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Updated: May 7, 2025
"I know it," said Edith; and two burning tears, despite her strong and preternatural self-exaltation, swelled from the dark fringe, and rolled slowly down the colourless cheek, as she added, with proud voice, "I know it: but that other is not Aldyth, it is England! In her, in Aldyth, behold the dear cause of thy native land; with her enweave the love which thy native land should command.
"For the vow which thou mightest take as subject, what matters it now thou art king?" Harold made no answer to Aldyth, but turned to his Chamberlain, who stood behind his throne chair. "Are my brothers without?" "They are: and my lord the King's chosen council." "Admit them: pardon, Aldyth; affairs fit only for men claim me now." The Lady of England took the hint, and rose.
Then turning round, still propped upon his elbow, he fixed his proud eye upon Aldyth, and said gravely, "Wife, pale is thy face, and gloomy thy brow; mournest thou the throne or the man?" Aldyth cast on her wild lord a look of more terror than compassion, a look without the grief that is gentle, or the love that reveres; and answered: "What matter to thee my thoughts or my sufferings?
Gryffyth's wife, the lady Aldyth, a Saxon by birth, fell into my hands. We were storming Rhadlan, at the farther end of the isle; she was there. We war not against women; I feared the license of my own soldiers, and I sent the lady to Gryffyth.
"No, Harold in vain sent me the casket; the jewel was gone. Oh Shame! shame! shame! Oh worst perfidy of all! Oh sharp sharper than Saxon sword or serpent's tooth, is is " Tears gushed to those fierce eyes, and the proud King dared not trust to his voice. Aldyth rose coldly. "Slay me if thou wilt not insult me. I have said, 'Let us die!"
"Not so; there is one way, and but one, to reconcile all England to thy dominion to win to thee not the cold neutrality but the eager zeal of Mercia and Northumbria; to make the first guard thee from the Welch, the last be thy rampart against the Scot. In a word, thou must ally thyself with the blood of these young earls; thou must wed with Aldyth their sister."
The Northumbrian Danes, untaught even by their recent escape from the Norwegian, regarded with ungrateful coldness a war limited at present to the southern coasts; and the vast territory under Mercia was, with more excuse, equally supine; while their two young Earls, too new in their command to have much sway with their subject populations, had they been in their capitals, had now arrived in London; and there lingered, making head, doubtless, against the intrigues in favour of the Atheling; so little had Harold's marriage with Aldyth brought him, at the hour of his dreadest need, the power for which happiness had been resigned!
But, once surrounded by her maidens, Aldyth forgot all, save that she was again a queen, forgot all, even to the earlier and less gorgeous diadem which her lord's hand had shattered on the brows of the son of Pendragon. Leofwine, still gay and blithe-hearted, entered first: Gurth followed, then Haco, then some half-score of the greater thegns.
But proud as was Aldyth, all pride seemed humbled into woman's sweeter emotions at the sight of the Earl, and she was at first unable to command words to answer his greeting. Gradually, however, she warmed into cordial confidence.
He dropped the hand he had held till then, turned slowly to the side of the vessel, and re-entered his boat. As he was rowed back to shore, the horn gave the signal for raising anchor, and the ship, righting itself, moved majestically through the midst of the fleet. But Aldyth still stood erect, and her eyes followed the boat that bore away the secret love of her youth.
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