Dead Man's Plack and an Old Thorn: Chapter 10

Chapter 10

It was about the middle of the afternoon when Elfrida on horseback and
attended by her mounted guard of twenty or more men, followed by a
convoy of carts with her servants and luggage, arrived at Salisbury, and
was surprised and disturbed at the sight of a vast concourse of people
standing without the gates.

It had got abroad that she was coming to Salisbury on that day, and it
was also now known throughout Wessex that she had not been allowed to
attend the procession to Shaftesbury. This had excited the people, and a
large part of the inhabitants of the town and the adjacent hamlets had
congregated to witness her arrival.

On her approach the crowd opened out on either side to make way for her
and her men, and glancing to this side and that she saw that every pair
of eyes in all that vast silent crowd were fixed intently on her face.

Then came a fresh surprise when she found a mounted guard standing with
drawn swords before the gates. The captain of the guard, lifting his
hand, cried out to her to halt, then in a loud voice he informed her he
had been ordered to turn her back from the gates. Was it then to witness
this fresh insult that the people had now been brought together? Anger
and apprehension struggled for mastery in her breast and choked her
utterance when she attempted to speak. She could only turn to her men,
and in instant response to her look they drew their swords and pressed
forward as if about to force their way in. This movement on their part
was greeted with a loud burst of derisive laughter from the town guard.
Then from out of the middle of the crowd of lookers-on came a cry of
Murderess! quickly followed by another shout of Go back, murderess, you
are not wanted here! This was a signal for all the unruly spirits in the
throng--all those whose delight is to trample upon the fallen--and from
all sides there arose a storm of jeers and execrations, and it was as if
she was in the midst of a frantic bellowing herd eager to gore and
trample her to death. And these were the same people that a few short
years ago would rush out from their houses to gaze with pride and
delight at her, their beautiful queen, and applaud her to the echo
whenever she appeared at their gates! Now, better than ever before, she
realised the change of feeling towards her from affectionate loyalty to
abhorrence, and drained to the last bitterest dregs the cup of shame and
humiliation.

With trembling hand she turned her horse round, and bending her ashen
white face low rode slowly out of the crowd, her men close to her on
either side, threatening with their swords those that pressed nearest
and followed in their retreat by shouts and jeers. But when well out of
sight and sound of the people she dismounted and sat down on the turf to
rest and consider what was to be done. By and by a mounted man was seen
coming from Salisbury at a fast gallop. He came with a letter and
message to the queen from an aged nobleman, one she had known in former
years at court. He informed her that he owned a large house at or near
Amesbury which he could not now use on account of his age and
infirmities, which compelled him to remain in Salisbury. This house she
might occupy for as long as she wished to remain in the neighbourhood.
He had received permission from the governor of the town to offer it to
her, and the only condition was that she must not return to Salisbury.

There was thus one friend left to the reviled and outcast queen--this
aged dying man!

Once more she set forth with the messenger as guide, and about set of
sun arrived at the house, which was to be her home for the next two to
three years, in this darkest period of her life. Yet she could not have
found a habitation and surroundings more perfectly suited to her wants
and the mood she was in. The house, which was large enough to
accommodate all her people, was on the west side of the Avon, a quarter
of a mile below Amesbury and two to three hundred yards distant from the
river bank, and was surrounded by enclosed land with gardens and
orchards, the river itself forming the boundary on one side. Here was
the perfect seclusion she desired: here she could spend her hours and
days as she ever loved to do in the open air without sight of any human
countenance excepting those of her own people, since now strange faces
had become hateful to her. Then, again, she loved riding, and just
outside of her gates was the great green expanse of the Downs, where she
could spend hours on horseback without meeting or seeing a human figure
except occasionally a solitary shepherd guarding his flock. So great was
the attraction the Downs had for her she herself marvelled at it. It was
not merely the sense of power and freedom the rider feels on a horse
with the exhilarating effect of swift motion and a wide horizon. Here
she had got out of the old and into a new world better suited to her
changed spirit. For in that world of men and women in which she had
lived until now all nature had become interfused with her own and other
people's lives--passions and hopes and fears and dreams and ambitions.
Now it was as if an obscuring purple mist had been blown away, leaving
the prospect sharp and clear to her sight as it had never appeared
before. A wide prospect, whose grateful silence was only broken by the
cry or song of some wild bird. Great thickets of dwarf thorn tree and
brambles and gorse, aflame with yellow flowers or dark to blackness by
contrast with the pale verdure of the earth. And open reaches of elastic
turf, its green suffused or sprinkled with red or blue or yellow,
according to the kind of flowers proper to the season and place. The
sight, too, of wild creatures: fallow deer, looking yellow in the
distance when seen amid the black gorse; a flock of bustards taking to
flight on her approach would rush away, their spread wings flashing
silver-white in the brilliant sunshine. She was like them on her horse,
borne swiftly as on wings above the earth, but always near it. Then,
casting her eyes up, she would watch the soarers, the buzzards, or
harriers and others, circling up from earth on broad motionless wings,
bird above bird, ever rising and diminishing to fade away at last into
the universal blue. Then, as if aspiring too, she would seek the highest
point on some high down, and sitting on her horse survey the prospect
before her--the sea of rounded hills, hills beyond hills, stretching
away to the dim horizon, and over it all the vast blue dome of heaven.
Sky and earth, with thorny brakes and grass and flowers and wild
creatures, with birds that flew low and others soaring up into
heaven--what was the secret meaning it had for her? She was like one
groping for a key in a dark place. Not a human figure visible, not a
sign of human occupancy on that expanse! Was this then the secret of her
elation? The all-powerful, dreadful God she was at enmity with, whom she
feared and fled from, was not here. He, or his spirit, was where man
inhabited, in cities and other centres of population, where there were
churches and monasteries.

To think this was a veritable relief to her. God was where men
worshipped him, and not here! She hugged the new belief and it made her
bold and defiant. Doubtless, if he is here, she would say, and can read
my thoughts, my horse in his very next gallop will put his foot in a
mole-run, and bring me down and break my neck. Or when yon black cloud
comes over me, if it is a thunder-cloud, the lightning out of it will
strike me dead. If he will but listen to his servant Dunstan this will
surely happen. Was it God or the head shepherd of his sheep, here in
England, who, when I tried to enter the fold, beat me off with his staff
and set his dogs on me so that I was driven away, torn and bleeding, to
hide myself in a solitary place? Would it then be better for me to go
with my cries for mercy to his seat? O no, I could not come to him
there; his doorkeepers would bar the way, and perhaps bring together a
crowd of their people to howl at me--Go away, Murderess, you are not
wanted here!

Now in spite of those moments, or even hours, of elation, during which
her mind would recover its old independence until the sense of freedom
was like an intoxication; when she cried out against God that he was
cruel and unjust in his dealings with his creatures, that he had raised
up and given power to the man who held the rod over her, one who in
God's holy name had committed crimes infinitely greater than hers, and
she refused to submit to him--in spite of it all she could never shake
off the terrible thought that in the end, at God's judgment seat, she
would have to answer for her own dark deeds. She could not be free of
her religion. She was like one who tears a written paper to pieces and
scatters the pieces in anger to see them blown away like snow-flakes on
the wind; who by and by discovers one small fragment clinging to his
garments, and looking at the half a dozen words and half words appearing
on it, adds others from memory or of his own invention. So she with what
was left when she thrust her religion away built for herself a different
one which was yet like the old; and even here in this solitude she was
able to find a house and sacred place for meditation and prayer, in
which she prayed indirectly to the God she was at enmity with. For now
invariably on returning from her ride to her house at Amesbury she would
pay a visit to the Great Stones, the ancient temple of Stonehenge.
Dismounting, she would order her attendants to take her horse away and
wait for her at a distance, so as not to be disturbed by the sound of
their talking. Going in she would seat herself on the central or altar
stone and give a little time to meditation--to the tuning of her mind.
That circle of rough-hewn stones, rough with grey lichen, were the
pillars of her cathedral, with the infinite blue sky for roof, and for
incense the smell of flowers and aromatic herbs, and for music the
far-off faintly heard sounds that came to her from the surrounding
wilderness--the tremulous bleating of sheep and the sudden wild cry of
hawk or stone curlew. Closing her eyes she would summon the familiar
image and vision of the murdered boy, always coming so quickly, so
vividly, that she had brought herself to believe that it was not a mere
creation of her own mind and of remorse, a memory, but that he was
actually there with her. Moving her hand over the rough stone she would
by and by let it rest, pressing it on the stone, and would say, Now I
have your hand in mine, and am looking with my soul's eyes into yours,
listen again to the words I have spoken so many times. You would not be
here if you did not remember me and pity and even love me still. Know
then that I am now alone in the world, that I am hated by the world
because of your bitter death. And there is not now one living being in
the world that I love, for I have ceased to love even my own boy, your
old beloved playmate, seeing that he has long been taken from me and
taught with all others to despise and hate me. And of all those who
inhabit the regions above, in all that innumerable multitude of angels
and saints, and of all who have died on earth and been forgiven, you
alone have any feeling of compassion for me and can intercede for me.
Plead for me--plead for me, O my son; for who is there in heaven or
earth that can plead so powerfully for me that am stained with your
blood!

Then, having finished her prayer, and wiped away all trace of tears and
painful emotions, she would summon her attendants and ride home, in
appearance and bearing still the Elfrida of her great days--the calm,
proud-faced, beautiful woman who was once Edgar's queen.

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