His smile mocked her openly then. “By all means,”—he assented,—“and see how much it will profit you.”
She realized then that walls were for shutting people in as well as for shutting people out, and she could have screamed for very temper. Yet she made one more attempt before giving way. Abandoning her struggle for the lines, she let her little gloved hands alight like fluttering birds upon his mailed arm, and summoned all the eloquence of her beauty into her heavenly eyes.
“No, sooner would I trust to you,” she murmured. “You could not mistreat me so! I beseech it of you, take me to the Palace where the King is.”
On what she based her belief that he was incapable of thwarting her is not quite clear, for he had never taken the trouble to hide the fact that he considered her a nuisance, and her civil marriage with the King a piece of youthful folly on Canute’s part. Sinister satisfaction was in his tone when he answered her.
“The Palace where the King is,” he said, “is the Palace for a Queen.”
At first, it seemed that she would either scratch out his eyes or throw herself from her saddle. But in the end she did neither, for a sense of her helplessness turned her faint. To one who has always ruled undisputed, there is something benumbing in the first collision with the pitiless hand of Force. “If I had the good luck to see a bee caught in a brier, I should wish your death,” she threatened. But she said it under her breath; and after that, rode with drooping head and eyes that saw nothing of the scene before her.
When the road had left the fens, it climbed a low hill, beyond which it entered a wood. A brook was the further boundary of the wood, and across its brawling brown water a rude stone bridge continued their path, and linked the bank with the little Isle of Thorns. Nature must have had a prison in mind when she constructed this island, Elfgiva thought with a shiver. A low sandy hillock rising amid three streams or water, the high tide would have cut it off completely but for the friendly arm which the Watling Street extended to it from the Tot Hill, while a thicket of brambles and briers edged it like a natural prison wall. Nor had man forgotten such defences, she found when they had passed a gap in the thorny hedge; a fence of stone rose sheer before them and extended on either hand as far as eye could reach. In the fence was a great gate of black oak, which a black-robed Benedictine presently opened to their summons.
Now for the first time, Thorkel took his hand from her rein. “I will go no farther,” he said. “You are expected, and one of the monks will be your guide. It lies only across the court and through one more door.” His lips curled in their cruel smile as he motioned her forward. “Go in and take possession. It is not sure how soon the King will get time to come to you. His mood has not been very playful lately. Rothgar’s sword has scarcely had time to go to bed in its sheath—”
“The King is occupied with great matters,” Rothgar’s heavy voice bore down the old man’s thinner tones. “It is not only that he has to be crowned and make laws. He has many Englishmen to dispose of, and much land to divide up among his following.”
While Elfgiva’s glance passed him uncomprehendingly, Randalin lifted startled eyes. When she saw that he was looking directly at her, she knew that it was no chance shaft, but an arrow aimed at her heart. The time had come that he had looked forward to, when Canute should get the kingship over the English, and Ivarsdale should come back to the race that had built it. And it was all fair, quite fair, quite within the rules of the game at which she herself had played. She had not a word to offer as she lowered her eyes and let her horse follow the others as it would. There was satisfaction on the lips of each of the King’s deputies as they rode cityward that day.