Chapter 14

Now may we understand That men’s wisdom And their devices And their councils Are like naught ‘Gainst God’s resolve. Saxon Chronicle.

What difference that, somewhere beyond the hills, men were fighting and castles were burning? At Ivarsdale in the shelter and cheer of the lord’s great hall, the feast of the barley beer was at its height. While one set of serfs bore away the remnants of roast and loaf and sweetmeat, another carried around the brimming horns; and to the sound of cheers and hand-clapping, the gleeman moved forward toward the harp that awaited him by the fireside.

Where the glow lay rosiest, the young lord sat in the great raised chair, jesting with his Danish page who knelt on the step at his side. Now the boy’s answering provoked him to laughter, and he put out a hand and tousled the thick curls in his favorite caress. One of the tresses caught in his jewelled ring; and as he bent to unfasten it, he stared at the wavy mass in lazy surprise. It was as soft and rich as the breast of a blackbird, and the fire had laid over it a sheen of rainbow lights.

“Never did I think there could be any black hair so alluring,” he said involuntarily.

He could not see how the face under the clark veil grew suddenly as bright as though the sun had risen in it. And the lad said, rather breathlessly, “I wonder at your words, lord. You know that such hair is the curse of black elves.”

Leaning back in his chair, the Etheling shook his head in whimsical obstinacy. “Not so, not so,” he persisted. “It has to it more lustre than has yellow. My lady-love shall have just such locks.”

He had a glimpse like the flash of a bluebird’s wing in the sun, as the page glanced up at him, and the sight of a face grown suddenly rose-red. Then the boy turned shyly, and slipping back to his cushion on the step, nestled himself against the chair-arm with a sigh that was almost pathetic in its happiness.

Like a quieting hand, the first of the mellow chords fell upon the noise of the revel. The servants bearing away the dishes began to tread the rushes on tiptoe, and a dozen frowns rebuked any clatter. Through the hush, the gleeman began to sing the “Romance of King Offa,” the king who married a wood nymph for dear love’s sake. It began with the wooing and the winning, out in the leafy greenwood amid bird-voices and murmuring brooks; but before long the enmity of the queen-mother entered, with jarring discords, to send the lovers through bitter trials. Lord and page, man and maid and serf, strained eye and ear toward the harper’s tattered figure. So breathless grew the listening stillness that the crackling of the fire became an annoyance. What matter that outside an autumn wind was howling through the forest and stripping the leaves through the vines? Within sound of the mellow harp-music it was balmiest spring-time, as the castlefolk followed the gleeman over the hills and dales of a flowering dream-world.

For a space after he had finished, the silence remained unbroken, then gave way only to an outburst of applause. And one did even better than applaud. Bending forward, his beautiful face quite radiant with his pleasure, the curly-headed page pulled a golden ring from his pouch and tossed it into the harper’s lap.

As he caught the largess, the man’s mouth broadened. “I thank you for your good-will, fair stripling,” he returned. “May you find as true a love when your time comes to go a-wooing.”

The maids tittered, while the men guffawed, and a richer glow came into the cheeks of Fridtjof the page. Suddenly his iris-blue eyes were daringly a-sparkle.

“The spirits will have forgot your wish before that time comes,” he laughed, “for I vow that I will raise a beard or ever I woo a maiden.”

Above the mirth that followed rose the voice of the brawniest of the henchmen, passing his judgment on the ballad. “Now that is my own desire of songs,” he declared. “That was worth possessing,—the love of that lass. A sweetheart who will cleave to your side when your fortune is most severe, and despise every good because she has not you also, she is the filly to yoke with. Drink to the wood maiden, comrades, bare feet and wild ways and all!” Swinging up his horn, he drained off the toast at a draught. “Give us a mistress like that, my lord,” he cried merrily, “and we will hold Ivarsdale for her though all of Edmund’s men batter at the doors.”

Laughing, they all looked up where the young master leaned in his chair, watching the revels with a smile of idle good-humor. All except the blue-eyed page; he bent forward instead, so that his long locks fell softly about his face.

The Lord of Ivarsdale shook his head indolently against the cushion. “No wood lass for me, friend Celric,” he said. “The lady of my love shall be a high-born maid who knows no more of the world’s roughness than I of woman’s ways. Nor shall she follow me at all, but stay modestly at home with her maids and keep herself gentle and fair against my return. Deliver me from your sun-browned, boy-bred wenches!”

“I am consenting to that, lord!” a voice cried from the benches; and a hubbub of conflicting opinions arose. Only the page neither spoke or moved.

The henchman would not be downed; again his voice rose above the others. “In soft days, my lord, in soft days, it might easily be so. But bear in mind such times as these, when grief happens to a man oftener than joy. Methinks your lily-fair lady would swoon at the sight of your blood; and tears would be the best answer you would get, should you seek to draw comfort out of her.”

White as a star at dawn, the page’s face was raised while his wide eyes hung on his master’s; and from the little reed wound between his brown fingers, the juice began to ooze slowly as though some silent force were crushing the life out of its green heart.

But the young noble laughed with gay scorn: “Tears would be in all respects a better answer than I should deserve, should I whimper faint-hearted words into a maiden’s ear. What folly-fit do you speak in, fellow? What! Do you think I would wed another comrade like yourself, or a playfellow like this youngster?” Ever so gently his foot touched the boyish form on the step. “It is something quite different from either of you that is my desire; something that is as much higher as the stars are above these candles.”

Disputing and agreeing, the clamor rose anew, and the Etheling turned to his favorite with a jest. But the page was no longer in his place. He had risen to his feet and was standing with his head flung back like one in pain, both hands up tearing the tunic away from his throat. Sebert bent toward him with a question on his lips.

He forgot the query before he could speak it, however, for at that moment there was a sound of hurried steps on the stone stairs, and one of the armed watchmen from the top of the Tower burst into the room.

“Lord,” he gasped, “some one is upon us! We thought first it was naught but the noise of the wind—then Elward saw a light. We swear they came not over the bridge, yet—”

His words were cut short by a horn-blast from the darkness, loud and clear above the whistling wind. Though only one woman screamed out Edmund’s name, it is probable that the same thought was in every mind. Jests and laughter died on the lips that bore them, and with one accord the men turned in their seats to watch their master.

His face had sobered as he listened; before the first echo had died away he had spoken swiftly to the fellow at his side. “Celric, get you down to the guard at the gate and inquire into the meaning of that.”

When the henchman had left, he began a sharp questioning of the sentinel, and the noise did not begin again. Whispering, the women drew together like herded sheep; and the men left their barley beer, to stand in little groups, muttering in one another’s ears. An old bowman took his weapon down from the wall and set silently to work to restring it.

In the quiet, the tap of the man’s feet upon the steps was audible long before he reached the waiting roomful. Every eye fastened itself upon the curtained doorway.

Swinging back, the arras disclosed a face full of amazement. “Lord,” the man said, “it is Danes! None know how many or how they came there. And their chief has sent you a messenger.”

“Danes!” For the first time in the history of Ivarsdale, the word was spoken with an accent of relief.

The page turned from the fire with a cry of bitter rejoicing: “If it is Canute, I will go to him!”

In the revulsion of his feelings, the Etheling laughed outright. “Since it is not Edmund, I care not if it be the Evil One himself; and it cannot be he, for Canute is in Mercia.” He rose and faced them cheerily. “Lay aside your uneasiness, friends; it is likely only such another band as we put to flight last month, that hopes to surprise us into some weakness. Let the signal fires blaze to warn the churls, while we amuse ourselves with the messenger. To-morrow we will chase them so far over the hills that they will never find their way back again.”

Beckoning to Morcard, he began to consult him concerning the most effective arrangement of the sentinels; and there was a muffled clatter of weapons as men went to and fro with hasty steps. At a word from the steward, the women went softly from the room and up the winding stairs to their quarters, the rustling of their dresses coming back with ghostly stealthiness.

When all was ready the messenger was brought in between guards. Wrapped in dirty sheepskins, he swaggered to the centre of the room, and the light that fell on his tanned face showed a scar running the full length of his cheek. With his first glance, the Lord of Ivarsdale uttered an exclamation.

“Now, by Saint Mary, I have seen you before, fellow! Were you not the leader of the band we drove away last month?”

The Scar-Cheek laughed impudently. “I will not conceal it; yet I did not know that my beauty was so showy. The chief was wise to send Brown-Cloak to do the spying.”

“Brown-Cloak! The beggar?” was cried all down the hall.

But the messenger’s eyes had fallen on the black-haired boy, who stood staring at him from the fireside. His wide mouth opened in astonishment. “The King’s ward? Here is a happening!” he ejaculated. “If I am not much mistaken, Canute will be glad to find this out. It was his belief that you had got your death-blow at Scoerstan, and he took it ill.”

The King’s ward made no other answer than to regard him with a strange mixture of attention and aversion; but the Etheling reached out and pushed the boy farther behind the great chair.

“Fridtjof Frodesson is my captive and no longer concerns you,” he said briefly. “Give him no further thought, but come to your message.”

The swaggering assurance of the man’s laugh was more offensive than rudeness would have been. “If I say that we will shortly set him free, I shall not be going very wide from my message. My errand hither is that I bring word from Rothgar Lodbroksson to surrender the Tower.”

The page uttered a little cry, and his lord raised a hand mechanically to impose silence; but no one else seemed able to speak or to move. From the master in his chair to the serf by the door, they stared dumb-founded at the messenger.

He, on his part, appeared to realize all at once that the time for formality had come. Pitching his cloak higher on his shoulders, he fastened his eyes on a hole in the tapestry behind the Etheling’s chair and began monotonously to recite his lesson: “Rothgar, the son of Lodbrok, sends you greeting, Sebert Oswaldsson; and it is his will that you surrender to him the odal and Tower of Ivarsdale; as is right, because the odal was created and the Tower was built by Ivar Vidfadmi, who was the first son of Lodbrok and the father’s father’s father of my chief—-” In spite of himself, he was obliged to stop to take in breath.

In the pause, the page bent toward his master, his face alight with a sudden fierce triumph. “Lord,” he whispered, “you can never get out! You are caught as though they had you in a trap!”

Astounded, Sebert drew back to stare at him. “Fridtjof! It is not possible that you are unfaithful to me!”

The boy’s only answer was to drop down upon the step and bury his face in his hands. And now the messenger had recovered his wind and his place.

“Since the time of Alfred,” he went on, “my chief and his kin have been kept out of the property by your stock and you; yet because he does not wish to look mean, he offers you to go out in safety with all of your housefolk, both men and women, and as much property as you can walk under,—if you go quietly and in peace.” This time his inflection showed that he had finished. He turned his eyes from the hole and fastened them on the Lord of Ivarsdale, in the confidence of invincible power.

The room was so still that when a gust came in around the ill-fitting windows, the flare of the torch-flames sounded loud as the hiss of serpents.

The Etheling’s voice was very deep and quiet. “If we go in peace,” he repeated slowly. “And if we do not?”

The Dane shrugged his burly shoulders. “There are no terms for that. You will find it necessary to take what comes.”

Again there was silence.

Sebert put his last question: “How long does the son of Lodbrok give me to consider how I am to order things?” The man shattered the silence with his boisterous laughter. “It is not a lie about you English that you never do aught that you do not sit down first and consider, till the crews have eaten all your provisions and the timbers of your boats are rotting. When a Dane strikes, it is like the striking of lightning. So soon as you hear the thunder of his coming, that instant you see the flashing of his weapon. My chief gives you no time at all. So long a time, he has studied out, will it take me to come in to you; so much longer to do my errand; and so much longer to get back. At the end of that time he will blow his horn, and if your gates do not fly open in obedience, he will take that for your answer.”

Either the Lord of Ivarsdale had been doing some rapid thinking during the long speech, or else he was too incensed to think. Now he rose with sparks flashing from the steel of his eyes. “By Peter, he is right! I do not need even that long,” he cried. “Since the Wide-Fathomer began the game, the Tower has been the prize of the strongest. Shall I flinch from a challenge? Our rights are equal; our luck shall decide. For his answer, be he reminded of his own Danish saying, that ‘It is a strong bird that can take what an eagle has in his claws,’ and let him get what comfort he can from that.”

After his ringing tones, the unmoved voice of the messenger fell flat on the ear. “It has happened as we supposed, that you would answer unfavorably,” he said as he turned. “It was seen in battle that you are a brave man. Otherwise the chief would not have thought it necessary to hew a path through the forest in order to take you by surprise.” Saluting with some appearance of respect, he joined his conductors at the door and passed out of sight down the stair.

Like smoke in the wake of a firebrand, confusion rose behind him; a din of exclamations loosed on the air and the clangor of weapons caught down from the wall. Through it, the Etheling’s voice sounded strongly. “To the palisade, all of you! They may not wait till morning. To the forest side; and keep them from it as you would keep off death!” He bent and shook the crouching page. “My armor, boy! How! Would you have me read treason in your sluggishness? My armor!”

The page started up, but it was only to stare past him and fling out his hand toward a window, where a bright light had suddenly shot athwart the darkness: “Lord, they have set fire to something!”

The voice of old Morcard rose shrill: “To the storehouses! Save the grain!”

There was a wild rush for the door; but on the threshold they were met by the shouts of watchmen hurrying from the parapets.

“Lord, the court is swarming with them!”... “They have cut through the palisade on the forest side!”... “They had brush laid ready—“... “Waited only for him—“... “Holy saints, what is the meaning of that?”... “Something else has taken!”

From the stairway above them came a piercing cry: “The storehouses! They have fired them from inside! The lead is melting like ice!”... “The grain!”... “The grain!”

In their midst the young lord stood in helpless fury; and the hand he had grasped around his sword-hilt gripped it so hard that blood started under each nail. But his page bent and kissed the clenched fist with a cry of fierce exulting.

“You will never get out to find your lily-fair lady. You will never have a lady wife, lord! We shall die together.”