"How pale thou art and thin, my sweet," said Ralph, reproaching himself more and more bitterly that he had left her to struggle alone.
"I fear my poor face has lost its fairness, Ralph," with an anxiety of tone that was all of love and naught of vanity.
"Thou art ten times fairer to me than ever before, my heroine!"
answered De Guader fondly. "But let me make excuse e"er I question thee. This is how I came not to thine aid. I went, as thou knowest, to Denmark, and sought Sweyn Ulfsson, and begged him bear out his promises and a.s.sist me with men, telling him that he might yet hoist William from the English throne. And Sweyn swore by the head of Sleipnir, Odin"s horse, which thou knowest is a mighty oath amongst these Danish heathens, that he would support me. But then my wounds, being half healed, broke out afresh; and my head being still sore through Odo"s blow, I fell into a fever, and lost my mind for six weeks. Meanwhile Sweyn had made no move, and when I came to myself I was still weak and powerless. As soon as I got strength enough, I came over here to collect my va.s.sals, and call to me whoever would put his hands between mine and be my man; and I sent off messengers to comfort thee"--
"Whom William"s men caught, and hanged on a gallows as high as the donjon keep," interposed Emma.
Ralph gnashed his teeth.
"Ah! was it so? My faithful Grillonne, was this the reward of thy long service? I have brought evil on all who loved me! I had all in readiness, and should have started in a day, but, the blessed saints be praised! thou art here in safety, and there is no need. None can tell how I have suffered thinking of thee."
"_Thy_ cheeks are hollow enough, in truth; thou canst not crow over me," said Emma, with a flash of her old gaiety. And then she told him the long story of the siege of Blauncheflour.
Ralph listened as one spellbound, and when she had ended her tale he slipped on his knee at her feet.
"Let me do thee homage," he said, with a proud, fond glance in her eyes. "What am I that thou shouldst have so suffered for my sake? It humbles me unspeakably."
Ever after it seemed to Emma that the poor garret of that wayside inn was the n.o.blest, fairest, and most beautiful apartment into which she had ever set foot.[8]
[8] See Appendix, Note E.
CHAPTER XXVI
CONCLUSION.
Whoever will, may find no small part of the ensuing chapter in the pages of grave historians; but in no sober leaf of history will they find recorded how it fared with Eadgyth of Norwich and Sir Aimand de Sourdeval.
Ralph and Emma, like an orthodox hero and heroine, lived happily together to the end of their days; though they had to fight a good many more battles. De Guader had made himself a mighty enemy in William the Conqueror, King of England and Duke of Normandy; one who, in his latter capacity, had no mind to have Ralph rampant on the borders of his dukedom. So he invaded Brittany, and strove to run De Guader to earth in his own country; he invested Dol, but had to raise the siege somewhat ignominiously, owing to the help rendered to the besieged by Alan Fergant, son of the reigning Count Howel of Brittany, and Philip of France, who was always delighted to supply aid against William.
Sweyn Ulfsson, King of Denmark, carried out his promises to Ralph, and sent his son c.n.u.t with Hakon Jarl to invade England; and they appeared on the east coast with a fleet of two hundred ships, and actually put into the Humber, though rather too late to serve the purposes of the ambitious earl.
William, whether really frightened, or moved by the l.u.s.t of power which was rapidly gaining upon him, and which clouded his later years with hate and misery, made the descent of the Danes a pretext for the worst crime of his reign--the judicial murder of Waltheof;--for it must be noted that, with this exception, his conduct to the English princes was generous and mild.
When the son of Siward had carried to William the news of the plot in which he had taken part, the Conqueror had received him graciously, and had pardoned him freely for his own share of the mischief. But he kept him at his side, although he did not call him a prisoner; and, soon after landing in England, arrested him on a charge of complicity with the Danes, who had been his old comrades. William had that excuse for thinking him dangerous.
Then came Judith"s opportunity. She hated the husband she had been forced to marry for State purposes, and stood forth as his accuser, pouring her poison into the ears of her royal uncle. Unfortunately William listened, and cast the son of Siward into prison at Winchester, where he languished for months, while a mock trial was going on, which many hungry Normans, who wanted his estates, were determined should end to their liking. Ivo Taillebois, who had been one of Hereward"s most venomous foes, and whose lands adjoined those of Waltheof, was amongst the most clamorous for his destruction; and the Primate Lanfranc his best advocate and almost sole friend, recognising perhaps that it was by his persuasion that Waltheof had been induced to place himself in the power of the Conqueror.
Early one morning, while the good folks of Winchester were asleep in their beds, the Normans led the Saxon chief without the walls of the town. Waltheof walked to the place of execution clothed in his earl"s apparel, which he distributed among some priests, or gave to some poor people who had followed him, and whom the Normans permitted to approach on account of their small numbers and entirely peaceful appearance.
Having reached a hill at a short distance from the walls, the soldiers halted, and the Saxon, prostrating himself, prayed aloud for a few moments; but the Normans, fearing that too long a delay would cause a rumour of the intended execution to be spread in the town, and that the citizens would rise to save their fellow-countryman, exclaimed with impatience to Waltheof, "Arise, that we may fulfil our orders." He asked, as a last favour, that they would wait only until he had once more repeated, for them and for himself, the Lord"s Prayer. They allowed him to do so; and Waltheof, rising from the ground, but remaining on his knees, began aloud, "Our Father who art in Heaven;"
but at the verse, "and lead us not into temptation," the executioner, seeing perhaps that daylight was beginning to appear, would wait no longer, but, suddenly drawing his large sword, struck off the Saxon"s head at one blow. The body was thrown into a hole, dug between two roads, and hastily covered with earth.[9] But the monks of Crowland, to whom he had made rich gifts in his lifetime, and who had been staunch throughout to the English cause, got the body up again a fortnight later, and averred that it was still unchanged and the blood fresh (sixteen years later they p.r.o.nounced that it was still as fresh, and that the head had grown on to the body again!); and they bore it away to "Holland," to St. Guthlac"s in the Fens, and erected a tomb in the abbey, with William"s permission, whereat great miracles took place.
When his traitress wife Judith, the "foreign woman," as the chroniclers style her, went to cover this monument to her husband with a rich pall of silk, which she had prepared for it, the martyred hero refused her hypocritical gift, and the offering was s.n.a.t.c.hed away and thrown to a distance by an invisible hand.
[9] Thierry, _Norman Conquest_, p. 113. Almost literal translation of Orderic Vitalis.
So the Saxon monks made a holy martyr of the wavering Waltheof, whose fate, and the fate of England with it, might have been very different if he had possessed as much moral as physical courage.
The Norman ecclesiastics accused the Saxons as idolaters, and found the occasion good for deposing and dishonouring Abbot Wulfketel, and putting Norman Toustain in his stead; which only made the English more keen to honour their dead hero, and they rushed in crowds to his tomb.
Judith thought herself very lucky to have all the money and lands that had belonged to Waltheof, and to be free of him, and made up her mind to have a second husband according to her own taste. But she wished him alive again when William made a present of her, possessions and all, to one Simon de Senlis, a brave, but lame and deformed knight.
She refused to carry out the bargain, so William consoled De Senlis with her daughter instead, together with all the lands and money; and the Saxon chroniclers gloat over Judith"s subsequent poverty and sorrows. But we, looking back, now the years have rolled away, may pity her, and see that the crime lay with those who treated a woman as a chattel, and "gave" her away to this man and that, without consulting her welfare or her happiness, rather than with the woman so treated.
And Emma"s brother, the son of William"s staunchest va.s.sal, how fared he?
When the Conqueror pa.s.sed the Straits after his attempt to reduce De Guader at Dol, he called a great council of Norman barons to pa.s.s judgment on the authors of the recent conspiracy. Ralph de Guader they dispossessed of all his English property as absent and contumacious; and Roger of Hereford, being a prisoner, was brought before them, and condemned to lose all his lands, and to pa.s.s the rest of his days in prison.
But William seems still to have had a soft place in his heart for the son of his old friend, and sent him one Easter, according to the custom of the Norman court, a complete suit of precious stuffs, a silk tunic and mantle, and a close coat trimmed with foreign furs.
But Roger was full of pride and bitterness, and he took the rich present and threw it on the fire.
When William heard how his gift had been received, he flew into a mighty rage.
"The man is too proud who does such scorn to me," he cried. "He shall never come out of my prison in my days, _par le splendeur Dex_!"
Nor did he; neither in the days of William Rufus. He died in prison.
But, in the reign of Henry I., his two sons won back a portion of their father"s possessions.
The lesser accomplices of the three great earls fared even worse.
At the council before mentioned, "Man foredoomed all the Bretons that were at the bride-ale at Norowic, some were blinded, some were driven from the land, and some were put to shame. So were the king"s traitors brought low," say the chronicles.
Truly a disastrous bridal!
Yet the bride and bridegroom, who risked so much for each other and involved so many in ruin, were the most fortunate of those who attended it.
Though Ralph lost his English estates, he had broad lands in his mother"s country, and lived with his hard-won consort in his castles of Guader and Montfort. A son and a daughter were born to them. The son succeeded to his father"s Breton possessions, and the daughter, whom one chronicler names Amicia, another Itta, married Earl Robert of Leicester, and became a great English lady.
A little over twenty years had Emma and Ralph lived together, the stream of their true love having found peaceful channel after the rapids and whirlpools that followed on the first joining of their courses twain in one. Grey hairs had begun to muster in Ralph"s dark locks, though his st.u.r.dy figure was as strong and active as ever and his hawk eyes as keen; motherhood had softened the high-spirited Emma, and had brought soft dimples into her cheeks and a lovelight to her brow. Happy in her home, she did not give much heed to the signs of the times, or note the strong new spirit that was stirring in the air.
But one day De Guader came into her bower in full harness, wearing helm and hauberk, with his great two-handed sword by his side.
He came up to her, and stood before her, and looked in her face, and took her soft mother"s hand between his two big palms.
"See"st thou?" he asked, and he guided her eyes with his own towards his arm, whereon was bound the cross of the Crusaders.
"Ah, Ralph!" she cried,"not thou!"
[Ill.u.s.tration: De Guader dons the Cross.]
"Sweet," he said gently, "When I lay on the field of my greatest fight, in sore distress and despair, with the choughs and ravens waiting to feed on mine eyes, and the thought of thee as of one I should never see again till the sounding of the last trump, I vowed that if life were spared me, I would one day make pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulchre. Now the time has come, my lady. Life has given me more than I had dared to hope for, but it is pa.s.sing; we are no longer young, you and I, old wife! Let me join the men who have responded to Pope Urban"s call.
Robert Curthose is moving. I will put my hands between his and be his man, and march under his banner to join G.o.dfrey de Bouillon."
"Whom all men honour!" said Emma under her breath.