Chapter 25

Hotter than fire Love for five days burns Between false friends; But is quenched When the sixth day comes, And friendship is all impaired. Hávamál.

From Edgeware, where the Watling Street left the Middlesex Forest to cross the barren heath known as Tyburn Lane, the great road was crowded with travellers. A small portion of them—messengers, soldiers, and hunting parties—were riding northward, but the great mass was facing the City whither they were pressing to warm themselves in the glow of the Coronation. On foot, on horseback, in wagons and on crutches, they were as motley a throng as had ever trod the Roman stones; and the respectable element among them was by no means large enough to leaven the lump. Sometimes a group of merchants was to be seen, conducting loaded wagons; sometimes, a thane’s pompous thane, ensheathed in his retinue; while occasionally, as they neared the New Gate, the crowd was swelled by squads of the lesser Cheapside dealers making the daily pilgrimage from their country dwellings to their stalls in the City. But these were as scattered islands in the stream of half drunken seamen, masterless thralls, wolf-eyed beggars, paupers, vagabonds and criminals, who were pushing toward London in hopes of pleasure or gain or for want of another goal.

Amid such a rabble, and as out of place as a swarm of butterflies in frost-silvered air, a band of high-born women was to be seen approaching the City this early December morning. Gorgeously attired pages, hardly more warlike than the women, made a blooming hedge around them, while a sufficiently strong guard of men-at-arms protected them from actual harm, but from impudent comment and ribald jest there was no defence. Their hoods were pulled down as before a storm, their mantles drawn up above their chins; and all but two of them appeared to be trying to shrink into their gilded saddles.

The two who rode at their head, however, looked to be of a different mettle. Indeed, in the quality of her courage, each appeared to differ from the other, though muffling folds blotted out anything like individuality. The shorter of the two, while she rode with gracefully drooping head, had left her face practically uncovered, seemingly unconscious of the half slighting, half pitying admiration elicited by its pathetic beauty. The other, who showed no more than the tip of her nose, held her head bravely erect, while, even through her wrappings, the straightness of her back breathed haughtiness.

Yet it was not to the pensive fair one that a timid companion appealed for comfort, when a temporary damming of the stream pressed those who led, back upon those who followed. She stretched out an en-treating hand toward the girl with the haughtily carried head.

“Randalin! What will he do—the King—when he finds that we have fooled Ulf Jarl, and come hither against his command?”

The Danish girl laughed recklessly. “Little do I care, Candida, to tell it truthfully. Nothing can be worse than sitting in that Abbey. Here at least there is a chance that something may happen to help us to forget that we are alive.”

Candida shook the cloak she had grasped. “But you expect that he will be angry! You told Elfgiva not to undertake the journey because of it. And you were able to say the soothest about his temper.”

“I was obliged to tell her that to be honest,” Randalin answered, and again there was a little wildness in her laugh, “but I should have gone stone-mad if she had not come.” Yet, as her horse commenced to bear her forward once more, she consented to speak more encouragingly across the widening space. “If his humor is right, it may be that nothing disagreeable will happen. She is very fair to look at,—it may be that his mind will change at the sight of her. Think that you will sleep in the Palace to-night.”

Catching this last phrase, as her Valkyria came abreast of her, Elfgiva spoke pettishly: “You see fit to sing a different tune from what you did when you tried to hinder me from this undertaking. I should have brighter hopes if I had not given ear to your advice to send a messenger ahead. If I could have come upon him before he had time to work himself into a hostile temper—”

Her attention wandered as a couple of tipsy soldiers elbowed themselves between the guards only to catch a nearer glimpse of her face, after which they allowed themselves to be thrust back, shouting drunken toasts to her beauty.

“Is it your wish that I help you to lower your hood, lady?” the Danish girl made offer.

Elfgiva’s half smile deepened into a laugh. “Not so, not so!” she said. “What! Have you seen so much of war and battle axes that you have forgotten the ways that are pleasing to men? Yet methinks you must needs have taken notice that, always before he goes into battle, a soldier tests the sharpness of his weapon. It is to that end that I endure the gaze of these serfs,—to test the power of my face.”

“It would not be unadvisable for you to whet your wits as well,” Frode’s daughter muttered scornfully, and somewhat rashly, since Elfgiva’s wits had been sharp enough to guess the significance of her hand-maiden’s interview with the young English noble, and the knowledge had given her a weapon which she was skilful in using.

“Has the sharpness of your mind brought you so much success then, my sweet?” she inquired with her faultless smile; and had the satisfaction of seeing her rebel shrink into silence like a child before a rod.

The crowding of the highway became more noticeable as they neared the point where the Watling Street swerved from its old course, toward the ford and the little Isle of Thorns, to bend eastward toward the New Gate. Some obstruction at the forking of the roads impeded their progress almost to a walk. After a brief experience of it, Elfgiva spoke impatiently to the nearest soldier.

“Why does it become more crowded when two paths open before us? Why does it not happen that some of these cattle turn down the old way?”

The man shook his head. “I do not think there is much likelihood of that, lady; since the Bridge was built, no one has wanted to use the ford; and there is little else to take that way for, unless you are going to service in the West Minster or to the Monastery.”

“Wanted!” the Lady of Northampton repeated in the extremity of scorn. “Bid them turn into that road at once. They stand some chance of their faces getting clean if they take the ford,—if they also get drowned matters very little. Tell them, seek what they may seek, to take that way instantly, or the King shall punish them for interfering with their betters.”

The man pushed up his leather cap to scratch his head. He was not unacquainted with her custom of sweeping the Northamptonshire serfs off any road she wished to possess, but that struck him as being somewhat easier than dispersing a Coronation mob at the gates of London; and yet to defy her—that was harder than either of them! It was an interposition of his good angel that at this moment provided a diversion.

Randalin broke from her silence with an exclamation: “Thorkel! Yonder!”

Less than fifty paces ahead of them, the grizzled head of the King’s foster-father rose steeple-like above the crowd, while the mighty shoulders of the King’s foster-brother made a bulwark beside it, and the gilded helms of the King’s guard formed a palisade around them. The obstacle in the way was nothing less than a royal detachment drawn up in waiting beside the road.

Elfgiva’s frown relaxed; for the first time in many days she let the liquid music of her laughter trickle forth. “Be blithesome in your minds, maidens!” she called gayly over her shoulder. “Friends are at hand to take charge of us.”

Taking into consideration what they had expected, the attention was so flattering that at first they scarcely dared believe it; but its truth was proved the moment Thorkel turned his head and saw them coming. At his command, the line of gilded helms quickly drew out across the road in a barrier which once more dammed the human stream to overflowing. A break in the middle allowed the party from Gloucester to filter through; then the opening closed behind them; the line bent at either end, and they moved as between walls, guarded against any further jostling or rude contact. Elfgiva sparkled with delight and greeted the Tall One with more affability than she had ever before deigned his gruffness.

“Since my royal lord came not himself to meet us,” she said graciously,—and pushing her hood entirely back so that he might get the full benefit of her face, “he has well honored us in his messengers, than whom no persons could be more welcome. I pray you, tell me without delay how it stands with his health and his fortunes.”

Turning from a muttered word to the soldier at his side, Thorkel answered her with his usual curtness. “He thrives well, but his time is full of great matters. To-day he is with the English Witan. Yesterday they chose him to be their king. To-morrow he is to be crowned.”

“To-morrow? And he would have let me remain in ignorance!” The Lady of Northampton was unable to repress a start of anger, though she turned it as soon as possible into a plaintive sigh. “Let me be thankful that my arrival is not too late. I cannot tell you how we have been beset with hardships!” Whereupon, she instantly began telling him, giving free rein to eyes and lips and all the graceful tricks of her hands. It did not disturb her in the least that he rode beside her in silence, when she had observed that from under the bristling thatch of his brows his gaze never left her face.

So complete was her preoccupation that she dis-regarded another thing,—the highway along which they were travelling. It was Randalin who first awoke to a consciousness that the noise of the rabble had become very faint behind them, that no sounds at all broke the stillness ahead of them, that the uneven weed-grown path they were treading was very different from the smooth hardness of the Watling Street. Fens on either side of them, a low hill to the front—was this the way to London? For the first time, she spoke to the son of Lodbrok, who had silently taken his place at her side.

“This is not the Watling Street! Yet we have not turned—Where are we?” Rothgar gnawed at his heavy moustache as though the answer were difficult to frame; and before he had time to evolve it, Elfgiva, who had caught the exclamation, had broken off her prattle.

“That is true! The crowd has disappeared—the stones are overlaid with weeds—” In her bewilderment, she reined in her horse and would have stopped to look about her, if Thorkel’s hand upon her bridle had not compelled her to remain in motion.

“You are still on the Watling Street,” he said harshly. “It is only that this is the old bed of it that has not been used much since the Bridge was built. Besides the ford, it leads also to Saint Peter’s Monastery on Thorney—”

Stung with fear, she tried to snatch the lines from him. “I am not going to a monastery! I am going to the Palace.”

As a cliff stands against the fretting of waves, his grasp stood against hers; and his voice was as immovable as his hand. “Certainly you are going to a palace, you did not let me carry out my meaning. Adjoining the Monastery there is a dwelling-place which was once a house for travellers, that King Edgar himself has slept in—”

“It is a prison you are taking me to!” Her voice rose in a shriek. “It is a prison! You are mocking me I will scream for help!”

His smile mocked her openly then. “By all means,”—he assented,—“and see how much it will profit you.”

She realized then that walls were for shutting people in as well as for shutting people out, and she could have screamed for very temper. Yet she made one more attempt before giving way. Abandoning her struggle for the lines, she let her little gloved hands alight like fluttering birds upon his mailed arm, and summoned all the eloquence of her beauty into her heavenly eyes.

“No, sooner would I trust to you,” she murmured. “You could not mistreat me so! I beseech it of you, take me to the Palace where the King is.”

On what she based her belief that he was incapable of thwarting her is not quite clear, for he had never taken the trouble to hide the fact that he considered her a nuisance, and her civil marriage with the King a piece of youthful folly on Canute’s part. Sinister satisfaction was in his tone when he answered her.

“The Palace where the King is,” he said, “is the Palace for a Queen.”

At first, it seemed that she would either scratch out his eyes or throw herself from her saddle. But in the end she did neither, for a sense of her helplessness turned her faint. To one who has always ruled undisputed, there is something benumbing in the first collision with the pitiless hand of Force. “If I had the good luck to see a bee caught in a brier, I should wish your death,” she threatened. But she said it under her breath; and after that, rode with drooping head and eyes that saw nothing of the scene before her.

When the road had left the fens, it climbed a low hill, beyond which it entered a wood. A brook was the further boundary of the wood, and across its brawling brown water a rude stone bridge continued their path, and linked the bank with the little Isle of Thorns. Nature must have had a prison in mind when she constructed this island, Elfgiva thought with a shiver. A low sandy hillock rising amid three streams or water, the high tide would have cut it off completely but for the friendly arm which the Watling Street extended to it from the Tot Hill, while a thicket of brambles and briers edged it like a natural prison wall. Nor had man forgotten such defences, she found when they had passed a gap in the thorny hedge; a fence of stone rose sheer before them and extended on either hand as far as eye could reach. In the fence was a great gate of black oak, which a black-robed Benedictine presently opened to their summons.

Now for the first time, Thorkel took his hand from her rein. “I will go no farther,” he said. “You are expected, and one of the monks will be your guide. It lies only across the court and through one more door.” His lips curled in their cruel smile as he motioned her forward. “Go in and take possession. It is not sure how soon the King will get time to come to you. His mood has not been very playful lately. Rothgar’s sword has scarcely had time to go to bed in its sheath—”

“The King is occupied with great matters,” Rothgar’s heavy voice bore down the old man’s thinner tones. “It is not only that he has to be crowned and make laws. He has many Englishmen to dispose of, and much land to divide up among his following.”

While Elfgiva’s glance passed him uncomprehendingly, Randalin lifted startled eyes. When she saw that he was looking directly at her, she knew that it was no chance shaft, but an arrow aimed at her heart. The time had come that he had looked forward to, when Canute should get the kingship over the English, and Ivarsdale should come back to the race that had built it. And it was all fair, quite fair, quite within the rules of the game at which she herself had played. She had not a word to offer as she lowered her eyes and let her horse follow the others as it would. There was satisfaction on the lips of each of the King’s deputies as they rode cityward that day.