Perhaps he saw its awfulness reflected in the wide blue eyes, for he checked himself abruptly. When he spoke again, he had himself well in hand.
“I act like a fool to let you hear my ravings. Poor cub! it is likely you will call me a worse name when you find out how I am hindered! Yet go on and tell me the rest. How comes it that you escaped unharmed?”
With Gram’s experience to follow, it was not hard to frame that answer. “They knocked me on the head with a spear-butt and left me for dead. When I got my senses again, I found my way to the nuns of St. Mildred’s; and they gave me food, and I rode hither.”
“It is the Troll’s luck! I—yet, go on. The day will come! Did they further harm within the castle? Have you women-kin?”
Randalin hesitated. Would it not be safer if she could deny altogether the existence of a daughter of Frode? But no, that was not possible, in the face of what Norman might reveal. She began very, very carefully: “It happened that my mother died before we came to Avalcomb; and my father had but one daughter. She was called Randalin. I did not see what became of her, for I was outside; but I think that she is dead. A—her thrall-woman told me that Leofwinesson pursued her to a chamber in the wall. And and because she could not escape from him—she—she threw herself from the window, and the stones below caused her death.”
The King’s hands clenched convulsively. “It is like them!” he muttered. “It has happened as I supposed. If the master be like his men, I ask you in what their God is to be preferred to ours? Have no fear but that I will avenge your kinswoman. Those of her own blood-ties could do no more. And Frode also. You need not wait long for me when the day comes; the last hair of the otter-skin shall be covered, though I take from them the Ring itself. You shall see! Have patience, and you shall see!”
Upon burning ears the word “patience” falls coldly.
“Patience!” the child of Frode repeated.
Perhaps in days gone by the young King himself had rebelled at the tyranny of that word. Perhaps the smart of its scourge was still upon him. He put forth a kindly hand and drew the boy down beside him.
“Listen, young one,” he said, “and do not blame me for what I cannot help. Had I come hither only to get property and go away again, as Northmen before me have come, it would not matter to me whom I killed, and I would slay Leofwinesson more gladly than I would eat; may the Giant take me if I lie! But I have come to the Island to set up my seat-pillars and get myself land. I think no one guesses how much I have the ambition at heart; even to me it appears a strange wonder. But it is true that I look upon the fair rolling meadows with such eyes of love that when it is necessary that I should set fire to them, it is as though I had laid the torch to my hair. And because of that, in order that I be not kept destroying them until they are not worth the having, I have made a bargain with Edric Jarl, who is dissatisfied with his king, that we are to support each other in the game. There it is all open to you. Leofwinesson is the man of Edric. Until such time as I get the kingship firmly in my hands, it would be unadvisable for me to reckon with him though he had slain my foster-brother. You see? It is the way the Fates order things. I must submit to them, though I am a king. Can you not, then, bend your head without shame, and wait with me?”