A King's Comrade: A Story of Old Hereford

by Charles W. Whistler

Now through a winding gap in the line of dunes comes from inland a little company of men and women, swiftly and in silence. The two men range themselves on either bow of the boat, and stand at attention as the newcomers near them, and so wait. Maybe there are two-score people, led by a man and woman, who walk side by side without word or look passing between them. The man is tall and handsome, armed in the close-knit ring-mail shirt of the Dane, with gemmed sword hilt and golden mountings to scabbard and dirk, and his steel helm and iron-gray hair seem the same colour in the shadowless light of the dull sky overhead. One would set his age at about sixty years.

But the woman at his side is young and wonderfully lovely. She is dressed in white and gold, and her hair is golden as the coiled necklace and armlets she wears, and hangs in two long plaits far below her knees, though it is looped in the golden girdle round her waist. Fastened to the girdle hangs the sheath of a little dagger, but there is no blade in it. She is plainly of high rank, and unwedded. Now her fair face is set and hard, and it would almost seem that despair was written on it.

After those two the other folk seem hardly worth a glance, though they are richly dressed, and the men are as well armed as the jarl their leader. Nor do they seem to have eyes for any but those two at their head, and no word passes among them. Their faces also are set and hard, as if they had somewhat heavy to see to, and would fain carry it through to the end unflinching.

So they come to the edge of the sea, where the boat waits them, and there halt; and the tall jarl faces the girl at his side, and speaks to her in a dull voice, while the people slowly make a half circle round them, listening.

"Now we have come to the end," he says, "and from henceforth this land shall know you and the ways of you no more. There were other dooms which men had thought more fitting for you, but they were dooms of death. You shall not die at our hands. You are young, and you have time to bethink you whither the ways you have trodden shall lead you. If the sea spares you, begin life afresh. If it spares you not, maybe it is well. No others shall be beguiled by that fair face of yours. The Norns heed not the faces of men."

He pauses; but the girl stands silent, hand locked in hand, and with no change of face. Nor does she look at her accuser, but gazes steadily out to the still sea, which seems endless, for there is no line between sea and sky in the hot haze. For all its exceeding beauty, hers is an evil face to look on at this time. And the women who gaze on her have no pity in their eyes, nor have the men.

Once again the great jarl speaks, and his words are cold and measured.

"Also, I and our wisest hold that what you have tried to compass was out of the longing for power that ever lies in the heart of youth. We had done no more than laugh thereat had you been content to try to win your will with the ancient wiles of woman that lie in beauty and weakness. But for the evil ways in which you have wrought the land is accursed, and will be so as long as we suffer you. Go hence, and meet elsewhere what fate befalls you. In the skill you have in the seaman's craft is your one hope. We leave it you."

Then, without a word of answer or so much as a look aside, the girl of her own accord steps into the boat; and at a sign from their lord the two men launch her from the shelving sand into the sea, following her, knee deep, among the little breakers that hardly hinder their steps. They see that in her look is deepest hate and wrath, but they pay no heed to it. And even as their hands leave the gunwale, the girl goes to the mast, and with the skill and ease of long custom hoists the sail, and so making fast the halliard deftly, comes aft again to ship the steering oar, and seat herself as the breeze wakes the ripples at the bow and the land slips away from her. She has gone, and never looks back.

Then a sort of sigh whispers among the women folk on shore; but it is not as a sigh of grief, but rather as if a danger had passed from the land. They know that the boat must needs drive but as the wind takes her, for oars wherewith to row against it are none, and the long summer spell of seaward breezes has set in. The jarl folds his arms and bides still in his place, and the two men still stand in the water, watching. And so the boat and its fair burden of untold ill fades into the mist and grows ghostly, and is lost to sight; and across the dunes the clouds gather, and the thunder mutters from inland with the promise of long-looked-for rain to a parched and starving folk.