His ward courtesied deeply before him. “For your justice, King Canute, I give you thanks drawn from the bottom of my heart,” she said.
“I welcome you to your own, Lady of Avalcomb,” he answered as he returned her salutation. Leaning against the window frame he stood a long while looking at her in silence,—so long that she was startled when at last he spoke. “Yet for the good of the realm, I must lay on your odal one burden, Frode’s daughter.”
“What is that, King?”
“It is that before the year is out you take a husband who shall be able to defend your land in time of need.”
Her white cheeks went very red before him and then grew very pale again, while her breast rose and fell convulsively. But she clasped her hands over it as though to still its protest and, suddenly, she flung up her head in a kind of trembling defiance. “What does it matter? King, I know what a Danish woman owes her race. Choose you the man and this shall, like other things, be as you wish.”
It was evident that her answer took him by surprise, for he bent from the wall to observe her. “I choose!” he repeated. “Have you then no choice?”
She tried to say “No”; she tried desperately to say it; but already her courage was crumbling under her. All at once she took her hands from her breast to hold them out pleadingly, and her voice was broken: “Lord, let me go back to Avalcomb—now—to-day!”
“Wherefore to-day?” he asked. “I had thought you would remain here for a while and get honor from Queen Emma.” A moment he looked away from her, out of the window at the drifting clouds. “I can tell you, Frode’s daughter, that while she is noble in her birth, she is still nobler in her mind,” he said gravely. “Little would there be in her service for you to take ill. I think it possible that she might be highly helpful to you. There is that about her which makes the good in one come out and bask like a snake in the sun, while the evil slinks away shadow-like—”
She interrupted him with a cry that was half a sob. “Lord King, I cannot bear it to see more people that are strange to me! Since I left my father’s house I have felt the starkness of strangers, and now—now I can endure it no longer. My heart within me is as though it were bruised black and blue. Let me go back where all know me,—where none will hold me off at arm’s length to challenge me with his eyes, but all love me and place faith in me because they know me. Lord, give me leave to go home,—I pray it of you! Beseech it of you!” Entreating, she would have fallen at his feet if he had not caught her hands and stayed her.
He did not release them immediately but tightened his grasp as his eyes, grown suddenly keen, searched her face. His voice dropped low. “Randalin, it is very unlikely that Elfgiva’s scratches have brought you to this. Do you stand in need of reminding that any man who has angered you has angered me? That my sword lies under your hand?”