We stayed many days at Lord Rudolf’s.
It was when the men were growing weary of waiting and the household that eat in the hall knew all of my songs—when the keel of the ship was fast grounded—that one night as I lay asleep with my back to the bulwark I felt a hand shaking my shoulder. And, as I grasped his arm in the darkness, Lord Snorē’s voice came to me whispering:
“Awake; and come out of the ship, silently—here in the darkness,” he whispered, as I came over the side and let myself drop by my arms to the sand.
I saw that he was dressed in his armour, and had his great axe in his hand, as he pulled me into the shadow of the steering-oar, where it stuck over the stern, its blade of broad silver where it shone to the moonlight.
“Do you hear the noise up at the castle?” he whispered.
“It is surely Lord Rudolf’s brother returned,” I answered when I had listened; for a sound like the grounding of swords and the tramping of men passing in and out over the drawbridge came to me, faintly, from where lay the castle beyond the black line of trees: the night was very still.
“Nay, it is not that,” whispered Lord Snorē, looming up dim by the ship’s side. “Listen, Witlaf: I love Lord Rudolf’s daughter—ah! so thou knowest?—and this night have I gone up to look at her window where the light is—nay, listen—and as I was standing there dreaming, I think, sudden and soft her voice came to me out of the darkness, from just within the great window that is at the side of the hall, and looking up, I heard her call to me gently, saying, ‘Snorē, Snorē; come here to the window-ledge, silently—quick! Back to your ship, Snorē—my father is arming himself in his chamber; I heard the clang of his armour: he is angry because that I—love thee. The castle is filled with his men, and—I love thee!’”
And the lord’s great hand was raised in the darkness.
“Now, Witlaf,” he whispered, and I heard his voice tremble, “the maiden is safe in the ship; but thou knowest,” and his voice grew firm, “that the half of our men lie drunk on the fore-deck—and ’tis hard to move ship with so few. Say, Minstrel, wilt thou hold the ship while I, with the rest, warm my hands at the castle?”
And thus it was that I, the harper of Lord Snorē, came to be sitting in the moonlight inside the ship, with my harp by my knee, and my axe in my hand, and a pale-faced maiden beside me who listened in silence to the distancing tread of my lord and his men as they stealthily passed up the path towards the castle.