Part 4

Several women pushed a maiden into the middle of the ring formed by the assembly. She seemed to have been weeping, for her eyelids were flushed; she shook her dark hair over her face, and clutched her hands together and plucked at a ring she wore.

"Daughter," said David, "why do you torment and pester Cynyr son of Cyngen, a hermit seeking God?"

Her lips moved. Some thought she whispered hoarsely:

"I do not!"

"Dost thou hate Cynyr?"

"I hate him in my heart!" cried she.

"I will hang him from yonder ash-tree," said David with a mocking twinkle, "to-morrow at dawn."

"No, no!" she shrieked. "Mercy, mercy! Holy David, there is cruel he is! Spare him--spare Cynyr----"

"Peace, woman!" David's face had become a mask of fury, but his voice was mellifluous. "Nothing will thy tongue avail thee. Thou hast wrought devilish magic, and surely we shall slay thee as a witch!"

"Myn Duw!" shouted Cynyr the novice, tossing his arms on high. "Do not so! I was mistaken--there is mad I have been. David has cleared the covering from my eyes! I love Indeg...."

"And thou, Indeg," said David softly, "dost thou love Cynyr?"

Said she, more softly still:

"I like him ... as well as I like any man."

"Our Lord God lays hold upon His own," cried David, "and, Teilo, there is no need to grab souls for him. Rhaint mab Brychan, wilt thou adopt this Cynyr into thy tribe, when he shall have sojourned with thee the accustomed number of years? He will make a brave fighting-man, though not in the picked army of heaven."

"Yes, indeed!" replied Rhaint the King. "I am David's servant, to do his bidding."

"Now, upon blessed Llywel's land, where he lived and died," the saint continued, "we will set a new church, and Llywel, Teilo, and I, we three, will own it in perpetuity. And of the three thou, Teilo, shalt have the pre-eminence. Willingly wilt thou fast forty days upon this spot, for our church's hallowing. A small omission troubles thy conscience, I know. Children," turning from the Abbot of Llandaff to the man and woman before him, "I would see all well with you before I depart. Give me thy ring, Indeg."

She put her ring in the palm of David.

"It is not yet the noon-hour," said he. "Lily, where is my altar, and the other things I now require?"

"Here is your altar, my father," was Lily's reply, "and the sacred elements, look you!--ready for the swearing of oaths."

He brought David's portable altar and placed it before him, and set bread and wine upon it.

David rose to his feet, and, supported by Teilo and Ismael, said mass as it was celebrated for a marriage.

"Cynyr," said he in the British tongue, "wilt thou have Indeg as thy wife?"

"Yes, yes!" Cynyr answered.

"And, Indeg, wilt thou have Cynyr as thy husband?"

She nodded her head several times.

"Then I declare before all these, men and women of the Plant y Cymry, that ye be man and wife together. And, Cynyr, thou shalt love Indeg as long as her life shall last; and thou, Indeg, shalt love Cynyr and obey him. The blessing of God is upon you; and ye shall go with my blessing, and with the blessing of Teilo."

Hand in hand the lovers wandered away over the young, green grass.

"Sixty days and no less will I fast before I consecrate Llywel's church," cried Teilo, his native generosity breaking forth, "and those two shall have my prayers at each day's offering!"

Gwhir, Teilo's bard at Llandaff, unslung his harp from his shoulder, and struck a triumphant prelude from the strings. He began to chant the praises of his master:

"Thrice a hundred servants of Christ does Teilo feed in his Bangor. The fierce old dragon he drove to the seas--potent is our father. Miracles are all about the little ones of Teilo.

"With Brynach aforetime did angels company in the wilderness about Nant Nimer. No harvest had Llandaff but flower of the broom, the gold-finch of the meadows. Surely white messengers were at hand for the succour of the Côr of Teilo!"

David listened at first with a slight frown, but by the end of the second triad his countenance had softened.

"Truth governs the tongue of Gwhir," said he. "Hearken! there is also music over yonder. Give me thy arm, my Ismael--I would hear the children sing."

They left the dingle, David and his followers, and ascended a gentle slope that led to an open stretch of level, sheep-cropped sward. Here stunted cowslips grew, and daisies, and a few stray tufts of thyme greeted the footsteps of each comer with their tonic perfume. Young men and girls, partnered in couples, were dancing about a blossoming hawthorn. At their shoulders and wrists, their knees or their ankles, coloured ribbons fluttered; and as they sprang, with outstretched arms, to touch the tree-trunk they hissed between tongue and palate. A man played shrilly upon a pipe, and a number of elderly women, seated upon the ground, were singing:

"Arianrod's battlements light the pathless waste of the sky. Oak for power, and ash for aid, and birch for constancy! Bird calls to bird that gone is winter, the time of hunger and fear. Bless the thorntree, maidens and boys, and bless the spring of the year!"

David watched them indulgently, for the days of the Druids were far off. When their dance was over, they rushed in a body to his feet, begging his blessing, and crying out compliments, sincere though extravagant, upon his sanctity and his fame.

"Dewi Sant! Dewi Sant! Father of the Saints of Britain! May he live amongst us for ever!"

"As God wills," said he, as he turned to leave them. "Beautiful the May tree--more beautiful the groves of Paradise. There is a hard task, my brothers, for Ismael."

His companions remembered well what he had spoken of Ismael in two months less than a year from that hour.[13]

[13] Ismael succeeded David as Bishop of Mynyw.

One February day in the year Six Hundred and One, many folk, rich and poor, flocked to the walls of Ty Ddewi, David's monastic enclosure. A rumour had gone abroad that the saint had had heavenly premonition that his end was near at hand. So, weeping and lamenting, these men and women came from the regions around, crying upon their bishop to take their sadness from them. Within Ty Ddewi there was a wonderful silence and peace; and in the streets of Mynyw were heard the flutterings of invisible wings.

"Look you, this mourning must cease, now!" said blessed David.

"Well, well, true is what ye have heard. Merry tidings have reached me! In a little while from now, on the first day of March, I must go hence to the place where is life without end, rest without labour, and joy without sorrow--where is health and no pain, youth and no old age, peace and no contention, music and no discord. I charge you pray always, in all your undertakings, spiritual and bodily; and be good, little people, for the best usage is goodness."

His last words on earth were just as simple:

"Take me with Thee!"

Star of Mercia

"_Hic regina detestatur Amplexus illicitos; Spreta mortem machinatur Ob amores vetitos._"

"Nay, Ethelfrith, bide thou here in quiet!" said Cynerith. "Tush, girl! art no child now, at sixteen years old! Why, thou hast witnessed the death of many a fledgling rook. The sun must not stain thy cheeks this day, and that thou knowest! The young man cannot now be afar off, God help! Nay, good lack! I will not have such pouting! It is my behest that thou stay at home."

In reality, the Lady Ethelfrith could scarcely be said to pout; and she knew her mother too well to venture a protest. The party set forth--Offa the King, the imperious Cynerith his Queen, their son the Atheling, and Eadburh their handsome elder daughter, wife of Beorhtric, King of Wessex, and now on a visit to her parents' court--and the young Ethelfrith, debarred from the sport, climbed to the upper room which was her own sleeping-chamber, and looked out over the shire of Hereford.

If she leant out and turned sideways, her window commanded a view of the highway that ran by the gates of King Offa's palace of Sutton. She peered idly in that direction, without emotion of any sort--even anger, or curiosity. Below her lay the orchard-close, bright green under foot, and rosy overhead with the vernal glory of the apple-trees. It was the fairest day of the fair month of May; but its beauty awoke in Ethelfrith a dull, continuous pain. She was seldom happy, poor little princess: she thought much, but there was no one to whom she could tell her ideas, or who would give her sympathy. The King was always occupied; her brother was as spare of speech as herself; her mother was the Queen and unapproachable, except when she jested coarsely; and she feared her sister, the Queen of Wessex. There were many puzzling things in her everyday world which had only just begun to claim her attention.

She was a very fairy-like being, so small and slim and fragile; her complexion was as delicate as the apple-blossom; she had soft eyes, grey as the plumage of a dove and a soft mouth with an obstinate curve; her hair was of the purest, palest gold, just saved from being flaxen and colourless. A strange child, surely, for those two robust persons, Offa and Cynerith. Just now she was wondering why they had not told her before yesterday of Ethelbert of East Anglia, his coming and its purpose. Every one about the palace had known of it but herself. She had overheard what had been whispered to a servant of her sister's from Wessex, in the orchard, upon the foregoing afternoon, by one of her father's henchmen, whose eyes had shed a marvellously tender light while he gazed upon her, King Offa's daughter.

"She is the star and flower of all Mercia," this henchman had said, "and she is to wed Lord Ethelbert, the star of the Eastern Angles."

Although she had remarked it, the expression of the speaker's countenance had in no wise stirred her sensibilities; she had been a little ruffled in temper, perhaps--no more. For Ethelfrith had no affinities with the courtiers; the overfed, voluptuous women and their satellites filled her with a cold disgust. The nuns of Marden, she thought, led peaceful lives, and bore in their faces a truly joyous light. Yet she had no longing for the seclusion of a religious house. She would sometimes, however--though very rarely--go to visit the sisters and spend a day in their company. The reverend mother was a motherly woman indeed; she was very gentle with the princess, and careful to refrain in her presence from any allusion to her life or her kinsfolk that might dash her girlish, half-childish dreams. When the maiden returned to her ordinary surroundings, how the glare and the chatter tired her head and oppressed her whole dainty frame! So it came about that the Lady Ethelfrith was little accounted by the great folk of Mercia: she was always silent, usually prim, and sometimes brusque; and to some she seemed a cross, spoilt child, and to others, witless.

Then there had been her mother's half-teasing words of the evening before; that was really all she knew! At the thought of King Ethelbert, a sharper pain than the ache of loneliness amid natural beauties struck through her heart. She remembered the Queen's parting injunctions. Her childhood was surely at an end. This Ethelbert would be coming by the highway to the halls of Sutton before long.

Impatiently she turned away from the dusty road. Her eyes lighted upon the flowering gorse-bushes that blazed upon the outskirts of an upland covert in the distance. There ran through her head a riddle of her nursery days, couched in the rhyming metre which the Mercians had begun to imitate from the neighbouring Welsh.

"Yellow and green, Sharp and keen, Grows in the mene. The King can't ride it, no more can the Queen."

Song after song, carol after carol, lay after lay, came tripping after--some of God and the saints and ghostly blessedness; some of love and mirth; others of woe. A smile hovered about the lips of Ethelfrith. She loved songs--they were often her only solace.

She would walk in the garden--no, she would not. The sun was too hot--the wind was too cold. She had just decided to wile away the time by strumming upon her cither, when she descried figures approaching along the road. They were horsemen, many horsemen; a mighty train. And there, unmistakably, was the banner of some great one. It was not a lord of Mercia, nor a lord of Wessex! Ethelfrith rushed from her room, down the stairs, and headlong into the orchard-close, in a fit of wild shyness.

There was her waiting-maid, and there were several aged ladies who cared not to look on at the shooting of the rooks. All confused, she stammered to them of her surmise--how that the King of East Anglia was even at their gates. What should they do, with her parents away?

"Why, lady, there is no need for fear," said one kind-hearted matron. Even as she spoke a servant appeared in the orchard doorway, ushering with every token of respect a company of nobly-attired, travel-stained men. In another moment the little group beneath the trees had become aware of the leader of the party--a young man, very lithe, very muscular, with an energetic open countenance, and the bluest, brightest eyes that Ethelfrith had ever seen. Their glance wandered from one to another of the women, and came to rest upon King Offa's youngest daughter.

It seemed to her that the universe whirled around her: she had to strain at her insteps in order to keep herself upright. Then she heard him saying:

"O lady, forgive me that I know not whom I should greet! Do I speak to the high and mighty lady, the Lady Ethelfrith of Mercia?"

She curtsied, and hung her head; she was pallid now, who had been crimson the instant before; her tongue refused to utter audible sound.

"I am Ethelbert of East Anglia," continued the stranger. "Here am I at King Offa's bidding. They have told you of my coming?"

"Indeed, I am Ethelfrith," said she. "I do greatly grieve--my father and mother.... Oh, my lord, will ye not be seated? I had forgotten.... Ye will deem me unmannerly...."

"Nay, lady, surely nay," said Ethelbert earnestly; and he seated himself beside her upon a bench built round the trunk of an ancient apple-tree. He had begun to address her once more in his kindly tones, when a bustling noise reached them from within the palace, and in another moment the whole court was about them. Offa, the welcoming host, Cynerith, with her ready, witty talk. And Eadburh, whose person and taste in adornment made her give the effect of a full-blown poppy. Ethelfrith felt faded and nerveless beside her. She shrank into the background.

"In a good hour!" cried Offa. "Ye have spoken with my little daughter, I see: no need to make you known one to another. I trow ye are weary from your wayfaring. Come with me, and ye shall bathe you, and have meat and drink. And then, Ethelbert Etheldred's son, I will show you my horses, my hounds, and my hawks, and ye shall say whether ye have other such in East Anglia."

And they all departed into the house, leaving the princess alone.

She, pondering dazedly, thought that a thunderstorm had broken.

But the sun was shining as it had shone all day: the little stream which bounded the orchard from the meadows beyond was as blue as the sky whose colour it borrowed. The earth beneath her feet seemed to pant forth the scent, sweet and languorous, of white wild violets. A cuckoo shouted insistently. The air was vibrant with the voices of created things. A glimmering sulphur-moth came fluttering before her. Ethelfrith began to run. About and about she chased it, screaming in her excitement; and presently she fell on her knees, panting, by the brookside, her arms clasped around a clump of meadowsweet and forget-me-not.

Summer was summer once again.

They were all upon a green knoll, sheltered by ash and elm. They had flown their hawks with some success, and were now enjoying shade and repose, while their attendants laid the midday meal before them.

Ethelfrith looked often at Ethelbert. He was listening somewhat impatiently to Eadburh, whose florid beauty was evidently little to his taste.

"Lord King," she was saying, "ye seem to me in no wise a monkish man. I thought, from what I had heard, that surely ye would betake you to the life of the cloister, or else bind yourself to all of a saint's life in your kingly halls. I beseech you say, had ye ever such a meaning?"

"They were my youthful thoughts," said Ethelbert. "But I have put them far from me. A king's life is for a king, and no monk's life. Besides, I am the last of my father's house."

He rose, and crossed to Ethelfrith, offering to pour mead into her drinking-horn.

Now Cynerith had looked often and long at Ethelbert since his coming.

"A harmless boy!" she remarked to her daughter Eadburh; and then she said "Fore heaven! the handsomest boy I have seen this many a year!"

Eadburh laughed her horse-laugh.

"Are all things to thy liking, fair lady?" said Ethelbert to Ethelfrith.

"Why, greatly to my liking, O King!" answered she.

Suddenly Cynerith called out, "Child, where is thine amethyst brooch? Is it lost, then, thou naughty one?"

"My lady," said the girl, trembling, "I did give it.... Ye saw the beggars. One there was that might have been a leper; and there were little children. O mother, be not wroth! I could not do else--woeful was their crying. I sent them unto the sisters, who will feed them and care for them this night; and I gave my brooch unto the woman with the baby in her arms."

"Fie upon thee, fie upon thee!" cried the Queen. "Is my daughter altogether a fool? I will not have thee go among such filthy folk, to touch them belike! Precious stones give I not thee for this!"

"All beggars and such scum should be whipped and branded," said Eadburh, little guessing that in years to come she herself would roam a foreign city,[14] begging her bread. "Lord father, think ye not that it would be well that when a bondman have not work enough, or when he feign himself a cripple, his lord might sell him beyond seas? So do I often tell King Beorhtric."

[14] Pavia.

"Why, why," Ethelbert broke in, "I miss my ring of onyx!"

"Was it loose upon thy finger?" said Queen Cynerith. "Often in unhooding a hawk----"

"Nay," said he, smiling, "I do think it is where the Lady Ethelfrith's sweet charity would have it be!"

Cynerith bit her lip.

"Have ye indeed bestowed your ring upon the beggars?" Ethelfrith whispered.

"Surely, aye," answered he. "The sad, sorry souls! These do fear lest they be besmirched by fellowship with the mean and ailing. But I think that a king, before all men in the earth ought to be lowly." Bending towards her, he said softly, "Tell me now, are all things truly to thy liking?"

"Oh, my lord...." said she. Here, amongst all these people--before all her kindred!

"'High and mighty' I greeted thee," he pursued. "Dearest, I knew not then to whom I spake. 'Soft and lovely lady' hail I thee now!"

He handed her down the slope and together they wandered slowly through the fields.

The royal party followed immediately, and they proceeded, mostly on foot, along the path which leads through the lush meadow-land. Presently Cynerith called the King of East Anglia to her, and they in their turn headed the company.

"May-tide is God's gift to lovers," she said. "The Queen's words are sooth," was his rejoinder.

"Hearken to the live things, and to the birds," said Cynerith, and her eyes were languishing. "Ethelbert, a woman's heart blooms blithe and tender in this month of May!"

Eadburh looked her sister from head to foot.

"Art not a fine woman," she remarked. "Belike thou wilt yet grow."

"Think ye I must needs become a fine woman?" said the other, smiling.

"Men like them," replied Eadburh. "All men," she added, with a meaning glance towards Ethelbert.

"What wouldst thou hint?" cried Ethelfrith; but Queen Eadburh was gone from her side.

The younger sister was not easy in heart or mind. Lately she had become aware of circumstances which she did not care to think on; and now, her sister's words! She was used to the moods of her mother; but there was also Sexwolf, the young lord who had been the Queen's constant companion for two years--he was full of smouldering fury, it was evident, and would speak to no one. Her brother was near at hand, but he always snubbed her when she talked inquisitively; he would be no help. There was thane Edric, the honest old man, seneschal of the court; she was certain he would tell her plainly anything he thought she ought to know. Why should she not take her perplexities to him? Alack! here was Eadburh again! Her she could not question. She would consult old Edric later on.

"Is a woman ever too old to love?" said Cynerith the Queen.

Ethelbert looked up quickly, surprised and a little amused. They were walking along the edge of a springing cornfield.

"Look, the bonny blossoms!" cried she.

She stooped over a patch of poppies, whose bowls seemed to burn with liquid scarlet fire. As she did so, her hand brushed against Ethelbert's as though by accident.

"Bonny, for sure," answered the young man.

"Pity they have no smell--as it were, no soul. They are rank, too, I think. O lady mother, this morning I heard Ethelfrith singing to herself...."

* * * * *

"Why, Leofgythe, whither away?" said Ethelfrith.

Said the waiting-maid: "Lady, there is great mirth afoot to-night for us of the household. The Queen hath given us leave that we may go to the dancing at Aegelstane the Thane's. I beseech you, my lady, that ye forget not to comb your locks right thoroughly; they must shine like gold for King Ethelbert."

"Good luck go with thee, Leofgythe," cried the Lady gaily. "I would we might have dancing too. But I fear me we shall be too few." And she passed on up the staircase.

In the palace hall King Ethelbert and Queen Cynerith sat facing one another across a little table, playing at chess. All was not well between them. The Queen leant very far over the board, and her lips were pouting. Her fingers rested lightly upon the head of a chessman. Suddenly she withdrew her hand, and launched a side-long look at her opponent from beneath drooping lashes. Ethelbert's brow was black, and for an instant there appeared in his eyes a glint of loathing.

Then Cynerith surveyed the board once more and played her piece.

It was checkmate.

As by a common impulse, they both rose, making no comment upon the game. The Queen was flushed and quivering. Ethelbert bowed to her and strode hurriedly from the hall.

Cynerith went then to King Offa's private chamber. The King was there alone: he smiled at sight of her, and greeted her lovingly. Cynerith stood before him, rapping one foot upon the earthen floor.

"My lord," she burst forth at last, "what will ye do if things fall out even so as your dearest wishes be undermined?"

Offa spread wide his hands.

"How now, sweetheart?" he queried, laughing.

"It were well to be ready. If East Anglia become our foe--if Ethelbert will not wed with Ethelfrith----?"

"Not wed with Ethelfrith! Not wed my little maid! How, wife, what meanest thou?"

"I understand not, for my life," said Cynerith, "which way things are faring between them twain! It is my belief that Ethelbert is here to pick a quarrel with thee, Offa."

"Tush, woman, woman! I have marked nought of this."

"Thou wilt own that my woman's wit is ever quicker than thine own, husband. I think he beareth little love to our daughter, and none to thee or me, or any of us. For all he is so mild, and his tongue so smooth, he is a man to scheme deep undertakings. Why hath he brought with him so great an armed train--greater far than a wedding warranteth? Offa, I tell thee this youth will some day spread his sway in England, even so far as thou hast spread thine!"

"If I thought he truly scorned my daughter...."