Book: Harold, Book 10.
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Edward Bulwer Lytton >> Harold, Book 10.
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BOOK X.
THE SACRIFICE ON THE ALTAR.
CHAPTER I.
The good Bishop Alred, now raised to the See of York, had been
summoned from his cathedral seat by Edward, who had indeed undergone a
severe illness, during the absence of Harold; and that illness had
been both preceded and followed by mystical presentiments of the evil
days that were to fall on England after his death. He had therefore
sent for the best and the holiest prelate in his realm, to advise and
counsel with.
The bishop had returned to his lodging in London (which was in a
Benedictine Abbey, not far from the Aldgate) late one evening, from
visiting the King at his rural palace of Havering; and he was seated
alone in his cell, musing over an interview with Edward, which had
evidently much disturbed him, when the door was abruptly thrown open,
and pushing aside in haste the monk, who was about formally to
announce him, a man so travel-stained in garb, and of a mien so
disordered, rushed in, that Alred gazed at first as on a stranger, and
not till the intruder spoke did he recognise Harold the Earl. Even
then, so wild was the Earl's eye, so dark his brow, and so livid his
cheek, that it rather seemed the ghost of the man than the man
himself. Closing the door on the monk, the Earl stood a moment on the
threshold, with a breast heaving with emotions which he sought in vain
to master; and, as if resigning the effort, he sprang forward, clasped
the prelate's knees, bowed his head on his lap, and sobbed aloud. The
good bishop, who had known all the sons of Godwin from their infancy,
and to whom Harold was as dear as his own child, folding his hands
over the Earl's head, soothingly murmured a benediction.
"No, no," cried the Earl, starting to his feet, and tossing the
dishevelled hair from his eyes, "bless me not yet! Hear my tale
first, and then say what comfort, what refuge, thy Church can bestow!"
Hurriedly then the Earl poured forth the dark story, already known to
the reader,--the prison at Belrem, the detention at William's court,
the fears, the snares, the discourse by the riverside, the oath over
the relics. This told, he continued, "I found myself in the open air,
and knew not, till the light of the sun smote me, what might have
passed into my soul. I was, before, as a corpse which a witch raises
from the dead, endows with a spirit not its own--passive to her hand--
life-like, not living. Then, then it was as if a demon had passed
from my body, laughing scorn at the foul things it had made the clay
do. O, father, father! is there not absolution from this oath,--an
oath I dare not keep? rather perjure myself than betray my land!"
The prelate's face was as pale as Harold's, and it was some moments
before he could reply.
"The Church can loose and unloose--such is its delegated authority.
But speak on; what saidst thou at the last to William?"
"I know not, remember not--aught save these words. 'Now, then, give
me those for whom I placed myself in thy power; let me restore Haco to
his fatherland, and Wolnoth to his mother's kiss, and wend home my
way.' And, saints in heaven! what was the answer of this caitiff
Norman, with his glittering eye and venomed smile? 'Haco thou shalt
have, for he is an orphan and an uncle's love is not so hot as to burn
from a distance; but Wolnoth, thy mother's son, must stay with me as a
hostage for thine own faith. Godwin's hostages are released; Harold's
hostage I retain: it is but a form, yet these forms are the bonds of
princes.'
"I looked at him, and his eye quailed. And I said, 'That is not in
the compact.' And William answered, 'No, but it is the seal to it.'
Then I turned from the Duke and I called my brother to my side, and I
said, 'Over the seas have I come for thee. Mount thy steed and ride
by my side, for I will not leave the land without thee.' And Wolnoth
answered, 'Nay, Duke William tells me that he hath made treaties with
thee, for which I am still to be the hostage; and Normandy has grown
my home, and I love William as my lord.' Hot words followed, and
Wolnoth, chafed, refused entreaty and command, and suffered me to see
that his heart was not with England! O, mother, mother, how shall I
meet thine eye! So I returned with Haco. The moment I set foot on my
native England, that moment her form seemed to rise from the tall
cliffs, her voice to speak in the winds! All the glamour by which I
had been bound, forsook me; and I sprang forward in scorn, above the
fear of the dead men's bones. Miserable overcraft of the snarer! Had
my simple word alone bound me, or that word been ratified after slow
and deliberate thought, by the ordinary oaths that appeal to God, far
stronger the bond upon my soul than the mean surprise, the covert
tricks, the insult and the mocking fraud. But as I rode on, the oath
pursued me--pale spectres mounted behind me on my steed, ghastly
fingers pointed from the welkin; and then suddenly, O my father--I
who, sincere in my simple faith, had, as thou knowest too well, never
bowed submissive conscience to priest and Church--then suddenly I felt
the might of some power, surer guide than that haughty conscience
which had so in the hour of need betrayed me! Then I recognised that
supreme tribunal, that mediator between Heaven and man, to which I
might come with the dire secret of my soul, and say, as I say now, on
my bended knee, O father--father--bid me die, or absolve me from my
oath!"
Then Alred rose erect, and replied, "Did I need subterfuge, O son, I
would say, that William himself hath released thy bond, in detaining
the hostage against the spirit of the guilty compact; that in the very
words themselves of the oath, lies the release--'if God aid thee.'
God aids no child to parricide--and thou art England's child! But all
school casuistry is here a meanness. Plain is the law, that oaths
extorted by compulsion, through fraud and in fear, the Church hath the
right to loose: plainer still the law of God and of man, that an oath
to commit crime it is a deadlier sin to keep than to forfeit.
Wherefore, not absolving thee from the misdeed of a vow that, if
trusting more to God's providence and less to man's vain strength and
dim wit, thou wouldst never have uttered even for England's sake--
leaving her to the angels;--not, I say, absolving thee from that sin,
but pausing yet to decide what penance and atonement to fix to its
committal, I do in the name of the Power whose priest I am, forbid
thee to fulfil the oath; I do release and absolve thee from all
obligation thereto. And if in this I exceed my authority as Romish
priest, I do but accomplish my duties as living man. To these grey
hairs I take the sponsorship. Before this holy cross, kneel, O my
son, with me, and pray that a life of truth and virtue may atone the
madness of an hour."
So by the crucifix knelt the warrior and the priest.
CHAPTER II.
All other thought had given way to Harold's impetuous yearning to
throw himself upon the Church, to hear his doom from the purest and
wisest of its Saxon preachers. Had the prelate deemed his vow
irrefragable, he would have died the Roman's death, rather than live
the traitor's life; and strange indeed was the revolution created in
this man's character, that he, "so self-dependent," he who had
hitherto deemed himself his sole judge below of cause and action, now
felt the whole life of his life committed to the word of a cloistered
shaveling. All other thought had given way to that fiery impulse--
home, mother, Edith, king, power, policy, ambition! Till the weight
was from his soul, he was as an outlaw in his native land. But when
the next sun rose, and that awful burthen was lifted from his heart
and his being--when his own calm sense, returning, sanctioned the fiat
of the priest,--when, though with deep shame and rankling remorse at
the memory of the vow, he yet felt exonerated, not from the guilt of
having made, but the deadlier guilt of fulfilling it--all the objects
of existence resumed their natural interest, softened and chastened,
but still vivid in the heart restored to humanity. But from that
time, Harold's stern philosophy and stoic ethics were shaken to the
dust; re-created, as it were, by the breath of religion, he adopted
its tenets even after the fashion of his age. The secret of his
shame, the error of his conscience, humbled him. Those unlettered
monks whom he had so despised, how had he lost the right to stand
aloof from their control! how had his wisdom, and his strength, and
his courage, met unguarded the hour of temptation!
Yes, might the time come, when England could spare him from her side!
when he, like Sweyn the outlaw, could pass a pilgrim to the Holy
Sepulchre, and there, as the creed of the age taught, win full pardon
for the single lie of his truthful life, and regain the old peace of
his stainless conscience!
There are sometimes event and season in the life of man the hardest
and most rational, when he is driven perforce to faith the most
implicit and submissive; as the storm drives the wings of the petrel
over a measureless sea, till it falls tame, and rejoicing at refuge,
on the sails of some lonely ship. Seasons when difficulties, against
which reason seems stricken into palsy, leave him bewildered in dismay
--when darkness, which experience cannot pierce, wraps the conscience,
as sudden night wraps the traveller in the desert--when error
entangles his feet in its inextricable web--when, still desirous of
the right, he sees before him but a choice of evil; and the Angel of
the Past, with a flaming sword, closes on him the gates of the Future.
Then, Faith flashes on him, with a light from the cloud. Then, he
clings to Prayer as a drowning wretch to the plank. Then, that solemn
authority which clothes the Priest, as the interpreter between the
soul and the Divinity, seizes on the heart that trembles with terror
and joy; then, that mysterious recognition of Atonement, of sacrifice,
of purifying lustration (mystery which lies hid in the core of all
religions), smoothes the frown on the Past, removes the flaming sword
from the future. The Orestes escapes from the hounding Furies, and
follows the oracle to the spot where the cleansing dews shall descend
on the expiated guilt.
He who hath never known in himself, nor marked in another, such
strange crisis in human fate, cannot judge of the strength and the
weakness it bestows. But till he can so judge, the spiritual part of
all history is to him a blank scroll, a sealed volume. He cannot
comprehend what drove the fierce Heathen, cowering and humbled, into
the fold of the Church; what peopled Egypt with eremites; what lined
the roads of Europe and Asia with pilgrim homicides; what, in the
elder world, while Jove yet reigned on Olympus, is couched in the dim
traditions of the expiation of Apollo, the joy-god, descending into
Hades; or why the sinner went blithe and light-hearted from the
healing lustrations of Eleusis. In all these solemn riddles of the
Jove world and the Christ's is involved the imperious necessity that
man hath of repentance and atonement: through their clouds, as a
rainbow, shines the covenant that reconciles the God and the man.
Now Life with strong arms plucked the reviving Harold to itself.
Already the news of his return had spread through the city, and his
chamber soon swarmed with joyous welcomes and anxious friends. But
the first congratulations over, each had tidings that claimed his
instant attention, to relate. His absence had sufficed to loosen half
the links of that ill-woven empire.
All the North was in arms. Northumbria had revolted as one man, from
the tyrannous cruelty of Tostig; the insurgents had marched upon York;
Tostig had fled in dismay, none as yet knew whither. The sons of
Algar had sallied forth from their Mercian fortresses, and were now in
the ranks of the Northumbrians, who it was rumoured had selected
Morcar (the elder) in the place of Tostig.
Amidst these disasters, the King's health was fast decaying; his mind
seemed bewildered and distraught; dark ravings of evil portent that
had escaped from his lip in his mystic reveries and visions, had
spread abroad, bandied with all natural exaggerations, from lip to
lip. The country was in one state of gloomy and vague apprehension.
But all would go well, now Harold the great Earl--Harold the stout,
and the wise, and the loved--had come back to his native land!
In feeling himself thus necessary to England,--all eyes, all hopes,
all hearts turned to him, and to him alone,--Harold shook the evil
memories from his soul, as a lion shakes the dews from his mane. His
intellect, that seemed to have burned dim and through smoke in scenes
unfamiliar to its exercise, rose at once equal to the occasion. His
words reassured the most despondent. His orders were prompt and
decisive. While, to and fro, went forth his bodes and his riders, he
himself leaped on his horse, and rode fast to Havering.
At length that sweet and lovely retreat broke on his sight, as a bower
through the bloom of a garden. This was Edward's favourite abode: he
had built it himself for his private devotions, allured by its woody
solitudes and gloom of its copious verdure. Here it was said, that
once that night, wandering through the silent glades, and musing on
heaven, the loud song of the nightingales had disturbed his devotions;
with vexed and impatient soul, he had prayed that the music might be
stilled: and since then, never more the nightingale was heard in the
shades of Havering! Threading the woodland, melancholy yet glorious
with the hues of autumn, Harold reached the low and humble gate of the
timber edifice, all covered with creepers and young ivy; and in a few
moments more he stood in the presence of the King.
Edward raised himself with pain from the couch on which he was
reclined [204], beneath a canopy supported by columns and surmounted
by carved symbols of the bell towers of Jerusalem: and his languid
face brightened at the sight of Harold. Behind the King stood a man
with a Danish battle-axe in his hand, the captain of the royal house-
carles, who, on a sign from the King, withdrew.
"Thou art come back, Harold," said Edward then, in a feeble voice; and
the Earl drawing near, was grieved and shocked at the alteration of
his face. "Thou art come back, to aid this benumbed hand, from which
the earthly sceptre is about to fall. Hush! for it is so, and I
rejoice." Then examining Harold's features, yet pale with recent
emotions, and now saddened by sympathy with the King, he resumed:
"Well, man of this world, that went forth confiding in thine own
strength, and in the faith of men of the world like thee,--well, were
my warnings prophetic, or art thou contented with thy mission?"
"Alas!" said Harold, mournfully. "Thy wisdom was greater than mine, O
King; and dread the snares laid for me and our native land, under
pretext of a promise made by thee to Count William, that he should
reign in England, should he be your survivor."
Edward's face grew troubled and embarrassed. "Such promise," he said,
falteringly, "when I knew not the laws of England, nor that a realm
could not pass like house and hyde by a man's single testament, might
well escape from my thoughts, never too bent upon earthly affairs.
But I marvel not that my cousin's mind is more tenacious and mundane.
And verily, in those vague words, and from thy visit, I see the Future
dark with fate and crimson with blood."
Then Edward's eyes grew locked and set, staring into space; and even
that reverie, though it awed him, relieved Harold of much disquietude,
for he rightly conjectured, that on waking from it Edward would press
him no more as to those details, and dilemmas of conscience, of which
he felt that the arch-worshipper of relics was no fitting judge.
When the King, with a heavy sigh, evinced return from the world of
vision, he stretched forth to Harold his wan, transparent hand, and
said:
"Thou seest the ring on this finger; it comes to me from above, a
merciful token to prepare my soul for death. Perchance thou mayest
have heard that once an aged pilgrim stopped me on my way from God's
House, and asked for alms--and I, having nought else on my person to
bestow, drew from my finger a ring, and gave it to him, and the old
man went his way, blessing me."
"I mind me well of thy gentle charity," said the Earl; "for the
pilgrim bruited it abroad as he passed, and much talk was there of
it."
The King smiled faintly. "Now this was years ago. It so chanced this
year, that certain Englishers, on their way from the Holy Land, fell
in with two pilgrims--and these last questioned them much of me. And
one, with face venerable and benign, drew forth a ring and said, 'When
thou reachest England, give thou this to the King's own hand, and say,
by this token, that on Twelfth-Day Eve he shall be with me. For what
he gave to me, will I prepare recompense without bound; and already
the saints deck for the new comer the halls where the worm never gnaws
and the moth never frets.' 'And who,' asked my subjects amazed, 'who
shall we say, speaketh thus to us?' And the pilgrim answered, 'He on
whose breast leaned the Son of God, and my name is John!' [205]
Wherewith the apparition vanished. This is the ring I gave to the
pilgrim; on the fourteenth night from thy parting, miraculously
returned to me. Wherefore, Harold, my time here is brief, and I
rejoice that thy coming delivers me up from the cares of state to the
preparation of my soul for the joyous day."
Harold, suspecting under this incredible mission some wily device of
the Norman, who, by thus warning Edward (of whose precarious health he
was well aware), might induce his timorous conscience to take steps
for the completion of the old promise,--Harold, we say, thus
suspecting, in vain endeavoured to combat the King's presentiments,
but Edward interrupted him, with displeased firmness of look and tone:
"Come not thou, with thy human reasonings, between my soul and the
messenger divine; but rather nerve and prepare thyself for the dire
calamities that lie greeding in the days to come! Be thine, things
temporal. All the land is in rebellion. Anlaf, whom thy coming
dismissed, hath just wearied me with sad tales of bloodshed and
ravage. Go and hear him;--go hear the bodes of thy brother Tostig,
who wait without in our hall;--go, take axe, and take shield, and the
men of earth's war, and do justice and right; and on thy return thou
shalt see with what rapture sublime a Christian King can soar aloft
from his throne! Go!"
More moved, and more softened, than in the former day he had been with
Edward's sincere, if fanatical piety, Harold, turning aside to conceal
his face, said:
"Would, O royal Edward, that my heart, amidst worldly cares, were as
pure and serene as thine! But, at least, what erring mortal may do to
guard this realm, and face the evils thou foreseest in the Far--that
will I do; and perchance, then, in my dying hour, God's pardon and
peace may descend on me!" He spoke, and went.
The accounts he received from Anlaf (a veteran Anglo-Dane), were
indeed more alarming than he had yet heard. Morcar, the bold son of
Algar, was already proclaimed, by the rebels, Earl of Northumbria; the
shires of Nottingham, Derby, and Lincoln, had poured forth their hardy
Dane populations on his behalf. All Mercia was in arms under his
brother Edwin; and many of the Cymrian chiefs had already joined the
ally of the butchered Gryffyth.
Not a moment did the Earl lose in proclaiming the Herr-bann; sheaves
of arrows were splintered, and the fragments, as announcing the War-
Fyrd, were sent from thegn to thegn, and town to town. Fresh
messengers were despatched to Gurth to collect the whole force of his
own earldom, and haste by quick marches to London; and, these
preparations made, Harold returned to the metropolis, and with a heavy
heart sought his mother, as his next care.
Githa was already prepared for his news; for Haco had of his own
accord gone to break the first shock of disappointment. There was in
this youth a noiseless sagacity that seemed ever provident for Harold.
With his sombre, smileless cheek, and gloom of beauty, bowed as if
beneath the weight of some invisible doom, he had already become
linked indissolubly with the Earl's fate, as its angel,--but as its
angel of darkness!
To Harold's intense relief, Githa stretched forth her hands as he
entered, and said, "Thou hast failed me, but against thy will! grieve
not; I am content!"
"Now our Lady be blessed, mother--"
"I have told her," said Haco, who was standing, with arms folded, by
the fire, the blaze of which reddened fitfully his hueless countenance
with its raven hair; "I have told thy mother that Wolnoth loves his
captivity, and enjoys the cage. And the lady hath had comfort in my
words."
"Not in thine only, son of Sweyn, but in those of fate; for before thy
coming I prayed against the long blind yearning of my heart, prayed
that Wolnoth might not cross the sea with his kinsmen."
"How!" exclaimed the Earl, astonished.
Githa took his arm, and led him to the farther end of the ample
chamber, as if out of the hearing of Haco, who turned his face towards
the fire, and gazed into the fierce blaze with musing, unwinking eyes.
"Couldst thou think, Harold, that in thy journey, that on the errand
of so great fear and hope, I could sit brooding in my chair, and count
the stitches on the tremulous hangings? No; day by day have I sought
the lore of Hilda, and at night I have watched with her by the fount,
and the elm, and the tomb; and I know that thou hast gone through dire
peril; the prison, the war, and the snare; and I know also, that his
Fylgia hath saved the life of my Wolnoth; for had he returned to his
native land, he had returned but to a bloody grave!"
"Says Hilda this?" said the Earl, thoughtfully.
"So say the Vala, the rune, and the Scin-laeca! and such is the doom
that now darkens the brow of Haco! Seest thou not that the hand of
death is in the hush of the smileless lip, and the glance of the
unjoyous eye?"
"Nay, it is but the thought born to captive youth, and nurtured in
solitary dreams. Thou hast seen Hilda?--and Edith, my mother? Edith
is--"
"Well," said Githa, kindly, for she sympathised with that love which
Godwin would have condemned, "though she grieved deeply after thy
departure, and would sit for hours gazing into space, and moaning.
But even ere Hilda divined thy safe return, Edith knew it; I was
beside her at the time; she started up, and cried, 'Harold is in
England!'--'How?--Why thinkest thou so?' said I. And Edith answered,
'I feel it by the touch of the earth, by the breath of the air.' This
is more than love, Harold. I knew two twins who had the same instinct
of each other's comings and goings, and were present each to each even
when absent: Edith is twin to my soul. Thou goest to her now, Harold:
thou wilt find there thy sister Thyra. The child hath drooped of
late, and I besought Hilda to revive her, with herb and charm. Thou
wilt come back, ere thou departest to aid Tostig, thy brother, and
tell me how Hilda hath prospered with my ailing child?"
"I will, my mother. Be cheered!--Hilda is a skilful nurse. And now
bless thee, that thou hast not reproached me that my mission failed to
fulfil my promise. Welcome even our kinswoman's sayings, sith they
comfort thee for the loss of thy darling!"
Then Harold left the room, mounted his steed, and rode through the
town towards the bridge. He was compelled to ride slowly through the
streets, for he was recognised; and cheapman and mechanic rushed from
house and from stall to hail the Man of the Land and the Time.
"All is safe now in England, for Harold is come back!" They seemed
joyous as the children of the mariner, when, with wet garments, he
struggles to shore through the storm. And kind and loving were
Harold's looks and brief words, as he rode with vailed bonnet through
the swarming streets.
At length he cleared the town and the bridge; and the yellowing boughs
of the orchards drooped over the road towards the Roman home, when, as
he spurred his steed, he heard behind him hoofs as in pursuit, looked
back, and beheld Haco. He drew rein,--"What wantest thou, my nephew?"
"Thee!" answered Haco, briefly, as he gained his side. "Thy
companionship."
"Thanks, Haco; but I pray thee to stay in my mother's house, for I
would fain ride alone."
"Spurn me not from thee, Harold! This England is to me the land of
the stranger; in thy mother's house I feel but the more the orphan.
Henceforth I have devoted to thee my life! And my life my dead and
dread father hath left to thee, as a doom or a blessing; wherefore
cleave I to thy side;--cleave we in life and in death to each other!"
An undefined and cheerless thrill shot through the Earl's heart as the
youth spoke thus; and the remembrance that Haco's counsel had first
induced him to abandon his natural hardy and gallant manhood, meet
wile by wile, and thus suddenly entangle him in his own meshes, had
already mingled an inexpressible bitterness with his pity and
affection for his brother's son. But, struggling against that uneasy
sentiment, as unjust towards one to whose counsel--however sinister,
and now repented--he probably owed, at least, his safety and
deliverance, he replied gently: