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+The Project Gutenberg EBook Harold, by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Book 6.
+#105 in our series by Edward Bulwer-Lytton
+
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+**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
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+**EBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**
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+*****These EBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers*****
+
+
+Title: Harold, Book 6.
+       The Last Of The Saxon Kings
+
+Author: Edward Bulwer-Lytton
+
+Release Date: March 2005  [EBook #7677]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on April 8, 2003]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+
+
+
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HAROLD, BY LYTTON, BOOK 6 ***
+
+
+
+This eBook was produced by Tapio Riikonen
+and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+BOOK VI.
+
+
+AMBITION.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+There was great rejoicing in England.  King Edward had been induced to
+send Alred the prelate [139] to the court of the German Emperor, for
+his kinsman and namesake, Edward Atheling, the son of the great
+Ironsides.  In his childhood, this Prince, with his brother Edmund,
+had been committed by Canute to the charge of his vassal, the King of
+Sweden; and it has been said (though without sufficient authority),
+that Canute's design was, that they should be secretly made away with.
+The King of Sweden, however, forwarded the children to the court of
+Hungary; they were there honourably reared and received.  Edmund died
+young, without issue.  Edward married a daughter of the German
+Emperor, and during the commotions in England, and the successive
+reigns of Harold Harefoot, Hardicanute, and the Confessor, had
+remained forgotten in his exile, until now suddenly recalled to
+England as the heir presumptive of his childless namesake.  He arrived
+with Agatha his wife, one infant son, Edgar, and two daughters,
+Margaret and Christina.
+
+Great were the rejoicings.  The vast crowd that had followed the royal
+visitors in their procession to the old London palace (not far from
+St. Paul's) in which they were lodged, yet swarmed through the
+streets, when two thegns who had personally accompanied the Atheling
+from Dover, and had just taken leave of him, now emerged from the
+palace, and with some difficulty made their way through the crowded
+streets.
+
+The one in the dress and short hair imitated from the Norman,--was our
+old friend Godrith, whom the reader may remember as the rebuker of
+Taillefer, and the friend of Mallet de Graville; the other, in a plain
+linen Saxon tunic, and the gonna worn on state occasions, to which he
+seemed unfamiliar, but with heavy gold bracelets on his arms, long
+haired and bearded, was Vebba, the Kentish thegn, who had served as
+nuncius from Godwin to Edward.
+
+"Troth and faith!" said Vebba, wiping his brow, "this crowd is enow to
+make plain roan stark wode.  I would not live in London for all the
+gauds in the goldsmith's shops, or all the treasures in King Edward's
+vaults.  My tongue is as parched as a hay-field in the weyd-month.
+[140]  Holy Mother be blessed!  I see a Cumen-hus [141] open; let us
+in and refresh ourselves with a horn of ale."
+
+"Nay, friend," quoth Godrith, with a slight disdain, "such are not the
+resorts of men of our rank.  Tarry yet awhile, till we arrive near the
+bridge by the river-side; there, indeed, you will find worthy company
+and dainty cheer."
+
+"Well, well, I am at your hest, Godrith," said the Kent man, sighing;
+"my wife and my sons will be sure to ask me what sights I have seen,
+and I may as well know from thee the last tricks and ways of this
+burly-burly town."
+
+Godrith, who was master of all the fashions in the reign of our lord
+King Edward, smiled graciously, and the two proceeded in silence, only
+broken by the sturdy Kent man's exclamations; now of anger when rudely
+jostled, now of wonder and delight when, amidst the throng, he caught
+sight of a gleeman, with his bear or monkey, who took advantage of
+some space near convent garden, or Roman ruin, to exhibit his craft;
+till they gained a long low row of booths, most pleasantly situated to
+the left of this side London bridge, and which was appropriated to the
+celebrated cookshops, that even to the time of Fitzstephen retained
+their fame and their fashion.
+
+Between the shops and the river was a space of grass worn brown and
+bare by the feet of the customers, with a few clipped trees with vines
+trained from one to the other in arcades, under cover of which were
+set tables and settles.  The place was thickly crowded, and but for
+Godrith's popularity amongst the attendants, they might have found it
+difficult to obtain accommodation.  However, a new table was soon
+brought forth, placed close by the cool margin of the water, and
+covered in a trice with tankards of hippocras, pigment, ale, and some
+Gascon, as well as British wines: varieties of the delicious cake-
+bread for which England was then renowned; while viands, strange to
+the honest eye and taste of the wealthy Kent man, were served on
+spits.
+
+"What bird is this?" said he, grumbling.
+
+"O enviable man, it is a Phrygian attagen [142] that thou art about to
+taste for the first time; and when thou hast recovered that delight, I
+commend to thee a Moorish compound, made of eggs and roes of carp from
+the old Southweorc stewponds, which the cooks here dress notably."
+
+"Moorish!--Holy Virgin!" cried Vebba, with his mouth full of the
+Phrygian attagen, "how came anything Moorish in our Christian island?"
+
+Godrith laughed outright.
+
+"Why, our cook here is Moorish; the best singers in London are Moors.
+Look yonder! see those grave comely Saracens!"
+
+"Comely, quotha, burnt and black as a charred pine-pole!" grunted
+Vebba; "well, who are they?"
+
+"Wealthy traders; thanks to whom, our pretty maids have risen high in
+the market." [143]
+
+"More the shame," said the Kent man; "that selling of English youth to
+foreign masters, whether male or female, is a blot on the Saxon name."
+
+"So saith Harold our Earl, and so preach the monks," returned Godrith.
+"But thou, my good friend, who art fond of all things that our
+ancestors did, and hast sneered more than once at my Norman robe and
+cropped hair, thou shouldst not be the one to find fault with what our
+fathers have done since the days of Cerdic."
+
+"Hem," said the Kent man, a little perplexed, "certainly old manners
+are the best, and I suppose there is some good reason for this
+practice, which I, who never trouble myself about matters that concern
+me not, do not see."
+
+"Well, Vebba, and how likest thou the Atheling? he is of the old
+line," said Godrith.
+
+Again the Kent man looked perplexed, and had recourse to the ale,
+which he preferred to all more delicate liquor, before he replied:
+
+"Why, he speaks English worse than King Edward! and as for his boy
+Edgar, the child can scarce speak English at all.  And then their
+German carles and cnehts!--An I had known what manner of folk they
+were, I had not spent my mancuses in running from my homestead to give
+them the welcome.  But they told me that Harold the good Earl had made
+the King send for them: and whatever the Earl counselled must, I
+thought, be wise, and to the weal of sweet England."
+
+"That is true," said Godrith with earnest emphasis, for, with all his
+affectation of Norman manners, he was thoroughly English at heart, and
+now among the staunchest supporters of Harold, who had become no less
+the pattern and pride of the young nobles than the darling of the
+humbler population,--"that is true--and Harold showed us his noble
+English heart when he so urged the King to his own loss."
+
+As Godrith thus spoke, nay, from the first mention of Harold's name,
+two men richly clad, but with their bonnets drawn far over their
+brows, and their long gonnas so worn as to hide their forms, who were
+seated at a table behind Godrith and had thus escaped his attention,
+had paused from their wine-cups, and they now listened with much
+earnestness to the conversation that followed.
+
+"How to the Earl's loss?" asked Vebba.
+
+"Why, simple thegn," answered Godrith, "why, suppose that Edward had
+refused to acknowledge the Atheling as his heir, suppose the Atheling
+had remained in the German court, and our good King died suddenly,--
+who, thinkest thou, could succeed to the English throne?"
+
+"Marry, I have never thought of that at all," said the Kent man,
+scratching his head.
+
+"No, nor have the English generally; yet whom could we choose but
+Harold?"
+
+A sudden start from one of the listeners was checked by the warning
+finger of the other; and the Kent man exclaimed:
+
+"Body o' me!  But we have never chosen king (save the Danes) out of
+the line of Cerdic.  These be new cranks, with a vengeance; we shall
+be choosing German, or Saracen, or Norman next!"
+
+"Out of the line of Cerdic! but that line is gone, root and branch,
+save the Atheling, and he thou seest is more German than English.
+Again I say, failing the Atheling, whom could we choose but Harold,
+brother-in-law to the King: descended through Githa from the royalties
+of the Norse, the head of all armies under the Herr-ban, the chief who
+has never fought without victory, yet who has always preferred
+conciliation to conquest--the first counsellor in the Witan--the first
+man in the realm--who but Harold? answer me, staring Vebba?"
+
+"I take in thy words slowly," said the Kent man, shaking his head,
+"and after all, it matters little who is king, so he be a good one.
+Yes, I see now that the Earl was a just and generous man when he made
+the King send for the Atheling.  Drink-hael! long life to them both!"
+
+"Was-hael," answered Godrith, draining his hippocras to Vebba's more
+potent ale.  "Long life to them both! may Edward the Atheling reign,
+but Harold the Earl rule!  Ah, then, indeed, we may sleep without fear
+of fierce Algar and still fiercer Gryffyth the Walloon--who now, it is
+true, are stilled for the moment, thanks to Harold--but not more still
+than the smooth waters in Gwyned, that lie just above the rush of a
+torrent."
+
+"So little news hear I," said Vebba, "and in Kent so little are we
+plagued with the troubles elsewhere, (for there Harold governs us, and
+the hawks come not where the eagles hold eyrie!)--that I will thank
+thee to tell me something about our old Earl for a year [144], Algar
+the restless, and this Gryffyth the Welch King, so that I may seem a
+wise man when I go back to my homestead."
+
+"Why, thou knowest at least that Algar and Harold were ever opposed in
+the Witan, and hot words thou hast heard pass between them!"
+
+"Marry, yes!  But Algar was as little match for Earl Harold in speech
+as in sword play."
+
+Now again one of the listeners started, (but it was not the same as
+the one before,) and muttered an angry exclamation.
+
+"Yet is he a troublesome foe," said Godrith, who did not hear the
+sound Vebba had provoked, "and a thorn in the side both of the Earl
+and of England; and sorrowful for both England and Earl was it, that
+Harold refused to marry Aldyth, as it is said his father, wise Godwin,
+counselled and wished."
+
+"Ah! but I have heard scops and harpers sing pretty songs that Harold
+loves Edith the Fair, a wondrous proper maiden, they say!"
+
+"It is true; and for the sake of his love, he played ill for his
+ambition."
+
+"I like him the better for that," said the honest Kent man: "why does
+he not marry the girl at once? she hath broad lands, I know, for they
+run from the Sussex shore into Kent."
+
+"But they are cousins five times removed, and the Church forbids the
+marriage; nevertheless Harold lives only for Edith; they have
+exchanged the true-lofa [145], and it is whispered that Harold hopes
+the Atheling, when he comes to be King, will get him the Pope's
+dispensation.  But to return to Algar; in a day most unlucky he gave
+his daughter to Gryffyth, the most turbulent sub-king the land ever
+knew, who, it is said, will not be content till he has won all Wales
+for himself without homage or service, and the Marches to boot.  Some
+letters between him and Earl Algar, to whom Harold had secured the
+earldom of the East Angles, were discovered, and in a Witan at
+Winchester thou wilt doubtless have heard, (for thou didst not, I
+know, leave thy lands to attend it,) that Algar [146] was outlawed."
+
+"Oh, yes, these are stale tidings; I heard thus much from a palmer--
+and then Algar got ships from the Irish, sailed to North Wales, and
+beat Rolf, the Norman Earl, at Hereford.  Oh, yes, I heard that, and,"
+added the Kent man, laughing, "I was not sorry to hear that my old
+Earl Algar, since he is a good and true Saxon, beat the cowardly
+Norman,--more shame to the King for giving a Norman the ward of the
+Marches!"
+
+"It was a sore defeat to the King and to England," said Godrith,
+gravely.  "The great Minster of Hereford built by King Athelstan was
+burned and sacked by the Welch; and the crown itself was in danger,
+when Harold came up at the head of the Fyrd.  Hard is it to tell the
+distress and the marching and the camping, and the travail, and
+destruction of men, and also of horses, which the English endured
+[147] till Harold came; and then luckily came also the good old
+Leofric, and Bishop Alred the peacemaker, and so strife was patched
+up--Gryffyth swore oaths of faith to King Edward, and Algar was
+inlawed; and there for the nonce rests the matter now.  But well I
+ween that Gryffyth will never keep troth with the English, and that no
+hand less strong than Harold's can keep in check a spirit as fiery as
+Algar's:  therefore did I wish that Harold might be King."
+
+"Well," quoth the honest Kent man, "I hope, nevertheless, that Algar,
+will sow his wild oats, and leave the Walloons to grow the hemp for
+their own halters; for, though he is not of the height of our Harold,
+he is a true Saxon, and we liked him well enow when he ruled us.  And
+how is our Earl's brother Tostig esteemed by the Northmen?  It must be
+hard to please those who had Siward of the strong arm for their Earl
+before."
+
+"Why, at first, when (at Siward's death in the wars for young Malcolm)
+Harold secured to Tostig the Northumbrian earldom, Tostig went by his
+brother's counsel, and ruled well and won favour.  Of late I hear that
+the Northmen murmur.  Tostig is a man indeed dour and haughty."
+
+After a few more questions and answers on the news of the day, Vebba
+rose and said:
+
+"Thanks for thy good fellowship; it is time for me now to be jogging
+homeward.  I left my ceorls and horses on the other side the river,
+and must go after them.  And now forgive me my bluntness, fellow-
+thegn, but ye young courtiers have plenty of need for your mancuses,
+and when a plain countryman like me comes sight-seeing, he ought to
+stand payment; wherefore," here he took from his belt a great leathern
+purse, "wherefore, as these outlandish birds and heathenish puddings
+must be dear fare--"
+
+"How!" said Godrith, reddening, "thinkest thou so meanly of us thegns
+of Middlesex as to deem we cannot entertain thus humbly a friend from
+a distance?  Ye Kent men I know are rich.  But keep your pennies to
+buy stuffs for your wife, my friend."
+
+The Kent man, seeing he had displeased his companion, did not press
+his liberal offer,--put up his purse, and suffered Godrith to pay the
+reckoning.  Then, as the two thegns shook hands, he said:
+
+"But I should like to have said a kind word or so to Earl Harold--for
+he was too busy and too great for me to come across him in the old
+palace yonder.  I have a mind to go back and look for him at his own
+house."
+
+"You will not find him there," said Godrith, "for I know that as soon
+as he hath finished his conference with the Atheling, he will leave
+the city; and I shall be at his own favourite manse over the water at
+sunset, to take orders for repairing the forts and dykes on the
+Marches.  You can tarry awhile and meet us; you know his old lodge in
+the forest land?"
+
+"Nay, I must be back and at home ere night, for all things go wrong
+when the master is away.  Yet, indeed, my good wife will scold me for
+not having shaken hands with the handsome Earl."
+
+"Thou shalt not come under that sad infliction," said the good-natured
+Godrith, who was pleased with the thegn's devotion to Harold, and who,
+knowing the great weight which Vebba (homely as he seemed) carried in
+his important county, was politically anxious that the Earl should
+humour so sturdy a friend,--"Thou shalt not sour thy wife's kiss, man.
+For look you, as you ride back you will pass by a large old house,
+with broken columns at the back."
+
+"I have marked it well," said the thegn, "when I have gone that way,
+with a heap of queer stones, on a little hillock, which they say the
+witches or the Britons heaped together."
+
+"The same.  When Harold leaves London, I trow well towards that house
+will his road wend; for there lives Edith the swan's-neck, with her
+awful grandam the Wicca.  If thou art there a little after noon,
+depend on it thou wilt see Harold riding that way."
+
+"Thank thee heartily, friend Godrith," said Vebba, taking his leave,
+"and forgive my bluntness if I laughed at thy cropped head, for I see
+thou art as good a Saxon as e'er a franklin of Kent--and so the saints
+keep thee."
+
+Vebba then strode briskly over the bridge; and Godrith, animated by
+the wine he had drunk, turned gaily on his heel to look amongst the
+crowded tables for some chance friend with whom to while away an hour
+or so at the games of hazard then in vogue.
+
+Scarce had he turned, when the two listeners, who, having paid their
+reckoning, had moved under shade of one of the arcades, dropped into a
+boat which they had summoned to the margin by a noiseless signal, and
+were rowed over the water.  They preserved a silence which seemed
+thoughtful and gloomy until they reached the opposite shore; then one
+of them, pushing back his bonnet, showed the sharp and haughty
+features of Algar.
+
+"Well, friend of Gryffyth," said he, with a bitter accent, "thou
+hearest that Earl Harold counts so little on the oaths of thy King,
+that he intends to fortify the Marches against him; and thou hearest
+also, that nought save a life, as fragile as the reed which thy feet
+are trampling, stands between the throne of England and the only
+Englishman who could ever have humbled my son-in-law to swear oath of
+service to Edward."
+
+"Shame upon that hour," said the other, whose speech, as well as the
+gold collar round his neck, and the peculiar fashion of his hair,
+betokened him to be Welch.  "Little did I think that the great son of
+Llewellyn, whom our bards had set above Roderic Mawr, would ever have
+acknowledged the sovereignty of the Saxon over the hills of Cymry."
+
+"Tut, Meredydd," answered Algar, "thou knowest well that no Cymrian
+ever deems himself dishonoured by breaking faith with the Saxon; and
+we shall yet see the lions of Gryffyth scaring the sheepfolds of
+Hereford."
+
+"So be it," said Meredydd, fiercely.  "And Harold shall give to his
+Atheling the Saxon land, shorn at least of the Cymrian kingdom."
+
+"Meredydd," said Algar, with a seriousness that seemed almost solemn,
+no Atheling will live to rule these realms!  Thou knowest that I was
+one of the first to hail the news of his coming--I hastened to Dover
+to meet him.  Methought I saw death writ on his countenance, and I
+bribed the German leach who attends him to answer my questions; the
+Atheling knows it not, but he bears within him the seeds of a mortal
+complaint.  Thou wottest well what cause I have to hate Earl Harold;
+and were I the only man to oppose his way to the throne, he should not
+ascend it but over my corpse.  But when Godrith, his creature, spoke,
+I felt that he spoke the truth; and, the Atheling dead, on no head but
+Harold's can fall the crown of Edward."
+
+"Ha!" said the Cymrian chief, gloomily; "thinkest thou so indeed?"
+
+"I think it not; I know it.  And for that reason, Meredydd, we must
+wait not till he wields against us all the royalty of England.  As
+yet, while Edward lives, there is hope.  For the King loves to spend
+wealth on relics and priests, and is slow when the mancuses are wanted
+for fighting men.  The King too, poor man! is not so ill-pleased at my
+outbursts as he would fain have it thought; he thinks, by pitting earl
+against earl, that he himself is the stronger [148]. While Edward
+lives, therefore, Harold's arm is half crippled; wherefore, Meredydd,
+ride thou, with good speed, back to King Gryffyth, and tell him all I
+have told thee.  Tell him that our time to strike the blow and renew
+the war will be amidst the dismay and confusion that the Atheling's
+death will occasion.  Tell him, that if we can entangle Harold himself
+in the Welch defiles, it will go hard but what we shall find some
+arrow or dagger to pierce the heart of the invader.  And were Harold
+but slain--who then would be king in England?  The line of Cerdic
+gone--the House of Godwin lost in Earl Harold, (for Tostig is hated in
+his own domain, Leofwine is too light, and Gurth is too saintly for
+such ambition)--who then, I say, can be king in England but Algar, the
+heir of the great Leofric?  And I, as King of England, will set all
+Cymry free, and restore to the realm of Gryffyth the shires of
+Hereford and Worcester.  Ride fast, O Meredydd, and heed well all I
+have said."
+
+"Dost thou promise and swear, that wert thou king of England, Cymry
+should be free from all service?"
+
+"Free as air, free as under Arthur and Uther: I swear it.  And
+remember well how Harold addressed the Cymrian chiefs, when he
+accepted Gryffyth's oaths of service."
+
+"Remember it--ay," cried Meredydd, his face lighting up with intense
+ire and revenge; "the stern Saxon said, 'Heed well, ye chiefs of
+Cymry, and thou Gryffyth the King, that if again ye force, by ravage
+and rapine, by sacrilege and murther, the majesty of England to enter
+your borders, duty must be done: God grant that your Cymrian lion may
+leave us in peace--if not, it is mercy to Human life that bids us cut
+the talons, and draw the fangs."
+
+"Harold, like all calm and mild men, ever says less than he means,"
+returned Algar; "and were Harold king, small pretext would he need for
+cutting the talons and drawing the fangs."
+
+"It is well," said Meredydd, with a fierce smile.  "I will now go to
+my men who are lodged yonder; and it is better that thou shouldst not
+be seen with me."
+
+"Right; so St. David be with you--and forget not a word of my message
+to Gryffyth my son-in-law."
+
+"Not a word," returned Meredydd, as with a wave of his hand he moved
+towards an hostelry, to which, as kept by one of their own countrymen,
+the Welch habitually resorted in the visits to the capital which the
+various intrigues and dissensions in their unhappy land made frequent.
+
+The chief's train, which consisted of ten men, all of high birth, were
+not drinking in the tavern--for sorry customers to mine host were the
+abstemious Welch.  Stretched on the grass under the trees of an
+orchard that backed the hostelry, and utterly indifferent to all the
+rejoicings that animated the population of Southwark and London, they
+were listening to a wild song of the old hero-days from one of their
+number; and round them grazed the rough shagged ponies which they had
+used for their journey.  Meredydd, approaching, gazed round, and
+seeing no stranger was present, raised his hand to hush the song, and
+then addressed his countrymen briefly in Welch--briefly, but with a
+passion that was evident in his flashing eyes and vehement gestures.
+The passion was contagious; they all sprang to their feet with a low
+but fierce cry, and in a few moments they had caught and saddled their
+diminutive palfreys, while one of the band, who seemed singled out by
+Meredydd, sallied forth alone from the orchard, and took his way, on
+foot, to the bridge.  He did not tarry there long; at the sight of a
+single horseman, whom a shout of welcome, on that swarming
+thoroughfare, proclaimed to be Earl Harold, the Welcbman turned, and
+with a fleet foot regained his companions.
+
+Meanwhile Harold, smilingly, returned the greetings he received,
+cleared the bridge, passed the suburbs, and soon gained the wild
+forest land that lay along the great Kentish road.  He rode somewhat
+slowly, for he was evidently in deep thought; and he had arrived about
+half-way towards Hilda's house when he heard behind quick pattering
+sounds, as of small unshod hoofs: he turned, and saw the Welchmen at
+the distance of some fifty yards.  But at that moment there passed,
+along the road in front, several persons bustling into London to share
+in the festivities of the day.  This seemed to disconcert the Welch in
+the rear, and, after a few whispered words, they left the high road
+and entered the forest land.  Various groups from time to time
+continued to pass along the thoroughfare.  But still, ever through the
+glades, Harold caught glimpses of the riders; now distant, now near.
+Sometimes he heard the snort of their small horses, and saw a fierce
+eye glaring through the bushes; then, as at the sight or sound of
+approaching passengers, the riders wheeled, and shot off through the
+brakes.
+
+The Earl's suspicions were aroused; for (though he knew of no enemy to
+apprehend, and the extreme severity of the laws against robbers made
+the high roads much safer in the latter days of the Saxon domination
+than they were for centuries under that of the subsequent dynasty,
+when Saxon thegns themselves had turned kings of the greenwood,) the
+various insurrections in Edward's reign had necessarily thrown upon
+society many turbulent disbanded mercenaries.
+
+Harold was unarmed, save the spear which, even on occasions of state,
+the Saxon noble rarely laid aside, and the ateghar in his belt; and,
+seeing now that the road had become deserted, he set spurs to his
+horse, and was just in sight of the Druid temple, when a javelin
+whizzed close by his breast, and another transfixed his horse, which
+fell head foremost to the ground.
+
+The Earl gained his feet in an instant, and that haste was needed to
+save his life; for while he rose ten swords flashed around him.  The
+Welchmen had sprung from their palfreys as Harold's horse fell.
+Fortunately for him, only two of the party bore javelins, (a weapon
+which the Welch wielded with deadly skill,) and those already wasted,
+they drew their short swords, which were probably imitated from the
+Romans, and rushed upon him in simultaneous onset.  Versed in all the
+weapons of the time, with his right hand seeking by his spear to keep
+off the rush, with the ateghar in his left parrying the strokes aimed
+at him, the brave Earl transfixed the first assailant, and sore
+wounded the next; but his tunic was dyed red with three gashes, and
+his sole chance of life was in the power yet left him to force his way
+through the ring.  Dropping his spear, shifting his ateghar into the
+right hand, wrapping round his left arm his gonna as a shield, he
+sprang fiercely on the onslaught, and on the flashing swords.  Pierced
+to the heart fell one of his foes--dashed to the earth another--from
+the hand of a third (dropping his own ateghar) he wrenched the sword.
+Loud rose Harold's cry for aid, and swiftly he strode towards the
+hillock, turning back, and striking as he turned; and again fell a
+foe, and again new blood oozed through his own garb.  At that moment
+his cry was echoed by a shriek so sharp and so piercing that it
+startled the assailants, it arrested the assault; and, ere the unequal
+strife could be resumed, a woman was in the midst of the fray; a woman
+stood dauntless between the Earl and his foes.
+
+"Back! Edith.  Oh, God!  Back, back!" cried the Earl, recovering all
+his strength in the sole fear which that strife had yet stricken into
+his bold heart; and drawing Edith aside with his strong arm, he again
+confronted the assailants.
+
+"Die!" cried, in the Cymrian tongue, the fiercest of the foes, whose
+sword had already twice drawn the Earl's blood; "Die, that Cymry may
+be free!"
+
+Meredydd sprang, with him sprang the survivors of his band; and, by a
+sudden movement, Edith had thrown herself on Harold's breast, leaving
+his right arm free, but sheltering his form with her own.
+
+At that sight every sword rested still in air.  These Cymrians,
+hesitating not at the murder of the man whose death seemed to their
+false virtue a sacrifice due to their hopes of freedom, were still the
+descendants of Heroes, and the children of noble Song, and their
+swords were harmless against a woman.  The same pause which saved the
+life of Harold, saved that of Meredydd; for the Cymrian's lifted sword
+had left his breast defenceless, and Harold, despite his wrath, and
+his fears for Edith, touched by that sudden forbearance, forbore
+himself the blow.
+
+"Why seek ye my life?" said he.  "Whom in broad England hath Harold
+wronged?"
+
+That speech broke the charm, revived the suspense of vengeance.  With
+a sudden aim, Meredydd smote at the head which Edith's embrace left
+unprotected.  The sword shivered on the steel of that which parried
+the stroke, and the next moment, pierced to the heart, Meredydd fell
+to the earth, bathed in his gore.  Even as he fell, aid was at hand.
+The ceorls in the Roman house had caught the alarm, and were hurrying
+down the knoll, with arms snatched in haste, while a loud whoop broke
+from the forest land hard by; and a troop of horse, headed by Vebba,
+rushed through the bushes and brakes.  Those of the Welch still
+surviving, no longer animated by their fiery chief, turned on the
+instant, and fled with that wonderful speed of foot which
+characterised their active race; calling, as they fled, to their Welch
+pigmy steeds, which, snorting loud, and lashing out, came at once to
+the call.  Seizing the nearest at hand, the fugitives sprang to selle,
+while the animals unchosen paused by the corpses of their former
+riders, neighing piteously, and shaking their long manes.  And then,
+after wheeling round and round the coming horsemen, with many a
+plunge, and lash, and savage cry, they darted after their companions,
+and disappeared amongst the bushwood.  Some of the Kentish men gave
+chase to the fugitives, but in vain; for the nature of the ground
+favoured flight.  Vebba, and the rest, now joined by Hilda's lithsmen,
+gained the spot where Harold, bleeding fast, yet strove to keep his
+footing, and, forgetful of his own wounds, was joyfully assuring
+himself of Edith's safety.  Vebba dismounted, and recognising the
+Earl, exclaimed:
+
+"Saints in heaven! are we in tine?  You bleed--you faint!--Speak, Lord
+Harold.  How fares it?"
+
+"Blood enow yet left here for our merrie England!" said Harold, with a
+smile.  But as he spoke, his head drooped, and he was borne senseless
+into the house of Hilda.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+The Vala met them at the threshold, and testified so little surprise
+at the sight of the bleeding and unconscious Earl, that Vebba, who had
+heard strange tales of Hilda's unlawful arts, half-suspected that
+those wild-looking foes, with their uncanny diminutive horses, were
+imps conjured by her to punish a wooer to her grandchild--who had been
+perhaps too successful in the wooing.  And fears so reasonable were
+not a little increased when Hilda, after leading the way up the steep
+ladder to the chamber in which Harold had dreamed his fearful dream,
+bade them all depart, and leave the wounded man to her care.
+
+"Not so," said Vebba, bluffly.  "A life like this is not to be left in
+the hands of woman, or wicca.  I shall go back to the great town, and
+summon the Earl's own leach.  And I beg thee to heed, meanwhile, that
+every head in this house shall answer for Harold's."
+
+The great Vala, and highborn Hleafdian, little accustomed to be
+accosted thus, turned round abruptly, with so stern an eye and so
+imperious a mien, that even the stout Kent man felt abashed.  She
+pointed to the door opening on the ladder, and said, briefly:
+
+"Depart!  Thy lord's life hath been saved already, and by woman.
+Depart!"
+
+"Depart, and fear not for the Earl, brave and true friend in need,"
+said Edith, looking up from Harold's pale lips, over which she bent;
+and her sweet voice so touched the good thegn, that, murmuring a
+blessing on her fair face, he turned and departed.
+
+Hilda then proceeded, with a light and skilful hand, to examine the
+wounds of her patient.  She opened the tunic, and washed away the
+blood from four gaping orifices on the breast and shoulders.  And as
+she did so, Edith uttered a faint cry, and falling on her knees, bowed
+her head over the drooping hand, and kissed it with stifling emotions,
+of which perhaps grateful joy was the strongest; for over the heart of
+Harold was punctured, after the fashion of the Saxons, a device--and
+that device was the knot of betrothal, and in the centre of the knot
+was graven the word "Edith."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+Whether, owing to Hilda's runes, or to the merely human arts which
+accompanied them, the Earl's recovery was rapid, though the great loss
+of blood he had sustained left him awhile weak and exhausted.  But,
+perhaps, he blessed the excuse which detained him still in the house
+of Hilda, and under the eyes of Edith.
+
+He dismissed the leach sent to him by Vebba, and confided, not without
+reason, to the Vala's skill.  And how happily went his hours beneath
+the old Roman roof!
+
+It was not without a superstition, more characterised, however, by
+tenderness than awe, that Harold learned that Edith had been
+undefinably impressed with a foreboding of danger to her betrothed,
+and all that morning she had watched his coming from the old legendary
+hill.  Was it not in that watch that his good Fylgia had saved his
+life?  Indeed, there seemed a strange truth in Hilda's assertions,
+that in the form of his betrothed, his tutelary spirit lived and
+guarded.  For smooth every step, and bright every day, in his career,
+since their troth had been plighted.  And gradually the sweet
+superstition had mingled with human passion to hallow and refine it.
+There was a purity and a depth in the love of these two, which, if not
+uncommon in women, is most rare in men.
+
+Harold, in sober truth, had learned to look on Edith as on his better
+angel; and, calming his strong manly heart in the hour of temptation,
+would have recoiled, as a sacrilege, from aught that could have
+sullied that image of celestial love.  With a noble and sublime
+patience, of which perhaps only a character so thoroughly English in
+its habits of self-control and steadfast endurance could have been
+capable, he saw the months and the years glide away, and still
+contented himself with hope;--hope, the sole godlike joy that belongs
+to men!
+
+As the opinion of an age influences even those who affect to despise
+it, so, perhaps, this holy and unselfish passion was preserved and
+guarded by that peculiar veneration for purity which formed the
+characteristic fanaticism of the last days of the Anglo-Saxons,--when
+still, as Aldhelm had previously sung in Latin less barbarous than
+perhaps any priest in the reign of Edward could command:
+
+    "Virginitas castam servans sine crimine carnem
+     Caetera virtutem vincit praeconia laudi--
+     Spiritus altithroni templum sibi vindicat almus;" [149]
+
+when, amidst a great dissoluteness of manners, alike common to Church
+and laity, the opposite virtues were, as is invariable in such epochs
+of society, carried by the few purer natures into heroic extremes.
+"And as gold, the adorner of the world, springs from the sordid bosom
+of earth, so chastity, the image of gold, rose bright and unsullied
+from the clay of human desire." [150]
+
+And Edith, though yet in the tenderest flush of beautiful youth, had,
+under the influence of that sanctifying and scarce earthly affection,
+perfected her full nature as woman.  She had learned so to live in
+Harold's life, that--less, it seemed, by study than intuition--a
+knowledge graver than that which belonged to her sex and her time,
+seemed to fall upon her soul--fall as the sunlight falls on the
+blossoms, expanding their petals, and brightening the glory of their
+hues.
+
+Hitherto, living under the shade of Hilda's dreary creed, Edith, as we
+have seen, had been rather Christian by name and instinct than
+acquainted with the doctrines of the Gospel, or penetrated by its
+faith.  But the soul of Harold lifted her own out of the Valley of the
+Shadow up to the Heavenly Hill.  For the character of their love was
+so pre-eminently Christian, so, by the circumstances that surrounded
+it--so by hope and self-denial, elevated out of the empire, not only
+of the senses, but even of that sentiment which springs from them, and
+which made the sole refined and poetic element of the heathen's love,
+that but for Christianity it would have withered and died.  It
+required all the aliment of prayer; it needed that patient endurance
+which comes from the soul's consciousness of immortality; it could not
+have resisted earth, but from the forts and armies it won from heaven.
+Thus from Harold might Edith be said to have taken her very soul.  And
+with the soul, and through the soul, woke the mind from the mists of
+childhood.
+
+In the intense desire to be worthy the love of the foremost man of her
+land; to be the companion of his mind, as well as the mistress of his
+heart, she had acquired, she knew not how, strange stores of thought,
+and intelligence, and pure, gentle wisdom.  In opening to her
+confidence his own high aims and projects, he himself was scarcely
+conscious how often he confided but to consult--how often and how
+insensibly she coloured his reflections and shaped his designs.
+Whatever was highest and purest, that, Edith ever, as by instinct,
+beheld as the wisest.  She grew to him like a second conscience,
+diviner than his own.  Each, therefore, reflected virtue on the other,
+as planet illumines planet.
+
+All these years of probation then, which might have soured a love less
+holy, changed into weariness a love less intense, had only served to
+wed them more intimately soul to soul; and in that spotless union what
+happiness there was! what rapture in word and glance, and the slight,
+restrained caress of innocence, beyond all the transports love only
+human can bestow!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+It was a bright still summer noon, when Harold sate with Edith amidst
+the columns of the Druid temple, and in the shade which those vast and
+mournful relics of a faith departed cast along the sward.  And there,
+conversing over the past, and planning the future, they had sate long,
+when Hilda approached from the house, and entering the circle, leant
+her arm upon the altar of the war-god, and gazing on Harold with a
+calm triumph in her aspect, said:
+
+"Did I not smile, son of Godwin, when, with thy short-sighted wisdom,
+thou didst think to guard thy land and secure thy love, by urging the
+monk-king to send over the seas for the Atheling?  Did I not tell
+thee, 'Thou dost right, for in obeying thy judgment thou art but the
+instrument of fate; and the coming of the Atheling shall speed thee
+nearer to the ends of thy life, but not from the Atheling shalt thou
+take the crown of thy love, and not by the Atheling shall the throne
+of Athelstan be filled'?"
+
+"Alas," said Harold, rising in agitation, "let me not hear of
+mischance to that noble prince.  He seemed sick and feeble when I
+parted from him; but joy is a great restorer, and the air of the
+native land gives quick health to the exile."
+
+"Hark!" said Hilda, "you hear the passing bell for the soul of the son
+of Ironsides!"
+
+The mournful knell, as she spoke, came dull from the roofs of the city
+afar, borne to their ears by the exceeding stillness of the
+atmosphere.  Edith crossed herself, and murmured a prayer according to
+the custom of the age; then raising her eyes to Harold, she murmured,
+as she clasped her hands:
+
+"Be not saddened, Harold; hope still."
+
+"Hope!" repeated Hilda, rising proudly from her recumbent position,
+"Hope! in that knell from St. Paul's, dull indeed is thine ear, O
+Harold, if thou hearest not the joy-bells that inaugurate a future
+king!"
+
+The Earl started; his eyes shot fire; his breast heaved.
+
+"Leave us, Edith," said Hilda, in a low voice; and after watching her
+grandchild's slow reluctant steps descend the knoll, she turned to
+Harold, and leading him towards the gravestone of the Saxon chief,
+said:
+
+"Rememberest thou the spectre that rose from this mound?--rememberest
+thou the dream that followed it?"
+
+"The spectre, or deceit of mine eye, I remember well," answered the
+Earl; "the dream, not;--or only in confused and jarring fragments."
+
+"I told thee then, that I could not unriddle the dream by the light of
+the moment; and that the dead who slept below never appeared to men,
+save for some portent of doom to the house of Cerdic.  The portent is
+fulfilled; the Heir of Cerdic is no more.  To whom appeared the great
+Scin-laeca, but to him who shall lead a new race of kings to the Saxon
+throne!"
+
+Harold breathed hard, and the colour mounted bright and glowing to his
+cheek and brow.
+
+"I cannot gainsay thee, Vala.  Unless, despite all conjecture, Edward
+should be spared to earth till the Atheling's infant son acquires the
+age when bearded men will acknowledge a chief [151], I look round in
+England for the coming king, and all England reflects but mine own
+image."
+
+His head rose erect as he spoke, and already the brow seemed august,
+as if circled by the diadem of the Basileus.  "And if it be so," he
+added, "I accept that solemn trust, and England shall grow greater in
+my greatness."
+
+"The flame breaks at last from the smouldering fuel!" cried the Vala,
+"and the hour I so long foretold to thee hath come!"
+
+Harold answered not, for high and kindling emotions deafened him to
+all but the voice of a grand ambition, and the awakening joy of a
+noble heart.
+
+"And then--and then," he exclaimed, "I shall need no mediator between
+nature and monkcraft;--then, O Edith, the life thou hast saved will
+indeed be thine!"  He paused, and it was a sign of the change that an
+ambition long repressed, but now rushing into the vent legitimately
+open to it, had already begun to work in the character hitherto so
+self-reliant, when he said in a low voice, "But that dream which hath
+so long lain locked, not lost, in my mind; that dream of which I
+recall only vague remembrances of danger yet defiance, trouble yet
+triumph,--canst thou unriddle it, O Vala, into auguries of success?"
+
+"Harold," answered Hilda, "thou didst hear at the close of thy dream,
+the music of the hymns that are chaunted at the crowning of a king,--
+and a crowned king shalt thou be; yet fearful foes shall assail thee--
+foreshown in the shapes of a lion and raven, that came in menace over
+the bloodred sea.  The two stars in the heaven betoken that the day of
+thy birth was also the birthday of a foe, whose star is fatal to
+thine; and they warn thee against a battle-field, fought on the day
+when those stars shall meet.  Farther than this the mystery of thy
+dream escapes from my lore;--wouldst thou learn thyself, from the
+phantom that sent the dream;--stand by my side at the grave of the
+Saxon hero, and I will summon the Scin-laeca to counsel the living.
+For what to the Vala the dead may deny, the soul of the brave on the
+brave may bestow!"
+
+Harold listened with a serious and musing attention which his pride or
+his reason had never before accorded to the warnings of Hilda.  But
+his sense was not yet fascinated by the voice of the charmer, and he
+answered with his wonted smile, so sweet yet so haughty:
+
+"A hand outstretched to a crown should be armed for the foe; and the
+eye that would guard the living should not be dimmed by the vapours
+that encircle the dead."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+
+But from that date changes, slight, yet noticeable and important, were
+at work both in the conduct and character of the great Earl.
+
+Hitherto he had advanced on his career without calculation; and
+nature, not policy, had achieved his power.  But henceforth he began
+thoughtfully to cement the foundations of his House, to extend the
+area, to strengthen the props.  Policy now mingled with the justice
+that had made him esteemed, and the generosity that had won him love.
+Before, though by temper conciliatory, yet, through honesty,
+indifferent to the enmities he provoked, in his adherence to what his
+conscience approved, he now laid himself out to propitiate all ancient
+feuds, soothe all jealousies, and convert foes into friends.  He
+opened constant and friendly communication with his uncle Sweyn, King
+of Denmark; he availed himself sedulously of all the influence over
+the Anglo-Danes which his mother's birth made so facile.  He strove
+also, and wisely, to conciliate the animosities which the Church had
+cherished against Godwin's house: he concealed his disdain of the
+monks and monkridden: he showed himself the Church's patron and
+friend; he endowed largely the convents, and especially one at
+Waltham, which had fallen into decay, though favourably known for the
+piety of its brotherhood.  But if in this he played a part not natural
+to his opinions, Harold could not, even in simulation, administer to
+evil.  The monasteries he favoured were those distinguished for purity
+of life, for benevolence to the poor, for bold denunciation of the
+excesses of the great.  He had not, like the Norman, the grand design
+of creating in the priesthood a college of learning, a school of arts;
+such notions were unfamiliar in homely, unlettered England.  And
+Harold, though for his time and his land no mean scholar, would have
+recoiled from favouring a learning always made subservient to Rome;
+always at once haughty and scheming, and aspiring to complete
+domination over both the souls of men and the thrones of kings.  But
+his aim was, out of the elements he found in the natural kindliness
+existing between Saxon priest and Saxon flock, to rear a modest,
+virtuous, homely clergy, not above tender sympathy with an ignorant
+population.  He selected as examples for his monastery at Waltham, two
+low-born humble brothers, Osgood and Ailred; the one known for the
+courage with which he had gone through the land, preaching to abbot
+and thegn the emancipation of the theowes, as the most meritorious act
+the safety of the soul could impose; the other, who, originally a
+clerk, had, according to the common custom of the Saxon clergy,
+contracted the bonds of marriage, and with some eloquence had
+vindicated that custom against the canons of Rome, and refused the
+offer of large endowments and thegn's rank to put away his wife.  But
+on the death of that spouse he had adopted the cowl, and while still
+persisting in the lawfulness of marriage to the unmonastic clerks, had
+become famous for denouncing the open concubinage which desecrated the
+holy office, and violated the solemn vows, of many a proud prelate and
+abbot.
+
+To these two men (both of whom refused the abbacy of Waltham) Harold
+committed the charge of selecting the new brotherhood established
+there.  And the monks of Waltham were honoured as saints throughout
+the neighbouring district, and cited as examples to all the Church.
+
+But though in themselves the new politic arts of Harold seemed
+blameless enough, arts they were, and as such they corrupted the
+genuine simplicity of his earlier nature.  He had conceived for the
+first time an ambition apart from that of service to his country.  It
+was no longer only to serve the land, it was to serve it as its ruler,
+that animated his heart and coloured his thoughts.  Expediencies began
+to dim to his conscience the healthful loveliness of Truth.  And now,
+too, gradually, that empire which Hilda had gained over his brother
+Sweyn began to sway this man, heretofore so strong in his sturdy
+sense.  The future became to him a dazzling mystery, into which his
+conjectures plunged themselves more and more.  He had not yet stood in
+the Runic circle and invoked the dead; but the spells were around his
+heart, and in his own soul had grown up the familiar demon.
+
+Still Edith reigned alone, if not in his thoughts at least in his
+affections; and perhaps it was the hope of conquering all obstacles to
+his marriage that mainly induced him to propitiate the Church, through
+whose agency the object he sought must be attained; and still that
+hope gave the brightest lustre to the distant crown.  But he who
+admits Ambition to the companionship of Love, admits a giant that
+outstrides the gentler footsteps of its comrade.
+
+Harold's brow lost its benign calm.  He became thoughtful and
+abstracted.  He consulted Edith less, Hilda more.  Edith seemed to him
+now not wise enough to counsel.  The smile of his Fylgia, like the
+light of the star upon a stream, lit the surface, but could not pierce
+to the deep.
+
+Meanwhile, however, the policy of Harold throve and prospered.  He had
+already arrived at that height, that the least effort to make power
+popular redoubled its extent.  Gradually all voices swelled the chorus
+in his praise; gradually men became familiar to the question, "If
+Edward dies before Edgar, the grandson of Ironsides, is of age to
+succeed, where can we find a king like Harold?"
+
+In the midst of this quiet but deepening sunshine of his fate, there
+burst a storm, which seemed destined either to darken his day or to
+disperse every cloud from the horizon.  Algar, the only possible rival
+to his power--the only opponent no arts could soften--Algar, whose
+hereditary name endeared him to the Saxon laity, whose father's most
+powerful legacy was the love of the Saxon Church, whose martial and
+turbulent spirit had only the more elevated him in the esteem of the
+warlike Danes in East Anglia (the earldom in which he had succeeded
+Harold), by his father's death, lord of the great principality of
+Mercia--availed himself of that new power to break out again into
+rebellion.  Again he was outlawed, again he leagued with the fiery
+Gryffyth.  All Wales was in revolt; the Marches were invaded and laid
+waste.  Rolf, the feeble Earl of Hereford, died at this critical
+juncture, and the Normans and hirelings under him mutinied against
+other leaders; a fleet of vikings from Norway ravaged the western
+coasts, and sailing up the Menai, joined the ships of Gryffyth, and
+the whole empire seemed menaced with dissolution, when Edward issued
+his Herr-bane, and Harold at the head of the royal armies marched on
+the foe.
+
+Dread and dangerous were those defiles of Wales; amidst them had been
+foiled or slaughtered all the warriors under Rolf the Norman; no Saxon
+armies had won laurels in the Cymrian's own mountain home within the
+memory of man; nor had any Saxon ships borne the palm from the
+terrible vikings of Norway.  Fail, Harold, and farewell the crown!--
+succeed, and thou hast on thy side the ultimam rationem regum (the
+last argument of kings), the heart of the army over which thou art
+chief.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+It was one day in the height of summer that two horsemen rode slowly,
+and conversing with each other in friendly wise, notwithstanding an
+evident difference of rank and of nation, through the lovely country
+which formed the Marches of Wales.  The younger of these men was
+unmistakably a Norman; his cap only partially covered the head, which
+was shaven from the crown to the nape of the neck [152], while in
+front the hair, closely cropped, curled short and thick round a
+haughty but intelligent brow.  His dress fitted close to his shape,
+and was worn without mantle; his leggings were curiously crossed in
+the fashion of a tartan, and on his heels were spurs of gold.  He was
+wholly unarmed; but behind him and his companion, at a little
+distance, his war-horse, completely caparisoned, was led by a single
+squire, mounted on a good Norman steed; while six Saxon theowes,
+themselves on foot, conducted three sumpter-mules, somewhat heavily
+laden, not only with the armour of the Norman knight, but panniers
+containing rich robes, wines, and provender.  At a few paces farther
+behind, marched a troop, light-armed, in tough hides, curiously
+tanned, with axes swung over their shoulders, and bows in their hands.
+
+The companion of the knight was as evidently a Saxon, as the knight
+was unequivocally a Norman.  His square short features, contrasting
+the oval visage and aquiline profile of his close-shaven comrade, were
+half concealed beneath a bushy beard and immense moustache.  His
+tunic, also, was of hide, and, tightened at the waist, fell loose to
+his knee; while a kind of cloak, fastened to the right shoulder by a
+large round button or brooch, flowed behind and in front, but left
+both arms free.  His cap differed in shape from the Norman's, being
+round and full at the sides, somewhat in shape like a turban.  His
+bare, brawny throat was curiously punctured with sundry devices, and a
+verse from the Psalms.
+
+His countenance, though without the high and haughty brow, and the
+acute, observant eye of his comrade, had a pride and intelligence of
+its own--a pride somewhat sullen, and an intelligence somewhat slow.
+
+"My good friend, Sexwolf," quoth the Norman in very tolerable Saxon,
+"I pray you not so to misesteem us.  After all, we Normans are of your
+own race: our fathers spoke the same language as yours."
+
+"That may be," said the Saxon, bluntly, "and so did the Danes, with
+little difference, when they burned our houses and cut our throats."
+
+"Old tales, those," replied the knight, "and I thank thee for the
+comparison; for the Danes, thou seest, are now settled amongst ye,
+peaceful subjects and quiet men, and in a few generations it will be
+hard to guess who comes from Saxon, who from Dane."
+
+"We waste time, talking such matters," returned the Saxon, feeling
+himself instinctively no match in argument for his lettered companion;
+and seeing, with his native strong sense; that some ulterior object,
+though he guessed not what, lay hid in the conciliatory language of
+his companion; "nor do I believe, Master Mallet or Gravel--forgive me
+if I miss of the right forms to address you--that Norman will ever
+love Saxon, or Saxon Norman; so let us cut our words short.  There
+stands the convent, at which you would like to rest and refresh
+yourself."
+
+The Saxon pointed to a low, clumsy building of timber, forlorn and
+decayed, close by a rank marsh, over which swarmed gnats, and all foul
+animalcules.
+
+Mallet de Graville, for it was he, shrugged his shoulders, and said,
+with an air of pity and contempt:
+
+"I would, friend Sexwolf, that thou couldst but see the houses we
+build to God and his saints in our Normandy; fabrics of stately stone,
+on the fairest sites.  Our Countess Matilda hath a notable taste for
+the masonry; and our workmen are the brethren of Lombardy, who know
+all the mysteries thereof."
+
+"I pray thee, Dan-Norman," cried the Saxon, "not to put such ideas
+into the soft head of King Edward.  We pay enow for the Church, though
+built but of timber; saints help us indeed, if it were builded of
+stone!"
+
+The Norman crossed himself, as if he had heard some signal impiety,
+and then said:
+
+"Thou lovest not Mother Church, worthy Sexwolf?"
+
+"I was brought up," replied the sturdy Saxon, "to work and sweat hard,
+and I love not the lazy who devour my substance, and say, 'the saints
+gave it them.'  Knowest thou not, Master Mallet, that one-third of all
+the lands of England is in the hands of the priests?"
+
+"Hem!" said the acute Norman, who, with all his devotion, could stoop
+to wring worldly advantage from each admission of his comrade; "then
+in this merrie England of thine thou hast still thy grievances and
+cause of complaint?"
+
+"Yea indeed, and I trow it," quoth the Saxon, even in that day a
+grumbler; "but I take it, the main difference between thee and me is,
+that I can say what mislikes me out like a man; and it would fare ill
+with thy limbs or thy life if thou wert as frank in the grim land of
+thy heretogh."
+
+"Now, Notre Dame stop thy prating," said the Norman, in high disdain,
+while his brow frowned and his eye sparkled.  "Strong judge and great
+captain as is William the Norman, his barons and knights hold their
+heads high in his presence, and not a grievance weighs on the heart
+that we give not out with the lip."
+
+"So have I heard," said the Saxon, chuckling; "I have heard, indeed,
+that ye thegns, or great men, are free enow, and plainspoken.  But
+what of the commons--the sixhaendmen and the ceorls, master Norman?
+Dare they speak as we speak of king and of law, of thegn and of
+captain?"
+
+The Norman wisely curbed the scornful "No, indeed," that rushed to his
+lips, and said, all sweet and debonnair: "Each land hath its customs,
+dear Sexwolf: and if the Norman were king of England, he would take
+the laws as he finds them, and the ceorls would be as safe with
+William as Edward."
+
+"The Norman king of England!" cried the Saxon, reddening to the tips
+of his great ears, "what dost thou babble of, stranger?  The Norman!--
+How could that ever be?"
+
+"Nay, I did but suggest--but suppose such a case," replied the knight,
+still smothering his wrath.  "And why thinkest thou the conceit so
+outrageous?  Thy King is childless; William is his next of kin, and
+dear to him as a brother; and if Edward did leave him the throne--"
+
+"The throne is for no man to leave," almost roared the Saxon.
+"Thinkest thou the people of England are like cattle and sheep, and
+chattels and theowes, to be left by will, as man fancies?  The King's
+wish has its weight, no doubt, but the Witan hath its yea or its nay,
+and the Witan and Commons are seldom at issue thereon.  Thy duke King
+of England!  Marry!  Ha! ha!"
+
+"Brute!" muttered the knight to himself; then adding aloud, with his
+old tone of irony (now much habitually subdued by years and
+discretion), "Why takest thou so the part of the ceorls? thou a
+captain, and well-nigh a thegn!"
+
+"I was born a ceorl, and my father before me," returned Sexwolf, "and
+I feel with my class; though my grandson may rank with the thegns,
+and, for aught I know, with the earls."
+
+The Sire de Graville involuntarily drew off from the Saxon's side, as
+if made suddenly aware that he had grossly demeaned himself in such
+unwitting familiarity with a ceorl, and a ceorl's son; and he said,
+with a much more careless accent and lofty port than before:
+
+"Good man, thou wert a ceorl, and now thou leadest Earl Harold's men
+to the war!  How is this?  I do not quite comprehend it."
+
+"How shouldst thou, poor Norman?" replied the Saxon, compassionately.
+"The tale is soon told.  Know that when Harold our Earl was banished,
+and his lands taken, we his ceorls helped with his sixhaendman, Clapa,
+to purchase his land, nigh by London, and the house wherein thou didst
+find me, of a stranger, thy countryman, to whom they were lawlessly
+given.  And we tilled the land, we tended the herds, and we kept the
+house till the Earl came back."
+
+"Ye had moneys then, moneys of your own, ye ceorls!" said the Norman,
+avariciously.
+
+"How else could we buy our freedom?  Every ceorl hath some hours to
+himself to employ to his profit, and can lay by for his own ends.
+These savings we gave up for our Earl, and when the Earl came back, he
+gave the sixhaendman hides of land enow to make him a thegn; and he
+gave the ceorls who hade holpen Clapa, their freedom and broad shares
+of his boc-land, and most of them now hold their own ploughs and feed
+their own herds.  But I loved the Earl (having no wife) better than
+swine and glebe, and I prayed him to let me serve him in arms.  And so
+I have risen, as with us ceorls can rise."
+
+"I am answered," said Mallet de Graville, thoughtfully, and still
+somewhat perplexed.  "But these theowes, (they are slaves,) never
+rise.  It cannot matter to them whether shaven Norman or bearded Saxon
+sit on the throne?"
+
+"Thou art right there," answered the Saxon; "it matters as little to
+them as it doth to thy thieves and felons, for many of them are felons
+and thieves, or the children of such; and most of those who are not,
+it is said, are not Saxons, but the barbarous folks whom the Saxons
+subdued.  No, wretched things, and scarce men, they care nought for
+the land.  Howbeit, even they are not without hope, for the Church
+takes their part; and that, at least, I for one think Church-worthy,"
+added the Saxon with a softened eye.  "And every abbot is bound to set
+free three theowes on his lands, and few who own theowes die without
+freeing some by their will; so that the sons of theowes may be thegns,
+and thegns some of them are at this day."
+
+"Marvels!" cried the Norman.  "But surely they bear a stain and
+stigma, and their fellow-thegns flout them?"
+
+"Not a whit--why so? land is land, money money.  Little, I trow, care
+we what a man's father may have been, if the man himself hath his ten
+hides or more of good boc-land."
+
+"Ye value land and the moneys," said the Norman, "so do we, but we
+value more name and birth."
+
+"Ye are still in your leading-strings, Norman," replied the Saxon,
+waxing good-humoured in his contempt.  "We have an old saying and a
+wise one, 'All come from Adam except Tib the ploughman: but when Tib
+grows rich all call him "dear brother."'"
+
+"With such pestilent notions," quoth the Sire de Graville, no longer
+keeping temper, "I do not wonder that our fathers of Norway and
+Daneland beat ye so easily.  The love for things ancient--creed,
+lineage, and name, is better steel against the stranger than your
+smiths ever welded."
+
+Therewith, and not waiting for Sexwolf's reply, he clapped spurs to
+his palfrey, and soon entered the courtyard of the convent.
+
+A monk of the order of St. Benedict, then most in favour [153],
+ushered the noble visitor into the cell of the abbot; who, after
+gazing at him a moment in wonder and delight, clasped him to his
+breast and kissed him heartily on brow and cheek.
+
+"Ah, Guillaume," he exclaimed in the Norman tongue, this is indeed a
+grace for which to sing Jubilate.  Thou canst not guess how welcome is
+the face of a countryman in this horrible land of ill-cooking and
+exile."
+
+"Talking of grace, my dear father, and food," said De Graville,
+loosening the cincture of the tight vest which gave him the shape of a
+wasp--for even at that early period, small waists were in vogue with
+the warlike fops of the French Continent--"talking of grace, the
+sooner thou say'st it over some friendly refection, the more will the
+Latin sound unctuous and musical.  I have journeyed since daybreak,
+and am now hungered and faint."
+
+"Alack, alack!" cried the abbot, plaintively, "thou knowest little, my
+son, what hardships we endure in these parts, how larded our larders,
+and how nefarious our fare.  The flesh of swine salted--"
+
+"The flesh of Beelzebub," cried Mallet de Graville, aghast. "But
+comfort thee, I have stores on my sumpter-mules--poulardes and fishes,
+and other not despicable comestibles, and a few flasks of wine, not
+pressed, laud the saints! from the vines of this country: wherefore,
+wilt thou see to it, and instruct thy cooks how to season the cheer?"
+
+"No cooks have I to trust to," replied the abbot; "of cooking know
+they here as much as of Latin; nathless, I will go and do my best with
+the stew-pans.  Meanwhile, thou wilt at least have rest and the bath.
+For the Saxons, even in their convents, are a clean race, and learned
+the bath from the Dane."
+
+"That I have noted," said the knight, "for even at the smallest house
+at which I lodged in my way from London, the host hath courteously
+offered me the bath, and the hostess linen curious and fragrant; and
+to say truth, the poor people are hospitable and kind, despite their
+uncouth hate of the foreigner; nor is their meat to be despised,
+plentiful and succulent; but pardex, as thou sayest, little helped by
+the art of dressing.  Wherefore, my father, I will while the time till
+the poulardes be roasted, and the fish broiled or stewed, by the
+ablutions thou profferest me.  I shall tarry with thee some hours, for
+I have much to learn."
+
+The abbot then led the Sire de Graville by the hand to the cell of
+honour and guestship, and having seen that the bath prepared was of
+warmth sufficient, for both Norman and Saxon (hardy men as they seem
+to us from afar) so shuddered at the touch of cold water, that a bath
+of natural temperature (as well as a hard bed) was sometimes imposed
+as a penance,--the good father went his way, to examine the sumpter-
+mules, and admonish the much suffering and bewildered lay-brother who
+officiated as cook,--and who, speaking neither Norman nor Latin,
+scarce made out one word in ten of his superior's elaborate
+exhortations.
+
+Mallet's squire, with a change of raiment, and goodly coffers of
+soaps, unguents, and odours, took his way to the knight, for a Norman
+of birth was accustomed to much personal attendance, and had all
+respect for the body; and it was nearly an hour before, in long gown
+of fur, reshaven, dainty, and decked, the Sire de Graville bowed, and
+sighed, and prayed before the refection set out in the abbot's cell.
+
+The two Normans, despite the sharp appetite of the layman, ate with
+great gravity and decorum, drawing forth the morsels served to them on
+spits with silent examination; seldom more than tasting, with looks of
+patient dissatisfaction, each of the comestibles; sipping rather than
+drinking, nibbling rather than devouring, washing their fingers in
+rose water with nice care at the close, and waving them afterwards
+gracefully in the air, to allow the moisture somewhat to exhale before
+they wiped off the lingering dews with their napkins.  Then they
+exchanged looks and sighed in concert, as if recalling the polished
+manners of Normandy, still retained in that desolate exile.  And their
+temperate meal thus concluded, dishes, wines, and attendants vanished,
+and their talk commenced.
+
+"How camest thou in England?" asked the abbot abruptly.
+
+"Sauf your reverence," answered De Graville, "not wholly for reason
+different from those that bring thee hither.  When, after the death of
+that truculent and orgulous Godwin, King Edward entreated Harold to
+let him have back some of his dear Norman favourites, thou, then
+little pleased with the plain fare and sharp discipline of the convent
+of Bec, didst pray Bishop William of London to accompany such train as
+Harold, moved by his poor king's supplication, was pleased to permit.
+The bishop consented, and thou wert enabled to change monk's cowl for
+abbot's mitre.  In a word, ambition brought thee to England, and
+ambition brings me hither."
+
+"Hem! and how?  Mayst thou thrive better than I in this swine-sty!"
+
+"You remember," renewed De Graville, "that Lanfranc, the Lombard, was
+pleased to take interest in my fortunes, then not the most
+flourishing, and after his return from Rome, with the Pope's
+dispensation for Count William's marriage with his cousin, he became
+William's most trusted adviser.  Both William and Lanfranc were
+desirous to set an example of learning to our Latinless nobles, and
+therefore my scholarship found grace in their eyes.  In brief since
+then I have prospered and thriven.  I have fair lands by the Seine,
+free from clutch of merchant and Jew.  I have founded a convent, and
+slain some hundreds of Breton marauders.  Need I say that I am in high
+favour?  Now it so chanced that a cousin of mine, Hugo de Magnaville,
+a brave lance and franc-rider, chanced to murder his brother in a
+little domestic affray, and, being of conscience tender and nice, the
+deed preyed on him, and he gave his lands to Odo of Bayeux, and set
+off to Jerusalem.  There, having prayed at the tomb," (the knight
+crossed himself,) "he felt at once miraculously cheered and relieved;
+but, journeying back, mishaps befell him.  He was made slave by some
+infidel, to one of whose wives he sought to be gallant, par amours,
+and only escaped at last by setting fire to paynim and prison.  Now,
+by the aid of the Virgin, he has got back to Rouen, and holds his own
+land again in fief from proud Odo, as a knight of the bishop's.  It so
+happened that, passing homeward through Lycia, before these
+misfortunes befell him, he made friends with a fellow-pilgrim who had
+just returned, like himself, from the Sepulchre, but not lightened,
+like him, of the load of his crime.  This poor palmer lay broken-
+hearted and dying in the hut of an eremite, where my cousin took
+shelter; and, learning that Hugo was on his way to Normandy, he made
+himself known as Sweyn, the once fair and proud Earl of England,
+eldest son to old Godwin, and father to Haco, whom our Count still
+holds as a hostage.  He besought Hugo to intercede with the Count for
+Haco's release and return, if King Edward assented thereto; and
+charged my cousin, moreover, with a letter to Harold, his brother,
+which Hugo undertook to send over.  By good luck, it so chanced that,
+through all his sore trials, cousin Hugo kept safe round his neck a
+leaden effigy of the Virgin.  The infidels disdained to rob him of
+lead, little dreaming the worth which the sanctity gave to the metal.
+To the back of the image Hugo fastened the letter, and so, though
+somewhat tattered and damaged, he had it still with him on arriving in
+Rouen."
+
+"Knowing, then, my grace with the Count, and not, despite absolution
+and pilgrimage, much wishing to trust himself in the presence of
+William, who thinks gravely of fratricide, he prayed me to deliver the
+message, and ask leave to send to England the letter."
+
+"It is a long tale," quoth the abbot.
+
+"Patience, my father!  I am nearly at the end.  Nothing more in season
+could chance for my fortunes.  Know that William has been long moody
+and anxious as to matters in England.  The secret accounts he receives
+from the Bishop of London make him see that Edward's heart is much
+alienated from him, especially since the Count has had daughters and
+sons; for, as thou knowest, William and Edward both took vows of
+chastity in youth [154], and William got absolved from his, while
+Edward hath kept firm to the plight.  Not long ere my cousin came
+back, William had heard that Edward had acknowledged his kinsman as
+natural heir to his throne.  Grieved and troubled at this, William had
+said in my hearing, 'Would that amidst yon statues of steel, there
+were some cool head and wise tongue I could trust with my interests in
+England! and would that I could devise fitting plea and excuse for an
+envoy to Harold the Earl!'  Much had I mused over these words, and a
+light-hearted man was Mallet de Graville when, with Sweyn's letter in
+hand, he went to Lanfranc the abbot and said, 'Patron and father! thou
+knowest that I, almost alone of the Norman knights, have studied the
+Saxon language.  And if the Duke wants messenger and plea, here stands
+the messenger, and in his hand is the plea.  Then I told my tale.
+Lanfranc went at once to Duke William.  By this time, news of the
+Atheling's death had arrived, and things looked more bright to my
+liege.  Duke William was pleased to summon me straightway, and give me
+his instructions.  So over the sea I came alone, save a single squire,
+reached London, learned the King and his court were at Winchester (but
+with them I had little to do), and that Harold the Earl was at the
+head of his forces in Wales against Gryffyth the Lion King.  The Earl
+had sent in haste for a picked and chosen band of his own retainers,
+on his demesnes near the city.  These I joined, and learning thy name
+at the monastery at Gloucester, I stopped here to tell thee my news
+and hear thine."
+
+"Dear brother," said the abbot, looking enviously on the knight,
+"would that, like thee, instead of entering the Church, I had taken up
+arms!  Alike once was our lot, well born and penniless.  Ah me!--Thou
+art now as the swan on the river, and I as the shell on the rock."
+
+"But," quoth the knight, "though the canons, it is true, forbid monks
+to knock people on the head, except in self-preservation, thou knowest
+well that, even in Normandy, (which, I take it, is the sacred college
+of all priestly lore, on this side the Alps,) those canons are deemed
+too rigorous for practice: and, at all events, it is not forbidden
+thee to look on the pastime with sword or mace by thy side in case of
+need.  Wherefore, remembering thee in times past, I little counted on
+finding thee--like a slug in thy cell!  No; but with mail on thy back,
+the canons clean forgotten, and helping stout Harold to sliver and
+brain these turbulent Welchmen."
+
+"Ah me! ah me!  No such good fortune!" sighed the tall abbot.
+"Little, despite thy former sojourn in London, and thy lore of their
+tongue, knowest thou of these unmannerly Saxons.  Rarely indeed do
+abbot and prelate ride to the battle [155]; and were it not for a huge
+Danish monk, who took refuge here to escape mutilation for robbery,
+and who mistakes the Virgin for a Valkyr, and St. Peter for Thor,--
+were it not, I say, that we now and then have a bout at sword-play
+together, my arm would be quite out of practice."
+
+"Cheer thee, old friend," said the knight, pityingly, "better times
+may come yet.  Meanwhile, now to affairs.  For all I hear strengthens
+all William has heard, that Harold the Earl is the first man in
+England.  Is it not so?"
+
+"Truly, and without dispute."
+
+"Is he married, or celibate?  For that is a question which even his
+own men seem to answer equivocally."
+
+"Why, all the wandering minstrels have songs, I am told by those who
+comprehend this poor barbarous tongue, of the beauty of Editha
+pulchra, to whom it is said the Earl is betrothed, or it may be worse.
+But he is certainly not married, for the dame is akin to him within
+the degrees of the Church."
+
+"Hem, not married! that is well; and this Algar, or Elgar, he is not
+now with the Welch, I hear."
+
+"No; sore ill at Chester with wounds and much chafing, for he hath
+sense to see that his cause is lost.  The Norwegian fleet have been
+scattered over the seas by the Earl's ships, like birds in a storm.
+The rebel Saxons who joined Gryffyth under Algar have been so beaten,
+that those who survive have deserted their chief, and Gryffyth himself
+is penned up in his last defiles, and cannot much longer resist the
+stout foe, who, by valorous St. Michael, is truly a great captain.  As
+soon as Gryffyth is subdued, Algar will be crushed in his retreat,
+like a bloated spider in his web; and then England will have rest,
+unless our liege, as thou hintest, set her to work again."
+
+The Norman knight mused a few moments, before he said:
+
+"I understand, then, that there is no man in the land who is peer to
+Harold:--not, I suppose, Tostig his brother?"
+
+"Not Tostig, surely, whom nought but Harold's repute keeps a day in
+his earldom.  But of late--for he is brave and skilful in war--he hath
+done much to command the respect, though he cannot win back the love,
+of his fierce Northumbrians, for he hath holpen the Earl gallantly in
+this invasion of Wales, both by sea and by land.  But Tostig shines
+only from his brother's light; and if Gurth were more ambitious, Gurth
+alone could be Harold's rival."
+
+The Norman, much satisfied with the information thus gleaned from the
+abbot, who, despite his ignorance of the Saxon tongue, was, like all
+his countrymen, acute and curious, now rose to depart.  The abbot,
+detaining him a few moments, and looking at him wistfully, said, in a
+low voice:
+
+"What thinkest thou are Count William's chances of England?"
+
+"Good, if he have recourse to stratagem; sure, if he can win Harold."
+
+"Yet, take my word, the English love not the Normans, and will fight
+stiffly."
+
+"That I believe.  But if fighting must be, I see that it will be the
+fight of a single battle, for there is neither fortress nor mountain
+to admit of long warfare.  And look you, my friend, everything here is
+worn out!  The royal line is extinct with Edward, save in a child,
+whom I hear no man name as a successor; the old nobility are gone,
+there is no reverence for old names; the Church is as decrepit in the
+spirit as thy lath monastery is decayed in its timbers; the martial
+spirit of the Saxon is half rotted away in the subjugation to a
+clergy, not brave and learned, but timid and ignorant; the desire for
+money eats up all manhood; the people have been accustomed to foreign
+monarchs under the Danes; and William, once victor, would have but to
+promise to retain the old laws and liberties, to establish himself as
+firmly as Canute.  The Anglo-Danes might trouble him somewhat, but
+rebellion would become a weapon in the hands of a schemer like
+William.  He would bristle all the land with castles and forts, and
+hold it as a camp.  My poor friend, we shall live yet to exchange
+gratulations,--thou prelate of some fair English see, and I baron of
+broad English lands."
+
+"I think thou art right," said the tall abbot, cheerily, and marry,
+when the day comes, I will at least fight for the Duke.  Yea--thou art
+right," he continued, looking round the dilapidated walls of the cell;
+"all here is worn out, and naught can restore the realm, save the
+Norman William, or----"
+
+"Or who?"
+
+"Or the Saxon Harold.  But thou goest to see him--judge for thyself."
+
+"I will do so, and heedfully," said the Sire de Graville; and
+embracing his friend he renewed his journey.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+Messire Mallet de Graville possessed in perfection that cunning
+astuteness which characterised the Normans, as it did all the old
+pirate races of the Baltic; and if, O reader, thou, peradveuture,
+shouldst ever in this remote day have dealings with the tall men of
+Ebor or Yorkshire, there wilt thou yet find the old Dane-father's wit
+--it may be to thy cost--more especially if treating for those animals
+which the ancestors ate, and which the sons, without eating, still
+manage to fatten on.
+
+But though the crafty knight did his best, during his progress from
+London into Wales, to extract from Sexwolf all such particulars
+respecting Harold and his brethren as he had reasons for wishing to
+learn, he found the stubborn sagacity or caution of the Saxon more
+than a match for him.  Sexwolf had a dog's instinct in all that
+related to his master; and he felt, though he scarce knew why, that
+the Norman cloaked some design upon Harold in all the cross-
+questionings so carelessly ventured.  And his stiff silence, or bluff
+replies, when Harold was mentioned, contrasted much the unreserve of
+his talk when it turned upon the general topics of the day, or the
+peculiarities of Saxon manners.
+
+By degrees, therefore, the knight, chafed and foiled, drew into
+himself; and seeing no farther use could be made of the Saxon,
+suffered his own national scorn of villein companionship to replace
+his artificial urbanity.  He therefore rode alone, and a little in
+advance of the rest, noticing with a soldier's eye the characteristics
+of the country, and marvelling, while he rejoiced, at the
+insignificance of the defences which, even on the Marches, guarded the
+English country from the Cymrian ravager [156].  In musings of no very
+auspicious and friendly nature towards the land he thus visited, the
+Norman, on the second day from that in which he had conversed with the
+abbot, found himself amongst the savage defiles of North Wales.
+
+Pausing there in a narrow pass overhung with wild and desolate rocks,
+the knight deliberately summoned his squires, clad himself in his ring
+mail, and mounted his great destrier.
+
+"Thou dost wrong, Norman," said Sexwolf, "thou fatiguest thyself in
+vain--heavy arms here are needless.  I have fought in this country
+before: and as for thy steed, thou wilt soon have to forsake it, and
+march on foot."
+
+"Know, friend," retorted the knight, "that I come not here to learn
+the horn-book of war; and for the rest, know also, that a noble of
+Normandy parts with his life ere he forsakes his good steed."
+
+"Ye outlanders and Frenchmen," said Sexwolf, showing the whole of his
+teeth through his forest of beard, "love boast and big talk; and, on
+my troth, thou mayest have thy belly full of them yet; for we are
+still in the track of Harold, and Harold never leaves behind him a
+foe.  Thou art as safe here, as if singing psalms in a convent."
+
+"For thy jests, let them pass, courteous sir," said the Norman; "but I
+pray thee only not to call me Frenchman [157].  I impute it to thy
+ignorance in things comely and martial, and not to thy design to
+insult me.  Though my own mother was French, learn that a Norman
+despises a Frank only less than he doth a Jew."
+
+"Crave your grace," said the Saxon, "but I thought all ye outlanders
+were the same, rib and rib, sibbe and sibbe."
+
+"Thou wilt know better, one of these days.  March on, master Sexwolf."
+
+The pass gradually opened on a wide patch of rugged and herbless
+waste; and Sexwolf, riding up to the knight, directed his attention to
+a stone, on which was inscribed the words, "Hic victor fuit
+Haroldus,"--Here Harold conquered.
+
+"In sight of a stone like that, no Walloon dare come," said the Saxon.
+
+"A simple and classical trophy," remarked the Norman, complacently,
+"and saith much.  I am glad to see thy lord knows the Latin."
+
+"I say not that he knows Latin," replied the prudent Saxon; fearing
+that that could be no wholesome information on his lord's part, which
+was of a kind to give gladness to the Norman--"Ride on while the road
+lets ye--in God's name."
+
+On the confines of Caernarvonshire, the troop halted at a small
+village, round which had been newly dug a deep military-trench.
+bristling with palisades, and within its confines might be seen,--some
+reclined on the grass, some at dice, some drinking,--many men, whose
+garbs of tanned hide, as well as a pennon waving from a little mound
+in the midst, bearing the tiger heads of Earl Harold's insignia,
+showed them to be Saxons.
+
+"Here we shall learn," said Sexwolf, "what the Earl is about--and
+here, at present, ends my journey."
+
+"Are these the Earl's headquarters, then?--no castle, even of wood--no
+wall, nought but ditch and palisades?" asked Mallet de Graville in a
+tone between surprise and contempt.
+
+"Norman," said Sexwolf, "the castle is there, though you see it not,
+and so are the walls.  The castle is Harold's name, which no Walloon
+will dare to confront; and the walls are the heaps of the slain which
+lie in every valley around."  So saying, he wound his horn, which was
+speedily answered, and led the way over a plank which admitted across
+the trench.
+
+"Not even a drawbridge!" groaned the knight.
+
+Sexwolf exchanged a few words with one who seemed the head of the
+small garrison, and then regaining the Norman, said: "The Earl and his
+men have advanced into the mountainous regions of Snowdon; and there,
+it is said, the blood-lusting Gryffyth is at length driven to bay.
+Harold hath left orders that, after as brief a refreshment as may be,
+I and my men, taking the guide he hath left for us, join him on foot.
+There may now be danger: for though Gryffyth himself may be pinned to
+his heights, he may have met some friends in these parts to start up
+from crag and combe.  The way on horse is impassable: wherefore,
+master Norman, as our quarrel is not thine nor thine our lord, I
+commend thee to halt here in peace and in safety, with the sick and
+the prisoners."
+
+"It is a merry companionship, doubtless," said the Norman; "but one
+travels to learn, and I would fain see somewhat of thine uncivil
+skirmishings with these men of the mountains; wherefore, as I fear my
+poor mules are light of the provender, give me to eat and to drink.
+And then shalt thou see, should we come in sight of the enemy, if a
+Norman's big words are the sauce of small deeds."
+
+"Well spoken, and better than I reckoned on," said Sexwolf, heartily.
+
+While De Graville, alighting, sauntered about the village, the rest of
+the troop exchanged greetings with their countrymen.  It was, even to
+the warrior's eye, a mournful scene.  Here and there, heaps of ashes
+and ruin-houses riddled and burned--the small, humble church,
+untouched indeed by war, but looking desolate and forlorn--with sheep
+grazing on large recent mounds thrown over the brave dead, who slept
+in the ancestral spot they had defended.
+
+The air was fragrant with spicy smells of the gale or bog myrtle; and
+the village lay sequestered in a scene wild indeed and savage, but
+prodigal of a stern beauty to which the Norman, poet by race, and
+scholar by culture, was not insensible.  Seating himself on a rude
+stone, apart from all the warlike and murmuring groups, he looked
+forth on the dim and vast mountain peaks, and the rivulet that rushed
+below, intersecting the village, and lost amidst copses of mountain
+ash.  From these more refined contemplations he was roused by Sexwolf,
+who, with greater courtesy than was habitual to him, accompanied the
+theowes who brought the knight a repast, consisting of cheese, and
+small pieces of seethed kid, with a large horn of very indifferent
+mead.
+
+"The Earl puts all his men on Welch diet," said the captain,
+apologetically.  "For indeed, in this lengthy warfare, nought else is
+to be had!"
+
+The knight curiously inspected the cheese, and bent earnestly over the
+kid.
+
+"It sufficeth, good Sexwolf," said he, suppressing a natural sigh.
+"But instead of this honey-drink, which is more fit for bees than for
+men, get me a draught of fresh water: water is your only safe drink
+before fighting."
+
+"Thou hast never drank ale, then!" said the Saxon; "but thy foreign
+tastes shall be heeded, strange man."
+
+A little after noon, the horns were sounded, and the troop prepared to
+depart.  But the Norman observed that they had left behind all their
+horses: and his squire, approaching, informed him that Sexwolf had
+positively forbidden the knight's steed to be brought forth.
+
+"Was it ever heard before," cried Sire Mallet de Graville, "that a
+Norman knight was expected to walk, and to walk against a foe too!
+Call hither the villein,--that is, the captain."
+
+But Sexwolf himself here appeared, and to him De Graville addressed
+his indignant remonstrance.  The Saxon stood firm, and to each
+argument replied simply, "It is the Earl's orders;" and finally wound
+up with a bluff--"Go or let alone: stay here with thy horse, or march
+with us on thy feet."
+
+"My horse is a gentleman," answered the knight, "and, as such, would
+be my more fitting companion.  But as it is, I yield to compulsion--I
+bid thee solemnly observe, by compulsion; so that it may never be said
+of William Mallet de Graville, that he walked, bon gre, to battle."
+With that, he loosened his sword in the sheath, and, still retaining
+his ring mail, fitting close as a shirt, strode on with the rest.
+
+A Welch guide, subject to one of the Underkings (who was in allegiance
+to England, and animated, as many of those petty chiefs were, with a
+vindictive jealousy against the rival tribe of Gryffyth, far more
+intense than his dislike of the Saxon), led the way.
+
+The road wound for some time along the course of the river Conway;
+Penmaen-mawr loomed before them.  Not a human being came in sight, not
+a goat was seen on the distant ridges, not a sheep on the pastures.
+The solitude in the glare of the broad August sun was oppressive.
+Some houses they passed--if buildings of rough stones, containing but
+a single room, can be called houses--but they were deserted.
+Desolation preceded their way, for they were on the track of Harold
+the Victor.  At length, they passed the cold Conovium, now Caer-hen,
+lying low near the river.  There were still (not as we now scarcely
+discern them, after centuries of havoc,) the mighty ruins of the
+Romans,--vast shattered walls, a tower half demolished, visible
+remnants of gigantic baths, and, proudly rising near the present ferry
+of Tal-y-Cafn, the fortress, almost unmutilated, of Castell-y-Bryn.
+On the castle waved the pennon of Harold.  Many large flat-bottomed
+boats were moored to the river-side, and the whole place bristled with
+spears and javelins.
+
+Much comforted, (for,--though he disdained to murmur, and rather than
+forego his mail, would have died therein a martyr,--Mallet de Graville
+was mightily wearied by the weight of his steel,) and hoping now to
+see Harold himself, the knight sprang forward with a spasmodic effort
+at liveliness, and found himself in the midst of a group, among whom
+he recognised at a glance his old acquaintance, Godrith.  Doffing his
+helm with its long nose-piece, he caught the thegn's hand, and
+exclaimed:
+
+"Well met, ventre de Guillaume! well met, O Godree the debonnair!
+Thou rememberest Mallet de Graville, and in this unseemly guise, on
+foot, and with villeins, sweating under the eyes of plebeian Phoebus,
+thou beholdest that much-suffering man!"
+
+"Welcome indeed," returned Godrith, with some embarrassment; "but how
+camest thou hither, and whom seekest thou?"
+
+"Harold, thy Count, man--and I trust he is here."
+
+"Not so, but not far distant--at a place by the mouth of the river
+called Caer Gyffin [158].  Thou shalt take boat, and be there ere the
+sunset."
+
+"Is a battle at hand?  Yon churl disappointed and tricked me; he
+promised me danger, and not a soul have we met."
+
+"Harold's besom sweeps clean," answered Godrith, smiling.  "But thou
+art like, perhaps, to be in at the death.  We have driven this Welch
+lion to bay at last. He is ours, or grim Famine's.  Look yonder;" and
+Godrith pointed to the heights of Penmaen-mawr.  "Even at this
+distance, you may yet descry something grey and dim against the sky."
+
+"Deemest thou my eye so ill practised in siege, as not to see towers?
+Tall and massive they are, though they seem here as airy as roasts,
+and as dwarfish as landmarks."
+
+"On that hill-top, and in those towers, is Gryffyth, the Welch king,
+with the last of his force.  He cannot escape us; our ships guard all
+the coasts of the shore; our troops, as here, surround every pass.
+Spies, night and day, keep watch.  The Welch moels (or beacon-rocks)
+are manned by our warders.  And, were the Welch King to descend,
+signals would blaze from post to post, and gird him with fire and
+sword.  From land to land, from hill to hill, from Hereford to
+Caerleon, from Caerleon to Milford, from Milford to Snowdon, through
+Snowdon to yonder fort, built, they say, by the fiends or the giants,
+--through defile and through forest, over rock, through morass, we have
+pressed on his heels.  Battle and foray alike have drawn the blood
+from his heart; and thou wilt have seen the drops yet red on the way,
+where the stone tells that Harold was victor."
+
+"A brave man and true king, then, this Gryffyth," said the Norman,
+with some admiration; "but," he added in a colder tone, "I confess,
+for my own part, that though I pity the valiant man beaten, I honour
+the brave man who wins; and though I have seen but little of this
+rough land as yet, I can well judge from what I have seen, that no
+captain, not of patience unwearied, and skill most consummate, could
+conquer a bold enemy in a country where every rock is a fort."
+
+"So I fear," answered Godrith, "that thy countryman Rolf found; for
+the Welch beat him sadly, and the reason was plain.  He insisted on
+using horses where no horses could climb, and attiring men in full
+armour to fight against men light and nimble as swallows, that skim
+the earth, then are lost in clouds.  Harold, more wise, turned our
+Saxons into Welchmen, flying as they flew, climbing where they
+climbed; it has been as a war of the birds.  And now there rests but
+the eagle, in his last lonely eyrie."
+
+"Thy battles have improved thy eloquence much, Messire Godree," said
+the Norman, condescendingly.  "Nevertheless, I cannot but think a few
+light horse----"
+
+"Could scale yon mountain-brow?" said Godrith, laughing, and pointing
+to Penmaen-mawr.
+
+The Norman looked and was silent, though he thought to himself, "That
+Sexwolf was no such dolt after all!"
+
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HAROLD, BY LYTTON, BOOK 6 ***
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