Book: Harold, Book 4.
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Edward Bulwer Lytton >> Harold, Book 4.
By Wolnoth's side stood his young sister, Thyra, a mere infant; and
her innocent sympathy with her brother's pleasure in gaud and toy
saddened Githa yet more.
"O my son!" said the troubled mother, "why, of all my children, have
they chosen thee? Harold is wise against danger, and Tostig is fierce
against foes, and Gurth is too loving to awake hate in the sternest,
and from the mirth of sunny Leofwine sorrow glints aside, as the shaft
from the sheen of a shield. But thou, thou, O beloved!--cursed be the
king that chose thee, and cruel was the father that forgot the light
of the mother's eyes!"
"Tut, mother the dearest," said Wolnoth, pausing from the
contemplation of a silk robe, all covered with broidered peacocks,
which had been sent him as a gift from his sister the Queen, and
wrought with her own fair hands; for a notable needle-woman, despite
her sage lere, was the wife of the Saint King, as sorrowful women
mostly are,--"Tut! the bird must leave the nest when the wings are
fledged. Harold the eagle, Tostig the kite, Gurth the ring-dove, and
Leofwine the stare. See, my wings are the richest of all, mother, and
bright is the sun in which thy peacock shall spread his pranked
plumes."
Then, observing that his liveliness provoked no smile from his mother,
he approached and said more seriously:
"Bethink thee, mother mine. No other choice was left to king or to
father. Harold, and Tostig, and Leofwine, have their lordships and
offices. Their posts are fixed, and they stand as the columns of our
house. And Gurth is so young, and so Saxish and so the shadow of
Harold, that his hate to the Norman is a by-word already among our
youths; for hate is the more marked in a temper of love, as the blue
of this border seems black against the white of the woof. But I;--the
good King knows that I shall be welcome, for the Norman knights love
Wolnoth, and I have spent hours by the knees of Montgommeri and
Grantmesnil, listening to the feats of Rolf-ganger, and playing with
their gold chains of knighthood. And the stout Count himself shall
knight me, and I shall come back with the spurs of gold which thy
ancestors, the brave Kings of Norway and Daneland, wore ere knighthood
was known. Come, kiss me, my mother, and come see the brave falcons
Harold has sent me:--true Welch!"
Githa rested her face on her son's shoulder, and her tears blinded
her. The door opened gently, and Harold entered; and with the Earl, a
pale dark-haired boy, Haco; the son of Sweyn.
But Githa, absorbed in her darling Wolnoth, scarce saw the grandchild
reared afar from her knees, and hurried at once to Harold. In his
presence she felt comfort and safety; for Wolnoth leant on her heart,
and her heart leant on Harold.
"O son, son!" she cried, "firmest of hand, surest of faith, and wisest
of brain, in the house of Godwin, tell me that he yonder, he thy young
brother, risks no danger in the halls of the Normans!"
"Not more than in these, mother," answered Harold, soothing her, with
caressing lip and gentle tone. "Fierce and ruthless, men say, is
William the Duke against foes with their swords in their hands, but
debonnair and mild to the gentle [105], frank host and kind lord. And
these Normans have a code of their own, more grave than all morals,
more binding than even their fanatic religion. Thou knowest it well,
mother, for it comes from thy race of the North, and this code of
honour, they call it, makes Wolnoth's head as sacred as the relics of
a saint set in zimmes. Ask only, my brother, when thou comest in
sight of the Norman Duke, ask only 'the kiss of peace,' and, that kiss
on thy brow, thou wilt sleep more safe than if all the banners of
England waved over thy couch." [106]
"But how long shall the exile be?" asked Githa, comforted. Harold's
brow fell.
"Mother, not even to cheer thee will I deceive. The time of the
hostageship rests with the King and the Duke. As long as the one
affects fear from the race of Godwin, as long as the other feigns care
for such priests or such knights as were not banished from the realm,
being not courtiers, but scattered wide and far in convent and
homestead, so long will Wolnoth and Haco be guests in the Norman
halls."
Githa wrung her hands.
"But comfort, my mother; Wolnoth is young, his eye is keen, and his
spirit prompt and quick. He will mark these Norman captains, he will
learn their strength and their weakness, their manner of war, and he
will come back, not as Edward the King came, a lover of things un-
Saxon, but able to warn and to guide us against the plots of the camp-
court, which threatens more, year by year, the peace of the world.
And he will see there arts we may worthily borrow: not the cut of a
tunic, and the fold of a gonna, but the arts of men who found states
and build nations. William the Duke is splendid and wise; merchants
tell us how crafts thrive under his iron hand, and war-men say that
his forts are constructed with skill and his battle-schemes planned as
the mason plans key-stone and arch, with weight portioned out to the
prop, and the force of the hand made tenfold by the science of the
brain. So that the boy will return to us a man round and complete, a
teacher of greybeards, and the sage of his kin; fit for earldom and
rule, fit for glory and England. Grieve not, daughter of the Dane
kings, that thy son, the best loved, hath nobler school and wider
field than his brothers."
This appeal touched the proud heart of the niece of Canute the Great,
and she almost forgot the grief of her love in the hope of her
ambition.
She dried her tears and smiled upon Wolnoth, and already, in the
dreams of a mother's vanity, saw him great as Godwin in council, and
prosperous as Harold in the field. Nor, half Norman as he was, did
the young man seem insensible of the manly and elevated patriotism of
his brother's hinted lessons, though he felt they implied reproof. He
came to the Earl, whose arm was round his mother, and said with a
frank heartiness not usual to a nature somewhat frivolous and
irresolute:
"Harold, thy tongue could kindle stones into men, and warm those men
into Saxons. Thy Wolnoth shall not hang his head with shame when he
comes back to our merrie land with shaven locks and spurs of gold.
For if thou doubtest his race from his look, thou shalt put thy right
hand on his heart, and feel England beat there in every pulse."
"Brave words, and well spoken," cried the Earl, and he placed his hand
on the boy's head as in benison.
Till then, Haco had stood apart, conversing with the infant Thyra,
whom his dark, mournful face awed and yet touched, for she nestled
close to him, and put her little hand in his; but now, inspired no
less than his cousin by Harold's noble speech, he came proudly forward
by Wolnoth's side, and said:
"I, too, am English, and I have the name of Englishman to redeem."
Ere Harold could reply, Githa exclaimed:
"Leave there thy right hand on my child's head, and say, simply: 'By
my troth and my plight, if the Duke detain Wolnoth, son of Githa,
against just plea, and King's assent to his return, I, Harold, will,
failing letter and nuncius, cross the seas, to restore the child to
the mother.'" [107] Harold hesitated.
A sharp cry of reproach that went to his heart broke from Githa's
lips.
"Ah! cold and self-heeding, wilt thou send him to bear a peril from
which thou shrinkest thyself?"
"By my troth and my plight, then," said the Earl, "if, fair time
elapsed, peace in England, without plea of justice, and against my
king's fiat, Duke William of Normandy detain the hostages;--thy son
and this dear boy, more sacred and more dear to me for his father's
woes,--I will cross the seas, to restore the child to the mother, the
fatherless to his fatherland. So help me, all-seeing One, Amen and
Amen!"
CHAPTER IV.
We have seen, in an earlier part of this record, that Harold
possessed, amongst his numerous and more stately possessions, a house,
not far from the old Roman dwelling-place of Hilda. And in this
residence he now (save when with the King) made his chief abode. He
gave as the reasons for his selection, the charm it took, in his eyes,
from that signal mark of affection which his ceorls had rendered him,
in purchasing the house and tilling the ground in his absence; and
more especially the convenience of its vicinity to the new palace at
Westminster; for, by Edward's special desire, while the other brothers
repaired to their different domains, Harold remained near his royal
person. To use the words of the great Norwegian chronicler, "Harold
was always with the Court itself, and nearest to the King in all
service."
"The King loved him very much, and kept him as his own son, for he had
no children."' This attendance on Edward was naturally most close at
the restoration to power of the Earl's family. For Harold, mild and
conciliating, was, like Alred, a great peacemaker, and Edward had
never cause to complain of him, as he believed he had of the rest of
that haughty house. But the true spell which made dear to Harold the
rude building of timber, with its doors open all day to his lithsmen,
when with a light heart he escaped from the halls of Westminster, was
the fair face of Edith his neighbour. The impression which this young
girl had made upon Harold seemed to partake of the strength of a
fatality. For Harold had loved her before the marvellous beauty of
her womanhood began; and, occupied from his earliest youth in grave
and earnest affairs, his heart had never been frittered away on the
mean and frivolous affections of the idle. Now, in that comparative
leisure of his stormy life, he was naturally most open to the
influence of a charm more potent than all the glamoury of Hilda.
The autumn sun shone through the golden glades of the forest-land,
when Edith sate alone on the knoll that faced forestland and road, and
watched afar.
And the birds sung cheerily; but that was not the sound for which
Edith listened: and the squirrel darted from tree to tree on the sward
beyond; but not to see the games of the squirrel sat Edith by the
grave of the Teuton. By-and-by, came the cry of the dogs, and the
tall gre-hound [108] of Wales emerged from the bosky dells. Then
Edith's heart heaved, and her eyes brightened. And now, with his hawk
on his wrist, and his spear [109] in his hand, came, through the
yellowing boughs, Harold the Earl.
And well may ye ween, that his heart beat as loud and his eye shone as
bright as Edith's, when he saw who had watched for his footsteps on
the sepulchral knoll; Love, forgetful of the presence of Death;--so
has it ever been, so ever shall it be! He hastened his stride, and
bounded up the gentle hillock, and his dogs, with a joyous bark, came
round the knees of Edith. Then Harold shook the bird from his wrist,
and it fell, with its light wing, on the altar-stone of Thor.
"Thou art late, but thou art welcome, Harold my kinsman," said Edith,
simply, as she bent her face over the hounds, whose gaunt heads she
caressed.
"Call me not kinsman," said Harold, shrinking, and with a dark cloud
on his broad brow.
"And why, Harold?"
"Oh, Edith, why?" murmured Harold; and his thought added, "she knows
not, poor child, that in that mockery of kinship the Church sets its
ban on our bridals."
He turned, and chid his dogs fiercely as they gambolled in rough glee
round their fair friend.
The hounds crouched at the feet of Edith; and Edith looked in mild
wonder at the troubled face of the Earl.
"Thine eyes rebuke me, Edith, more than my words the hounds!" said
Harold, gently. "But there is quick blood in my veins; and the mind
must be calm when it would control the humour. Calm was my mind,
sweet Edith, in the old time, when thou wert an infant on my knee, and
wreathing, with these rude hands, flower-chains for thy neck like the
swan's down, I said, 'The flowers fade, but the chain lasts when love
weaves it.'"
Edith again bent her face over the crouching hounds. Harold gazed on
her with mournful fondness; and the bird still sung and the squirrel
swung himself again from bough to bough. Edith spoke first:
"My godmother, thy sister, hath sent for me, Harold, and I am to go to
the Court to-morrow. Shalt thou be there?"
"Surely," said Harold, in an anxious voice, "surely, I will be there!
So my sister hath sent for thee: wittest thou wherefore?"
Edith grew very pale, and her tone trembled as she answered:
"Well-a-day, yes."
"It is as I feared, then!" exclaimed Harold, in great agitation; "and
my sister, whom these monks have demented, leagues herself with the
King against the law of the wide welkin and the grand religion of the
human heart. Oh!" continued the Earl, kindling into an enthusiasm,
rare to his even moods, but wrung as much from his broad sense as from
his strong affection, "when I compare the Saxon of our land and day,
all enervated and decrepit by priestly superstition, with his
forefathers in the first Christian era, yielding to the religion they
adopted in its simple truths, but not to that rot of social happiness
and free manhood which this cold and lifeless monarchism--making
virtue the absence of human ties--spreads around--which the great Bede
[110], though himself a monk, vainly but bitterly denounced;--yea,
verily, when I see the Saxon already the theowe of the priest, I
shudder to ask how long he will be folk-free of the tyrant."
He paused, breathed hard, and seizing, almost sternly, the girl's
trembling arm, he resumed between his set teeth: "So they would have
thee be a nun?--Thou wilt not,--thou durst not,--thy heart would
perjure thy vows!"
"Ah, Harold!" answered Edith, moved out of all bashfulness by his
emotion and her own terror of the convent, and answering, if with the
love of a woman, still with all the unconsciousness of a child:
"Better, oh better the grate of the body than that of the heart!--In
the grave I could still live for those I love; behind the Grate, love
itself must be dead. Yes, thou pitiest me, Harold; thy sister, the
Queen, is gentle and kind; I will fling myself at her feet, and say:
'Youth is fond, and the world is fair: let me live my youth, and bless
God in the world that he saw was good!'"
"My own, own dear Edith!" exclaimed Harold, overjoyed. "Say this. Be
firm: they cannot and they dare not force thee! The law cannot wrench
thee against thy will from the ward of thy guardian Hilda; and, where
the law is, there Harold at least is strong,--and there at least our
kinship, if my bane, is thy blessing."
"Why, Harold, sayest thou that our kinship is thy bane? It is so
sweet to me to whisper to myself, 'Harold is of thy kith, though
distant; and it is natural to thee to have pride in his fame, and joy
in his presence!' Why is that sweetness to me, to thee so bitter?"
"Because," answered Harold, dropping the hand he had clasped, and
folding his arms in deep dejection, "because but for that I should
say: 'Edith, I love thee more than a brother: Edith, be Harold's
wife!' And were I to say it, and were we to wed, all the priests of
the Saxons would lift up their hands in horror, and curse our
nuptials, and I should be the bann'd of that spectre the Church; and
my house would shake to its foundations; and my father, and my
brothers, and the thegns and the proceres, and the abbots and
prelates, whose aid makes our force, would gather round me with
threats and with prayers, that I might put thee aside. And mighty as
I am now, so mighty once was Sweyn my brother; and outlaw as Sweyn is
now, might Harold be; and outlaw if Harold were, what breast so broad
as his could fill up the gap left in the defence of England? And the
passions that I curb, as a rider his steed, might break their rein;
and, strong in justice, and child of Nature, I might come, with banner
and mail, against Church, and House, and Fatherland; and the blood of
my countrymen might be poured like water: and, therefore, slave to the
lying thraldom he despises, Harold dares not say to the maid of his
love, 'Give me thy right hand, and be my bride!'"
Edith had listened in bewilderment and despair, her eyes fixed on his,
and her face locked and rigid, as if turned to stone. But when he had
ceased, and, moving some steps away, turned aside his manly
countenance, that Edith might not perceive its anguish, the noble and
sublime spirit of that sex which ever, when lowliest, most comprehends
the lofty, rose superior both to love and to grief; and rising, she
advanced, and placing her slight hand on his stalwart shoulder, she
said, half in pity, half in reverence: "Never before, O Harold, did I
feel so proud of thee: for Edith could not love thee as she doth, and
will till the grave clasp her, if thou didst not love England more
than Edith. Harold, till this hour I was a child, and I knew not my
own heart: I look now into that heart, and I see that I am woman.
Harold, of the cloister I have now no fear: and all life does not
shrink--no, it enlarges, and it soars into one desire--to be worthy to
pray for thee!"
"Maid, maid!" exclaimed Harold, abruptly, and pale as the dead, "do
not say thou hast no fear of the cloister. I adjure, I command thee,
build not up between us that dismal everlasting wall. While thou art
free Hope yet survives--a phantom, haply but Hope still."
"As thou wilt I will," said Edith, humbly: "order my fate so as
pleases thee the best."
Then, not daring to trust herself longer, for she felt the tears
rushing to her eyes, she turned away hastily, and left him alone
beside the altar-stone and the tomb.
CHAPTER V.
The next day, as Harold was entering the palace of Westminster, with
intent to seek the King's lady, his father met him in one of the
corridors, and, taking him gravely by the hand said:
"My son, I have much on my mind regarding thee and our House; come
with me."
"Nay," said the Earl, "by your leave let it be later. For I have it
on hand to see my sister, ere confessor, or monk, or schoolman, claim
her hours!"
"Not so, Harold," said the Earl, briefly. "My daughter is now in her
oratory, and we shall have time enow to treat of things mundane ere
she is free to receive thee, and to preach to thee of things ghostly,
the last miracle at St. Alban's, or the last dream of the King, who
would be a great man and a stirring, if as restless when awake as he
is in his sleep. Come."
Harold, in that filial obedience which belonged, as of course, to his
antique cast of character, made no farther effort to escape, but with
a sigh followed Godwin into one of the contiguous chambers.
"Harold," then said Earl Godwin, after closing the door carefully,
"thou must not let the King keep thee longer in dalliance and
idleness: thine earldom needs thee without delay. Thou knowest that
these East Angles, as we Saxons still call them, are in truth mostly
Danes and Norsemen; people jealous and fierce, and free, and more akin
to the Normans than to the Saxons. My whole power in England hath
been founded, not less on my common birth with the freefolk of Wessex
--Saxons like myself, and therefore easy for me, a Saxon, to conciliate
and control--than on the hold I have ever sought to establish, whether
by arms or by arts, over the Danes in the realm. And I tell and I
warn thee, Harold, as the natural heir of my greatness, that he who
cannot command the stout hearts of the Anglo-Danes, will never
maintain the race of Godwin in the post they have won in the vanguard
of Saxon England."
"This I wot well, my father," answered Harold; "and I see with joy,
that while those descendants of heroes and freemen are blended
indissolubly with the meeker Saxon, their freer laws and hardier
manners are gradually supplanting, or rather regenerating, our own."
Godwin smiled approvingly on his son, and then his brow becoming
serious, and the dark pupil of his blue eye dilating, he resumed:
"This is well, my son; and hast thou thought also, that while thou art
loitering in these galleries, amidst the ghosts of men in monk cowls,
Siward is shadowing our House with his glory, and all north the Humber
rings with his name? Hast thou thought that all Mercia is in the
hands of Leofric our rival, and that Algar his son, who ruled Wessex
in my absence, left there a name so beloved, that had I stayed a year
longer, the cry had been 'Algar', not 'Godwin'?--for so is the
multitude ever! Now aid me, Harold, for my soul is troubled, and I
cannot work alone; and though I say naught to others, my heart
received a death-blow when tears fell from its blood-springs on the
brow of Sweyn, my first-born." The old man paused, and his lip
quivered.
"Thou, thou alone, Harold, noble boy, thou alone didst stand by his
side in the hall; alone, alone, and I blessed thee in that hour over
all the rest of my sons. Well, well! now to earth again. Aid me,
Harold. I open to thee my web: complete the woof when this hand is
cold. The new tree that stands alone in the plain is soon nipped by
the winter; fenced round with the forest, its youth takes shelter from
its fellows [111]. So is it with a house newly founded; it must win
strength from the allies that it sets round its slender stein. What
had been Godwin, son of Wolnoth, had he not married into the kingly
house of great Canute? It is this that gives my sons now the right to
the loyal love of the Danes. The throne passed from Canute and his
race, and the Saxons again had their hour; and I gave, as Jephtha gave
his daughter, my blooming Edith, to the cold bed of the Saxon King.
Had sons sprung from that union, the grandson of Godwin, royal alike
from Saxon and Dane, would reign on the throne of the isle. Fate
ordered otherwise, and the spider must weave web anew. Thy brother,
Tostig, has added more splendour than solid strength of our line, in
his marriage with the daughter of Baldwin the Count. The foreigner
helps us little in England. Thou, O Harold, must bring new props to
the House. I would rather see thee wed to the child of one of our
great rivals than to the daughter of kaisar, or outland king. Siward
hath no daughter undisposed of. Algar, son of Leofric, hath a
daughter fair as the fairest; make her thy bride that Algar may cease
to be a foe. This alliance will render Mercia, in truth, subject to
our principalities, since the stronger must quell the weaker. It doth
more. Algar himself has married into the royalty of Wales [112].
Thou wilt win all those fierce tribes to thy side. Their forces will
gain thee the marches, now held so feebly under Rolf the Norman, and
in case of brief reverse, or sharp danger, their mountains will give
refuge from all foes. This day, greeting Algar, he told me he
meditated bestowing his daughter on Gryffyth, the rebel under-King of
North Wales. Therefore," continued the old Earl, with a smile, "thou
must speak in time, and win and woo in the same breath. No hard task,
methinks, for Harold of the golden tongue."
"Sir, and father," replied the young Earl, whom the long speech
addressed to him had prepared for its close, and whose habitual self-
control saved him from disclosing his emotion, "I thank you duteously,
for your care for my future, and hope to profit by your wisdom. I
will ask the King's leave to go to my East Anglians, and hold there a
folkmuth, administer justice, redress grievances, and make thegn and
ceorl content with Harold, their Earl. But vain is peace in the
realm, if there is strife in the house. And Aldyth, the daughter of
Algar, cannot be house-wife to me."
"Why?" asked the old Earl, calmly, and surveying his son's face with
those eyes so clear yet so unfathomable.
"Because, though I grant her fair, she pleases not my fancy, nor would
give warmth to my hearth. Because, as thou knowest well, Algar and I
have ever been opposed, both in camp and in council; and I am not the
man who can sell my love, though I may stifle my anger. Earl Harold
needs no bride to bring spearmen to his back at his need; and his
lordships he will guard with the shield of a man, not the spindle of a
woman."
"Said in spite and in error," replied the old Earl, coolly. "Small
pain had it given thee to forgive Algar old quarrels, and clasp his
hand as a father-in-law--if thou hadst had for his daughter what the
great are forbidden to regard save as a folly."
"Is love a folly, my father?"
"Surely, yes," said the Earl, with some sadness--"surely, yes, for
those who know that life is made up of business and care, spun out in
long years, nor counted by the joys of an hour. Surely, yes; thinkest
thou that I loved my first wife, the proud sister of Canute, or that
Edith, thy sister, loved Edward, when he placed the crown on her
head?"
"My father, in Edith, my sister, our House has sacrificed enow to
selfish power."
"I grant it, to selfish power," answered the eloquent old man, "but
not enow for England's safety. Look to it, Harold; thy years, and thy
fame, and thy state, place thee free from my control as a father, but
not till thou sleepest in thy cerements art thou free from that
father--thy land! Ponder it in thine own wise mind--wiser already
than that which speaks to it under the hood of grey hairs. Ponder it,
and ask thyself if thy power, when I am dead, is not necessary to the
weal of England? and if aught that thy schemes can suggest would so
strengthen that power, as to find in the heart of the kingdom a host
of friends like the Mercians;--or if there could be a trouble and a
bar to thy greatness, a wall in thy path, or a thorn in thy side, like
the hate or the jealousy of Algar, the son of Leofric?"