“How comes it, then,” continued the King, with a voice to which he in vain endeavoured to impart an accent of severity, “how comes it, O little one, that thou, whose thoughts should be lifted already above this carnal world, and eager for the service of Mary the chaste and blessed, standest thus hoodless and alone on the waysides, a mark for the eyes of men? go to, it is naught.”
Thus reproved, and in presence of so large and brilliant a company, the girl’s colour went and came, her breast heaved high, but with an effort beyond her age she checked her tears, and said meekly, “My grandmother, Hilda, bade me come with her, and I came.”
“Hilda!” said the King, backing his palfrey with apparent perturbation, “but Hilda is not with thee; I see her not.”
As he spoke, Hilda rose, and so suddenly did her tall form appear on the brow of the hill, that it seemed as if she had emerged from the earth. With a light and rapid stride she gained the side of her grandchild; and after a slight and haughty reverence, said, “Hilda is here; what wants Edward the King with his servant Hilda?”
“Nought, nought,” said the King, hastily; and something like fear passed over his placid countenance; “save, indeed,” he added, with a reluctant tone, as that of a man who obeys his conscience against his inclination, “that I would pray thee to keep this child pure to threshold and altar, as is meet for one whom our Lady, the Virgin, in due time, will elect to her service.”
“Not so, son of Etheldred, son of Woden, the last descendant of Penda should live, not to glide a ghost amidst cloisters, but to rock children for war in their father’s shield. Few men are there yet like the men of old; and while the foot of the foreigner is on the Saxon soil no branch of the stem of Woden should be nipped in the leaf.”
“Per la resplendar De [12], bold dame,” cried the knight by the side of Edward, while a lurid flush passed over his cheek of bronze; “but thou art too glib of tongue for a subject, and pratest overmuch of Woden, the Paynim, for the lips of a Christian matron.”
Hilda met the flashing eye of the knight with a brow of lofty scorn, on which still a certain terror was visible. “Child,” she said, putting her hand upon Edith’s fair locks; “this is the man thou shalt see but twice in thy life;—look up, and mark well!”
Edith instinctively raised her eyes, and, once fixed upon the knight, they seemed chained as by a spell. His vest, of a cramoisay so dark, that it seemed black beside the snowy garb of the Confessor, was edged by a deep band of embroidered gold; leaving perfectly bare his firm, full throat—firm and full as a column of granite,—a short jacket or manteline of fur, pendant from the shoulders, left developed in all its breadth a breast, that seemed meet to stay the march of an army; and on the left arm, curved to support the falcon, the vast muscles rose, round and gnarled, through the close sleeve.
In height, he was really but little above the stature of many of those present; nevertheless, so did his port [13], his air, the nobility of his large proportions, fill the eye, that he seemed to tower immeasurably above the rest.