“Lord of Ivarsdale, I am not rich of time, and my present need is too great to spare any of it to the chastising of rebellious boys. Go back to your toy kingdom, and lord it over your serfs until I find leisure to teach you who is master.” Making a disdainful gesture of dismissal, he turned with deliberate grace and entered into conversation with the Mercian.
At the moment, it is likely that the young noble would have preferred arrest. The utter scorn of word and act lashed the blood to his cheeks and the tears to his eyes. With boyish passion, he snatched the sword from its sheath, and breaking it in pieces across his knee, flung the fragments clinking into the dead embers.
But if he had hoped to provoke an answer, it was in vain; the King deigned him no further notice. Resuming his seat, Edmund continued to talk quietly with the Earl, a half-smile playing about his complacent chin.
The old cniht bent forward and whispered in his chief’s ear: “Make haste, Lord Sebert; they will be cheering in a moment, the churls; so pleased are they at the thought of going home. Hasten with your retiring.”
It was a clever appeal. Forgetting, for the moment, humiliation in responsibility, the young leader whirled to his men. A gesture, a muttered order, and they were drawing back among the trees in silent retreat. A few steps more, and the bushes had blotted out the Ironside and his thanes.
CHAPTER XI. When My Lord Comes Home From War
One’s own house is best,
Small though it be;
At home is every one his own master.
Bleeding at heart is he
Who has to ask
For food at every mealtide.
Hávamál.
Slowly the bleak light warmed into golden radiance and the touch of dawn strung the scattered bird-notes into a chain of joyous song. Passing at last from the forest shades, the men of Ivarsdale came out into the grassy lane-like road that wound away over the Middlesex hills.
The Destroyer had not passed this way, it seemed, for the oat-fields stretched before them in unbroken silvery sheen; and the straight young corn dared to rustle its green ribbons boastfully. Fowls still uncaptured crowed lustily in adjacent barnyards; and now and again, sweet as echoes from elfin horns, came the tinkling music of cow-bells. Here and there, the little shock-headed boys who were driving their charges afield paused knee-deep in rosy clover to watch the band ride by.
“Yon must be a mighty warrior,” they whispered as they stared at the sober young leader. “Take notice how his eyes gaze straight ahead, as though he were seeking more people to overcome.” And they spoke enviously of the red-cloaked page who sat on the croup of the leader’s white charger.