THE HOSTAGE
I seek to tell of a Danish hostage, called Valgard the Fair, that in his youth was ceded to our great Alfred by the Danish king Guthrum when they two made peace together in the year eight hundred and seventy-eight.
From Denmark young Valgard came to England in the following of Ogmund Monks-bane, who was his elder brother and Guthrum’s first war chief; and though no warrior of more accursed memory than this same Ogmund ever fed the ravens, it was known that toward his young brother alone of all living things he showed a human heart. Wherefore those on whom it lay to choose the hostages were swift to name the comely boy as the one pledge that might clinch the Monks-bane’s shifty faith. And that nothing might be lacking, they further fixed it in the bond what would be the fate of Valgard and the eleven other hostages if they that gave them should break any part of their oath; and it was this—that the discipline of the Holy Church should take hold of them, and after that they should die a shameful death.
A snared and a savage man was Ogmund Monks-bane when they brought this word to the tent of skins in which he laired; and it saddened him besides that the boy Valgard strove to contend him, saying:
“It will be no hindrance to you, kinsman. Never will you so much as think of me when the battle-lust comes on you. And I shall bear it well.”
In our king’s will at London, therefore, young Valgard grew into man’s estate and, contrary to his expectations, throve mightily, discovering a rare aptitude for gentle accomplishments. And for that his heart was noble as well as brave and he was as débonaire as he was comely, the king and the royal household came to love him exceeding well until—as the years went by and the peace held—they scarcely remembered that he might one day stand as a scapegoat for loathsomest crimes against them.
Only Valgard himself never for the span of one candle’s burning forgot it. Like poison at the bottom of a honeyed cup it lay behind every honor he achieved. Yet even as he had promised his brother, he bore it well and gallantly enough—until, in the sixth year of his captivity, it fortuned to him to fall in love.
She of whom he become enamoured was a young maid in the queen’s service, whose rightful name was Adeleve but whom men called Little Nun both by virtue of the celestial sweetness of her face and because of her being but newly come from a cloister school. And in this cloister they had taught her so much of heaven and so little of earth that whenso her heart was taken by Valgard’s brave and débonaire ways she knew neither fear nor shame therein, but continued to demean herself with the lovely straightforwardness of an angel or a child. Wherefore Valgard, who was used to women that smiled at him from under heavy lids or drew full red lips into rosebuds of enticement, might not dream that she felt more than friendship. And since in her presence he was always silent and humble as he had been before Our Blessed Lady herself, though elsewhere light speeches sparkled on his lips as bubbles on the clear wine, he wist not for a long time the true name of what he felt.
But one day at that season of the year when the king’s household rode often to hunt the wild boar in the woody groves that compassed London round, it happened to Valgard to become separated from the rest and stray alone through still and shadowy glades. There in the solitude, as was ever his unhappy case, his gayety fell away and his forebodings climbed up behind and went with him heavily. Riding thus, it chanced to him to approach the spot where the queen and her maidens tarried and so to come upon the Little Nun herself, that also rode apart, following a brook which sang as it went. Then at last was he made aware of his love, for suddenly it was neither a dislike of death nor any rebellious wish to flee therefrom that possessed him, but solely the dread of being parted from her, which so racked him that he was in very agony.
Now as soon as ever Little Nun perceived that a great trouble was upon him she spoke straight from her heart, though timidly as a child knowing the narrowness of its power, and prayed him to say whether his distress were aught which her love might assuage. When he heard her speak thus sweetly and marked the angelic tenderness of her eyes under her little dove-colored hood, lo! everything fell clean out of his mind before one almighty longing. Descending from his horse, he took her hands and spoke to her passionately, so:
“Tell me whether you love me. My heart cries out for you with every beat. Must it be as the voice of one calling into emptiness? Tell me that you return my love and my life will be whole though it end to-night.”
The Little Nun’s face of cloistral paleness flushed deeply like an alabaster vase into which is being poured the red wine of the sacrament, but her crystalline eyes neither fell nor turned aside.
“I love you as much as you love me—and more,” she answered softly.
Whereupon he would have caught her in passionate arms, but that even as he reached this pinnacle of bliss it came back to him how he was a doomed man; and he was as one that is cast down from a height and stunned by the fall.
Anon his voice returned, and sinking to his knee he begged her in broken words to forgive the wrong he had done her in gaining her love, that well knew himself to be set aside for shame and dole and apart from the favor of woman.
To which the Little Nun listened as it might be one of God’s angels, bending over the golden bar of Heaven, would listen to the wailing in the Pit. And so soon as he paused she spoke with halting breath.
“Alas, could anything so cruel happen? Ah, no! The peace has held six years—the king believes it firm—and every night and morning I will pray to Our Lady to change your brother’s heart.”
As she said this, her face bloomed again with her hope. But Valgard only bowed his head upon his hands and groaned; for that albeit he had faith in the Virgin, he knew the nature of Ogmund Monks-bane.
Soon after, constraining himself to hardness for her sake, he rose and drew her away and continued to speak with the dulness of one in great pain, schooling her how she must put him from her heart and forget him.
But to that, when she had listened a while with widening eyes, the Little Nun cried out piteously:
“Alas! what then shall I do with my love? It came into being before you called it—it cannot cease at your bidding. Oh, if it be God’s will that we shall have a long life together, then God’s will be done, but make not a thwarted useless thing out of the love which He has permitted me! Let me give it to you. Even though it be too poor to ease you much, yet let me give it! How else shall I find comfort?”
Suddenly, as their eyes met, she stretched out her hands to him with a little sobbing cry that was half piteous and half pitying. And so drew him back, malgre his will, until he had put his arms about her where she sat in the saddle above him, when she gathered his head to her breast and cherished it there, with little soft wordless sounds of comforting.
Thus, for that he was so well-nigh spent with struggling, he leaned a while upon her love. And it heartened him. And he lifted his head, thinking to set burning lips to her sweet mouth.
But even as he thought to do this, something in himself or her checked him, so that he kissed instead her small ministering hands. Wherefore the Little Nun remained unstartled and blessedly trustful, and raising her eyes to the blue heavens of which they seemed so much a part prayed softly to Our Dear Lady to keep true the heart of Ogmund Monks-bane.
The fourth morning after this, the queen’s maiden Adeleve was wedded to Valgard the Hostage. And that day at noon did our benignant king and his housewifely queen make a marriage feast for the young pair that both of them held dear. A marriage feast, well-a-way!
It happened to the sweet bride to come to it last and alone, for that she had lingered above to pray once more to her on whom she fixed her faith. Blissfully enough she began the descent of the stairs that cored the massive wall; but ere she reached the foot, where a door gave upon the king’s hall, dead was her joy. For this is what befell.
First, a quavering shriek as of an aged woman stabbed by evil tidings; and after that a deathlike stillness. Then the door opened and a girl staggered forth up the stairs, her hands groping before her as her staring eyes had been sightless, the while she moaned over and over the name of her soldier lover.
Though she knew not why, little Adeleve shrank from the groping hands and crept by them down the stairs. Whither rose these words in a man’s loud voice:
“—but last week came a load of Danish pirates to the shore, reeking of slaughter and gorged with Irish spoil. And every night thereafter a band of them sat at drink with the Monks-bane, stirring his fighting lust, until——”
Here the voice was lost in the outburst of many voices, till it overleapt them hoarsely to answer a question from the king.
“The twoscore English soldiers I named to your grace; besides all the nuns of Saint Helena’s that lie stark in their blood——”
Then once again the tumult rose, which now there was no overleaping, and the bride cowering against the wall saw how all heads turned toward him who stood opposite the king in the mockery of gay feasting clothes. And suddenly one called down Christ’s curse on the race of Ogmund Monks-bane, and a second echoed the cry. Whereat the other Danish hostages—to show that their hands were clean—took up the shout more fierce than any, and smote Valgard so that he reeled under their fists. And the aged woman whose son had been slain flung her cup of wine in his face.
Thereafter the young wife saw only the figure of her doomed lord upon whom it seemed that the curses descended as a visible blight, withering to ghastliness his fresh beauty and blasting his spirit so that he shrank farther and farther from the damning looks and tongues till he might no longer in any wise endure them, but calling in agony upon his God strove with his hands to stop his sight and his hearing. And when presently he became aware of the Little Nun approaching, he cried out to know whether she also was come to curse him, and bent his arms around his head as against a blow.
But even as he did this, he met the anguished love in her eyes and saw how she was laboring to make of her fragile self a buckler for him against the press of crowding bodies; whereupon he caught hold of her shoulder and held to her as a man sinking into Hell might hold to the robe of an angel. Until brutal hands thrust her one way and dragged him the other.
Now the sentence was that he should die at sunrise, unto which time the Church should have him to chasten. And this sentence our king might not alter, for that he was called the Truth-teller and had sworn to take the atonement of life for any breach of the faith. But this much he granted, out of the pity and love he had toward the young pair, that they might be together when the end drew near. And stranger than betrothal or marriage feast was this vigil of their wedding night!
Strange was all the world now to the Little Nun, since the arch of her Heaven had fallen about her with the destruction of its keystone, which was her faith in the Virgin. As the white dove of the Ark hovering over a changed earth whereon it might see no familiar foothold, she hung falteringly on the threshold of the king’s chapel, while the bells tolled the midnight hour, gazing at the group of deathful men looming amid blended smoke and starlight and torch-glare, at the pitiless shining figure of Our Lady above the altar, at him who stood in grim endurance before it, stripped to naked feet and a single garment of horsehair.
When Valgard felt her eyes and turned his set face toward her, she fluttered to him as the dove to the Ark. But no longer to brood or minister; only to cling to him in utter helpless woe of her helpless love. And when it happened to her hand to touch his horsehair shirt where it was wet with the blood of his atonement, she screamed sharply and was like to go wild with weeping over him and lamenting that she might not bear any of his punishment on her own soft flesh. It was he that kneeling on the stones gathered her to his breast and cherished her, speaking to comfort her such words of resignation as no priest’s scourge had drawn from him with his life-blood.
Lo! it was so that from the very helplessness of her love he drew his best strength, that he no longer cared anything at all for his own woe but only for lightening hers. When she cried out piteously that she must always fear Christ’s Mother now her whole life long, and all the world saving him alone, he spoke with tenderest artfulness, thus:
“For my sake then, heart beloved of my heart! Be brave for my sake—because your tears are the only part of my doom that is heavier than I can bear.”
Which was the one plea in all the world that had a meaning for her, so that she tried obediently to choke down her sobs.
Yet which was the easier to bear, her courage or her tears, it were hard to say. When the time of parting came and she had suffered him to loosen her clinging hands and fold them upon her breast and leave her, a little white and shaking figure at the Virgin’s feet, it seemed to Valgard looking back that death was easier to him than life, and he pressed with mad haste upon those who went before him to the door.
Now in this vill it was that the king’s chapel was hollowed out of the wall of the king’s hall; wherefore the opening of the door permitted Valgard and those surrounding him to look down into the great dim room wherein our king kept sorrowful vigil with his knights, and to behold also a man that stood before the high-seat with the mud and mire of the road yet besmirching him. Upon whom Valgard’s glance fell amazedly for that he knew him to be a Danish thrall and his brother’s trusted slave, albeit the Monks-bane had used him so cruelly that some of his features were lacking.
As the door opened, the thrall began speaking, thus, in the dull voice of one who has neither wit nor will but only dogged faithfulness:
“This is the message of Ogmund Monks-bane, that because as soon as he got into his senses again he disliked the thought that he should cause the death of his brother whom he loved, he sends you this atonement.”
Saying which, he thrust his hand under his cloak and drew therefrom, by the knotted yellow hair, a bloody head. And the ashen face on the head was the face of Ogmund Monks-bane.
Through stillness, the thrall spoke again. “Do you accept this atonement, king?”
To whom, after a little time has passed, our king answered in a strange voice: “I accept this atonement.”
Then, his task being accomplished, the thrall loosed an awful discordant sound of grief; and raising the head between his palms kissed it on either cheek, crying:
“I slew you and I brought you hither because I have never dared go against your will in anything, but even you cannot hinder me from following you now!”
Wherewith he slew himself with the knife he had at his belt. And the sound of his falling body broke the spell, so that the bars of silence were let down and men’s voices rushed in like lowing cattle.
Excepting only in the little chapel in the wall. There Valgard stood as a man in a dream, gazing on the dead face of his brother; while the Little Nun, clasping him close, yet lifted awe-filled eyes to Our Lady that thus in her own inscrutable way answered the prayer to keep alive in the nature of an evil man its one good part.
Let us all give thanks that there is such a Lady, and pray that she may harken to us in our need!
