Dead Mans Plack and an Old Thorn | Page 9

in good part and smilingly replied that it had been reported to him that the earl was now wedded to a woman with a will. Also he knew that her father, the great Earldoman of Devon, had been famed for his tremendous physical strength. It was related of him that he had once been charged by a furious bull, that he had calmly waited the onset and had dealt the animal a staggering blow with his fist on its head and had then taken it up in his arms and hurled it into the river Exe. If, he concluded, the daughter had inherited something of this power it was not to be wondered at that she was able to detain her husband at home.
Loud laughter followed this pleasantry of the king's, then one of the company remarked that not a woman's will, though it might be like steel of the finest temper, nor her muscular power, would serve to change Athelwold's nature or keep him from his friend, but only a woman's exceeding beauty.
Then Edgar, seeing that he had been put upon the defence of his absent friend, and that all of them were eager to hear his next word, replied that there was no possession a man was prouder of than that of a beautiful wife; that it was more to him than his own best qualities, his greatest actions, or than titles and lands and gold. If Athelwold had indeed been so happy as to secure the most beautiful woman he would have been glad to bring her to court to exhibit her to all--friends and foes alike--for his own satisfaction and glory.
Again they greeted his speech with laughter, and one cried out: Do you believe it?
Then another, bolder still, exclaimed: It's God's truth that she is the fairest woman in the land--perhaps no fairer has been in any land since Helen of Troy. This I can swear to, he added, smiting the board with his hand, because I have it from one who saw her at her home in Devon before her marriage. One who is a better judge in such matters than I am or than any one at this table, not excepting the king, seeing that he is not only gifted with the serpent's wisdom but with that creature's cold blood as well.
Edgar heard him frowningly, then ended the discussion by rising, and silence fell on the company, for all saw that he was offended. But he was not offended with them, since they knew nothing of his and Athelwold's secret, and what they thought and felt about his friend was nothing to him. But these fatal words about Elfrida's beauty had pierced him with a sudden suspicion of his friend's treachery. And Athelwold was the man he greatly loved--the companion of all his years since their boyhood together. Had he betrayed him in this monstrous way--wounding him in his tenderest part? The very thought that such a thing might be was like a madness in him. Then he reflected--then he remembered, and said to himself: Yes, let me follow his teaching in this matter too, as in the other, and exercise caution and look before I leap. I shall look and look well and see and judge for myself.
The result was that when his boon companions next met him there was no shadow of displeasure in him; he was in a peculiarly genial mood, and so continued. And when his friend returned he embraced him and gently upbraided him for having kept away for so long a time. He begged him to remember that he was his one friend and confidant who was more than a brother to him, and that if wholly deprived of his company he would regard himself as the loneliest man in the kingdom. Then in a short time he spoke once more in the same strain, and said he had not yet sufficiently honoured his friend before the world, and that he proposed visiting him at his own castle to make the acquaintance of his wife and spend a day with him hunting the boar in Harewood Forest.
Athelwold, secretly alarmed, made a suitable reply, expressing his delight at the prospect of receiving the king, and begging him to give him a couple of days' notice before making his visit, so as to give him time to make all preparation for his entertainment.
This the king promised, and also said that this would be an informal visit to a friend, that he would go alone with some of his servants and huntsmen and ride there one day, hunt the next day and return to Salisbury on the third day. And a little later, when the day of his visit was fixed on, Athelwold returned in haste with an anxious mind to