|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The Path of the King
J >> John Buchan >> The Path of the King Pages: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 This Etext prepared by Mary Starr
[Her notes on spelling, etc., are appended following the text]
THE PATH OF THE KING
by John Buchan
TO
MY WIFE
I DEDICATE THESE CHAPTERS
FIRST READ BY A COTSWOLD FIRE
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
1. HIGHTOWN UNDER SUNFELL
2. THE ENGLISHMAN
3. THE WIFE OF FLANDERS
4. EYES OF YOUTH
5. THE MAID
6. THE WOOD OF LIFE
7. EAUCOURT BY THE WATERS
8. THE HIDDEN CITY
9. THE REGICIDE
10. THE MARPLOT
11. THE LIT CHAMBER
12. IN THE DARK LAND
13. THE LAST STAGE
14. THE END OF THE ROAD
EPILOGUE
Linum fumigans non exstinguet; in veritate educet judicium. ISA. XLII.3.
THE PATH OF THE KING
by John Buchan
PROLOGUE
The three of us in that winter camp in the Selkirks were talking the slow
aimless talk of wearied men.
The Soldier, who had seen many campaigns, was riding his hobby of the Civil
War and descanting on Lee's tactics in the last Wilderness struggle. I said
something about the stark romance of it--of Jeb Stuart flitting like a
wraith through the forests; of Sheridan's attack at Chattanooga, when the
charging troops on the ridge were silhouetted against a harvest moon; of
Leonidas Polk, last of the warrior Bishops, baptizing his fellow generals
by the light of a mess candle. "Romance," I said, "attended the sombre grey
and blue levies as faithfully as she ever rode with knight-errant or
crusader."
The Scholar, who was cutting a raw-hide thong, raised his wise eyes.
"Does it never occur to you fellows that we are all pretty mixed in our
notions? We look for romance in the well-cultivated garden-plots, and when
it springs out of virgin soil we are surprised, though any fool might know
it was the natural place for it."
He picked up a burning stick to relight his pipe.
"The things we call aristocracies and reigning houses are the last places
to look for masterful men. They began strongly, but they have been too long
in possession. They have been cosseted and comforted and the devil has gone
out of their blood. Don't imagine that I undervalue descent. It is not for
nothing that a great man leaves posterity. But who is more likely to
inherit the fire--the elder son with his flesh-pots or the younger son with
his fortune to find? Just think of it! All the younger sons of younger sons
back through the generations! We none of us know our ancestors beyond a
little way. We all of us may have kings' blood in our veins. The dago who
blacked my boots at Vancouver may be descended by curious byways from
Julius Caesar.
"Think of it!" he cried. "The spark once transmitted may smoulder for
generations under ashes, but the appointed time will come, and it will
flare up to warm the world. God never allows waste. And we fools rub our
eyes and wonder, when we see genius come out of the gutter. It didn't begin
there. We tell ourselves that Shakespeare was the son of a woolpedlar, and
Napoleon of a farmer, and Luther of a peasant, and we hold up our hands at
the marvel. But who knows what kings and prophets they had in their
ancestry!"
After that we turned in, and as I lay looking at the frosty stars a fancy
wove itself in my brain. I saw the younger sons carry the royal blood far
down among the people, down even into the kennels of the outcast.
Generations follow, oblivious of the high beginnings, but there is that in
the stock which is fated to endure. The sons and daughters blunder and sin
and perish, but the race goes on, for there is a fierce stuff of life in
it. It sinks and rises again and blossoms at haphazard into virtue or vice,
since the ordinary moral laws do not concern its mission. Some rags of
greatness always cling to it, the dumb faith that sometime and somehow that
blood drawn from kings it never knew will be royal again. Though nature is
wasteful of material things, there is no waste of spirit And then after
long years there comes, unheralded and unlooked-for, the day of the
Appointed Time....
This is the story which grew out of that talk by the winter fire.
CHAPTER I. HIGHTOWN UNDER SUNFELL
When Biorn was a very little boy in his father's stead at Hightown he had a
play of his own making for the long winter nights. At the back end of the
hall, where the men sat at ale, was a chamber which the thralls used of a
morning--a place which smelt of hams and meal and good provender. There a
bed had been made for him when he forsook his cot in the women's quarters.
When the door was shut it was black dark, save for a thin crack of light
from the wood fire and torches of the hall. The crack made on the earthen
floor a line like a golden river. Biorn, cuddled up on a bench in his
little bear-skin, was drawn like a moth to that stream of light. With his
heart beating fast he would creep to it and stand for a moment with his
small body bathed in the radiance. The game was not to come back at once,
but to foray into the farther darkness before returning to the sanctuary of
bed. That took all the fortitude in Biorn's heart, and not till the thing
was dared and done could he go happily to sleep.
One night Leif the Outborn watched him at his game. Sometimes the man was
permitted to sleep there when he had been making sport for the housecarles.
"Behold an image of life!" he had said in his queer outland speech. "We
pass from darkness to darkness with but an instant of light between. You
are born for high deeds, princeling. Many would venture from the dark to
the light, but it takes a stout breast to voyage into the farther dark."
And Biorn's small heart swelled, for he detected praise, though he did not
know what Leif meant.
In the long winter the sun never topped Sunfell, and when the gales blew
and the snow drifted there were lights in the hall the day long. In Biorn's
first recollection the winters were spent by his mother's side, while she
and her maids spun the wool of the last clipping. She was a fair woman out
of the Western Isles, all brown and golden as it seemed to him, and her
voice was softer than the hard ringing speech of the Wick folk. She told
him island stories about gentle fairies and good-humoured elves who lived
in a green windy country by summer seas, and her air would be wistful as if
she thought of her lost home. And she sang him to sleep with crooning songs
which had the sweetness of the west wind in them. But her maids were a
rougher stock, and they stuck to the Wicking lullaby which ran something
like this:
Hush thee, my bold one, a boat will I buy thee,
A boat and stout oars and a bright sword beside,
A helm of red gold and a thrall to be nigh thee,
When fair blows the wind at the next wicking-tide.
There was a second verse, but it was rude stuff, and the Queen had
forbidden the maids to sing it.
As he grew older he was allowed to sit with the men in the hall, when bows
were being stretched and bowstrings knotted and spear-hafts fitted. He
would sit mum in a corner, listening with both ears to the talk of the old
franklins, with their endless grumbles about lost cattle and ill
neighbours. Better he liked the bragging of the young warriors, the
Bearsarks, who were the spear-head in all the forays. At the great feasts
of Yule-tide he was soon sent packing, for there were wild scenes when the
ale flowed freely, though his father, King Ironbeard, ruled his hall with a
strong hand. From the speech of his elders Biorn made his picture of the
world beyond the firths. It was a world of gloom and terror, yet shot with
a strange brightness. The High Gods might be met with in beggar's guise at
any ferry, jovial fellows and good friends to brave men, for they
themselves had to fight for their lives, and the End of All Things hung
over them like a cloud. Yet till the day of Ragnarok there would be
feasting and fine fighting and goodly fellowship, and a stout heart must
live for the hour.
Leif the Outborn was his chief friend. The man was no warrior, being lame
of a leg and lean and sharp as a heron. No one knew his begetting, for he
had been found as a child on the high fells. Some said he was come of the
Finns, and his ill-wishers would have it that his birthplace had been
behind a foss, and that he had the blood of dwarves in him. Yet though he
made sport for the company, he had respect from them, for he was wise in
many things, a skilled leech, a maker of runes, and a crafty builder of
ships. He was a master hand at riddles, and for hours the housecarles would
puzzle their wits over his efforts. This was the manner of them. "Who,"
Leif would ask, "are the merry maids that glide above the land to the joy
of their father; in winter they bear a white shield, but black in summer?"
The answer was "Snowflakes and rain." Or "I saw a corpse sitting on a
corpse, a blind one riding on a lifeless steed?" to which the reply was "A
dead horse on an ice-floe." Biorn never guessed any of the riddles, but the
cleverness of them he thought miraculous, and the others roared with glee
at their own obtuseness.
But Leif had different moods, for sometimes he would tell tales, and all
were hushed in a pleasant awe. The fire on the hearth was suffered to die
down, and men drew closer to each other, as Leif told of the tragic love of
Helgi and Sigrun, or how Weyland outwitted King Nidad, or how Thor went as
bride to Thrym in Giantland, and the old sad tale of how Sigurd
Fafnirsbane, noblest of men, went down to death for the love of a queen not
less noble. Leif told them well, so that his hearers were held fast with
the spell of wonder and then spurred to memories of their own. Tongues
would be loosened, and there would be wild recollections of battles among
the skerries of the west, of huntings in the hills where strange sights
greeted the benighted huntsman, and of voyaging far south into the lands of
the sun where the poorest thrall wore linen and the cities were all gold
and jewels. Biorn's head would be in such a whirl after a night of
story-telling that he could get no sleep for picturing his own deeds when
he was man enough to bear a sword and launch his ship. And sometimes in his
excitement he would slip outside into the darkness, and hear far up in the
frosty sky the whistle of the swans as they flew southward, and fancy them
the shield-maids of Odin on their way to some lost battle.
His father, Thorwald Thorwaldson, was king over all the firths and wicks
between Coldness in the south and Flatness and the mountain Rauma in the
north, and inland over the Uplanders as far as the highest springs of the
rivers. He was king by more than blood, for he was the tallest and
strongest man in all the land, and the cunningest in battle. He was for
ordinary somewhat grave and silent, a dark man with hair and beard the
colour of molten iron, whence came his by-name. Yet in a fight no Bearsark
could vie with him for fury, and his sword Tyrfing was famed in a thousand
songs. On high days the tale of his descent would be sung in the hall--not
by Leif, who was low-born and of no account, but by one or other of the
chiefs of the Shield-ring. Biorn was happy on such occasions, for he
himself came into the songs, since it was right to honour the gentle lady,
the Queen. He heard how on the distaff side he was sprung from proud
western earls, Thorwolf the Black, and Halfdan and Hallward Skullsplitter.
But on the spear side he was of still loftier kin, for Odin was first in
his pedigree, and after him the Volsung chiefs, and Gothfred the Proud,
and--that no magnificence might be wanting--one Karlamagnus, whom Biorn had
never heard of before, but who seemed from his doings to have been a
puissant king.
On such occasions there would follow a braggingmatch among the warriors,
for a recital of the past was meant as an augury for the future. The time
was towards the close of the Wicking-tide, and the world was becoming hard
for simple folk. There were endless bickerings with the Tronds in the north
and the men of More in the south, and a certain Shockhead, an upsetting
king in Norland, was making trouble with his neighbours. Likewise there was
one Kristni, a king of the Romans, who sought to dispute with Odin himself.
This Kristni was a magic-worker, who clad his followers in white linen
instead of byrnies, and gave them runes in place of swords, and sprinkled
them with witch water. Biorn did not like what he heard of the warlock, and
longed for the day when his father Ironbeard would make an end of him.
Each year before the coming of spring there was a lean season in Hightown.
Fish were scarce in the ice-holes, the stock of meal in the meal-ark grew
low, and the deep snow made poor hunting in wood or on fell-side. Belts
were tightened, and there were hollow cheeks among the thralls. And then
one morning the wind would blow from the south, and a strange smell come
into the air. The dogs left their lair by the fire and, led by the Garm the
old blind patriarch, made a tour of inspection among the outhouses to the
edge of the birch woods. Presently would come a rending of the ice on the
firth, and patches of inky water would show between the floes. The snow
would slip from the fell-side, and leave dripping rock and clammy bent, and
the river would break its frosty silence and pour a mighty grey-green flood
to the sea. The swans and geese began to fly northward, and the pipits woke
among the birches. And at last one day the world put on a new dress, all
steel-blue and misty green, and a thousand voices woke of flashing streams
and nesting birds and tossing pines, and the dwellers in Hightown knew that
spring had fairly come.
Then was Biorn the happy child. All through the long day, and through much
of that twilight which is the darkness of a Norland summer, he was abroad
on his own errands. With Grim the Hunter he adventured far up on the fells
and ate cheese and bannocks in the tents of the wandering Skridfinns, or
stalked the cailzie-cock with his arrows in the great pine forest, which in
his own mind he called Mirkwood and feared exceedingly. Or he would go
fishing with Egil the Fisherman, spearing salmon in the tails of the river
pools. But best he loved to go up the firth in the boat which Leif had made
him--a finished, clinker-built little model of a war galley, christened the
Joy-maker--and catch the big sea fish. Monsters he caught sometimes in the
deep water under the cliffs, till he thought he was destined to repeat the
exploit of Thor when he went fishing with the giant Hymi, and hooked
the Midgard Serpent, the brother of Fenris-wolf, whose coils encircle the
earth.
Nor was his education neglected. Arnwulf the Bearsark taught him axe-play
and sword-play, and he had a small buckler of his own, not of linden-wood
like those of the Wick folk, but of wickerwork after the fashion of his
mother's people. He learned to wrestle toughly with the lads of his own
age, and to throw a light spear truly at a mark. He was fleet of foot and
scoured the fells like a goat, and he could breast the tide in the pool of
the great foss up to the very edge of the white water where the trolls
lived.
There was a wise woman dwelt on the bay of Sigg. Katla was her name, a
woman still black-browed though she was very old, and clever at mending
hunters' scars. To her house Biorn went with Leif; and when they had made a
meal of her barley-cakes and sour milk, and passed the news of the coast,
Leif would fall to probing her craft and get but surly answers. To the
boy's question she was kinder. "Let the dead things be, prince," she said.
"There's small profit from foreknowledge. Better to take fates as they come
sudden round a turn of the road than be watching them with an anxious heart
all the way down the hill. The time will come soon enough when you must
stand by the Howe of the Dead and call on the ghost-folk."
But Leif coaxed and Biorn harped on the thing, as boys do, and one night
about the midsummer time her hour came upon Katla and she spoke without
their seeking. There in the dim hut with the apple-green twilight dimming
the fells Biorn stood trembling on the brink of the half-world, the woman
huddled on the floor, her hand shading her eyes as if she were looking to a
far horizon. Her body shook with gusts of passion, and the voice that came
from her was not her own. Never so long as he lived did Biorn forget the
terrible hour when that voice from beyond the world spoke things he could
not understand. "I have been snowed on with snow," it said, "I have been
beaten with the rain, I have been drenched with the dew, long have I been
dead." It spoke of kings whose names he had never heard, and of the
darkness gathering about the Norland, and famine and awe stalking upon the
earth.
Then came a whisper from Leif asking the fortune of the young prince of
Hightown.
"Death," said the weird-wife, "death--but not yet. The shears of the Norns
are still blunt for him, and Skuld has him in keeping."
There was silence for a space, for the fit was passing from Katla. But the
voice came again in broken syllables. "His thread runs westward--beyond the
Far Isles . . . not he but the seed of his loins shall win great kingdoms
... beyond the sea-walls.... The All-Father dreams.... Nay, he wakes ... he
wakes . . ."
There was a horrible choking sound, and the next Biorn knew was that Leif
had fetched water and was dashing it on Katla's face.
It was nearly a week before Biorn recovered his spirits after this
adventure, and it was noticeable that neither Leif nor he spoke a word to
each other on the matter. But the boy thought much, and from that night he
had a new purpose. It seemed that he was fated to travel far, and his fancy
forsook the homely life of his own wicks and fells and reached to that
outworld of which he had heard in the winter's talk by the hall fire.
There were plenty of folk in Hightown to satisfy his curiosity. There were
the Bearsarks, who would spin tales of the rich Frankish lands and the
green isles of the Gael. From the Skridfinns he heard of the bitter country
in the north where the Jotuns dwelt, and the sun was not and the frost
split the rocks to dust, while far underground before great fires the
dwarves were hammering gold. But these were only old wives' tales, and he
liked better the talk of the sea-going franklins, who would sail in the
summer time on trading ventures and pushed farther than any galleys of war.
The old sailor, Othere Cranesfoot, was but now back from a voyage which had
taken him to Snowland, or, as we say, Iceland. He could tell of the Curdled
Sea, like milk set apart for cheese-making, which flowed as fast as a
river, and brought down ghoulish beasts and great dragons in its tide. He
told, too, of the Sea-walls which were the end of the world, waves higher
than any mountain, which ringed the whole ocean. He had seen them, blue and
terrible one dawn, before he had swung his helm round and fled southwards.
And in Snowland and the ports of the Isles this Othere had heard talk from
others of a fine land beyond the sunset, where corn grew unsown like grass,
and the capes looked like crusted cow-pats they were so thick with deer,
and the dew of the night was honey-dew, so that of a morning a man might
breakfast delicately off the face of the meadows.
Full of such marvels, Biorn sought Leif and poured out his heart to him.
For the first time he spoke of the weird-wife's spaeing. If his fortune lay
in the west, there was the goal to seek. He would find the happy country
and reign over it. But Leif shook his head, for he had heard the story
before. "To get there you will have to ride over Bilrost, the Rainbow
Bridge, like the Gods. I know of the place. It is called Gundbiorn's Reef
and it is beyond the world."
All this befell in Biorn's eleventh summer. The winter which followed
brought ill luck to Hightown and notably to Ironbeard the King. For in the
autumn the Queen, that gentle lady, fell sick, and, though leeches were
sought for far and near, and spells and runes were prepared by all who had
skill of them, her life ebbed fast and ere Yule she was laid in the Howe of
the Dead. The loss of her made Thorwald grimmer and more silent than
before, and there was no feasting at the Yule high-tide and but little at
the spring merry-making. As for Biorn he sorrowed bitterly for a week, and
then, boylike, forgot his grief in the wonder of living.
But that winter brought death in another form. Storms never ceased, and in
the New Year the land lay in the stricture of a black frost which froze the
beasts in the byres and made Biorn shiver all the night through, though in
ordinary winter weather he was hardy enough to dive in the ice-holes. The
stock of meal fell low, and when spring tarried famine drew very near. Such
a spring no man living remembered. The snow lay deep on the shore till far
into May. And when the winds broke they were cold sunless gales which
nipped the young life in the earth. The ploughing was backward, and the
seed-time was a month too late. The new-born lambs died on the fells and
there fell a wasting sickness among the cattle. Few salmon ran up the
streams, and the sea-fish seemed to have gone on a journey. Even in summer,
the pleasant time, food was scarce, for the grass in the pastures was poor
and the cows gave little milk, and the children died. It foreboded a black
harvest-time and a blacker winter.
With these misfortunes a fever rose in the blood of the men of Hightown.
Such things had happened before for the Norland was never more than one
stage distant from famine; and in the old days there had been but a single
remedy. Food and wealth must be won from a foray overseas. It was years
since Ironbeard had ridden Egir's road to the rich lowlands, and the
Bearsarks were growing soft from idleness. Ironbeard himself was willing,
for his hall was hateful to him since the Queen's death. Moreover, there
was no other way. Food must be found for the winter or the folk would
perish.
So a hosting was decreed at harvest-tide, for few men would be needed to
win the blasted crops; and there began a jointing of shields and a
burnishing of weapons, and the getting ready of the big ships. Also there
was a great sortilege-making. Whither to steer, that was the question.
There were the rich coasts of England, but they were well guarded, and many
of the Norland race were along the wardens. The isles of the Gael were in
like case, and, though they were the easier prey, there was less to be had
from them. There were soon two parties in the hall, one urging Ironbeard to
follow the old track of his kin westward, another looking south to the
Frankish shore. The King himself, after the sacrifice of a black heifer,
cast the sacred twigs, and they seemed to point to Frankland. Old Arnwulf
was deputed on a certain day to hallow three ravens and take their
guidance, but, though he said three times the Ravens' spell, he got no
clear counsel from the wise birds. Last of all, the weird-wife Katla came
from Sigg, and for the space of three days sat in the hall with her head
shrouded, taking no meat or drink. When at last she spoke she prophesied
ill. She saw a red cloud and it descended on the heads of the warriors, yea
of the King himself. As for Hightown she saw it frozen deep in snow like
Jotunheim, and rime lay on it like a place long dead. But she bade
Ironbeard go to Frankland, for it was so written. "A great kingdom waits,"
she said--"not for you, but for the seed of your loins." And Biorn
shuddered, for they were the words spoken in her hut on that unforgotten
midsummer night.
The boy was in an agony lest he should be left behind. But his father
decreed that he should go. "These are times when manhood must come fast,"
he said. "He can bide within the Shield-ring when blows are going. He will
be safe enough if it holds. If it breaks, he will sup like the rest of us
with Odin."
Then came days of bustle and preparation. Biorn was agog with excitement
and yet solemnised, for there was strange work afoot in Hightown. The King
made a great festival in the Gods' House, the dark hall near the Howe of
the Dead, where no one ventured except in high noon. Cattle were slain in
honour of Thor, the God who watched over forays, and likewise a great boar
for Frey. The blood was caught up in the sacred bowls, from which the
people were sprinkled, and smeared on the altar of blackened fir. Then came
the oath-taking, when Ironbeard and his Bearsarks swore brotherhood in
battle upon the ship's bulwarks, and the shield's rim, and the horse's
shoulder, and the brand's edge. There followed the mixing of blood in the
same footprint, a rite to which Biorn was admitted, and a lesser oath for
all the people on the great gold ring which lay on the altar. But most
solemn of all was the vow the King made to his folk, warriors and franklins
alike, when he swore by the dew, the eagle's path, and the valour of Thor.
Then it was Biorn's turn. He was presented to the High Gods as the prince
and heir.
Old Arnwulf hammered on his left arm a torque of rough gold, which he must
wear always, in life and in death.
Pages: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19
|
|
|
|
|
|