“No doubt you were, fair franklin,” I answered. “Yesterday was such a day as well excuses your weariness. Sleep again, and when the sun rises in an hour you shall rise with it as fresh as any of the little birds that already preen themselves.” So she slept—and presently I too.
All the next day we rode on through endless glades and briery paths toward Editha’s home, and as we went, I afoot and she meekly perched upon our mighty Norman charger, I wooed her with a brevity which the times excused, and poured my nimble lover wit into ears accustomed only to the sluggish flattery of woodland thanes and princely swineherds. And first she blushed and would not listen, and then she sighed and switched the low wet boughs of oak and hazel as we passed along, and then she let me say my say with downcast, averted eyes, and a sweet reluctance which told me I might stoutly push the siege.
As we went we picked up now and then a straggling soldier or two from the fight behind us, and now and then a petty chieftain joined us, until presently we wound through the bracken toward Voewood, a very goodly train.
Editha had got a palfrey and I my horse again; but as she neared her home the thought of its desolation weighed heavier and heavier upon her tender nature. She would not eat and would not speak, and at last took her to crying, and so cried until we saw, aglint through the oak-stems, a very fair homestead and ample, with broad lands around, and kine and deer about it, and all that could make it fair and pleasant. This was her Voewood; and when the servants came running to meet us (knowing nothing of the fight or its results, and thinking we were their master and his sons come again) with waving caps and shouts of pleasure, it was too much for the overwrought girl. She threw up her white hands, and, with a cry of pain and grief, slipped fainting from her palfrey before us all.
Then might you have seen a score of saddles featly emptied to the service of the heiress! Down jumped Offa the Dane, whose unchanged doublet was still red to his chin with mud and Norman gore. Down jumped Edred and Egbert, those blue-eyed brothers who had left their lands by the northern sea a month ago to follow Harold’s luckless banner; Torquil, the grim, and Wulfhere of the white beard, sprang to the ground: and Clywin the fair Welsh princeling, and his shadow, Idwal ap Cynan, the harper-warrior, vaulted to their feet—spent and battle-weary as they were, with many another. But, lighter and quicker than any of them, Phra the Phœnician had leaped to earth, and stood there astride of the senseless girl, his hand upon his dagger-hilt, and scowling round that soldier circle wrathful to think that any other but he should touch her!
Then he took her up, as if it were a mother with a sleeping babe, and the serfs uncapped and stood back on either hand, and the grim warriors fell in behind, and so Editha came home, her loose arms hanging down and her long bright hair all adrift over the broad shoulders of the strangest, most many-adventured soldier in that motley band.
CHAPTER VI
When I come to look back upon that Saxon period, spent in the green shades of my sweet franklin’s homestead, it seems, perhaps, that never was there a time so peaceful before in the experience of this passion-tossed existence! We hunted and we hawked, we feasted and we lay abask in the sunshine of a jolly, idle life all these luxurious months, drinking scorn and confusion amid our nightly flagons to remote care and (as it seemed) remoter Normans.
But first to tell you how I won the right to lord it over these merry Saxon churls and dissolute thanes. Editha had hardly come to her home and dried, in a day or two, her weeping eyes, when all the noble vagrants from yonder battle were up in arms to woo her. Never was maid so sued! From morning till night there was no rest or peace. From the uppermost bower looking over the fair English glades, down into the thickets of nut and hazel, the air reeked of love and petitions. The mighty Dane, like a sick bear, slept upon her curtained threshold and growled amorousness into her timid ear before the sun was up. The Welsh Prince wooed her all her breakfast-time, and his tawny harper spent many a golden morning in outlining his noble patron’s genealogy. In faith—ap Tudor, ap Griffith, ap Morgan, ap Huge, and I know not how many others, it seemed all had a hand in the making of that paragon—but Editha blushed and said she feared one Saxon girl was all too few for so many. They besought her up and down, night and morning, full and empty, to wed them. The English Princelings dogged her footsteps when she went afield, and Torquil and Wulfhere, those bandaged lovers, were ready for her with sighs and plaintive proposals when she came flitting, frightened and fearful, home through the bracken.