It was a sunny little room on the east side of the palace, looking over the marshes of the low holme which then bordered the Wensum with a wilderness of sedges and white water-lilies, and upon which, some eleven years later, Herbert de Losinga erected the cathedral which is our present pride and joy.
Emma loved to watch the high-prowed galleys passing to and fro upon the river, with sails spread, and oars flashing, and stout rowers bending to their work; and to see them lading and unlading at Lovelly's Staithe, a wharf situated about a third of the distance between the present ferry and Foundry Bridge.
Here Eadgyth would entertain her with stories of her girlhood, and tell how she had seen her cousin, Harold Godwinsson, land at that wharf, when he came to Norwich after his imprisonment in Normandy; and how Leofric, Earl of Mercia, to whom the sainted King Eadward had given the East Anglian earldom in Harold's absence, met him with all honour; and of the magnanimous strife between the two, when Leofric would give back the earldom, and Harold would fain have had him keep it; and how Harold took it for a time, but returned it on ascending the throne.
And when the white swans came sailing amongst the reeds, bending their long necks from side to side, the Saxon maiden would tell her friend of Harold's beloved, her namesake Eadgyth Swannehals, the most beautiful woman in Norfolk, or, for the matter of that, in all England, and would burst into tears when she thought of the sad ending of that fair romance.
And Emma would smile at her enthusiasm, but yet grew in sympathy with this English people, the smoke of whose dwellings was rising around her, and almost found it in her heart to wish that her hero William had been a little less successful, and to question whether it had not been more virtuous of him to stay at home in his native Normandy. Somehow she had never admired him so freely since he had endeavoured to part her from her betrothed.
In such a mood as this was Emma when her husband sought her, with the intention of telling her the secret of his bold enterprise, but he little guessed how much her sympathies had turned against William, for, as is often the case when convictions are changing, she had made up for her coldness of feeling by warmth of speech, and had sought so to atone for her act of rebellion in marrying Ralph against the king's mandate.
Therefore the earl knew not how to begin his explanation, and sat before her embroidery frame almost as deeply embarrassed as Waltheof had been before the archbishop. 'Tis true he had told her ere their wedding that the quarrel must needs be fought out, yet it seemed not the easier to say,'My standard is lifted.'
His face was ashy pale, for it was to him cruel as death to leave his young bride before a month had passed, although he had known that the parting must come.
Emma, looking at him, dropped her silks in horror, and, throwing her arms round his neck, asked coaxingly what ailed him.
And Ralph turned his head away without speaking.