Stamping with rage, the Jotun hammered his huge fist upon a tree-trunk until bark flew in every direction. “King, I will give you every ring off my hand if you will give me leave to strangle her!”
“You remind me that I will take one of your rings now,” Canute said, reaching out and opening the mallet-like fist that he might make his choice. Then, as he fitted on his prize and held it critically to the light, he added with more sympathy: “I will arrange for you a more profitable revenge than that. I will make a condition with Edmund that the Etheling’s odal shall not be included in the land which is peace-holy, and that to ravage it shall not be looked upon as breaking the truce. Then can you betake yourself thither and sit down with your following, and have no one but yourself to blame if you fail a second time. Only,”—he thrust his knuckles suddenly between the other’s ribs,—“only, before we get serious over it, do at least give one laugh. Though she be Ran herself, the maiden has played an excellent joke upon you.”
“I do not see how you make out that it is all upon me,” Rothgar said sulkily. “It did not appear that you got suspicious in any way, until I told you myself what she talked like. You did not have the appearance of choking much on her stories.”
The King seemed all at once to recover his dignity. “I will not deny that,” he said gravely; “and have I not said that I expect to be angry about it presently? Certainly I do not think she has treated me with much respect. That she did not tell you, is by no means to be wondered at; it might even count as something in her favor. But me she should have given her confidence. That she should dare to offer her King that lying story about her sister’s death—” His face flushed as though he were remembering his emotion on receiving that same story; and his foster-brother’s observation did not tend to mollify him.
“And not only to offer it,” the son of Lodbrok chuckled, “but to cram it down his throat and make him swallow it.”
Canute’s heels also began to ring with ominous sharpness upon the frosty ground. “She must be Ran herself! Oh, you need not be afraid that I shall not get overbearing enough after I am started! Had she been no more than her father’s daughter, her behavior would have been sufficiently bad; but that she whom I had made my ward should withhold her confidence from me to give it to an Englishman! Become his thrallwoman, by Odin, and betray my people for his sake! Now, as I am a king, I will punish her in a way that she will like less than strangling! I tell you, her luck is great that she is not here to-night.”
CHAPTER XIX. The Gift of The Elves
Fair shall speak
And money offer,
Who would obtain a woman’s love.
Hávamál.
It was the edge of a forest pool, and a slender dark-haired girl bending from the brink to see herself in the water. Looking, she smiled,—and small wonder!
Below her, framed in green rushes, was the reflection of a high-born maiden dressed according to her rank. Clinging silk and jewelled girdle lent new grace to her lithesome form, while the mossy green of her velvet mantle brought out the rich coloring of her face as leaves bring out the glowing splendor of a rose. Gold was in the embroidery that stiffened her trailing skirts; gold was sewn into her gloves, and golden chains twined in her lustrous hair added to the spirited poise of her head a touch of stateliness. No wonder that her mouth curved into a smile as she gazed.