Dead Man's Plack and an Old Thorn: Chapter 9

Chapter 9

When Edward in sudden terror set spurs to his horse: when at the same
moment a knife flashed out and the fatal blow was delivered, Elfrida
too, like the other women witnesses in the crowd, had uttered a cry of
horror. But once the deed was accomplished and the assurance received
that the body had been hidden where it would never be found, the feeling
experienced at the spectacle was changed to one of exultation. For now
at last, after three miserable years of brooding on her defeat, she had
unexpectedly triumphed, and it was as if she already had her foot set on
her enemies' necks. For now her boy would be king--happily there was no
other candidate in the field; now her great friends from all over the
land would fly to her aid, and with them for her councillors she would
practically be the ruler during the king's long minority.

Thus she exulted; then, when that first tempest of passionate excitement
had abated, came a revulsion of feeling when the vivid recollections of
that pitiful scene returned and would not be thrust away; when she saw
again the change from affection and delight at beholding her to
suspicion and fear, then terror, come into the face of the boy she had
loved; when she witnessed the dreadful blow and watched him when he
swerved and fell from the saddle and the frightened horse galloped
wildly away dragging him over the rough moor. For now she knew that in
her heart she had never hated him: the animosity had been only on the
surface and was an overflow of her consuming hatred of the primate. She
had always loved the boy, and now that he no longer stood in her way to
power she loved him again. And she had slain him! O no, she was thankful
to think she had not! His death had come about by chance. Her commands
to her people had been that he was not to be allowed to leave the
castle; she had resolved to detain him, to hide and hold him a captive,
to persuade or in some way compel him to abdicate in his brother's
favour. She could not now say just how she had intended to deal with
him, but it was never her intention to murder him. Her commands had been
misunderstood, and she could not be blamed for his death, however much
she was to benefit by it. God would not hold her accountable.

Could she then believe that she was guiltless in God's sight? Alas! on
second thoughts she dared not affirm it. She was guiltless only in the
way that she had been guiltless of Athelwold's murder; had she not
rejoiced at the part she had had in that act? Athelwold had deserved his
fate, and she had never repented that deed, nor had Edgar. She had not
dealt the fatal blow then nor now, but she had wished for Edward's death
even as she had wished for Athelwold's, and it was for her the blow was
struck. It was a difficult and dreadful question. She was not equal to
it. Let it be put off, the pressing question now was, what would man's
judgment be--how would she now stand before the world?

And now the hope came that the secret of the king's disappearance would
never be known; that after a time it would be assumed that he was dead,
and that his death would never be traced to her door.

A vain hope, as she quickly found! There had been too many witnesses of
the deed both of the castle people and those who lived outside the
gates. The news spread fast and far as if carried by winged messengers,
so that it was soon known throughout the kingdom, and everywhere it was
told and believed that the queen herself had dealt the fatal blow.

Not Elfrida nor any one living at that time could have foretold the
effect on the people generally of this deed, described as the foulest
which had been done in Saxon times. There had in fact been a thousand
blacker deeds in the England of that dreadful period, but never one that
touched the heart and imagination of the whole people in the same way.
Furthermore, it came after a long pause, a serene interval of many years
in the everlasting turmoil--the years of the reign of Edgar the
Peaceful, whose early death had up till then been its one great sorrow.
A time too of recovery from a state of insensibility to evil deeds; of
increasing civilisation and the softening of hearts. For Edward was the
child of Edgar and his child-wife, who was beautiful and beloved and
died young; and he had inherited the beauty, charm, and all engaging
qualities of his parents. It is true that these qualities were known at
first-hand only by those who were about him; but from these the feeling
inspired had been communicated to those outside in ever-widening circles
until it was spread over all the land, so that there was no habitation,
from the castle to the hovel, in which the name of Edward was not as
music on man's lips. And we of the present generation can perhaps
understand this better than those of any other in the past centuries,
for having a prince and heir to the English throne of this same name so
great in our annals, one as universally loved as was Edward the Second,
afterwards called the Martyr, in his day.

One result of this general outburst of feeling was that all those who
had been, openly or secretly, in alliance with Elfrida now hastened to
dissociate themselves from her. She was told that by her own rash act in
killing the king before the world she had ruined her own cause for ever.

And Dunstan was not defeated after all. He made haste to proclaim the
son, the boy of ten years, king of England, and at the same time to
denounce the mother as a murderess. Nor did she dare to resist him when
he removed the little prince from Corfe Castle and placed him with some
of his own creatures, with monks for schoolmasters and guardians, whose
first lesson to him would be detestation of his mother. This lesson too
had to be impressed on the public mind; and at once, in obedience to
this command, every preaching monk in every chapel in the land raged
against the queen, the enemy of the archbishop and of religion, the
tigress in human shape, and author of the greatest crime known in the
land since Cerdic's landing. No fortitude could stand against such a
storm of execration. It overwhelmed her. It was, she believed, a
preparation for the dreadful doom about to fall on her. This was her
great enemy's day, and he would no longer be baulked of his revenge. She
remembered that Edwin had died by the assassin's hand, and the awful
fate of his queen Elgitha, whose too beautiful face was branded with hot
irons, and who was hamstrung and left to perish in unimaginable agony.
She was like the hunted roe deer hiding in a close thicket and
listening, trembling, to the hunters shouting and blowing on their horns
and to the baying of their dogs, seeking for her in the wood.

Could she defend herself against them in her castle? She consulted her
guard as to this, with the result that most of the men secretly left
her. There was nothing for her to do but wait in dreadful suspense, and
thereafter she would spend many hours every day in a tower commanding a
wide view of the surrounding level country to watch the road with
anxious eyes. But the feared hunters came not; the sound of the cry for
vengeance grew fainter and fainter until it died into silence. It was at
length borne in on her that she was not to be punished--at all events,
not here and by man. It came as a surprise to every one, herself
included. But it had been remembered that she was Edgar's widow and the
king's mother, and that her power and influence were dead. Never again
would she lift her head in England. Furthermore, Dunstan was growing
old; and albeit his zeal for religion, pure and undefiled as he
understood it, was not abated, the cruel, ruthless instincts and temper,
which had accompanied and made it effective in the great day of conflict
when he was engaged in sweeping from England the sin and scandal of a
married clergy, had by now burnt themselves out. Vengeance is mine,
saith the Lord, I will repay, and he was satisfied to have no more to do
with her. Let the abhorred woman answer to God for her crimes.

But now that all fear of punishment by man was over, this dreadful
thought that she was answerable to God weighed more and more heavily on
her. Nor could she escape by day or night from the persistent image of
the murdered boy. It haunted her like a ghost in every room, and when
she climbed to a tower to look out it was to see his horse rushing madly
away dragging his bleeding body over the moor. Or when she went out to
the gate it was still to find him there, sitting on his horse, his face
lighting up with love and joy at beholding her again; then the
change--the surprise, the fear, the wine-cup, the attempt to break away,
her cry--the unconsidered words she had uttered--and the fatal blow! The
cry that rose from all England calling on God to destroy her! would that
be her torment--would it sound in her ears through all eternity?

Corfe became unendurable to her, and eventually she moved to Bere, in
Dorset, where the lands were her property and she possessed a house of
her own, and there for upwards of a year she resided in the strictest
seclusion.

It then came out and was quickly noised abroad that the king's body had
been discovered long ago--miraculously it was said--in that brake near
Corfe where it had been hidden; that it had been removed to and secretly
buried at Wareham, and it was also said that miracles were occurring at
that spot. This caused a fresh outburst of excitement in the country;
the cry of miracles roused the religious houses all over Wessex, and
there was a clamour for possession of the remains. This was a question
for the heads of the Church to decide, and it was eventually decreed
that the monastery of Shaftesbury, founded by King Alfred, Edward's
great-great-grandfather, should have the body. Shaftesbury then, in
order to advertise so important an acquisition to the world, resolved to
make the removal of the remains the occasion of a great ceremony, a
magnificent procession bearing the sacred remains from Wareham to the
distant little city on the hill, attended by representatives from
religious houses all over the country and by the pious generally.

Elfrida, sitting alone in her house, brooding on her desolation, heard
of all these happenings and doings with increasing excitement; then all
at once resolved to take part herself in the procession. This was
seemingly a strange, almost incredible departure for one of her
indomitable character and so embittered against the primate, even as he
was against her. But her fight with him was now ended; she was defeated,
broken, deprived of everything that she valued in life; it was time to
think about the life to come. Furthermore, it now came to her that this
was not her own thought, but that it had been whispered to her soul by
some compassionate being of a higher order, and it was suggested to her
that here was an opportunity for a first step towards a reconciliation
with God and man. She dared not disregard it. Once more she would appear
before the world, not as the beautiful, magnificent Elfrida, the proud
and powerful woman of other days, but as a humble penitent doing her
bitter penance in public, one of a thousand or ten thousand humble
pilgrims, clad in mean garments, riding only when overcome with fatigue,
and at the last stage of that long twenty-five-mile journey casting off
her shoes to climb the steep stony road on naked, bleeding feet.

This resolution, in which she was strongly supported by the local
priesthood, had a mollifying effect on the people, and something like
compassion began to mingle with their feelings of hatred towards her.
But when it was reported to Dunstan, he fell into a rage, and imagined
or pretended to believe that some sinister design was hidden under it.
She was the same woman, he said, who had instigated the murder of her
first husband by means of a trick of this kind. She must not be allowed
to show her face again. He then despatched a stern and threatening
message forbidding her to take any part in or show herself at the
procession.

This came at the last moment when all her preparations had been made;
but she dared not disobey. The effect was to increase her misery. It was
as if the gates of mercy and deliverance, which had been opened,
miraculously as she believed, had now been once more closed against her;
and it was also as if her enemy had said: I have spared you the branding
with hot irons and slashing of sinews with sharp knives, not out of
compassion, but in order to subject you to a more terrible punishment.

Despair possessed her, which turned to sullen rage when she found that
the feeling of the people around her had again become hostile, owing to
the report that her non-appearance at the procession was due to the
discovery by Dunstan in good time of a secret plot against the State on
her part. Her house at Bere became unendurable to her; she resolved to
quit it, and made choice of Salisbury as her next place of residence. It
was not far to go, and she had a good house there which had not been
used since Edgar's death, but was always kept ready for her occupation.

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