Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) (527 page)

‘“Nay,” said Hugh. “I am no child. Where I take a gift, there I render service”; and he put his hands between De Aquila’s, and swore to be faithful, and, as I remember, I kissed him, and De Aquila kissed us both.

‘We sat afterwards outside the hut while the  sun rose, and De Aquila marked our churls going to their work in the fields, and talked of holy things, and how we should govern our Manors in time to come, and of hunting and of horse-breeding, and of the King’s wisdom and unwisdom; for he spoke to us as though we were in all sorts now his brothers. Anon a churl stole up to me — he was one of the three I had not hanged a year ago — and he bellowed — which is the Saxon for whispering — that the Lady Ælueva would speak to me at the Great House. She walked abroad daily in the Manor, and it was her custom to send me word whither she went, that I might set an archer or two behind and in front to guard her. Very often I myself lay up in the woods and watched on her also.

‘I went swiftly, and as I passed the great door it opened from within, and there stood my Lady Ælueva, and she said to me: “Sir Richard, will it please you enter your Great Hall?” Then she wept, but we were alone.’

The knight was silent for a long time, his face turned across the valley, smiling.

‘Oh, well done!’ said Una, and clapped her hands very softly. ‘She was sorry, and she said so.’

‘Aye, she was sorry, and she said so,’ said Sir Richard, coming back with a little start. ‘Very soon — but
he
said it was two full hours later — De Aquila rode to the door, with his shield new scoured (Hugh had cleansed it), and demanded entertainment, and called me a false knight, that would starve his overlord to death. Then Hugh

‘Sir Richard, will it please you to enter your Great Hall?’

cried out that no man should work in the valley that day, and our Saxons blew horns, and set about feasting and drinking, and running of races, and dancing and singing; and De Aquila climbed upon a horse-block and spoke to them in what he swore was good Saxon, but no man understood it. At night we feasted in the Great Hall, and when the harpers and the singers were gone we four sat late at the high table. As I remember, it was a warm night with a full moon, and De Aquila bade Hugh take down his sword from the wall again, for the honour of the Manor of Dallington, and Hugh took it gladly enough. Dust lay on the hilt, for I saw him blow it off.

‘She and I sat talking a little apart, and at first we thought the harpers had come back, for the Great Hall was filled with a rushing noise of music. De Aquila leaped up; but there was only the moonlight fretty on the floor.

‘“Hearken!” said Hugh. “It is my sword,” and as he belted it on the music ceased.

‘“Over Gods, forbid that I should ever belt blade like that,” said De Aquila. “What does it foretell?”

‘“The Gods that made it may know. Last time it spoke was at Hastings, when I lost all my lands. Belike it sings now that I have new lands and am a man again,” said Hugh.

‘He loosed the blade a little and drove it back happily into the sheath, and the sword answered him low and crooningly, as — as a woman would speak to a man, her head on his shoulder.

‘Now that was the second time in all my life I heard this Sword sing.’...

‘Look!’ said Una. ‘There’s Mother coming down the Long Slip. What will she say to Sir Richard? She can’t help seeing him.’

‘And Puck can’t magic us this time,’ said Dan.

‘Are you sure?’ said Puck; and he leaned forward and whispered to Sir Richard, who, smiling, bowed his head.

‘But what befell the sword and my brother Hugh I will tell on another time,’ said he, rising. ‘Ohé, Swallow!’

The great horse cantered up from the far end of the meadow, close to Mother.

They heard Mother say: ‘Children, Gleason’s old horse has broken into the meadow again. Where did he get through?’

‘Just below Stone Bay,’ said Dan. ‘He tore down simple flobs of the bank! We noticed it just now. And we’ve caught no end of fish. We’ve been at it all the afternoon.’

And they honestly believed that they had. They never noticed the Oak, Ash and Thorn leaves that Puck had slyly thrown into their laps.

SIR RICHARD’S SONG

I followed my Duke ere I was a lover,To take from England fief and fee;
But now this game is the other way over — But now England hath taken me!

I had my horse, my shield and banner,And a boy’s heart, so whole and free;
But now I sing in another manner — But now England hath taken me!

As for my Father in his tower,Asking news of my ship at sea;
He will remember his own hour — Tell him England hath taken me!

As for my Mother in her bower,That rules my Father so cunningly;
She will remember a maiden’s power — Tell her England hath taken me!

As for my Brother in Rouen city,A nimble and naughty page is he;
But he will come to suffer and pity — Tell him England hath taken me!

As for my little Sister waitingIn the pleasant orchards of Normandie;
Tell her youth is the time of mating — Tell her England hath taken me!

As for my Comrades in camp and highway,That lift their eyebrows scornfully;
Tell them their way is not my way — Tell them England hath taken me!

Kings and Princes and Barons famed,Knights and Captains in your degree;
Hear me a little before I am blamed — Seeing England hath taken me!

Howso great man’s strength be reckoned,There are two things he cannot flee;
Love is the first, and Death is the second — And Love, in England, hath taken me!

HARP SONG OF THE DANE WOMEN

What is a woman that you forsake her,And the hearth-fire and the home-acre,
To go with the old grey Widow-maker?

She has no house to lay a guest in — But one chill bed for all to rest in,That the pale suns and the stray bergs nest in.

She has no strong white arms to fold you,But the ten-times-fingering weed to hold you
Bound on the rocks where the tide has rolled you.

Yet, when the signs of summer thicken,And the ice breaks, and the birch-buds quicken,
Yearly you turn from our side, and sicken —

Sicken again for the shouts and the slaughters, — You steal away to the lapping waters,And look at your ship in her winter quarters.

You forget our mirth, and talk at the tables,The kine in the shed and the horse in the stables — To pitch her sides and go over her cables!

Then you drive out where the storm-clouds swallow:And the sound of your oar-blades falling hollow
Is all we have left through the months to follow.

Ah, what is a Woman that you forsake her,And the hearth-fire and the home-acre,
To go with the old grey Widow-maker?

The Knights of the Joyous Venture

It was too hot to run about in the open, so Dan asked their friend, old Hobden, to take their own dinghy from the pond and put her on the brook at the bottom of the garden. Her painted name was the
Daisy
, but for exploring expeditions she was the
Golden Hind
or the
Long Serpent
, or some such suitable name. Dan hiked and howked with a boat-hook (the brook was too narrow for sculls), and Una punted with a piece of hop-pole. When they came to a very shallow place (the
Golden Hind
drew quite three inches of water) they disembarked and scuffled her over the gravel by her tow-rope, and when they reached the overgrown banks beyond the garden they pulled themselves up stream by the low branches.

That day they intended to discover the North Cape like ‘Othere, the old sea-captain’, in the book of verses which Una had brought with her; but on account of the heat they changed it to a voyage up the Amazon and the sources of the Nile. Even on the shaded water the air was hot and heavy with drowsy scents, while outside, through breaks in the trees, the sunshine burned the pasture like fire. The kingfisher was asleep  on his watching-branch, and the blackbirds scarcely took the trouble to dive into the next bush. Dragonflies wheeling and clashing were the only things at work, except the moorhens and a big Red Admiral, who flapped down out of the sunshine for a drink.

When they reached Otter Pool the
Golden Hind
grounded comfortably on a shallow, and they lay beneath a roof of close green, watching the water trickle over the flood-gates down the mossy brick chute from the mill-stream to the brook. A big trout — the children knew him well — rolled head and shoulders at some fly that sailed round the bend, while, once in just so often, the brook rose a fraction of an inch against all the wet pebbles, and they watched the slow draw and shiver of a breath of air through the tree-tops. Then the little voices of the slipping water began again.

‘It’s like the shadows talking, isn’t it?’ said Una. She had given up trying to read. Dan lay over the bows, trailing his hands in the current. They heard feet on the gravel-bar that runs half across the pool and saw Sir Richard Dalyngridge standing over them.

‘Was yours a dangerous voyage?’ he asked, smiling.

‘She bumped a lot, sir,’ said Dan. ‘There’s hardly any water this summer.’

‘Ah, the brook was deeper and wider when my children played at Danish pirates. Are you pirate-folk?’

‘Oh no. We gave up being pirates years ago,’ explained Una. ‘We’re nearly always explorers now. Sailing round the world, you know.’

‘Round?’ said Sir Richard. He sat him in the comfortable crotch of an old ash-root on the bank. ‘How can it be round?’

‘Wasn’t it in your books?’ Dan suggested. He had been doing geography at his last lesson.

‘I can neither write nor read,’ he replied. ‘Canst
thou
read, child?’

‘Yes,’ said Dan, ‘barring the very long words.’

‘Wonderful! Read to me, that I may hear for myself.’

Dan flushed, but opened the book and began — gabbling a little — at ‘The Discoverer of the North Cape.’

‘Othere, the old sea-captain, Who dwelt in Helgoland, To King Alfred, the lover of truth, Brought a snow-white walrus tooth, That he held in his brown right hand.’

‘But — but — this I know! This is an old song! This I have heard sung! This is a miracle,’ Sir Richard interrupted. ‘Nay, do not stop!’ He leaned forward, and the shadows of the leaves slipped and slid upon his chain-mail.

‘“I ploughed the land with horses, But my heart was ill at ease, For the old sea-faring men Came to me now and then With their Sagas of the Seas.”‘

His hand fell on the hilt of the great sword. ‘This is truth,’ he cried, ‘for so did it happen to  me,’ and he beat time delightedly to the tramp of verse after verse.

‘“And now the land,” said Othere, “Bent southward suddenly, And I followed the curving shore, And ever southward bore Into a nameless sea.”‘

‘A nameless sea!’ he repeated. ‘So did I — so did Hugh and I.’

‘Where did you go? Tell us,’ said Una.

‘Wait. Let me hear all first.’ So Dan read to the poem’s very end.

‘Good,’ said the knight. ‘That is Othere’s tale — even as I have heard the men in the Dane ships sing it. Not in those same valiant words, but something like to them.’

‘Have you ever explored North?’ Dan shut the book.

‘Nay. My venture was South. Farther South than any man has fared, Hugh and I went down with Witta and his heathen.’ He jerked the tall sword forward, and leaned on it with both hands; but his eyes looked long past them.

‘I thought you always lived here,’ said Una, timidly.

‘Yes; while my Lady Ælueva lived. But she died. She died. Then, my eldest son being a man, I asked De Aquila’s leave that he should hold the Manor while I went on some journey or pilgrimage — to forget. De Aquila, whom the Second William had made Warden of Pevensey in Earl Mortain’s place, was very old then, but still he rode his tall, roan horses, and in the saddle  he looked like a little white falcon. When Hugh, at Dallington, over yonder, heard what I did, he sent for my second son, whom being unmarried he had ever looked upon as his own child, and, by De Aquila’s leave, gave him the Manor of Dallington to hold till he should return. Then Hugh came with me.’