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Alred briefly communicated the result of the conference; and with an aspect, and in a tone, free alike from triumph and indecision, Harold replied: "As ye will, so will I. Place me only where I can most serve the common cause.
Scarcely had Alred resumed his seat, before Robert the Norman prelate of Canterbury started up, a man, it was said, of worldly learning and exclaimed: "To admit the messenger is to approve the treason. I do beseech the King to consult only his own royal heart and royal honour.
"Speak on, father," said Harold, turning somewhat pale at the solemnity of the address; "I am ready, if the council so desire, to remain a subject, and aid in the choice of a worthier king." "Thou divinest me ill," answered Alred; "I do not call on thee to lay aside the crown, but to crucify the heart. The decree of the Witan assigns Mercia and Northumbria to the sons of Algar.
The prelate shook his head, and the group gained again the ante-hall. "Fit leader of bearded men! fit king for the Saxon land!" cried a thegn. "No more of your Atheling, Alred my father!" "No more of him, indeed!" said the prelate, mournfully. "It is but the fault of his nurture and rearing, a neglected childhood, a Norman tutor, German hirelings. We may remould yet the pliant clay," said Harold.
The eyes of the priests then turned to Alred, and to them the prelate spoke as he had done before to Harold; he distinguished between the oath and its fulfilment between the lesser sin and the greater the one which the Church could absolve the one which no Church had the right to exact, and which, if fulfilled, no penance could expiate.
But the stake was too weighty, the suspense too keen, for that reverent delicacy in those around; and the thegns pressed on each other, and a murmur rose, which murmured the name of Harold. "Bethink thee, my son," said Alred, in a tender voice tremulous with emotion; "the young Atheling is too much an infant yet for these anxious times." Edward signed his head in assent.
"Fear not for me, my fathers; humble as I am, I am strong in the faith of heaven and its angels." The Churchmen looked at each other, sly yet abashed; it was not precisely for the King that they feared. Then spoke Alred, the good prelate and constant peacemaker fair column and lone one of the fast-crumbling Saxon Church.
Meanwhile the two archprelates bent over him Stigand eagerly, Alred fondly. Then raising himself on one arm, while with the other he pointed to Harold at the foot of the bed, the King said: "Your hearts, I see, are with Harold the Earl: so be it." At those words he fell back on his pillow; a loud shriek burst from his wife's lips; all crowded around; he lay as the dead.
Edward released his hand, and laid it on her head as in benediction. Then motioning to the abbot of Westminster, he drew from his finger the ring which the palmer had brought to him , and murmured scarce audibly: "Be this kept in the House of St. Peter in memory of me!" "He is alive now to us speak " whispered more than one thegn, one abbot, to Alred and to Stigand.
Alred, O holy father, at whose knees I once confessed my every sin, I blame thee not that thou first, in the Witan, liftest thy voice against me, though thou knowest that I loved Algive from youth upward; she, with her heart yet mine, was given in the last year of Hardicanute, when might was right, to the Church.
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