“Hearken to him, Ecta,” he cried; “this old druid would have you believe that two men and a woman make one person! Believe that if you will! As for me, I laugh.”
But with that, at a sign from Molios, they lifted and slung him amid the branches of the oak, and let him slide feet foremost into the deep hollow heart of the tree.
When the law was done, Molios bade all near kneel in a circle round the oak. Then he prayed for the soul of the doomed man. As he ended this prayer, a laugh flew up among the high wind-swayed leaves. It was as though an invisible bird were there, mocking like a jay.
One by one, with bowed heads, Molios and Ecta and those with him withdrew, all save two young men who were bidden to stay. Upon these was bond laid, that they would not stir from that place for three days. They were to let none draw nigh; and no food was to be given to the victim; and if he cried to them, they were to take no heed,—nay, not though he called upon God or the Mother of God or upon the White Christ.
All that day there was no sound from the hollow tree. At the setting of the sun a blackbird lit upon a small branch that drooped over the aperture, and sang a brave lilt. Then the dark came, and the moon rose, and the stars glimmered through the dew.
At midnight the moon was overhead. A flood of pale gold rays lit up the branches of the oak, and turned the leaves into a lustrous bronze. The watchers heard a voice singing in the silence of the night—a voice muffled and obscure, as from one in a pit, or as that of a shepherd straying in a narrow corrie. Words they caught, though not all; and this was what they heard:[5]
O yellow lamp of Ioua that is having a cold pale flame there,
Put thy honey-sheen upon me who am close-caverned with Death:
Sure it is nought I see now who have seen too much and too little:
O moon, thy breast is softer and whiter than hers who burneth the day.
Put thy white light on the grave where the dead man my father is,
And waken him, waken him, wake!
And put my soft shining on the breast of the woman my mother,
So that she stir in her sleep and say to the Viking beside her,
“Take up thy sword, and let it lap blood, for it thirsts with long thirst.”
And O Ioua, be as the sea-calm upon the hot heart of Ardanna, the girl:
Tell her that Cathal loves her, and that memory is sweeter than life.
I list her heart beating here in the dark and the silence,
And it is not lonely I am, because of that, and remembrance.
O yellow flame of Ioua, be a spilling of blood out of the heart of Ecta,
So that he fall dead, inglorious, slain from within, as a greybeard;
And light a fire in the brain of Molios, so that he shall go moonstruck,
And men will jeer at him, and he will die at the last, idly laughing.