Once more she set forth with the messenger as guide, and about set of sun arrived at the house, which was to be her home for the next two to three years, in this darkest period of her life. Yet she could not have found a habitation and surroundings more perfectly suited to her wants and the mood she was in. The house, which was large enough to accommodate all her people, was on the west side of the Avon, a quarter of a mile below Amesbury and two to three hundred yards distant from the river bank, and was surrounded by enclosed land with gardens and orchards, the river itself forming the boundary on one side. Here was the perfect seclusion she desired: here she could spend her hours and days as she ever loved to do in the open air without sight of any human countenance excepting those of her own people, since now strange faces had become hateful to her. Then, again, she loved riding, and just outside of her gates was the great green expanse of the Downs, where she could spend hours on horseback without meeting or seeing a human figure except occasionally a solitary shepherd guarding his flock. So great was the attraction the Downs had for her she herself marvelled at it. It was not merely the sense of power and freedom the rider feels on a horse with the exhilarating effect of swift motion and a wide horizon. Here she had got out of the old and into a new world better suited to her changed spirit. For in that world of men and women in which she had lived until now all nature had become interfused with her own and other people's lives—passions and hopes and fears and dreams and ambitions. Now it was as if an obscuring purple mist had been blown away, leaving the prospect sharp and clear to her sight as it had never appeared before. A wide prospect, whose grateful silence was only broken by the cry or song of some wild bird. Great thickets of dwarf thorn tree and brambles and gorse, aflame with yellow flowers or dark to blackness by contrast with the pale verdure of the earth. And open reaches of elastic turf, its green suffused or sprinkled with red or blue or yellow, according to the kind of flowers proper to the season and place. The sight, too, of wild creatures: fallow deer, looking yellow in the distance when seen amid the black gorse; a flock of bustards taking to flight on her approach would rush away, their spread wings flashing silver-white in the brilliant sunshine. She was like them on her horse, borne swiftly as on wings above the earth, but always near it. Then, casting her eyes up, she would watch the soarers, the buzzards, or harriers and others, circling up from earth on broad motionless wings, bird above bird, ever rising and diminishing to fade away at last into the universal blue. Then, as if aspiring too, she would seek the highest point on some high down, and sitting on her horse survey the prospect before her—the sea of rounded hills, hills beyond hills, stretching away to the dim horizon, and over it all the vast blue dome of heaven. Sky and earth, with thorny brakes and grass and flowers and wild creatures, with birds that flew low and others soaring up into heaven—what was the secret meaning it had for her? She was like one groping for a key in a dark place. Not a human figure visible, not a sign of human occupancy on that expanse! Was this then the secret of her elation? The all-powerful, dreadful God she was at enmity with, whom she feared and fled from, was not here. He, or his spirit, was where man inhabited, in cities and other centres of population, where there were churches and monasteries.
To think this was a veritable relief to her. God was where men worshipped him, and not here! She hugged the new belief and it made her bold and defiant. Doubtless, if he is here, she would say, and can read my thoughts, my horse in his very next gallop will put his foot in a mole-run, and bring me down and break my neck. Or when yon black cloud comes over me, if it is a thunder-cloud, the lightning out of it will strike me dead. If he will but listen to his servant Dunstan this will surely happen. Was it God or the head shepherd of his sheep, here in England, who, when I tried to enter the fold, beat me off with his staff and set his dogs on me so that I was driven away, torn and bleeding, to hide myself in a solitary place? Would it then be better for me to go with my cries for mercy to his seat? O no, I could not come to him there; his doorkeepers would bar the way, and perhaps bring together a crowd of their people to howl at me—Go away, Murderess, you are not wanted here!
Now in spite of those moments, or even hours, of elation, during which her mind would recover its old independence until the sense of freedom was like an intoxication; when she cried out against God that he was cruel and unjust in his dealings with his creatures, that he had raised up and given power to the man who held the rod over her, one who in God's holy name had committed crimes infinitely greater than hers, and she refused to submit to him—in spite of it all she could never shake off the terrible thought that in the end, at God's judgment seat, she would have to answer for her own dark deeds. She could not be free of her religion. She was like one who tears a written paper to pieces and scatters the pieces in anger to see them blown away like snow-flakes on the wind; who by and by discovers one small fragment clinging to his garments, and looking at the half a dozen words and half words appearing on it, adds others from memory or of his own invention. So she with what was left when she thrust her religion away built for herself a different one which was yet like the old; and even here in this solitude she was able to find a house and sacred place for meditation and prayer, in which she prayed indirectly to the God she was at enmity with. For now invariably on returning from her ride to her house at Amesbury she would pay a visit to the Great Stones, the ancient temple of Stonehenge. Dismounting, she would order her attendants to take her horse away and wait for her at a distance, so as not to be disturbed by the sound of their talking. Going in she would seat herself on the central or altar stone and give a little time to meditation—to the tuning of her mind. That circle of rough-hewn stones, rough with grey lichen, were the pillars of her cathedral, with the infinite blue sky for roof, and for incense the smell of flowers and aromatic herbs, and for music the far-off faintly heard sounds that came to her from the surrounding wilderness—the tremulous bleating of sheep and the sudden wild cry of hawk or stone curlew. Closing her eyes she would summon the familiar image and vision of the murdered boy, always coming so quickly, so vividly, that she had brought herself to believe that it was not a mere creation of her own mind and of remorse, a memory, but that he was actually there with her. Moving her hand over the rough stone she would by and by let it rest, pressing it on the stone, and would say, Now I have your hand in mine, and am looking with my soul's eyes into yours, listen again to the words I have spoken so many times. You would not be here if you did not remember me and pity and even love me still. Know then that I am now alone in the world, that I am hated by the world because of your bitter death. And there is not now one living being in the world that I love, for I have ceased to love even my own boy, your old beloved playmate, seeing that he has long been taken from me and taught with all others to despise and hate me. And of all those who inhabit the regions above, in all that innumerable multitude of angels and saints, and of all who have died on earth and been forgiven, you alone have any feeling of compassion for me and can intercede for me. Plead for me—plead for me, O my son; for who is there in heaven or earth that can plead so powerfully for me that am stained with your blood!
Then, having finished her prayer, and wiped away all trace of tears and painful emotions, she would summon her attendants and ride home, in appearance and bearing still the Elfrida of her great days—the calm, proud-faced, beautiful woman who was once Edgar's queen.
XI
The time had arrived when Elfrida was deprived of this her one relief and consolation—her rides on the Downs and the exercise of her religion at the temple of the Great Stones—when in the second winter of her residence at Amesbury there fell a greater darkness than that of winter on England, when the pirate kings of the north began once more to frequent our shores, and the daily dreadful tale of battles and massacres and burning of villages and monasteries was heard throughout the kingdom. These invasions were at first confined to the eastern counties, but the agitation, with movements of men and outbreaks of lawlessness, were everywhere in the country, and the queen was warned that it was no longer safe for her to go out on Salisbury Plain.
The close seclusion in which she had now to live, confined to house and enclosed land, affected her spirits, and this was her darkest period, and it was also the turning-point in her life. For I now come to the strange story of her maid Editha, who, despite her humble position in the house, and albeit she was but a young girl in years, one, moreover, of a meek, timid disposition, was yet destined to play an exceedingly important part in the queen's history.
It happened that by chance or design the queen's maid, who was her closest attendant, who dressed and undressed her, was suddenly called away on some urgent matter, and this girl Editha, a stranger to all, was put in her place. The queen, who was in a moody and irritable state, presently discovered that the sight and presence of this girl produced a soothing effect on her darkened mind. She began to notice her when the maid combed her hair, when sitting with half-closed eyes in profound dejection she first looked attentively at that face behind her head in the mirror and marvelled at its fairness, the perfection of its lines and its delicate colouring, the pale gold hair and strangely serious grey eyes that were never lifted to meet her own.
What was it in this face, she asked herself, that held her and gave some rest to her tormented spirit? It reminded her of that crystal stream of sweet and bitter memories, at Wherwell, on which she used to gaze and in which she used to dip her hands, then to press the wetted hands to her lips. It also reminded her of an early morning sky, seen beyond and above the green dew-wet earth, so infinitely far away, so peaceful with a peace that was not of this earth.