“The next time they sing the ‘Romance of King Offa,’ before me, I will not hold back my sympathy,” he scorned himself, “for at last I understand how it is possible for an elf to lure a man’s reason off its seat and leave him a dreaming dolt.”
Like a new lease of life it came to him when the last of the April days brought the long-delayed summons to the King. The old cniht, who considered that a command to military service could be justified only by imminent national destruction, was deeply incensed when he learned that the call was to no more than an officership in the new body of Royal Guards, but the young lord checked him with even a touch of impatience.
“What a throng of many words, my friend Morcard, have you spoken! Did you learn naught from the palisade that gave way because churls paid me their service when and how they would?” he demanded. “Now let me inform you that I have got that lesson by heart, and hereafter no king shall have that trouble about me. At sunrise, I ride back with the messenger.” And he maintained this view so firmly that his face was rather stern as he spent the night settling matters of ploughing and planting and pasturage with the indignant old servitor.
But the next morning, after he had set forth and found how every mile lengthening behind him lightened the burden of his depression, a kind of joy rose phoenix-like out of the gray ashes of duty.
“If I had continued there, I should have become feeble in mind,” he said. “Now, since I have got out of that tomb that she haunts, it may be that I can follow my art more lustily.” And suddenly his sternness melted into a great warmth, toward the strapping soldier riding beside him, toward the pannier-laden venders swinging along in their tireless dog-trot, even toward the beggar that hobbled out of the ditch to waylay him. “To live out in the world, where you are pulled into others’ lives whether you will or no, is the best thing to teach people to forget,” he said. “Solitude has comfort only for those who have no sorrows, for Solitude is the mother of remembrance.”
He got genuine enjoyment out of the hour that he was obliged to sit in the ante-room, waiting to be admitted to the King. On one side of him, a group was discussing a Danish rebellion that seemed to be somewhere in progress; on the other, men were speculating on the chances of a Norman invasion,—news of keenest interest was flying thick as bees in June; and the coming and going of the red-cloaked warriors, the occasional passing of some great noble through the throng, stimulated him like wine.
“Praise to the Saint who has brought me into a life where there are no women!” he told himself. “Yes! Oh, yes! Here once more I shall rule my thoughts like a man.” When a page finally came to summon him, he followed with buoyant step and so gallant a bearing that more than one turned to look at him as he passed.
“Yonder goes the new Marshal,” he heard one say to another, and gave the words a fleeting wonder.
The bare stone hall into which the boy ushered him was the same room in which he had had his last audience, and now as then the King sat in the great carved chair by the chimney-piece, but other things were so changed that inside the threshold the Etheling checked his swinging stride to gaze incredulously. No soldiers were to be seen but the sentinels that had been placed beside the doorways, stiff as their gilded pikes, and they counted strictly in the class with the ebony footstools and other furnishings. The knots of men, scattered here and there in buzzing discussion, were all dark-robed merchants and white-bearded judges, while around the table under the window a dozen shaven-headed monks were working busily with writing tools. The King himself was no longer armored, but weapon-less and clad in velvet. Stopping uncertainly, Sebert took from his head the helmet which he had worn, soldier fashion, into the presence of his chief, and into his salutation crept some of the awe that he had felt for Edmund’s kingship, before he knew how weak a man held up the crown.
Certainly Edmund had never received a greeting with more of formal dignity than the young Dane did now, while Edmund could never have spoken what followed with this grim directness which sent every word home like an arrow to its mark.