“I!” the Etheling ejaculated. Suddenly it occurred to him to suspect that his new-sworn vow of obedience was about to be put genuinely to the test, and he drew himself up stiffly, facing the King. But Canute was tracing idle patterns on the carving of his chair-arm.
“Listen, Lord of Ivarsdale,” he said quietly. “It is unadvisable for me to stir up further rebellion among the Danes by accusing them of things which it is not certain they have done, and even though I seized upon these women it would not help; while I cannot let the matter continue, since one thing after another, worse and worse, would be caused by it. The only man who can end it, while keeping quiet, is the one who has the friendship of the only woman among them to whose honor I would risk my life. I mean Randalin, Frode’s daughter.”
Whether or not he heard Sebert’s exclamation, he spoke on as though it had not been uttered. “One thing is, that she knows nothing of a plot; for did she so, she would have warned me had it compelled her to swim the Thames to reach me. But she must be able to tell many tidings that we wish to know, with regard to the use they make of their jewels, and the Danes who visit them, and such matters, which might be got from her without letting her suspect that she is telling news. Now you are the one person who might do this without making any fuss, and it is my will therefore that you go to her as soon as you can. Your excuse shall be that the Abbot has in his keeping some law-parchments which I have the wish to see, but while you are there, I want you to renew your friendship with her and find out these things for me. By obeying me in this, you will give the State help where it is most needed and hard to get.” When that was out, he raised his head and met the Etheling’s eyes squarely, and it was plain to each of them that the moment had come which must, once and forever, decide their future relations.
It was a long time that the Lord of Ivarsdale stood there, the pride of his rank, and the prejudice of his blood, struggling with his new convictions, his new loyalty. But at last he took his eyes from the King’s to bow before him in noble submission.
“This is not the way of fighting that I am used to, King Canute,” he said, “and I will not deny that I had rather you had set me any other task; but neither can I deny that, since you find you have need of my wits rather than of my sword, it is with my wits that it behooves me to serve you. Tell me clearly what is your command, and neither haughtiness nor self-will shall hinder me from fulfilling it.”
CHAPTER XXVIII. When Love Meets Love
Rejoiced at evil
Be thou never,
But let good give thee pleasure.
Hávamál.
Before the time of the Confessor, the West Minster was little more than the Monastery chapel, in which the presence of the parish folk, if not forbidden, was still in no way encouraged. To-day, when the Lord of Ivarsdale came unnoticed into the dim light while the last strains of the vesper service were rising, there were no more than a score of worshippers scattered through the north aisle,—a handful of women, wives of the Abbot’s military tenants, a trader bound for the land beyond the ford, a couple of yeomen and a hollow-eyed pilgrim, drifting with the current of his unsteady mind. After a searching glance around him, the Etheling took up his station in the shelter of a pillar.
“Little danger—or hope—is there than I can miss her,” he told himself, “if she is indeed here, as the page said. Yet of all the unlikely places to seek her!” he smiled faintly as the figure in elfin green flitted through his mind. As well look for a wood-nymph at confession—unless indeed, Elfgiva had taken her there against her will—But that was scarcely likely, he remembered immediately afterwards, since an English-woman who had entered into a civil marriage with a Dane would be little apt to frequent an English church. “Doubtless she makes of it a meeting place with her newest lover,” he concluded. And the anger the thought gave him, and a sense of the helplessness of his own position, was so great that he could not remain quiet under it but was tortured into moving restlessly to and fro in the shadow.
Tender as the gloaming of a summer day was the shade in the great nave, with the ever-burning candles to remind one of the eternal stars. Now their quivering light called into life, for one brief moment, the golden dove that hung above the altar; now it touched with dazzling brightness the precious service on the holy table itself; again it was veiled by drifting incense as by heaven’s clouds. From the throats of the hidden choir, the last note swelled rich and full, to roll out over the pillared aisles in a wave of vibrant sound and pass away in a sigh of ineffable sweetness under the rafters.