CHAPTER IV.
"I tell thee, Hilda," said the Earl, impatiently, "I tell thee that I
renounce henceforth all faith save in Him whose ways are concealed
from our eyes. Thy seid and thy galdra have not guarded me against
peril, nor armed me against sin. Nay, perchance--but peace: I will no
more tempt the dark art, I will no more seek to disentangle the awful
truth from the juggling lie. All so foretold me I will seek to
forget,--hope from no prophecy, fear from no warning. Let the soul go
to the future under the shadow of God!"
"Pass on thy way as thou wilt, its goal is the same, whether seen or
unmarked. Peradventure thou art wise," said the Vala, gloomily.
"For my country's sake, heaven be my witness, not my own," resumed the
Earl, "I have blotted my conscience and sullied my truth. My country
alone can redeem me, by taking my life as a thing hallowed evermore to
her service. Selfish ambition do I lay aside, selfish power shall
tempt me no more; lost is the charm that I beheld in a throne, and,
save for Edith--"
"No! not even for Edith," cried the betrothed, advancing, "not even
for Edith shalt thou listen to other voice than that of thy country
and thy soul."
The Earl turned round abruptly, and his eyes were moist. "O Hilda,"
he cried, "see henceforth my only Vala; let that noble heart alone
interpret to us the oracles of the future."
The next day Harold returned with Haco and a numerous train of his
house-carles to the city. Their ride was as silent as that of the day
before; but on reaching Southwark, Harold turned away from the bridge
towards the left, gained the river-side, and dismounted at the house
of one of his lithsmen (a franklin, or freed ceorl). Leaving there
his horse, he summoned a boat, and, with Haco, was rowed over towards
the fortified palace which then rose towards the west of London,
jutting into the Thames, and which seems to have formed the outwork of
the old Roman city. The palace, of remotest antiquity, and blending
all work and architecture, Roman, Saxon, and Danish, had been repaired
by Canute; and from a high window in the upper story, where were the
royal apartments, the body of the traitor Edric Streone (the founder
of the house of Godwin) had been thrown into the river.
"Whither go we, Harold?" asked the son of Sweyn.
"We go to visit the young Atheling, the natural heir to the Saxon
throne," replied Harold in a firm voice. "He lodges in the old palace
of our kings."
"They say in Normandy that the boy is imbecile."
"That is not true," returned Harold. "I will present thee to him,--
judge."
Haco mused a moment and said:
"Methinks I divine thy purpose; is it not formed on the sudden,
Harold?"
"It was the counsel of Edith," answered Harold, with evident emotion.
"And yet, if that counsel prevail, I may lose the power to soften the
Church and to call her mine."
"So thou wouldest sacrifice even Edith for thy country."
"Since I have sinned, methinks I could," said the proud man humbly.
The boat shot into a little creek, or rather canal, which then ran
inland, beside the black and rotting walls of the fort. The two Earl-
born leapt ashore, passed under a Roman arch, entered a court the
interior of which was rudely filled up by early Saxon habitations of
rough timber work, already, since the time of Canute, falling into
decay, (as all things did which came under the care of Edward,) and
mounting a stair that ran along the outside of the house, gained a low
narrow door, which stood open. In the passage within were one or two
of the King's house-carles who had been assigned to the young
Atheling, with liveries of blue and Danish axes, and some four or five
German servitors, who had attended his father from the Emperor's
court. One of these last ushered the noble Saxons into a low, forlorn
ante-hall; and there, to Harold's surprise they found Alred the
Archbishop of York, and three thegns of high rank, and of lineage
ancient and purely Saxon.
Alred approached Harold with a faint smile on his benign face:
"Methinks, and may I think aright!--thou comest hither with the same
purpose as myself, and you noble thegns."
"And that purpose?"
"Is to see and to judge calmly, if, despite his years, we may find in
the descendant of the Ironsides such a prince as we may commend to our
decaying King as his heir, and to the Witan as a chief fit to defend
the land."
"Thou speakest the cause of my own coming. With your ears will I
hear, with your eyes will I see; as ye judge, will judge I," said
Harold, drawing the prelate towards the thegns, so that they might
hear his answer.
The chiefs, who belonged to a party that had often opposed Godwin's
House, had exchanged looks of fear and trouble when Harold entered;
but at his words their frank faces showed equal surprise and pleasure.
Harold presented to them his nephew, with whose grave dignity of
bearing beyond his years they were favourably impressed, though the
good bishop sighed when he saw in his face the sombre beauty of the
guilty sire. The group then conversed anxiously on the declining
health of the King, the disturbed state of the realm, and the
expediency, if possible, of uniting all suffrages in favour of the
fittest successor. And in Harold's voice and manner, as in Harold's
heart, there was nought that seemed conscious of his own mighty stake
and just hopes in that election. But as time wore, the faces of the
thegns grew overcast; proud men and great satraps [210] were they, and
they liked it ill that the boy-prince kept them so long in the dismal
ante-room.
At length the German officer, who had gone to announce their coming,
returned; and in words, intelligible indeed from the affinity between
Saxon and German, but still disagreeably foreign to English ears,
requested them to follow him into the presence of the Atheling.
In a room yet retaining the rude splendour with which it had been
invested by Canute, a handsome boy, about the age of thirteen or
fourteen, but seeming much younger, was engaged in the construction of
a stuffed bird, a lure for a young hawk that stood blindfold on its
perch. The employment made so habitual a part of the serious
education of youth, that the thegns smoothed their brows at the sight,
and deemed the boy worthily occupied. At another end of the room, a
grave Norman priest was seated at a table on which were books and
writing implements; he was the tutor commissioned by Edward to teach
Norman tongue and saintly lore to the Atheling. A profusion of toys
strewed the floor, and some children of Edgar's own age were playing
with them. His little sister Margaret [211] was seated seriously,
apart from all the other children, and employed in needlework.
When Alred approached the Atheling, with a blending of reverent
obeisance and paternal cordiality, the boy carelessly cried, in a
barbarous jargon, half German, half Norman-French:
"There, come not too near, you scare my hawk. What are you doing?
You trample my toys, which the good Norman bishop William sent me as a
gift from the Duke. Art thou blind, man?"
"My son," said the prelate kindly, "these are the things of childhood
--childhood ends sooner with princes than with common men. Leave thy
lure and thy toys, and welcome these noble thegns, and address them,
so please you, in our own Saxon tongue."
"Saxon tongue!--language of villeins! not I. Little do I know of it,
save to scold a ceorl or a nurse. King Edward did not tell me to
learn Saxon, but Norman! and Godfroi yonder says, that if I know
Norman well, Duke William will make me his knight. But I don't desire
to learn anything more to-day." And the child turned peevishly from
thegn and prelate.
The three Saxon lords interchanged looks of profound displeasure and
proud disgust. But Harold, with an effort over himself, approached,
and said winningly:
"Edgar the Atheling, thou art not so young but thou knowest already
that the great live for others. Wilt thou not be proud to live for
this fair country, and these noble men, and to speak the language of
Alfred the Great?"
"Alfred the Great! they always weary me with Alfred the Great," said
the boy, pouting. "Alfred the Great, he is the plague of my life! if
I am Atheling, men are to live for me, not I for them; and if you
tease me any more, I will run away to Duke William in Rouen; Godfroi
says I shall never be teased there!"
So saying, already tired of hawk and lure, the child threw himself on
the floor with the other children, and snatched the toys from their
hands.
The serious Margaret then rose quietly, and went to her brother, and
said, in good Saxon:
"Fie! if you behave thus, I shall call you NIDDERING!" At the threat
of that word, the vilest in the language--that word which the lowest
ceorl would forfeit life rather than endure--a threat applied to the
Atheling of England, the descendant of Saxon heroes--the three thegns
drew close, and watched the boy, hoping to see that he would start to
his feet with wrath and in shame.
"Call me what you will, silly sister," said the child, indifferently,
"I am not so Saxon as to care for your ceorlish Saxon names."
"Enow," cried the proudest and greatest of the thegns, his very
moustache curling with ire. "He who can be called niddering shall
never be crowned king!"
"I don't want to be crowned king, rude man, with your laidly
moustache: I want to be made knight, and have banderol and baldric.--
Go away!"
"We go, son," said Alred, mournfully.
And with slow and tottering step he moved to the door; there he
halted, turned back,--and the child was pointing at him in mimicry,
while Godfroi, the Norman tutor, smiled as in pleasure. The prelate
shook his head, and the group gained again the ante-hall.
"Fit leader of bearded men! fit king for the Saxon land!" cried a
thegn. "No more of your Atheling, Alred my father!"
"No more of him, indeed!" said the prelate, mournfully. "It is but
the fault of his nurture and rearing,--a neglected childhood, a Norman
tutor, German hirelings. We may remould yet the pliant clay," said
Harold.
"Nay," returned Alred, "no leisure for such hopes, no time to undo
what is done by circumstance, and, I fear, by nature. Ere the year is
out the throne will stand empty in our halls."
"Who then," said Haco, abruptly, "who then,--(pardon the ignorance of
youth wasted in captivity abroad!) who then, failing the Atheling,
will save this realm from the Norman Duke, who, I know well, counts on
it as the reaper on the harvest ripening to his sickle?"
"Alas, who then?" murmured Alred.
"Who then?" cried the three thegns, with one voice, "why the
worthiest, the wisest, the bravest! Stand forth, Harold the Earl,
Thou art the man!" And without awaiting his answer, they strode from
the hall.
