The Ward of King Canute; a romance of the Danish conquest

Ottilie A. (Ottilia Adelina) Liljencrantz

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• Publié par: shuem
• Publié le: 08 décembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 24
• Langue: English

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Project Gutenberg's The Ward of King Canute, by Ottilie A. Liljencrantz This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: The Ward of King Canute Author: Ottilie A. Liljencrantz Release Date: February 28, 2009 [EBook #3323] Language: English Character set encoding: ASCII *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WARD OF KING CANUTE *** Produced by A. Elizabeth Warren, and David Widger THE WARD OF KING CANUTE A Romance of the Danish Conquest By Ottilie A. Liljencrantz Contents Acknowledgment THE WARD OF KING CANUTE Foreword Chapter I. Chapter II. Chapter III. Chapter IV. Chapter V. Chapter VI. Chapter VII. Chapter VIII. Chapter IX. Chapter X. Chapter XI. The Fall of the House of Frode Randalin, Frode's Daughter Where War-dogs Kennel When Royal Blood Is Young Blood Before The King The Training of Fridtjof The Page The Game of Swords Taken Captive The Young Lord of Ivarsdale As The Norns Decree When My Lord Comes Home From War Chapter XII. Chapter XIII. Chapter XIV. Chapter XV. Chapter XVI. Chapter XVII. Chapter XVIII. Chapter XIX. Chapter XX. Chapter XXI. Chapter XXII. Chapter XXIII. Chapter XXIV. Chapter XXV. Chapter XXVI. Chapter XXVII. Chapter XXVIII. Chapter XXIX. Chapter XXX. Chapter XXXI. Chapter XXXII. The Foreign Page When Might Made Right How The Fates Cheated Randalin How Fridtjof Cheated The Jotun The Sword of Speech The Judgment of The Iron Voice What The Red Cloak Hid The Gift of The Elves A Royal Reckoning With The Jotun as Chamberlain How The Lord of Ivarsdale Paid His Debt A Blood-stained Crown On The Road to London The King's Wife In The Judgment Hall Pixie-led When Love Meets Love The Ring of The Coiled Snake When The King Takes a Queen The Twilight of The Gods In Time's Morning Acknowledgment For the facts of this romance I have made free use of the following authorities: The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle; The Venerable Bede's Ecclesiastical History of England; Ingulph's History of the Abbey of Croyland; William of Malmesbury's Chronicle of the Kings of England; The Chronicles of Florence of Worcester; Lingard's History and Antiquities of the Anglo-Saxon Church, and Lingard's History of England; Dean Spencer's The White Robe of Churches; Collier's Ecclesiastical History of Great Britain; Montalembert's Monks of the West; Thrupp's Anglo-Saxon Home; Hall's Queens Before the Conquest; Kemble's Saxons in England; Ridgway's Gem of Thorney Island; Brayley and Britton's History of the Ancient Palace and Late Houses of Parliament; Loftie's Westminster Abbey and Loftie's History of London; Allen's History and Antiquities of London; Lappenberg's History of England Under the Anglo-Saxon Kings; Sharon Turner's History of the Anglo-Saxons; Knight's Old England; Hume's History of England; Green's Conquest of England; Thierry's History of the Conquest of England by the Normans; Freeman's History of the Norman Conquest. For the translations of Ha'vama'l, etc., used at the beginnings of the chapters, I am indebted to Professor Rasmus B. Anderson and Mr. Paul du Chaillu. O. A. L. Chicago, April 1, 1903. THE WARD OF KING CANUTE Foreword There is an old myth of a hero who renewed his strength each time he touched the earth, and finally was overcome by being raised in the air and crushed. Whether or not the Angles risked a like fate as they raised themselves away from the primitive virtues that had been their life and strength, no one can tell; but it has been well said that when Northern blood mingled with English blood at the time of the Danish Conquest, the Anglo-Saxon race touched the earth again. Chapter I. The Fall of the House of Frode Full stocked folds I saw at the sons of Fitjung, Now they carry beggars' staffs; Wealth is Like the twinkling of an eye, The most unstable of friends. Ha'vama'l. As the blackness of the midsummer night paled, the broken towers and wrecked walls of the monastery loomed up dim and stark in the gray light. The long-drawn sigh of a waking world crept through the air and rustled the ivy leaves. The pitying angel of dreams, who had striven all night long to restore the plundered shrine and raise from their graves the band of martyred nuns, ceased from his ministrations, softly as a bubble frees itself from the pipe that shaped it, and floated away on the breath of the wind. Through a breach in the moss-grown wall, the first sunbeam stole in and pointed a bright finger across the cloister garth at the charred spot in the centre, where missals and parchment rolls had made a roaring fire to warm the invaders' blood-stained hands. As the lark rose through the brightening air to greet the coming day, a woman in the tunic and cowl of a nun opened what was left of the wicket-gate in the one unbattered wall. A trace of the luxury that had dwelt under the gilded spires survived in her robes, which had been of a royal purple and embroidered with silken flowers; but the voice of Time and of Ruin spoke from them also, for the purple was faded to a rusty brown, and the silken embroideries were threadbare. She struck a note in perfect harmony with her surroundings, as she stood under the crumbling arch, peering out into the flowering lane. Stretching away from her feet in dewy freshness, it made a green link between the herb-garden of St. Mildred's and the highway of the Watling Street. Like the straggling hedges that were half buried under a net of wild roses, red and white, the path was half effaced by grass; but beyond, her eye could follow the straight line of the great Roman road over marsh and meadow and hill-top. If grass had gathered there also, during the Anglo-Saxon times, there were no traces of it now, in the days of Edmund Ironside when Canute of Denmark was leading his war-host back and forth over its stones. Between the dark walls of oak and beech, it gleamed as white as the Milky Way. The nun was able to trace its course up the slope of the last hill. Just beyond the crest, a pall of smoke was spread over a burning village. Though it was miles away, it seemed to her that the wind brought cries of anguish to her ear, and prayers for mercy. Shivering, she turned her face back to the desolate peace of the ruins. "Now is it clear to all men why a bloody cloud was hung over the land in the year that Ethelred came to the