Her face seemed to have become glass before him, through which he looked into the innermost chambers of her mind. Terror-stricken, she snatched her hands away to cover it. “No, no!” she cried wildly. “I am angry with no one. I have found fault with no one. Draw no sword for me—only let me go!”
Again he turned from her and stood looking out at the clouds; but when at last he spoke, his voice was the gentlest she had ever heard it. “You are wise in this, as in other things, Frode’s daughter,” he said, “and you shall certainly have your way. I take it that I am your guardian to protect you from harm, not to force you into things you do not want. Soldiers I can trust shall go with you, in case there be danger from Norman’s people, and for women—”
She spoke up eagerly, “There is an old nun at Saint Mildred’s, King, who loves me. I think she would come to me until others could be found.”
“Go then,” he granted. “Thorkel shall see to it that men and horses are ready when you are.” He held out his hand, but when she took it in both of hers and would have saluted it reverently, he would not let her but instead raised her fingers to his lips. An odd note was in his voice. “Heavy is it for my tongue to say farewell to you, Frode’s daughter,” he said, “for your friendship has surpassed most other things in pleasantness to me.”
Frank liking mingled with gratitude and reverence as she looked up at him. “I have got great kindness and favor from you, King Canute; I pray that you will be very happy with your Queen.”
A moment he pressed his lips to her hand; then gently set it free. “I give you thanks,” he returned, “but happiness is for me to wish you. The best you can ask for me is that sometime I shall become what you believed me to be the day you came to me at Scoerstan.”
She tried to tell him that she believed him that now,—but something in her forbade the untruth. She could do no more than leave him, with a mute gesture of farewell.
Perhaps her gaze was not quite clear as she crossed the room, for she did not see that the door-curtains were moving until she was close upon them, when they were thrust apart to admit the form of Rothgar Lodbroksson. Stifling a gasp, she shrank behind a tall chair.
He did not see her, however, for his eyes were fastened upon the King, who had turned back to the window. He had cast aside the splendor of the royal guards, wearing over his steel shirt a kirtle of blue that made his florid face seem redder and gave to his fiery hair a hotter glow. Two sentinels carrying shining pikes had followed him in, uncertainly, and now one plucked at his arm. But the Jotun shook him off to stride forward, clanking his heels with intentional noisiness upon the stone floor.
At the clatter the King looked around, and the tone in which he spoke his friend’s name had in it more of passion than all the lover’s phrases he had ever paid Elfgiva’s ears. At the same time, he made a sharp sign to the two sentinels. “Get back to your posts,” he said.