may sleep without fear of fierce Algar and still fiercer Gryffyth the Walloon--who now, it is true, are stilled for the moment, thanks to Harold--but not more still than the smooth waters in Gwyned, that lie just above the rush of a torrent.”

”So little news hear I,” said Vebba, ”and in Kent so little are we plagued with the troubles elsewhere, (for there Harold governs us, and the hawks come not where the eagles hold eyrie!)--that I will thank thee to tell me something about our old Earl for a year [144], Algar the restless, and this Gryffyth the Welch King, so that I may seem a wise man when I go back to my homestead.”

”Why, thou knowest at least that Algar and Harold were ever opposed in the Witan, and hot words thou hast heard pa.s.s between them!”

”Marry, yes! But Algar was as little match for Earl Harold in speech as in sword play.”

Now again one of the listeners started, (but it was not the same as the one before,) and muttered an angry exclamation.

”Yet is he a troublesome foe,” said G.o.drith, who did not hear the sound Vebba had provoked, ”and a thorn in the side both of the Earl and of England; and sorrowful for both England and Earl was it, that Harold refused to marry Aldyth, as it is said his father, wise G.o.dwin, counselled and wished.”

”Ah! but I have heard scops and harpers sing pretty songs that Harold loves Edith the Fair, a wondrous proper maiden, they say!”

”It is true; and for the sake of his love, he played ill for his ambition.”

”I like him the better for that,” said the honest Kent man: ”why does he not marry the girl at once? she hath broad lands, I know, for they run from the Suss.e.x sh.o.r.e into Kent.”

”But they are cousins five times removed, and the Church forbids the marriage; nevertheless Harold lives only for Edith; they have exchanged the true-lofa [145], and it is whispered that Harold hopes the Atheling, when he comes to be King, will get him the Pope's dispensation. But to return to Algar; in a day most unlucky he gave his daughter to Gryffyth, the most turbulent sub-king the land ever knew, who, it is said, will not be content till he has won all Wales for himself without homage or service, and the Marches to boot. Some letters between him and Earl Algar, to whom Harold had secured the earldom of the East Angles, were discovered, and in a Witan at Winchester thou wilt doubtless have heard, (for thou didst not, I know, leave thy lands to attend it,) that Algar [146] was outlawed.”