Book: Harold, Book 10.
E >>
Edward Bulwer Lytton >> Harold, Book 10.
"Call me what you will, silly sister," said the child, indifferently,
"I am not so Saxon as to care for your ceorlish Saxon names."
"Enow," cried the proudest and greatest of the thegns, his very
moustache curling with ire. "He who can be called niddering shall
never be crowned king!"
"I don't want to be crowned king, rude man, with your laidly
moustache: I want to be made knight, and have banderol and baldric.--
Go away!"
"We go, son," said Alred, mournfully.
And with slow and tottering step he moved to the door; there he
halted, turned back,--and the child was pointing at him in mimicry,
while Godfroi, the Norman tutor, smiled as in pleasure. The prelate
shook his head, and the group gained again the ante-hall.
"Fit leader of bearded men! fit king for the Saxon land!" cried a
thegn. "No more of your Atheling, Alred my father!"
"No more of him, indeed!" said the prelate, mournfully. "It is but
the fault of his nurture and rearing,--a neglected childhood, a Norman
tutor, German hirelings. We may remould yet the pliant clay," said
Harold.
"Nay," returned Alred, "no leisure for such hopes, no time to undo
what is done by circumstance, and, I fear, by nature. Ere the year is
out the throne will stand empty in our halls."
"Who then," said Haco, abruptly, "who then,--(pardon the ignorance of
youth wasted in captivity abroad!) who then, failing the Atheling,
will save this realm from the Norman Duke, who, I know well, counts on
it as the reaper on the harvest ripening to his sickle?"
"Alas, who then?" murmured Alred.
"Who then?" cried the three thegns, with one voice, "why the
worthiest, the wisest, the bravest! Stand forth, Harold the Earl,
Thou art the man!" And without awaiting his answer, they strode from
the hall.
CHAPTER V.
Around Northampton lay the forces of Morcar, the choice of the Anglo-
Dane men of Northumbria. Suddenly there was a shout as to arms from
the encampment; and Morcar, the young Earl, clad in his link mail,
save his helmet, came forth, and cried:
"My men are fools to look that way for a foe; yonder lies Mercia,
behind it the hills of Wales. The troops that come hitherward are
those which Edwin my brother brings to our aid."
Morcar's words were carried into the host by his captains and
warbodes, and the shout changed from alarm into joy. As the cloud of
dust through which gleamed the spears of the coming force rolled away,
and lay lagging behind the march of the host, there rode forth from
the van two riders. Fast and far from the rest they rode, and behind
them, fast as they could, spurred two others, who bore on high, one
the pennon of Mercia, one the red lion of North Wales. Right to the
embankment and palisade which begirt Mortar's camp rode the riders;
and the head of the foremost was bare, and the guards knew the face of
Edwin the Comely, Mortar's brother. Morcar stepped down from the
mound on which he stood, and the brothers embraced amidst the halloos
of the forces.
"And welcome, I pray thee," said Morcar, "our kinsman Caradoc, son of
Gryffyth [212] the bold."
So Morcar reached his hand to Caradoc, stepson to his sister Aldyth,
and kissed him on the brow, as was the wont of our fathers. The young
and crownless prince was scarce out of boyhood, but already his name
was sung by the bards, and circled in the halls of Gwynedd with the
Hirlas horn; for he had harried the Saxon borders, and given to fire
and sword even the fortress of Harold himself.
But while these three interchanged salutations, and ere yet the mixed
Mercians and Welch had gained the encampment, from a curve in the
opposite road, towards Towcester and Dunstable, broke the flash of
mail like a river of light, trumpets and fifes were heard in the
distance; and all in Morcar's host stood hushed but stern, gazing
anxious and afar, as the coming armament swept on. And from the midst
were seen the Martlets and Cross of England's king, and the Tiger
heads of Harold; banners which, seen together, had planted victory on
every tower, on every field, towards which they had rushed on the
winds.
Retiring, then, to the central mound, the chiefs of the insurgent
force held their brief council.
The two young Earls, whatever their ancestral renown, being yet new
themselves to fame and to power, were submissive to the Anglo-Dane
chiefs, by whom Morcar had been elected. And these, on recognising
the standard of Harold, were unanimous in advice to send a peaceful
deputation, setting forth their wrongs under Tostig, and the justice
of their cause. "For the Earl," said Gamel Beorn (the head and front
of that revolution,) is a just man, and one who would shed his own
blood rather than that of any other freeborn dweller in England; and
he will do us right."
"What, against his own brother?" cried Edwin.
"Against his own brother, if we convince but his reason," returned the
Anglo-Dane.
And the other chiefs nodded assent. Caradoc's fierce eyes flashed
fire; but he played with his torque, and spoke not.
Meanwhile, the vanguard of the King's force had defiled under the very
walls of Northampton, between the town and the insurgents; and some of
the light-armed scouts who went forth from Morcar's camp to gaze on
the procession, with that singular fearlessness which characterised,
at that period, the rival parties in civil war, returned to say that
they had seen Harold himself in the foremost line, and that he was not
in mail.
This circumstance the insurgent thegns received as a good omen; and,
having already agreed on the deputation, about a score of the
principal thegns of the north went sedately towards the hostile lines.
By the side of Harold,--armed in mail, with his face concealed by the
strange Sicilian nose-piece used then by most of the Northern
nations,--had ridden Tostig, who had joined the Earl on his march,
with a scanty band of some fifty or sixty of his Danish house-carles.
All the men throughout broad England that he could command or bribe to
his cause, were those fifty or sixty hireling Danes. And it seemed
that already there was dispute between the brothers, for Harold's face
was flushed, and his voice stern, as he said, "Rate me as thou wilt,
brother, but I cannot advance at once to the destruction of my fellow
Englishmen without summons and attempt at treaty,--as has ever been
the custom of our ancient heroes and our own House."
"By all the fiends of the North?" exclaimed Tostig, "it is foul shame
to talk of treaty and summons to robbers and rebels. For what art
thou here but for chastisement and revenge?"
"For justice and right, Tostig."
"Ha! thou comest not, then, to aid thy brother?"
"Yes, if justice and right are, as I trust, with him."
Before Tostig could reply, a line was suddenly cleared through the
armed men, and, with bare heads, and a monk lifting the rood on high,
amidst the procession advanced the Northumbrian Danes.
"By the red sword of St. Olave!" cried Tostig, "yonder come the
traitors, Gamel Beorn and Gloneion! You will not hear them? If so, I
will not stay to listen. I have but my axe for my answer to such
knaves."
"Brother, brother, those men are the most valiant and famous chiefs in
thine earldom. Go, Tostig, thou art not now in the mood to hear
reason. Retire into the city; summon its gates to open to the King's
flag. I will hear the men."
"Beware how thou judge, save in thy brother's favour!" growled the
fierce warrior; and, tossing his arm on high with a contemptuous
gesture, he spurred away towards the gates.
Then Harold, dismounting, stood on the ground, under the standard of
his King, and round him came several of the Saxon chiefs, who had kept
aloof during the conference with Tostig.
The Northumbrians approached, and saluted the Earl with grave
courtesy.
Then Gamel Beorn began. But much as Harold had feared and foreboded
as to the causes of complaint which Tostig had given to the
Northumbrians, all fear, all foreboding, fell short of the horrors now
deliberately unfolded; not only extortion of tribute the most
rapacious and illegal, but murder the fiercest and most foul. Thegns
of high birth, without offence or suspicion, but who had either
excited Tostig's jealousy, or resisted his exactions, had been snared
under peaceful pretexts into his castle [213], and butchered in cold
blood by his house-carles. The cruelties of the old heathen Danes
seemed revived in the bloody and barbarous tale.
"And now," said the thegn, in conclusion, "canst thou condemn us that
we rose?--no partial rising;--rose all Northumbria! At first but two
hundred thegns; strong in our course, we swelled into the might of a
people. Our wrongs found sympathy beyond our province, for liberty
spreads over human hearts as fire over a heath. Wherever we march,
friends gather round us. Thou warrest not on a handful of rebels,--
half England is with us!"
"And ye,--thegns," answered Harold, "ye have ceased to war against
Tostig, your Earl. Ye war now against the King and the Law. Come
with your complaints to your Prince and your Witan, and, if they are
just, ye are stronger than in yonder palisades and streets of steel."
"And so," said Gamel Beorn, with marked emphasis, "now thou art in
England, O noble Earl,--so are we willing to come. But when thou wert
absent from the land, justice seemed to abandon it to force and the
battle-axe."
"I would thank you for your trust," answered Harold, deeply moved.
"But justice in England rests not on the presence and life of a single
man. And your speech I must not accept as a grace, for it wrongs both
my King and his Council. These charges ye have made, but ye have not
proved them. Armed men are not proofs; and granting that hot blood
and mortal infirmity of judgment have caused Tostig to err against you
and the right, think still of his qualities to reign over men whose
lands, and whose rivers, lie ever exposed to the dread Northern sea-
kings. Where will ye find a chief with arm as strong, and heart as
dauntless? By his mother's side he is allied to your own lineage.
And for the rest, if ye receive him back to his earldom, not only do
I, Harold in whom you profess to trust, pledge full oblivion of the
past, but I will undertake, in his name, that he shall rule you well
for the future, according to the laws of King Canute."
"That will we not hear," cried the thegns, with one voice; while the
tones of Gamel Beorn, rough with the rattling Danish burr, rose above
all, "for we were born free. A proud and bad chief is by us not to be
endured; we have learned from our ancestors to live free or die!"
A murmur, not of condemnation, at these words, was heard amongst the
Saxon chiefs round Harold: and beloved and revered as he was, he felt
that, had he the heart, he had scarce the power, to have coerced those
warriors to march at once on their countrymen in such a cause. But
foreseeing great evil in the surrender of his brother's interests,
whether by lowering the King's dignity to the demands of armed force,
or sending abroad in all his fierce passions a man so highly connected
with Norman and Dane, so vindictive and so grasping, as Tostig, the
Earl shunned further parley at that time and place. He appointed a
meeting in the town with the chiefs; and requested them, meanwhile, to
reconsider their demands, and at least shape them so as that they
could be transmitted to the King, who was then on his way to Oxford.
It is in vain to describe the rage of Tostig, when his brother gravely
repeated to him the accusations against him, and asked for his
justification. Justification he could give not. His idea of law was
but force, and by force alone he demanded now to be defended. Harold,
then, wishing not alone to be judge in his brother's cause, referred
further discussion to the chiefs of the various towns and shires,
whose troops had swelled the War-Fyrd; and to them he bade Tostig
plead his cause.
Vain as a woman, while fierce as a tiger, Tostig assented, and in that
assembly he rose, his gonna all blazing with crimson and gold, his
hair all curled and perfumed as for a banquet; and such, in a half-
barbarous day, the effect of person, especially when backed by warlike
renown, that the Proceres were half disposed to forget, in admiration
of the earl's surpassing beauty of form, the dark tales of his hideous
guilt. But his passions hurrying him away ere he had gained the
middle of his discourse, so did his own relation condemn himself, so
clear became his own tyrannous misdeeds, that the Englishmen murmured
aloud their disgust, and their impatience would not suffer him to
close.
"Enough," cried Vebba, the blunt thegn from Saxon Kent; "it is plain
that neither King nor Witan can replace thee in thine earldom. Tell
us not farther of these atrocities; or by're Lady, if the
Northumbrians had chased thee not, we would."
"Take treasure and ship, and go to Baldwin in Flanders," said Thorold,
a great Anglo-Dane from Lincolnshire, "for even Harold's name can
scarce save thee from outlawry."
Tostig glared round on the assembly, and met but one common expression
in the face of all.
"These are thy henchmen, Harold!" he said through his gnashing teeth,
without vouchsafing farther word, strode from the council-hall.
That evening he left the town and hurried to tell to Edward the tale
that had so miscarried with the chiefs. The next day, the
Northumbrian delegates were heard; and they made the customary
proposition in those cases of civil differences, to refer all matters
to the King and the Witan; each party remaining under arms meanwhile.
This was finally acceded to. Harold repaired to Oxford, where the
King (persuaded to the journey by Alred, foreseeing what would come to
pass) had just arrived.
CHAPTER VI.
The Witan was summoned in haste. Thither came the young earls Morcar
and Edwin, but Caradoc, chafing at the thought of peace, retired into
Wales with his wild band.
Now, all the great chiefs, spiritual and temporal, assembled in Oxford
for the decree of that Witan on which depended the peace of England.
The imminence of the time made the concourse of members entitled to
vote in the assembly even larger than that which had met for the
inlawry of Godwin. There was but one thought uppermost in the minds
of men, to which the adjustment of an earldom, however mighty, was
comparatively insignificant--viz., the succession of the kingdom.
That thought turned instinctively and irresistibly to Harold.
The evident and rapid decay of the King; the utter failure of all male
heir in the House of Cerdic, save only the boy Edgar; whose character
(which throughout life remained puerile and frivolous) made the
minority which excluded him from the throne seem cause rather for
rejoicing than grief: and whose rights, even by birth, were not
acknowledged by the general tenor of the Saxon laws, which did not
recognize as heir to the crown the son of a father who had not himself
been crowned [214];--forebodings of coming evil and danger,
originating in Edward's perturbed visions; revivals of obscure and
till then forgotten prophecies, ancient as the days of Merlin;
rumours, industriously fomented into certainty by Haco, whose whole
soul seemed devoted to Harold's cause, of the intended claim of the
Norman Count to the throne;--all concurred to make the election of a
man matured in camp and council, doubly necessary to the safety of the
realm.
Warm favourers, naturally, of Harold, were the genuine Saxon
population, and a large part of the Anglo-Danish--all the thegns in
his vast earldom of Wessex, reaching to the southern and western
coasts, from Sandwich and the mouth of the Thames to the Land's End in
Cornwall; and including the free men of Kent, whose inhabitants even
from the days of Caesar had been considered in advance of the rest of
the British population, and from the days of Hengist had exercised an
influence that nothing save the warlike might of the Anglo-Danes
counterbalanced. With Harold, too, were many of the thegns from his
earlier earldom of East Anglia, comprising the county of Essex, great
part of Hertfordshire, and so reaching into Cambridge, Huntingdon,
Norfolk, and Ely. With him, were all the wealth, intelligence, and
power of London, and most of the trading towns; with him all the
veterans of the armies he had led; with him too, generally throughout
the empire, was the force, less distinctly demarked, of public and
national feeling.
Even the priests, save those immediately about the court, forgot, in
the exigency of the time, their ancient and deep-rooted dislike to
Godwin's House; they remembered, at least, that Harold had never, in
foray or feud, plundered a single convent; or in peace, and through
plot, appropriated to himself a single hide of Church land; and that
was more than could have been said of any other earl of the age--even
of Leofric the Holy. They caught, as a Church must do, when so
intimately, even in its illiterate errors, allied with the people as
the old Saxon Church was, the popular enthusiasm. Abbot combined with
thegn in zeal for Earl Harold.
The only party that stood aloof was the one that espoused the claims
of the young sons of Algar. But this party was indeed most
formidable; it united all. the old friends of the virtuous Leofric,
of the famous Siward; it had a numerous party even in East Anglia (in
which earldom Algar had succeeded Harold); it comprised nearly all the
thegns in Mercia (the heart of the country) and the population of
Northumbria; and it involved in its wide range the terrible Welch on
the one hand, and the Scottish domain of the sub-king Malcolm, himself
a Cumbrian, on the other, despite Malcolm's personal predilections for
Tostig, to whom he was strongly attached. But then the chiefs of this
party, while at present they stood aloof, were all, with the exception
perhaps of the young earls themselves, disposed, on the slightest
encouragement, to blend their suffrage with the friends of Harold; and
his praise was as loud on their lips as on those of the Saxons from
Kent, or the burghers from London. All factions, in short, were
willing, in this momentous crisis, to lay aside old dissensions; it
depended upon the conciliation of the Northumbrians, upon a fusion
between the friends of Harold and the supporters of the young sons of
Algar, to form such a concurrence of interests as must inevitably bear
Harold to the throne of the empire.
Meanwhile, the Earl himself wisely and patriotically deemed it right
to remain neuter in the approaching decision between Tostig and the
young earls. He could not be so unjust and so mad as to urge to the
utmost (and risk in the urging) his party influence on the side of
oppression and injustice, solely for the sake of his brother; nor, on
the other, was it decorous or natural to take part himself against
Tostig; nor could he, as a statesman, contemplate without anxiety and
alarm the transfer of so large a portion of the realm to the vice-
kingship of the sons of his old foe--rivals to his power, at the very
time when, even for the sake of England alone, that power should be
the most solid and compact.
But the final greatness of a fortunate man is rarely made by any
violent effort of his own. He has sown the seeds in the time
foregone, and the ripe time brings up the harvest. His fate seems
taken out of his own control: greatness seems thrust upon him. He has
made himself, as it were, a want to the nation, a thing necessary to
it; he has identified himself with his age, and in the wreath or the
crown on his brow, the age itself seems to put forth its flower.
Tostig, lodging apart from Harold in a fort near the gate of Oxford,
took slight pains to conciliate foes or make friends; trusting rather
to his representations to Edward, (who was wroth with the rebellious
House of Algar,) of the danger of compromising the royal dignity by
concessions to armed insurgents.
It was but three days before that for which the Witan was summoned;
most of its members had already assembled in the city; and Harold,
from the window of the monastery in which he lodged, was gazing
thoughtfully into the streets below, where, with the gay dresses of
the thegns and cnehts, blended the grave robes of ecclesiastic and
youthful scholar;--for to that illustrious university (pillaged the
persecuted by the sons of Canute), Edward had, to his honour, restored
the schools,--when Haco entered, and announced to him that a numerous
body of thegns and prelates, headed by Alred, Archbishop of York,
craved an audience.
"Knowest thou the cause, Haco?"
The youth's cheek was yet more pale than usual, as he answered slowly:
"Hilda's prophecies are ripening into truths."
The Earl started, and his old ambition reviving, flushed on his brow,
and sparkled from his eye--he checked the joyous emotion, and bade
Haco briefly admit the visitors.
They came in, two by two,--a body so numerous that they filled the
ample chamber; and Harold, as he greeted each, beheld the most
powerful lords of the land--the highest dignitaries of the Church--
and, oft and frequent, came old foe by the side or trusty friend.
They all paused at the foot of the narrow dais on which Harold stood,
and Alred repelled by a gesture his invitation to the foremost to
mount the platform.
Then Alred began an harangue, simple and earnest. He described
briefly the condition of the country; touched with grief and with
feeling on the health of the King, and the failure of Cerdic's line.
He stated honestly his own strong wish, if possible, to have
concentrated the popular suffrages on the young Atheling; and under
the emergence of the case, to have waived the objection to his
immature years. But as distinctly and emphatically he stated, that
that hope and intent he had now formally abandoned, and that there was
but one sentiment on the subject with all the chiefs and dignitaries
of the realm.
"Wherefore," continued he, "after anxious consultations with each
other, those whom you see around have come to you: yea, to you, Earl
Harold, we offer our hands and hearts to do our best to prepare for
you the throne on the demise of Edward, and to seat you thereon as
firmly as ever sate King of England and son of Cerdic;--knowing that
in you, and in you alone, we find the man who reigns already in the
English heart; to whose strong arm we can trust the defence of our
land; to whose just thoughts, our laws.--As I speak, so think we all!"
With downcast eyes, Harold heard; and but by a slight heaving of his
breast under his crimson robe, could his emotion be seen. But as soon
as the approving murmur that succeeded the prelate's speech, had
closed, he lifted his head, and answered:
"Holy father, and you, Right Worthy my fellow-thegns, if ye could read
my heart at this moment, believe that you would not find there the
vain joy of aspiring man, when the greatest of earthly prizes is
placed within his reach. There, you would see, with deep and wordless
gratitude for your trust and your love, grave and solemn solicitude,
earnest desire to divest my decision of all mean thought of self, and
judge only whether indeed, as king or as subject, I can best guard the
weal of England. Pardon me, then, if I answer you not as ambition
alone would answer; neither deem me insensible to the glorious lot of
presiding, under heaven, and by the light of our laws, over the
destinies of the English realm,--if I pause to weigh well the
responsibilities incurred, and the obstacles to be surmounted. There
is that on my mind that I would fain unbosom, not of a nature to
discuss in an assembly so numerous, but which I would rather submit to
a chosen few whom you yourselves may select to hear me, in whose cool
wisdom, apart from personal love to me, ye may best confide;--your
most veteran thegns, your most honoured prelates: To them will I
speak, to them make clean my bosom; and to their answer, their
counsels, will I in all things defer: whether with loyal heart to
serve another, whom, hearing me, they may decide to choose; or to fit
my soul to bear, not unworthily, the weight of a kingly crown."
Alred lifted his mild eyes to Harold, and there were both pity and
approval in his gaze, for he divined the Earl.
"Thou hast chosen the right course, my son; and we will retire at
once, and elect those with whom thou mayest freely confer, and by
whose judgment thou mayest righteously abide."
The prelate turned, and with him went the conclave. Left alone with
Haco, the last said, abruptly:
"Thou wilt not be so indiscreet, O Harold, as to confess thy compelled
oath to the fraudful Norman?"
"That is my design," replied Harold, coldly.
The son of Sweyn began to remonstrate, but the Earl cut him short.
"If the Norman say that he has been deceived in Harold, never so shall
say the men of England. Leave me. I know not why, Haco, but in thy
presence, at times, there is a glamour as strong as in the spells of
Hilda. Go, dear boy; the fault is not in thee, but in the
superstitious infirmities of a man who hath once lowered, or, it may
be, too highly strained, his reason to the things of a haggard fancy.
Go! and send to me my brother Gurth. I would have him alone of my
House present at this solemn crisis of its fate."