“Do you believe now that I love you?” he asked, raising her face between his hands.
Then it smote his heart that he should even seem to reproach her, and he finished lightly:
“What does it matter? We will make a jest of it between ourselves. Let the world think me the king’s man—we know that I am yours!”
THE HOSTAGE
I seek to tell of a Danish hostage, called Valgard the Fair, that in his youth was ceded to our great Alfred by the Danish king Guthrum when they two made peace together in the year eight hundred and seventy-eight.
From Denmark young Valgard came to England in the following of Ogmund Monks-bane, who was his elder brother and Guthrum’s first war chief; and though no warrior of more accursed memory than this same Ogmund ever fed the ravens, it was known that toward his young brother alone of all living things he showed a human heart. Wherefore those on whom it lay to choose the hostages were swift to name the comely boy as the one pledge that might clinch the Monks-bane’s shifty faith. And that nothing might be lacking, they further fixed it in the bond what would be the fate of Valgard and the eleven other hostages if they that gave them should break any part of their oath; and it was this—that the discipline of the Holy Church should take hold of them, and after that they should die a shameful death.
A snared and a savage man was Ogmund Monks-bane when they brought this word to the tent of skins in which he laired; and it saddened him besides that the boy Valgard strove to contend him, saying:
“It will be no hindrance to you, kinsman. Never will you so much as think of me when the battle-lust comes on you. And I shall bear it well.”