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"Love for Rothgar Lodbroksson?" she repeated, drawing back. "Then you did believe that I could love Rothgar?" Her voice rose sharply. "You believed that I followed him!" Too late he saw what he had done. "I said that I did not believe it," he cried hastily. "What I thought at first in my bewilderment, that could not be called belief."
He raised from his hands now a face of boyish sullenness, and sat glaring over his clenched fists at his counsellors. "Certainly it would become a great misfortune to me if I should act against the advice of Rothgar Lodbroksson," he made stinging answer. "He is as wise and long-sighted as though he had eaten a dragon's heart.
Glorying in his deed, she stood shining sun-like upon him until the red cloaks of the advancing warriors came between like scarlet clouds. "Who are you?.... What is your errand?.... How came you here?" she heard them demand. And, after a pause, in disbelieving chorus, "Rothgar Lodbroksson! .... Does that sound likely?.... Where is he, then?"
Thus would you get protection, and your father's castle would gain a strong arm to fight for it. I would wed you to my foster-brother, Rothgar Lodbroksson, and thus bring good to both of Are you finding fault with that also?" But the lad stood before him like a stone. If a faint cry had come from him, it was not repeated; and there was nothing offensive about a hidden face and shaking limbs.
And these thoughts are not good to look back upon, and, moreover, I should have fully trusted my friend Halfden Lodbroksson. Well knew I the stories of those places which I saw as the ships crept up the haven, for Humbert our bishop had told me them many a time when as a child I sat on his knee and listened, wondering.
Nothing that troubled him very much, apparently, for his haggard face had grown radiant with gladness. Yet he was enough afraid of the reaction to answer her as gravely as possible: "It is Rothgar Lodbroksson, whom I met coming from the City as I was journeying back from my errand in Northampton.
The swaggering assurance of the man's laugh was more offensive than rudeness would have been. "If I say that we will shortly set him free, I shall not be going very wide from my message. My errand hither is that I bring word from Rothgar Lodbroksson to surrender the Tower."
"Since you have heard the Norman rumor," he said, "it is likely that you have heard also of the discontent among the Danes, who dislike my judgments; but in case you have not, I will tell you that an abundance of them have betaken themselves to a place in the Middlesex forest where they live outlaws, and their leader is Rothgar Lodbroksson."
The viking dropped his axe on the deck and seized my hand, gazing at the ring and the runes graven thereon. "Lives he yet?" he said, breathless. "Aye, Halfden Lodbroksson, your father lives and is well in our house," I answered; for now I knew that this was surely the youngest of those three sons of whom the jarl had told me so often.
Like the bellow of an angry bull, Rothgar's voice broke through his. "Land! Quickly will I proclaim my opinion of any man who sets his heart on that! He who forgets glory in his eagerness for property, deserves the curse of Thor!" "Prepare yourself, then, for a thunderbolt, Rothgar Lodbroksson," a clear voice spoke up suddenly.
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