Alfgar the Dane or the Second Chronicle of Aescendune<br />A Tale of the Days of Edmund Ironside, A. D. Crake [best romance books of all time TXT] 📗

"There wave on wave of bitter woe Overwhelms the parricide."

The king started from his seat. He was about to launch his battle-axe through the air in search of the daring minstrel, when the same dread expression of unutterable agony we have before mentioned passed over his face; he trembled as an aspen, and sank, as one paralysed, into his chair, while his glaring eyes seemed to behold some horrid apparition unseen by all beside. The warriors now turned in their wrath to seek the daring or unfortunate minstrel, but he was gone.

Alfgar had seen the apostate in his moment of retributive agony, and he shuddered.

"Better death, far better," he murmured, "than a fate like this. God keep me firm to Him."

The king had by this time recovered his usual composure, but his rage and fury were the more awful that the outbreak was suppressed.

"Sit down, my warriors, disturb not the feast. What if your king has been insulted in his own banquet hall? there are hands enow to avenge him without unseemly tumult. Let us drink like the heroes in Valhalla. Meanwhile let the minstrel be sought and brought before us, and he shall make us sport in a different mode."

The "rista oern" whispered one in his ear.

The ferocious king nodded, and his eyes sparkled with the expected gratification of his fierce cruelty. Meanwhile warriors were searching all the precincts of the camp for the destined victim.

Nearly half-an-hour had passed, and the king was getting impatient, for nearly all the chieftains were getting too drunk to appreciate the spectacle he designed for them.

"Why do the men delay?" he cried; "let them bring in the minstrel."

Still he came not; and at length the searchers were forced, one after the other, to confess their failure.

"It is well," said the king; "but it was the insult of a Christian, and shall be washed out in Christian blood. Anlaf, produce thy son."

"Nay, nay, not now," cried Sidroc and others, for they saw that Sweyn was already drunk, and consideration for Anlaf made them interfere. "Not now; tomorrow, tomorrow."

"Nay, tonight, tonight."

"Drink first, then, and drown care," said Sidroc, and gave the brutal tyrant a bowl of rich mead.

He drank, drank until it was empty, then fell back and reposed with an idiotic smile superseding the ferocious expression his face had so lately worn. Meanwhile a hand was laid upon Alfgar's shoulder, and a keen bright eye met his own, as if to read his inmost thoughts.

"Come with me, or my father will disgrace himself."

It was Canute.

He led Alfgar forth into the courtyard.

"Thou dost not seem to fear death," said the boy prince.

"It would be welcome now."

"So some of our people sometimes say, but the motive is different; tell me what is the secret of this Christianity?"

Just then Sidroc and Anlaf came out from the hall and saw the two together. Sidroc seemed annoyed, and led the young prince away, while Anlaf seized the opportunity to whisper to his son:

"My son, I can do no more for thee; I see thou wilt persist in thine obstinacy. I release thee from thy promise given to me; escape if thou canst, or die in the attempt; but bring not my grey hairs to contempt on the morrow."

At this moment, Sidroc having seen Canute to the royal quarters, returned.

"Sidroc," said Anlaf, "I cannot any longer be the jailor of my unhappy and rebellious son. Let him be confined till the morrow. I shall ask leave of absence from Sweyn, and now I deliver Alfgar to your care."

"I accept the charge," said Sidroc; "follow me, Alfgar, son of Anlaf."

Alfgar followed passively. He could not help looking as if to take leave of his father; but Anlaf stood as mute and passionless as a statue. Sidroc reached a party of the guard, and bade them confine the prisoner in the dungeon beneath the ruined eastern tower.

"Listen to my last words, thou recreant boy; Sweyn will send for thee early in the morning before the assembled host; it will be the day of St. Brice; and even were he not now mad with rage, there would be no mercy for a Christian on that day. Thou must yield, or die by the severest torture, compared with which the death of thy late companion under the archers' shafts was merciful. Be warned!"

CHAPTER XI. THE GLEEMAN.

It was a low dungeon, built of that brick which we still recognise as of Roman manufacture, in the foundations of what had been the eastern tower of the ancient fortification. The old pile had been badly preserved by the Saxon conquerors, but it had been built of that solid architecture which seems almost to defy the assaults of time, and which in some cases, after fifteen centuries, preserves all its characteristics, and promises yet to preserve them, when our frailer erections lie crumbled in the dust.

The roof was semicircular, and composed of minute bricks, seeming to form one solid mass; the floor of tiling, arranged in patterns, which could still be obscurely traced by the light of the lamp left by the charity of Sidroc to the prisoner; for the dungeon was of bad reputation; lights had been seen there at unearthly hours, when the outer door was fast and no inmate existed.

There were two long narrow windows at the end, unbarred, for they were too small for the human body to pass through them; they looked upon the valley and, river beneath, for although the dungeon was below the level of the courtyard, it was above that of the neighbourhood.

The prisoner strode up and down the limited area, wrestling with self, bending the will by prayer to submit to ignominy and pain, for he knew now that his father had abandoned him, and that he had to apprehend the worst; still he did not regret the choice he had made, and he felt, as he prayed, peace and confidence descend like heavenly dew upon his soul. Mechanically he cast his eyes around the cell, and tried to trace out the pattern of the flooring, when he saw that the central figure, around which the circles and squares converged, was justice, with the scales, and the motto, "Fiat justitia." He knew the meaning of the words, for Father Cuthbert had taught him some Latin, and the conviction flashed upon him that, sooner or later, all the wrong and evil about him would be righted by the power of a judge as omnipotent as unerring. And this thought made him the more reconciled to the apparent injustice of which he was the victim, and he prayed for his father, that God would enlighten him with the true light.

"Perhaps before he dies he may yet think of me without shame."

For the shame which he unwillingly brought upon a father who was stern, yet not unkind or void of parental love, was the bitterest ingredient in the cup.

And so the hours rolled on, which brought the dreaded morn nearer and nearer; and the victim, comforted by prayer, but without hope in this world, slept, and thought no longer of the torturer's knife, or felt the cruel anticipations which would rack the waiting mind.

And while he slept he was wakened, yet but partly wakened, by a voice which seemed to belong to the borderland 'twixt sleep and waking.

"Alfgar, son of Anlaf, sleepest thou?"

"Surely I dream," thought he, and strove to sleep again.

"Alfgar, son of Anlaf, sleepest thou?"

Now he sat up, and beheld, or thought he beheld, a figure of one clothed in the attire of a minstrel, in the centre of the chamber.

"Art thou yet in the flesh like me?" he cried, repressing a shudder.

"Even so, a being of like mould, subject to pain and death."

"A prisoner, then; art doomed to die?"

"No prisoner, neither art thou, if thou willest to escape."

"Thou art the gleeman who insulted Sweyn."

"Nay, who told the brutal tyrant the truth."

"And what doest thou here?"

"I am come to deliver thee."

"But how?"

"Rise up, cast on your garments."

Hardly knowing what he did, Alfgar obeyed, and when he stood face to face with the stranger, began to lose the uneasy impression that the being who addressed him was otherwise than mortal; for he saw by the light of the lamp that the gleeman bore all the attributes of a living man.

"How came you here?"

"Because I know the secrets of the prison house--knew them before the Danes had murdered the once happy dwellers in this garden of England, which they have made a howling wilderness; hence I escaped the wrath of the furious parricide, whom the saints destroy, with ease, and laughed in security at their vain efforts to take me; but we must waste no time; it yet wants five hours to daybreak; within those five hours we must reach the opposite shore."

"But tell me, I cannot understand, why hast thou braved the wrath of Sweyn? why hast thou cared for me?"

"All in good time, follow me now, I bid thee by the memory of Aescendune."

"Aescendune! surely I dream."

"Yes, of Aescendune. I have heard that thou art thence. Now waste no more time."

More and more mystified, for he had never to his knowledge seen the speaker before, Alfgar gazed at the gleeman.

He appeared of noble air and mien, but was evidently but a young man; he was somewhat above the average height, and looked as though he could wield the sword as well as the harp. But how were they to escape?

Alfgar was not left long in doubt. The stranger took up the lamp and walked to the farthest recess of the dungeon, where, concealed amongst the rude carvings with which the builders had ornamented the wall, was a rose carved in stone. The gleeman pressed it sharply, and a hidden door sprang open, revealing a winding staircase excavated in the solid wall.

"Upwards it leads to the banqueting hall, and you can comprehend my escape this evening," said he; "but our path is now downwards, unless you would like to go up and see the drunken beasts of murderers snoring off their debauch upon the floor as they fell; oh, that it were lawful for a Christian man to cut their throats as they lie; many innocent lives would be saved thereby, which those brutes will live to destroy."

"Thou art, then, a Christian?"

The gleeman crossed himself piously.

"Why not?" said he.

"I heard you sing like a scald tonight."

"It was my part, and I acted it passing well, did I not? Sweyn would own as much; but, pardon me, I am forgetting that my daring put you in danger."

"How did you know that?"

"I heard every word; and perhaps I might even have risked more than this to save you."

Meanwhile they had descended nearly a hundred steps, and the atmosphere became singularly cold and charnel-like, when they entered a large vault, which, by the light of their torches, appeared of great extent. Its walls were covered with uncouth representations, and inscriptions in Latin.

"What place is this?"

"It had some connection, I believe, with the old idolatry, and that is all I know. This passage will guide us to daylight and liberty."

Following a short and narrow passage, they emerged upon a ruined vault, whose roof had fallen in. Climbing out with some difficulty, and disturbing in the process hundreds of bat-mice and not a few rats, they found themselves in the midst of some old ruins at the foot of the acclivity whereon the fortress was built, and below them the brook ran rapidly to join the river.

"Thanks be to God for our preservation in that den of unclean lions!" said the gleeman; "but had they known who was amongst them, he would have had scant chance of escape."

"May I not know?"

"Not yet. Come, we must waste no more time."

They walked swiftly down the brook. No sentinels were posted in this direction, nor was any lookout kept.

"The danger is yet to come," said the gleeman, in a low tone.

Shortly they reached the river, and then they found a boat hidden in the rushes, which grew tall and strong. They embarked, and Alfgar steered, by the other's direction, straight down the stream, while he rowed for full an hour with remarkable strength and dexterity, so that they drew near the coast, and the cold air from the sea blew in Alfgar's face.

Here the gleeman ceased rowing, and spoke to him in a low tone.

"Do you see those dark figures ahead?"

"I do."

"Well, they are the Danish war ships, and our hour of peril draws near. We must