“Then I have lived as my fathers in life, and shall live with their glory in death!” said Gryffyth; “and so the shadow hath passed from my soul.” Then turning round, still propped upon his elbow, he fixed his proud eye upon Aldyth, and said gravely, “Wife, pale is thy face, and gloomy thy brow; mournest thou the throne or the man?”
Aldyth cast on her wild lord a look of more terror than compassion, a look without the grief that is gentle, or the love that reveres; and answered:
“What matter to thee my thoughts or my sufferings? The sword or the famine is the doom thou hast chosen. Listening to vain dreams from thy bard, or thine own pride as idle, thou disdainest life for us both: be it so; let us die!”
A strange blending of fondness and wrath troubled the pride on Gryffyth’s features, uncouth and half savage as they were, but still noble and kingly.
“And what terror has death, if thou lovest me?” said he.
Aldyth shivered and turned aside. The unhappy King gazed hard on that face, which, despite sore trial and recent exposure to rough wind and weather, still retained the proverbial beauty of the Saxon women—but beauty without the glow of the heart, as a landscape from which sunlight has vanished; and as he gazed, at the colour went and came fitfully over his swarthy cheeks whose hue contrasted the blue of his eye and the red tawny gold of his shaggy hair.
“Thou wouldst have me,” he said at length, “send to Harold thy countryman; thou wouldst have me, me—rightful lord of all Britain—beg for mercy, and sue for life. Ah, traitress, and child of robber-sires, fair as Rowena art thou, but no Vortimer am I! Thou turnest in loathing from the lord whose marriage-gift was a crown; and the sleek form of thy Saxon Harold rises up through the clouds of the carnage.”
All the fierce and dangerous jealousy of man’s most human passion—when man loves and hates in a breath—trembled in the Cymrian’s voice, and fired his troubled eye; for Aldyth’s pale cheek blushed like the rose, but she folded her arms haughtily on her breast, and made no reply.
“No,” said Gryffyth, grinding teeth, white [169] and strong as those of a young hound. “No, Harold in vain sent me the casket; the jewel was gone. In vain thy form returned to my side; thy heart was away with thy captor: and not to save my life (were I so base as to seek it), but to see once more the face of him to whom this cold hand, in whose veins no pulse answers my own, had been given, if thy House had consulted its daughter, wouldst thou have me crouch like a lashed dog at the feet of my foe! Oh Shame! shame! shame! Oh worst perfidy of all! Oh sharp—sharper than Saxon sword or serpent’s tooth, is—is—”
Tears gushed to those fierce eyes, and the proud King dared not trust to his voice.