I bent my head and thought, for I dimly perceived in all this a meaning appearing through its incomprehensibleness. Much else did we talk through the live-long night, whereof all I may not tell, and something might but weary you. At one time I asked her of the little one I had never seen, and then she, reflective, questioned whether I would wish to see him. “As gladly,” was my reply, “as one looks for the sun in springtime.” At this the comely chieftainess seemed to fall a-musing, and even while she did so an eddy in the curling smoke of the low red fire swung gently into consistency there by her bare shoulder, and brightened and grew into mortal likeness, and in a moment, by the summons of his mother’s will, from where I knew not, and how I could not guess, a fair, young, ruddy boy was fashioned and stood there leaning upon the gentle breast that had so often rocked him, and gazing upon me with a quiet wonder that seemed to say, “How came you here?” But the little one had not the substance of the other, and after a moment, during which I felt somehow that no slight effort was being made to maintain him, he paled, and then the same waft of air that had conspired to his creation shredded him out again into the fine thin webs of disappearing haze.
Comely shadow! Dear British mistress! Great was thy condescension, passing strange thy conversation, wonderful thy knowledge, perplexing, mysterious thy professed ignorance! And then, when the morning was nigh, she bade me speak a word of comfort to the restless-sleeping Editha, and when I had done so I turned again—and the cave was empty! I ran out into the open air and whispered “Blodwen!” and then louder “Blodwen!” and all those gray, uncouth, sinful old monoliths, standing there in the half-light up to their waists in white mist, took up my word and muttered out of their time-worn hollows one to another, “Blodwen, Blodwen!” but never again for many a long year did she answer to that call.
CHAPTER VII
In the days that followed, it seemed the cruse of contentment would never run dry, and I, foolish I, thought angry destiny had misled me, and that these green Saxon glades were to witness the final ending of my story. Vain hope! Illusive expectation! The hand of fate was even then raised to strike!
In that pleasant harborage, outside the ken of ambition, and beyond the limits of avarice, surrounded by almost impenetrable mazes of forest land, life was delightful indeed. The sun shone yellow and big in those early days upon our oak-crowned hillocks—sometimes I doubt if it is ever so warm and ruddy now—and December storms told mightily in praise of the great Yule fires wherewith we defied the winter cold. In the summer time, when the sunny Saxon orchards sheltered the herds of kine in their flickering shadows, and the great droves of black swine lay a-basking among the ferns on the distant hangers, we lived more out of doors than in. Editha then would bring out under the oaks the little ruddy-cheeked Gurth, and set him upon my knee, that I might cut him reed whistles or bows and arrows, while the flaxen-haired Agitha played about her mother, tuning her pretty prattle to the merry clatter of the distaff and the wheel.
In the winter the blaze that went leaping and crackling from our hearthstone shone golden upon the hair of those little ones as they sat wide-eyed by me, and saw among the ruddy embers the white horse of Hengist and the banner of his brother winning these fertile vales for a noble Saxon realm. Never was there a better Saxon than I! And when I told of Harold, and softened to those tender ears the story of his dying, the bright drops of sympathy stood in my small maiden’s eyes, while Gurth’s flashed hatred of the false Norman and scorn of foreign tyrants. Under such circumstances it will readily be understood that I ought to have had little wish to draw weapons again or bestride the good charger growing so gross and sleek in his stall all this long peace time.
And yet the silken meshes of felicity were irksome against all reason, and I would grow weary of so much good fortune, finding my pretty deckings and raiment heavier—more burdensome wear—than ever was martial harness. My fair Saxon wife noticed these moods, and strove to mend them. She would take me out to the hawking, were I never so gloomy, and then I would envy the wild haggards of the rocks who got their living from day to day in the free mid air, and asked no favor of either gods or men. Or, perhaps, she would make revelries upon the level green before her homestead, and thither would come all the fools and pedlers, all the bear-baiters, somersaulters, and wrestlers of the shire. But I was not to be pleasured so, and I slew the bear in single combat, and tossed, vindictive, the somersaulters over the hucksters’ stalls, and broke the ribs in the wrestlers’ sides—till none would play with me, and all of the people murmured. Then, of a night, Editha got the best gleemen in Mercia to sing to me, and when they sang of peace, and sheep and orchards, or each praised his leman’s moonlike eyes and slender middies, I would not listen. Nor was it better when they tuned their strings to martial ditties, for that doubled my malady, since then their rhyming stirred my soul to new unrest, making worse that which they sought to cure.
I sometimes think it was all this to-do which brought Voewood under Norman notice. But, perhaps, it was the slow and steady advance of the invaders’ power percolating like a rising tide into all the recesses of the land which drew us into the fatal circle of the despoilers, and not my waywardness. Be this as it may, the result was the same.
Over to the northward, a score of miles away, where the great road ran east, we heard from wandering strollers the Normans were passing daily. Then, later, there came in the news-budget of a Flemish pedler tidings that the hungry foreigners had licked up all the fat meadows around the nearest town, had hung its aldermen over the walls, and built a tower and dungeon (after their wont) in the middle of it. Yes! and these messengers of ill omen said there were left no men of note or Saxon blood to uphold the English cause—there was no proper speech in England but the Norman—there was no way of wearing a tunic but the Norman—nothing now to swear by but by Our Lady of Tours and Holy St. Bridget—all Saxon wives were in danger of kissing—and all Saxon abbots were become barefooted monks!
Never was a country turned inside out so soon or quietly; and as I looked over our wide, fair meadows, and upon my sweet girl and her flaxen little ones, and thought how already for her I had risked my life, I could not help wondering how soon I might have to venture it again.