Harold | Page 9

some at
dice, some playing with huge hounds, or caressing the hawks that stood
grave and solemn on their perches.
The lararium was deserted; the gynoecium was still, as in the Roman
time, the favoured apartment of the female portion of the household,
and indeed bore the same name [8], and with the group there assembled
we have now to do.
The appliances of the chamber showed the rank and wealth of the

owner. At that period the domestic luxury of the rich was infinitely
greater than has been generally supposed. The industry of the women
decorated wall and furniture with needlework and hangings: and as a
thegn forfeited his rank if he lost his lands, so the higher orders of an
aristocracy rather of wealth than birth had, usually, a certain portion of
superfluous riches, which served to flow towards the bazaars of the
East and the nearer markets of Flanders and Saracenic Spain.
In this room the walls were draped with silken hangings richly
embroidered. The single window was glazed with a dull grey glass [9].
On a beaufet were ranged horns tipped with silver, and a few vessels of
pure gold. A small circular table in the centre was supported by
symbolical monsters quaintly carved. At one side of the wall, on a long
settle, some half-a-dozen handmaids were employed in spinning;
remote from them, and near the window, sat a woman advanced in
years, and of a mien and aspect singularly majestic. Upon a small
tripod before her was a Runic manuscript, and an inkstand of elegant
form, with a silver graphium, or pen. At her feet reclined a girl
somewhat about the age of sixteen, her long hair parted across her
forehead and falling far down her shoulders. Her dress was a linen
under-tunic, with long sleeves, rising high to the throat, and without
one of the modern artificial restraints of the shape, the simple belt
sufficed to show the slender proportions and delicate outline of the
wearer. The colour of the dress was of the purest white, but its hems, or
borders, were richly embroidered. This girl's beauty was something
marvellous. In a land proverbial for fair women, it had already obtained
her the name of "the fair." In that beauty were blended, not as yet
without a struggle for mastery, the two expressions seldom united in
one countenance, the soft and the noble; indeed in the whole aspect
there was the evidence of some internal struggle; the intelligence was
not yet complete; the soul and heart were not yet united: and Edith the
Christian maid dwelt in the home of Hilda the heathen prophetess. The
girl's blue eyes, rendered dark by the shade of their long lashes, were
fixed intently upon the stern and troubled countenance which was bent
upon her own, but bent with that abstract gaze which shows that the
soul is absent from the sight. So sate Hilda, and so reclined her
grandchild Edith.

"Grandam," said the girl in a low voice and after a long pause; and the
sound of her voice so startled the handmaids, that every spindle stopped
for a moment and then plied with renewed activity; "Grandam, what
troubles you--are you not thinking of the great Earl and his fair sons,
now outlawed far over the wide seas?"
As the girl spoke, Hilda started slightly, like one awakened from a
dream; and when Edith had concluded her question, she rose slowly to
the height of a statue, unbowed by her years, and far towering above
even the ordinary standard of men; and turning from the child, her eye
fell upon the row of silent maids, each at her rapid, noiseless, stealthy
work. "Ho!" said she; her cold and haughty eye gleaming as she spoke;
"yesterday they brought home the summer--to-day, ye aid to bring
home the winter. Weave well--heed well warf and woof; Skulda [10] is
amongst ye, and her pale fingers guide the web!"
The maidens lifted not their eyes, though in every cheek the colour
paled at the words of the mistress. The spindles revolved, the thread
shot, and again there was silence more freezing than before.
"Askest thou," said Hilda at length, passing to the child, as if the
question so long addressed to her ear had only just reached her mind;
"askest thou if I thought of the Earl and his fair sons?--yea, I heard the
smith welding arms on the anvil, and the hammer of the shipwright
shaping strong ribs for the horses of the sea. Ere the reaper has bound
his sheaves, Earl Godwin will scare the Normans in the halls of the
Monk-king, as the hawk scares the brood in the dovecot. Weave well,
heed well warf and woof, nimble maidens--strong be the texture, for
biting is the worm."
"What weave