Harold : the Last of the Saxon Kings — Complete by Lytton (an ebook reader TXT) 📖

“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