Eadgyth was a cousin in some sort, second or third, perhaps, to Harold G.o.dwinsson, and made it a point of honour to keep his memory green, though she had grown to love dearly the generous Norman maiden, who treated her more as a sister than a dependent.

Many relatives of Harold had property in Norwich, and when Ralph de Guader had received his earldom of Norfolk and Suffolk, which Harold's death on the field of Senlac had rendered vacant, he had taken pity on the forlorn condition of the little damsel, whose male relatives had been slain in the contest, and who was thus left without protection from the insolent conquerors. De Guader had been amused by the patriotic defiance the bereaved maiden of ten had flung at him, rating him as a renegade and a murderer, with other terms of equal politeness which had sounded oddly from her flower-like mouth, and perhaps his conscience smote him, and told him they were not untrue. Her courage moved his admiration and generosity, and, having no women-folk of his own to whom he could confide her, he had induced William Fitzosbern the Norman Earl of Hereford, to take her into his castle as a playmate and lady-in-waiting for his daughter Emma. So began a companionship which was to endure for their lives.

The tide of sad reflection was flooding Emma's heart to the brim. Since the cruel day on which the king's mandate had been received, the subject of her interrupted betrothal had been buried in dead silence.

Her brother and guardian, the young Earl of Hereford, had set out on a journey a day or two later, but had left even his wife in ignorance of its aim and direction. Emma, on her own part, had shrunk from speech.

Her wounds were too sore to bear the probing even of those who loved her. But at length, on this bright May evening, she spoke.

'This was to have been my wedding-day, Eadgyth,' she said.

A cloud of scornful anger pa.s.sed over the face of the Saxon girl, and her blue eyes flashed.

'So William of Normandy has ruined both our lives!' she said hotly, her young voice quivering with pa.s.sion. 'I would that the earth had opened and swallowed him up when he first set foot on English ground, instead of only catching him by the ankle, to enable him to make a jest and find a good omen!'

Emma bent down, laughing, that she might not cry.

'Hush!' she said; 'little rebel, thou art talking treason!'

'Nay,' returned Eadgyth, 'for I have never vowed fealty.'

'Ah, well,' answered Emma, sighing, 'my forbears have fought for William's forbears for generations! It is bred in my blood to be obedient to him. He would never have been King of England, had not my father lavished wealth and activity, and roused the barons and the burghers by example and ruse.'

'A fine reason, truly, for making thy father's daughter miserable,'

quoth Eadgyth. 'Nevertheless, if thou art bred to obedience, it seemeth not less irksome to thee! Perhaps it is because he owes the keeping of the English crown to the valour with which Ralph de Guader beat back the Danes, that he thwarts _him_! Not that I can spare any pity for Ralph. If he had not played my cousin Harold false, how different all things might have been. He, the grand-nephew of the sainted King Eadward! It seems a just retribution that William should thwart him.'

'On my part, I cannot account it a crime in Ralph to have sided with my countrymen,' Emma said, with a gentle smile; 'but we cannot look on those things with the same eyes.'

'No; I think it is perhaps a good thing that thou sittest here, instead of being Ralph de Guader's bride, though I had lief have gone with thee to my dear old Norwich,' said Eadgyth. 'My dear old Norwich!' she repeated, with a sigh. 'I should scarce know it again, with its fine new castle, and its streets full of Normans and Bretons, and foul, greedy Jews.'

'Oh, Eadgyth! Eadgyth! I will have no more to say to thee, if thou takest part against my knight!' said Emma, withdrawing her hands and folding them on her lap.

'I did not mean to wound thee, Emma!' exclaimed the Saxon, clasping both hands affectionately round Emma's right arm. 'I must needs be grateful to the earl, since I owe to him my happy home with thee. Yet,'

she added sadly, 'forgive me if I cannot quite forget that such a refuge would not have been needful to me, if he had been firm to the Dragon standard. Disguise it as thou wilt, I am but thy serving-maiden.'

'When I strive so carefully to disguise it, dost thou think it generous thus to pull it forth to the light of day?' asked Emma, and the tears, which she had till then kept back with difficulty, would no longer be restrained, and rolled rapidly down her cheeks.

'No, it is not generous!' cried Eadgyth, full of ruth. 'And I am not worthy to lace thy shoe latchet! Forgive me, dear Emma!'

As she spoke, the ring of a mailed footstep sounded in the corridor without, and the door was unceremoniously opened, and gave entrance to the young Earl of Hereford, clad in a whole suit of mail, but unhelmed.

'What! sitting in darkness, maidens?' and, turning to a varlet with a torch, who had accompanied him to the door, he took it from the lad's hold, and placed it with his own hands in a sconce beside the hearth.

'I love the light,' he said, laughing. 'Leave darkness to the bats and owls.'

Emma had risen, and ran to him gladly, kissing him on the cheek. 'Oh, Roger!' she said, 'I am so glad of thy return!'

But the joy that had come into her face at his unexpected appearance did not dry the tears which she had forgotten to wipe away in her surprise, and he saw them.

'Tears, Emma, tears? What! is my little sister weeping?' he asked in a tone that was half banter, half tenderness. 'This is a thing that must be inquired into. I can have no weeping damsels in castle of mine.'

'Eadgyth and I were quarrelling,' said Emma gaily, 'because we were so lonely in thine absence, and could find nothing better to do.'

'By the ma.s.s! that won't serve thee for an excuse, Emma,' answered the earl; then, taking her hands and looking searchingly in her face, he said somewhat sternly, as if to compel an answer, 'Art thou fretting at the breaking of thy troth with Ralph de Guader?'

Emma turned away blushing from his scrutiny.

'The wound is fresh yet, Roger!' she said. 'It will bleed. Time will perchance heal it.'

'And by all the saints! a very short time too!' said Hereford triumphantly. 'Thou shalt plight a new troth to-night.'

Emma started with apprehension. In those days, damsels of rank were often disposed of in marriage by their male relatives with very little regard to their prejudices or affections, a girl's whimsies appearing of small consequence in their eyes beside the importance of a good political alliance, and Emma feared lest her brother might intend to demand a summary transference of her affections. Hitherto, it was true that the young earl had been tender and indulgent, and had regarded her wishes the more readily perhaps in this matter, that Ralph de Guader, the powerful Earl of East Anglia, was the very man of all others to suit his views of a desirable brother-in-law. But Emma knew him to be both impulsive and obstinate, and visions of a fierce struggle with him, ending in the cloister, the haven of refuge for women in those days, pa.s.sed through her mind.

The earl, however, took no notice of her trepidation. 'Come,' he said, and led the way down the wide stone staircase. Emma followed trembling, and wondering what ordeal was before her. They entered a small room set apart near the great banqueting-hall, which was the earl's special sanctum.

The next moment she found herself with her two hands clasped in those of Ralph de Guader, while he was looking down at her with a hunger of entreaty in his eyes; and in the minds of both was the unspoken thought, that if all had gone well they would have been husband and wife that day.

The revulsion from apprehension to joy was so great as to be almost a pain.

'Is it thou indeed, Ralph?' she faltered; and the young Earl of Hereford laughed.

'Didst think I had brought home an ogre to be my _beau-frere_,' he asked, 'that thou wast so sore afraid?'

Emma turned anxiously to De Guader.

'The king, then, has relented?' she said quickly. 'In sooth, I doubted not his heart would soften. He could not be so cruel as to part us!'

De Guader shot a questioning glance at Hereford.

'Plead thine own cause, valiant knight!' said Roger a little sarcastically. 'I was never a maker of speeches, and, by the Holy Virgin! thy eloquence has twisted me round thy little finger. See if thou canst vie with a woman's sharp wits. To say truth, I care not to breathe thy plan to the vagrant air, it has such a treasonable savour.'

Emma looked from one to the other for a solution of the mystery, but she did not see much in De Guader's dark, handsome face to help her to read riddles.

'Thy brother bids me proffer my own pet.i.tion, dear lady,' he said. 'If I hesitate, be merciful to my unreadiness, for it is no easy boon I come to ask of thee.'

He led her to a carved settle which stood beside the fireplace, and when she was seated, he stood before her silently a moment or two, the firelight scintillating on the rings of the mail in which he was sheathed from head to foot, and sparkling on the jewels of his baldric and the golden hilt of his great two-handed sword, for, like her brother, he was still in his harness.

'n.o.ble Emma, I have come to ask thee to share with me danger and difficulty,' he said. 'The king has not relented. But his mandate is unjust, and I beg thee to disregard it, and to give me once more the sweet promise that thou wilt be my bride.'

'Dost thou mean that thou wouldst ask me to defy the king?' faltered Emma, a great terror chasing away the short-lived joy which had flooded her heart. She turned wide, anxious eyes upon her brother.

'Dost thou not see, Emma, we are sick of spending our lives for William, and getting nothing but kicks and curses from him?' explained the prosaic Roger. 'By the ma.s.s! it is hard on Ralph and on me, after so much faithful service, and so maint hard blows given and taken in William's business, that he should mar all our plans and spoil all our pleasure by putting his veto on your marriage. A curse on loyalty! If this is all it brings, we may as well be a little disloyal.'

Roger had better have allowed his friend to plead his own cause as he had bidden him to do. Ralph's appeal to Emma to share danger with him had touched her generous spirit. Her brother's outburst against his sovereign roused all her loyalty.

'I know not what to reply to such converse,' said Emma indignantly; then added, between jest and earnest, the tears trembling on her lashes as she looked at her brother, 'I would fain let it pa.s.s as a bad joke, or to think that perchance ye twain have been drinking a little copiously at the wine-cup.'

'Nay, Emma, that is an injustice!' cried Hereford, bursting into laughter, and clapping his hand down upon De Guader's mailed shoulder; 'when this poor love-lorn galliard would not break fast till he had seen thee, albeit he had been in selle all day, so fire-hot was he to mend his broken troth.'

'It may well seem strange converse to the gentle damsel,' said Ralph gravely. 'The earl your father almost worshipped William of Normandy, who, in good sooth, would never have been King of England but for his stalwart aid, and she has never heard whisper of aught against the king. We who have writhed under his imperious tyranny, and groaned in spirit so fiercely,'--here the level brows were knitted and the entreating face grew stern, while the green light shone in the deep-set eyes,--'can scarce conceive the shock she feels at our sudden speech.'

'She will have to get used to it,' said Earl Roger dryly, 'for my patience is at an end. Beshrew me! she will hear a good deal of such talk. William has ever popped upon me like a cat on a mouse whenever any scheme which promised me well was in hand. And what has he given me but ravaged land that the Welsh run over and harry at will? I say he only gives away what he must needs pay a garrison to defend if he kept it himself. What is your earldom of Norwich, Ralph, but sea-washed dunes or waste corn lands? He is ever nibbling at our power. Earls, indeed! Poor earls are we beside G.o.dwin, Leofric, and Siward! But I tell thee he has gone too far this time. I'll not be thwarted in my plan to be thy brother-in-law; no, neither by king-lord or foolish damsel!' He turned to Emma somewhat fiercely. 'Hark ye, sister of mine, by the little finger of St. Nicholas, to whom De Guader has dedicated his castle of Blauncheflour, thou hadst better make no mincing about accepting a man thou hast already pleaded guilty to loving, or I shall have a crow to pluck with thee!'