Book: Harold, Book 10.
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Edward Bulwer Lytton >> Harold, Book 10.
"I accept thy trust and thy love, Haco! Ride with me, then; but
pardon a dull comrade, for when the soul communes with itself the lip
is silent."
"True," said Haco, "and I am no babbler. Three things are ever
silent: Thought, Destiny, and the Grave."
Each then, pursuing his own fancies, rode on fast, and side by side;
the long shadows of declining day struggling with a sky of unusual
brightness, and thrown from the dim forest trees and the distant
hillocks. Alternately through shade and through light rode they on;
the bulls gazing on them from holt and glade, and the boom of the
bittern sounding in its peculiar mournfulness of toile as it rose from
the dank pools that glistened in the western sun.
It was always by the rear of the house, where stood the ruined temple,
so associated with the romance of his life, that Harold approached the
home of the Vala; and as now the hillock, with its melancholy diadem
of stones, came in view, Haco for the first time broke the silence.
"Again--as in a dream!" he said, abruptly. "Hill, ruin, grave-mound--
but where the tall image of the mighty one?"
"Hast thou then seen this spot before?" asked the Earl.
"Yea, as an infant here was I led by my father Sweyn; here too, from
thy house yonder, dim seen through the fading leaves, on the eve
before I left this land for the Norman, here did I wander alone; and
there, by that altar, did the great Vala of the North chaunt her runes
for my future."
"Alas! thou too!" murmured Harold; and then he asked aloud, "What said
she?"
"That thy life and mine crossed each other in the skein; that I should
save thee from a great peril, and share with thee a greater."
"Ah, youth," answered Harold, bitterly, "these vain prophecies of
human wit guard the soul from no anger. They mislead us by riddles
which our hot hearts interpret according to their own desires. Keep
thou fast to youth's simple wisdom, and trust only to the pure spirit
and the watchful God."
He suppressed a groan as he spoke, and springing from his steed, which
he left loose, advanced up the hill. When he had gained the height,
he halted, and made sign to Haco, who had also dismounted, to do the
same. Half way down the side of the slope which faced the ruined
peristyle, Haco beheld a maiden, still young, and of beauty surpassing
all that the court of Normandy boasted of female loveliness. She was
seated on the sward;--while a girl younger, and scarcely indeed grown
into womanhood, reclined at her feet, and leaning her cheek upon her
hand, seemed hushed in listening attention. In the face of the
younger girl Haco recognised Thyra, the last-born of Githa, though he
had but once seen her before--the day ere he left England for the
Norman court--for the face of the girl was but little changed, save
that the eye was more mournful, and the cheek was paler.
And Harold's betrothed was singing, in the still autumn air, to
Harold's sister. The song chosen was on that subject the most popular
with the Saxon poets, the mystic life, death, and resurrection of the
fabled Phoenix, and this rhymeless song, in its old native flow, may
yet find some grace in the modern ear.
THE LAY OF THE PHOENIX. [206]
"Shineth far hence--so
Sing the wise elders
Far to the fire-east
The fairest of lands.
Daintily dight is that
Dearest of joy fields;
Breezes all balmy-filled
Glide through its groves.
There to the blest, ope
The high doors of heaven,
Sweetly sweep earthward
Their wavelets of song.
Frost robes the sward not,
Rusheth no hail-steel;
Wind-cloud ne'er wanders,
Ne'er falleth the rain.
Warding the woodholt,
Girt with gay wonder,
Sheen with the plumy shine,
Phoenix abides.
Lord of the Lleod, [207]
Whose home is the air,
Winters a thousand
Abideth the bird.
Hapless and heavy then
Waxeth the hazy wing;
Year-worn and old in the
Whirl of the earth.
Then the high holt-top,
Mounting, the bird soars;
There, where the winds sleep,
He buildeth a nest;--
Gums the most precious, and
Balms of the sweetest,
Spices and odours, he
Weaves in the nest.
There, in that sun-ark, lo,
Waiteth he wistful;
Summer comes smiling, lo,
Rays smite the pile!
Burden'd with eld-years, and
Weary with slow time,
Slow in his odour-nest
Burneth the bird.
Up from those ashes, then,
Springeth a rare fruit;
Deep in the rare fruit
There coileth a worm.
Weaving bliss-meshes
Around and around it,
Silent and blissful, the
Worm worketh on.
Lo, from the airy web,
Blooming and brightsome,
Young and exulting, the
Phoenix breaks forth.
Round him the birds troop,
Singing and hailing;
Wings of all glories
Engarland the king.
Hymning and hailing,
Through forest and sun-air,
Hymning and hailing,
And speaking him 'King.'
High flies the phoenix,
Escaped from the worm-web
He soars in the sunlight,
He bathes in the dew.
He visits his old haunts,
The holt and the sun-hill;
The founts of his youth, and
The fields of his love.
The stars in the welkin,
The blooms on the earth,
Are glad in his gladness,
Are young in his youth.
While round him the birds troop,
the Hosts of the Himmel, [208]
Blisses of music, and
Glories of wings;
Hymning and hailing,
And filling the sun-air
With music, and glory
And praise of the King."
As the lay ceased, Thyra said:
"Ah, Edith, who would not brave the funeral pyre to live again like
the phoenix!"
"Sweet sister mine," answered Edith, "the singer doth mean to image
out in the phoenix the rising of our Lord, in whom we all live again."
And Thyra said, mournfully:
"But the phoenix sees once more the haunts of his youth--the things
and places dear to him in his life before. Shall we do the same, O
Edith?"
"It is the persons we love that make beautiful the haunts we have
known," answered the betrothed. "Those persons at least we shall
behold again, and whenever they are--there is heaven."
Harold could restrain himself no longer. With one bound he was at
Edith's side, and with one wild cry of joy he clasped her to his
heart.
"I knew that thou wouldst come to-night--I knew it, Harold," murmured
the betrothed.
CHAPTER III.
While, full of themselves, Harold and Edith wandered, hand in hand,
through the neighbouring glades--while into that breast which had
forestalled, at least, in this pure and sublime union, the wife's
privilege to soothe and console, the troubled man poured out the tale
of the sole trial from which he had passed with defeat and shame,--
Haco drew near to Thyra, and sate down by her side. Each was
strangely attracted towards the other; there was something congenial
in the gloom which they shared in common; though in the girl the
sadness was soft and resigned, in the youth it was stern and solemn.
They conversed in whispers, and their talk was strange for companions
so young; for, whether suggested by Edith's song, or the neighbourhood
of the Saxon grave-stone, which gleamed on their eyes, grey and wan
through the crommell, the theme they selected was of death. As if
fascinated, as children often are, by the terrors of the Dark King,
they dwelt on those images with which the northern fancy has
associated the eternal rest, on--the shroud and the worm, and the
mouldering bones--on the gibbering ghost, and the sorcerer's spell
that could call the spectre from the grave. They talked of the pain
of the parting soul, parting while earth was yet fair, youth fresh,
and joy not yet ripened from the blossom--of the wistful lingering
look which glazing eyes would give to the latest sunlight it should
behold on earth; and then he pictured the shivering and naked soul,
forced from the reluctant clay, wandering through cheerless space to
the intermediate tortures, which the Church taught that none were so
pure as not for a whole to undergo; and hearing, as it wandered, the
knell of the muffled bells and the burst of unavailing prayer. At
length Haco paused abruptly and said:
"But thou, cousin, hast before thee love and sweet life, and these
discourses are not for thee."
Thyra shook her head mournfully:
"Not so, Haco; for when Hilda consulted the runes, while, last night,
she mingled the herbs for my pain, which rests ever hot and sharp
here," and the girl laid her hand on her breast, "I saw that her face
grew dark and overcast; and I felt, as I looked, that my doom was set.
And when thou didst come so noiselessly to my side, with thy sad, cold
eyes, O Haco, methought I saw the Messenger of Death. But thou art
strong, Haco, and life will be long for thee; let us talk of life."
Haco stooped down and pressed his lips upon the girl's pale forehead.
"Kiss me too, Thyra."
The child kissed him, and they sate silent and close by each other,
while the sun set.
And as the stars rose, Harold and Edith joined them. Harold's face
was serene in the starlight, for the pure soul of his betrothed had
breathed peace into his own; and, in his willing superstition, he felt
as if, now restored to his guardian angel, the dead men's bones had
released their unhallowed hold.
But suddenly Edith's hand trembled in his, and her form shuddered.--
Her eyes were fixed upon those of Haco.
"Forgive me, young kinsman, that I forget thee so long," said the
Earl. "This is my brother's son, Edith; thou hast not, that I
remember, seen him before?"
"Yes, yes;" said Edith, falteringly.
"When, and where?"
Edith's soul answered the question, "In a dream;" but her lips were
silent.
And Haco, rising, took her by the hand, while the Earl turned to his
sister--that sister whom he was pledged to send to the Norman court;
and Thyra said, plaintively:
"Take me in thine arms, Harold, and wrap thy mantle round me, for the
air is cold."
The Earl lifted the child to his breast, and gazed on her cheek long
and wistfully; then questioning her tenderly, he took her within the
house; and Edith followed with Haco.
"Is Hilda within?" asked the son of Sweyn.
"Nay, she hath been in the forest since noon," answered Edith with an
effort, for she could not recover her awe of his presence.
"Then," said Haco, halting at the threshold, "I will go across the
woodland to your house, Harold, and prepare your ceorls for your
coming."
"I shall tarry here till Hilda returns," answered Harold, and it may
be late in the night ere I reach home; but Sexwolf already hath my
orders. At sunrise we return to London, and thence we march on the
insurgents."
"All shall be ready. Farewell, noble Edith; and thou, Thyra my
cousin, one kiss more to our meeting again." The child fondly held
out her arms to him, and as she kissed his cheek whispered:
"In the grave, Haco!"
The young man drew his mantle around him, and moved away. But he did
not mount his steed, which still grazed by the road; while Harold's,
more familiar with the place, had found its way to the stall; nor did
he take his path through the glades to the house of his kinsman.
Entering the Druid temple, he stood musing by the Teuton tomb. The
night grew deeper and deeper, the stars more luminous and the air more
hushed, when a voice close at his side, said, clear and abrupt:
"What does Youth the restless, by Death the still?"
It was the peculiarity of Haco, that nothing ever seemed to startle or
surprise him. In that brooding boyhood, the solemn, quiet, and sad
experience all fore-armed, of age, had something in it terrible and
preternatural; so without lifting his eyes from the stone, he
answered:
"How sayest thou, O Hilda, that the dead are still?" Hilda placed her
hand on his shoulder, and stooped to look into his face.
"Thy rebuke is just, son of Sweyn. In Time, and in the Universe,
there is no stillness! Through all eternity the state impossible to
the soul is repose!--So again thou art in thy native land?"
"And for what end, Prophetess? I remember, when but an infant, who
till then had enjoyed the common air and the daily sun, thou didst rob
me evermore of childhood and youth. For thou didst say to my father,
that 'dark was the woof of my fate, and that its most glorious hour
should be its last!'"
"But thou wert surely too childlike, (see thee now as thou wert then,
stretched on the grass, and playing with thy father's falcon!)--too
childlike to heed my words."
"Does the new ground reject the germs of the sower, or the young heart
the first lessons of wonder and awe? Since then, Prophetess, Night
hath been my comrade, and Death my familiar. Rememberest thou again
the hour when, stealing, a boy, from Harold's house in his absence--
the night ere I left my land--I stood on this mound by thy side? Then
did I tell thee that the sole soft thought that relieved the
bitterness of my soul, when all the rest of my kinsfolk seemed to
behold in me but the heir of Sweyn, the outlaw and homicide, was the
love that I bore to Harold; but that that love itself was mournful and
bodeful as the hwata [209] of distant sorrow. And thou didst take me,
O Prophetess, to thy bosom, and thy cold kiss touched my lips and my
brow; and there, beside this altar and grave-mound, by leaf and by
water, by staff and by song, thou didst bid me take comfort; for that
as the mouse gnawed the toils of the lion, so the exile obscure should
deliver from peril the pride and the prince of my House--that, from
that hour with the skein of his fate should mine be entwined; and his
fate was that of kings and of kingdoms. And then, when the joy
flushed my cheek, and methought youth came back in warmth to the night
of my soul--then, Hilda, I asked thee if my life would be spared till
I had redeemed the name of my father. Thy seidstaff passed over the
leaves that, burning with fire-sparks, symbolled the life of the man,
and from the third leaf the flame leaped up and died; and again a
voice from thy breast, hollow, as if borne from a hill-top afar, made
answer, 'At thine entrance to manhood life bursts into blaze, and
shrivels up into ashes.' So I knew that the doom of the infant still
weighed unannealed on the years of the man; and I come here to my
native land as to glory and the grave. But," said the young man, with
a wild enthusiasm, "still with mine links the fate which is loftiest
in England; and the rill and the river shall rush in one to the
Terrible Sea."
"I know not that," answered Hilda, pale, as if in awe of herself: "for
never yet hath the rune, or the fount or the tomb, revealed to me
clear and distinct the close of the great course of Harold; only know
I through his own stars his glory and greatness; and where glory is
dim, and greatness is menaced, I know it but from the stars of others,
the rays of whose influence blend with his own. So long, at least, as
the fair and the pure one keeps watch in the still House of Life, the
dark and the troubled one cannot wholly prevail. For Edith is given
to Harold as the Fylgia, that noiselessly blesses and saves: and thou--"
Hilda checked herself, and lowered her hood over her face, so that
it suddenly became invisible.
"And I?" asked Haco, moving near to her side.
"Away, son of Sweyn; thy feet trample the grave of the mighty dead!"
Then Hilda lingered no longer, but took her way towards the house.
Haco's eye followed her in silence. The cattle, grazing in the great
space of the crumbling peristyle, looked up as she passed; the watch-
dogs, wandering through the star-lit columns, came snorting round
their mistress. And when she had vanished within the house, Haco
turned to his steed:
"What matters," he murmured, "the answer which the Vala cannot or dare
not give? To me is not destined the love of woman, nor the ambition
of life. All I know of human affection binds me to Harold; all I know
of human ambition is to share in his fate. This love is strong as
hate, and terrible as doom,--it is jealous, it admits no rival. As
the shell and the sea-weed interlaced together, we are dashed on the
rushing surge; whither? oh, whither?"
CHAPTER IV.
"I tell thee, Hilda," said the Earl, impatiently, "I tell thee that I
renounce henceforth all faith save in Him whose ways are concealed
from our eyes. Thy seid and thy galdra have not guarded me against
peril, nor armed me against sin. Nay, perchance--but peace: I will no
more tempt the dark art, I will no more seek to disentangle the awful
truth from the juggling lie. All so foretold me I will seek to
forget,--hope from no prophecy, fear from no warning. Let the soul go
to the future under the shadow of God!"
"Pass on thy way as thou wilt, its goal is the same, whether seen or
unmarked. Peradventure thou art wise," said the Vala, gloomily.
"For my country's sake, heaven be my witness, not my own," resumed the
Earl, "I have blotted my conscience and sullied my truth. My country
alone can redeem me, by taking my life as a thing hallowed evermore to
her service. Selfish ambition do I lay aside, selfish power shall
tempt me no more; lost is the charm that I beheld in a throne, and,
save for Edith--"
"No! not even for Edith," cried the betrothed, advancing, "not even
for Edith shalt thou listen to other voice than that of thy country
and thy soul."
The Earl turned round abruptly, and his eyes were moist. "O Hilda,"
he cried, "see henceforth my only Vala; let that noble heart alone
interpret to us the oracles of the future."
The next day Harold returned with Haco and a numerous train of his
house-carles to the city. Their ride was as silent as that of the day
before; but on reaching Southwark, Harold turned away from the bridge
towards the left, gained the river-side, and dismounted at the house
of one of his lithsmen (a franklin, or freed ceorl). Leaving there
his horse, he summoned a boat, and, with Haco, was rowed over towards
the fortified palace which then rose towards the west of London,
jutting into the Thames, and which seems to have formed the outwork of
the old Roman city. The palace, of remotest antiquity, and blending
all work and architecture, Roman, Saxon, and Danish, had been repaired
by Canute; and from a high window in the upper story, where were the
royal apartments, the body of the traitor Edric Streone (the founder
of the house of Godwin) had been thrown into the river.
"Whither go we, Harold?" asked the son of Sweyn.
"We go to visit the young Atheling, the natural heir to the Saxon
throne," replied Harold in a firm voice. "He lodges in the old palace
of our kings."
"They say in Normandy that the boy is imbecile."
"That is not true," returned Harold. "I will present thee to him,--
judge."
Haco mused a moment and said:
"Methinks I divine thy purpose; is it not formed on the sudden,
Harold?"
"It was the counsel of Edith," answered Harold, with evident emotion.
"And yet, if that counsel prevail, I may lose the power to soften the
Church and to call her mine."
"So thou wouldest sacrifice even Edith for thy country."
"Since I have sinned, methinks I could," said the proud man humbly.
The boat shot into a little creek, or rather canal, which then ran
inland, beside the black and rotting walls of the fort. The two Earl-
born leapt ashore, passed under a Roman arch, entered a court the
interior of which was rudely filled up by early Saxon habitations of
rough timber work, already, since the time of Canute, falling into
decay, (as all things did which came under the care of Edward,) and
mounting a stair that ran along the outside of the house, gained a low
narrow door, which stood open. In the passage within were one or two
of the King's house-carles who had been assigned to the young
Atheling, with liveries of blue and Danish axes, and some four or five
German servitors, who had attended his father from the Emperor's
court. One of these last ushered the noble Saxons into a low, forlorn
ante-hall; and there, to Harold's surprise they found Alred the
Archbishop of York, and three thegns of high rank, and of lineage
ancient and purely Saxon.
Alred approached Harold with a faint smile on his benign face:
"Methinks, and may I think aright!--thou comest hither with the same
purpose as myself, and you noble thegns."
"And that purpose?"
"Is to see and to judge calmly, if, despite his years, we may find in
the descendant of the Ironsides such a prince as we may commend to our
decaying King as his heir, and to the Witan as a chief fit to defend
the land."
"Thou speakest the cause of my own coming. With your ears will I
hear, with your eyes will I see; as ye judge, will judge I," said
Harold, drawing the prelate towards the thegns, so that they might
hear his answer.
The chiefs, who belonged to a party that had often opposed Godwin's
House, had exchanged looks of fear and trouble when Harold entered;
but at his words their frank faces showed equal surprise and pleasure.
Harold presented to them his nephew, with whose grave dignity of
bearing beyond his years they were favourably impressed, though the
good bishop sighed when he saw in his face the sombre beauty of the
guilty sire. The group then conversed anxiously on the declining
health of the King, the disturbed state of the realm, and the
expediency, if possible, of uniting all suffrages in favour of the
fittest successor. And in Harold's voice and manner, as in Harold's
heart, there was nought that seemed conscious of his own mighty stake
and just hopes in that election. But as time wore, the faces of the
thegns grew overcast; proud men and great satraps [210] were they, and
they liked it ill that the boy-prince kept them so long in the dismal
ante-room.
At length the German officer, who had gone to announce their coming,
returned; and in words, intelligible indeed from the affinity between
Saxon and German, but still disagreeably foreign to English ears,
requested them to follow him into the presence of the Atheling.
In a room yet retaining the rude splendour with which it had been
invested by Canute, a handsome boy, about the age of thirteen or
fourteen, but seeming much younger, was engaged in the construction of
a stuffed bird, a lure for a young hawk that stood blindfold on its
perch. The employment made so habitual a part of the serious
education of youth, that the thegns smoothed their brows at the sight,
and deemed the boy worthily occupied. At another end of the room, a
grave Norman priest was seated at a table on which were books and
writing implements; he was the tutor commissioned by Edward to teach
Norman tongue and saintly lore to the Atheling. A profusion of toys
strewed the floor, and some children of Edgar's own age were playing
with them. His little sister Margaret [211] was seated seriously,
apart from all the other children, and employed in needlework.
When Alred approached the Atheling, with a blending of reverent
obeisance and paternal cordiality, the boy carelessly cried, in a
barbarous jargon, half German, half Norman-French:
"There, come not too near, you scare my hawk. What are you doing?
You trample my toys, which the good Norman bishop William sent me as a
gift from the Duke. Art thou blind, man?"
"My son," said the prelate kindly, "these are the things of childhood
--childhood ends sooner with princes than with common men. Leave thy
lure and thy toys, and welcome these noble thegns, and address them,
so please you, in our own Saxon tongue."
"Saxon tongue!--language of villeins! not I. Little do I know of it,
save to scold a ceorl or a nurse. King Edward did not tell me to
learn Saxon, but Norman! and Godfroi yonder says, that if I know
Norman well, Duke William will make me his knight. But I don't desire
to learn anything more to-day." And the child turned peevishly from
thegn and prelate.
The three Saxon lords interchanged looks of profound displeasure and
proud disgust. But Harold, with an effort over himself, approached,
and said winningly:
"Edgar the Atheling, thou art not so young but thou knowest already
that the great live for others. Wilt thou not be proud to live for
this fair country, and these noble men, and to speak the language of
Alfred the Great?"
"Alfred the Great! they always weary me with Alfred the Great," said
the boy, pouting. "Alfred the Great, he is the plague of my life! if
I am Atheling, men are to live for me, not I for them; and if you
tease me any more, I will run away to Duke William in Rouen; Godfroi
says I shall never be teased there!"
So saying, already tired of hawk and lure, the child threw himself on
the floor with the other children, and snatched the toys from their
hands.
The serious Margaret then rose quietly, and went to her brother, and
said, in good Saxon:
"Fie! if you behave thus, I shall call you NIDDERING!" At the threat
of that word, the vilest in the language--that word which the lowest
ceorl would forfeit life rather than endure--a threat applied to the
Atheling of England, the descendant of Saxon heroes--the three thegns
drew close, and watched the boy, hoping to see that he would start to
his feet with wrath and in shame.