Dead Man's Plack : and An old thorn

Presented to the

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO
LIBRARY

by the

ONTARIO LEGISLATIVE
LIBRARY

1980

DEAD MAN'S PLACK

First Published in 1920.

All rights reserved

DEAD MAN'S PLACK

DEAD MAN'S PLACK

AND

AN OLD THORN

BY

W. H. HUDSON

-

1920

LONDON y TORONTO
J. M. DENT & SONS LTD.

NEW YORK : E. P. BUTTON & CO.

f,

II

CONTENTS

PAGB

DEAD MAN'S PLACK:

PREAMBLE 3

CHAPTER 1 14

„ II 18

,, III 22

„ IV 29

,, v 38

„ VI. .... 50

„ VII 62

„ VIII 72

„ IX 81

„ X 95

,, XI 107

„ XII 128

AN OLD THORN:

CHAPTER 1 149

„ II. . • . . . . 163

„ III. ... 171

POSTSCRIPT 191

ILLUSTRATIONS

DEAD MAN'S PLACK .... Frontispiece

HAWTHORN AND IVY, NEAR THE GREAT

RIDGE WOOD .... Facing page 149

DEAD MAN'S PLACK

PREAMBLE

" A • ^HE insect tribes of human kind "
is a mode of expression we are
familiar with in the poets, moralists and
other superior persons, or beings, who
viewing mankind from their own vast
elevation see us all more or less of one
size and very, very small. No doubt
the comparison dates back to early, probably
Pliocene, times, when some one climbed to
the summit of a very tall cliff, and looking
down and seeing his fellows so diminished
in size as to resemble insects, not so gross
as beetles perhaps but rather like emmets,
he laughed in the way they laughed then at
the enormous difference between his stature
and theirs. Hence the time-honoured and
serviceable metaphor.

Now with me, in this particular instance, it
was all the other way about — from insect to

4 DEAD MAN'S PLACK

man — seeing that it was when occupied in
watching the small comedies and tragedies of
the insect world on its stage that I stumbled
by chance upon a compelling reminder of
one of the greatest tragedies in England's
history — greatest, that is to say, in its
consequences. And this is how it happened.
One summer day, prowling in an extensive
oak wood, in Hampshire, known as
Harewood Forest, I discovered that it
counted among its inhabitants no fewer
than three species of insects of peculiar
interest to me, and from that time I haunted
it, going there day after day to spend long
hours in pursuit of my small quarry. Not
to kill and preserve their diminutive corpses
in a cabinet, but solely to witness the
comedy of their brilliant little lives. And
as I used to take my luncheon in my
pocket I fell into the habit of going to
a particular spot, some opening in the dense
wood with a big tree to lean against and
give me shade, where after refreshing myself
with food and drink I could smoke my pipe
in solitude and peace. Eventually I came

DEAD MAN'S PLACK 5

to prefer one spot for my midday rest in
the central part of the wood, where a stone
cross, slender, beautifully proportioned and
about eighteen feet high, had been erected
some seventy or eighty years before by the
lord of the manor. On one side of the
great stone block on which the cross stood
there was an inscription which told that
it was placed there to mark the spot known
from of old as Dead Man's Plack ; that,
according to tradition, handed from father
to son, it was just here that King Edgar
slew his friend and favourite Earl Athelwold,
when hunting in the forest.

I had sat there on many occasions, and
had glanced from time to time at the
inscription cut on the stone, once actually
reading it, without having my attention
drawn away from the insect world I was
living in. It was not the tradition of the
Saxon king nor the beauty of the cross
in that green wilderness which drew me
daily to the spot, but its solitariness and
the little open space where I could sit in the
shade and have my rest.

6 DEAD MAN'S PLACK

Then something happened. Some friends
from town came down to me at the hamlet I
was staying at, and one of the party, the
mother of most of them, was not only older
than the rest of us in years, but also in
knowledge and wisdom ; and at the same
time she was younger than the youngest
of us, since she had the curious mind, the
undying interest in everything on earth—
the secret, in fact, of everlasting youth.
Naturally, being of this temperament, she
wanted to know what I was doing and
all about what I had seen, even to the
minutest detail — the smallest insect — and
in telling her of my days I spoke casually
of the cross placed at a spot called Dead
Man's Plack. This at once reminded her
of something she had heard about it before,
but long ago, in the seventies of last
century ; then presently it all came back to
her, and it proved to me an interesting story.

It chanced that in that far back time she
was in correspondence on certain scientific
and literary subjects with a gentleman who
was a native of this part of Hampshire in

DEAD MAN'S PLACK 7

which we were staying, and that they got
into a discussion about Freeman, the
historian, during which he told her of
an incident of his undergraduate days when
Freeman was professor at Oxford. He
attended a lecture by that man on the
Mythical and Romantic Elements in Early
English History, in which he stated for
the guidance of all who study the past,
that they must always bear in mind the
inevitable passion for romance in men,
especially the uneducated, and that when
the student comes upon a romantic incident
in early history, even when it accords with
the known character of the person it relates
to, he must reject it as false. Then, to
rub the lesson in, he gave an account of
the most flagrant of the romantic lies
contained in the history of the Saxon kings.
This was the story of King Edgar, and how
his favourite, Earl Athelwold, deceived him
as to the reputed beauty of Elfrida, and
how Edgar in revenge slew Athelwold with
his own hand when hunting. Then — to
show how false it all was ! — Edgar, the

8 DEAD MAN'S PLACK

chronicles state, was at Salisbury and rode
in one day to Harewood Forest and there
slew Athelwold. Now, said Freeman, as
Harewood Forest is in Yorkshire, Edgar
could not have ridden there from Salisbury
in one day, nor in two, nor in three, which
was enough to show that the whole story
was a fabrication.

The undergraduate, listening to the
lecturer, thought the Professor was wrong
owing to his ignorance of the fact that
the Harewood Forest in which the deed
was done was in Hampshire, within a day's
ride from Salisbury, and that local tradition
points to the very spot in the forest where
Athelwold was slain. Accordingly he wrote
to the Professor and gave him these facts.
His letter was not answered ; and the poor
youth felt hurt, as he thought he was doing
Professor Freeman a service by telling him
something he didn't know. He didn't
know his Professor Freeman.

This story about Freeman tickled me,
because I dislike him, but if any one were to
ask me why I dislike him I should probably

DEAD MAN'S PLACK 9

have to answer like a woman : Because I do.
Or if stretched on the rack until I could
find or invent a better reason I should
perhaps say it was because he was so
infernally cock-sure, so convinced that he
and he alone had the power of distinguish-
ing between the true and false ; also that he
was so arbitrary and arrogant and ready
to trample on those who doubted his
infallibility.

All this, I confess, would not be much
to say against him, seeing that it is nothing
but the ordinary professorial or academic
mind, and I suppose that the only difference
between Freeman and the ruck of the
professors was that he was more impulsive
or articulate and had a greater facility in
expressing his scorn.

Here I may mention in passing that when
this lecture appeared in print in his Historical
Essays he had evidently been put out a little,
and also put on his mettle by that letter from
an undergraduate, and had gone more deeply
into the documents relating to the incident,
seeing that he now relied mainly on the dis-

io DEAD MAN'S PLACK

crepancies in half a dozen chronicles he was
able to point out to prove its falsity. His
former main argument now appeared as a
" small matter of detail " — a " confusion of
geography " in the different versions of the
old historians. But one tells us, Freeman
writes, that Athelwold was killed in the
Forest of Wherwell on his way to York, and
then he says : " Now as Wherwell is in
Hampshire, it could not be on the road to
York ; " and further on he says : u Now
Harewood Forest in Yorkshire is certainly
not the same as Wherwell in Hampshire,"
and so on, and on, and on, but always care-
ful not to say that Wherwell Forest and
Harewood Forest are two names for one
and the same place, although now the name
of Wherwell is confined to the village on the
Test, where it is supposed Athelwold had
his castle and lived with his wife before he
was killed, and where Elfrida in her declining
years, when trying to make her peace with
God, came and built a Priory and took the
habit herself and there finished her darkened
life.

DEAD MAN'S PLACK n

This then was how he juggled with words
and documents and chronicles (his thimble-
rigging), making a truth a lie or a lie a
truth according as it suited a froward and
prejudicate mind, to quote the expression of
an older and simpler-minded historian — Sir
Walter Raleigh.

Finally, to wind up the whole controversy,
he says you are to take it as a positive truth
that Edgar married Elfrida, and a positive
falsehood that Edgar killed Athelwold. Why
— seeing there is as good authority and reason
for believing the one statement as the other ?
A foolish question ! Why ? — Because 1,
Professor or Pope Freeman, say so !

The main thing here is the effect the
Freeman anecdote had on me, which was
that when I went back to continue, my
insect-watching and rested at noon at Dead
Man's Plack, the old legend would keep
intruding itself on my mind, until, wishing
to have done with it, I said and I swore
that it was true — that the tradition preserved
in the neighbourhood, that on this very spot
Athelwold was slain by the king, was better

12 DEAD MAN'S PLACK

than any document or history. It was an
act which had been witnessed by many
persons, and the memory of it preserved
and handed down from father to son for
thirty generations ; for it must be borne in
mind that the inhabitants of this district of
Andover and the villages on the Test have
never in the last thousand years been ex-
terminated or expelled. And ten centuries
is not so long for an event of so startling
a character to persist in the memory of the
people when we consider that such traditions
have come down to us even from prehistoric
times and have proved true. Our archaeo-
logists, for example, after long study of the
remains, cannot tell us how long ago —
centuries or thousands of years — a warrior
with golden armour was buried under the
great cairn at Mold in Flintshire.

And now the curious part of all this matter
comes in. Having taken my side in the
controversy and made my pronouncement,
I found that I was not yet free of it. It
remained with me, but in a new way — not
as an old story in old books, but as an event,

DEAD MAN'S PLACK 13

or series of events, now being re-enacted
before my very eyes. I actually saw and
heard it all, from the very beginning to the
dreadful end ; and this is what I am now going
to relate. But whether or not I shall in my
relation be in close accord with what history
tells us 1 know not, nor does it matter in the
least. For just as the religious mystic is
exempt from the study of theology and the
whole body of religious doctrine, and from
all the observances necessary to those who
in fear and trembling are seeking their salva-
tion, even so those who have been brought
to the Gate of Remembrance are independent
of written documents, chronicles and histories,
and of the weary task of separating the false
from the true. They have better sources of
information. For I am not so vain as to
imagine for one moment that without such
external aid I am able to make shadows
breathe, revive the dead, and know what
silent mouths once said.

I

WHEN, sitting at noon in the shade
of an oak tree at Dead Man's Plack,
I beheld Edgar, I almost ceased to wonder
at the miracle that had happened in this
war-mad, desolated England, where Saxon
and Dane, like two infuriated bull-dogs, were
everlastingly at grips, striving to tear each
other's throats out, and deluging the country
with blood ; how, ceasing from their strife,
they had all at once agreed to live in peace
and unity side by side under the young king ;
and this seemingly unnatural state of things
endured even to the end of his life, on which
account he was called Edgar the Peaceful.

He was beautiful in person and had infinite
charm, and these gifts, together with his
kingly qualities, which have won the admira-
tion of all men of all ages, endeared him to
his people. He was but thirteen when he
14

DEAD MAN'S PLACK 15

came to be king of united England, and
small for his age, but even in these terrible
times he was remarkable for his courage,
both physical and moral. Withal he had
a subtle mind ; indeed, I think he surpassed
all our kings of the past thousand years in
combining so many excellent qualities. His
was the wisdom of the serpent combined
with the gentleness — I will not say of the
dove, but rather of the cat, our little tiger
on the hearthrug, the most beautiful of
four-footed things, so lithe, so soft, of so
affectionate a disposition, yet capable when
suddenly roused to anger of striking with
lightning rapidity and rending the offender's
flesh with its cruel, unsheathed claws.

Consider the line he took, even as a boy !
He recognised among all those who sur-
rounded him, in his priestly adviser, the one
man of so great a mind as to be capable of
assisting him effectually in ruling so divided,
war-loving and revengeful a people, and he
allowed him practically unlimited power to do
as he liked. He went even further by pre-
tending to fall in with Dunstan's ambitions

16 DEAD MAN'S PLACK

of purging the Church of the order of
priests or half-priests, or canons, who were
in possession of most of the religious houses
in England, and were priests that married
wives and owned lands and had great power.
Against this monstrous state of things Edgar
rose up in his simulated wrath and cried out
to Archbishop Dunstan in a speech he de-
livered to sweep them away and purify the
Church and country from such a scandal !

But Edgar himself had a volcanic heart,
and to witness it in full eruption it was only
necessary to convey to him the tidings of
some woman of a rare loveliness ; and have
her he would, in spite of all laws human and
divine. Thus when inflamed with passion
for a beautiful nun he did not hesitate to
smash the gates of a convent to drag her
forth and forcibly make her his mistress.
And this too was a dreadful scandal, but no
great pother could be made about it, seeing
that Edgar was so powerful a friend of the
Church and of pure religion.

Now all the foregoing is contained in the

DEAD MAN'S PLACK 17

histories, but in what follows I have for sole
light and guide the vision that came to me
at Dead Man's Flack, and have only to add
to this introductory note that Edgar at the
early age of twenty-two was a widower, having
already had to wife Ethelfled the Fair, who
was famous for her beauty, and who died
shortly after giving birth to a child who
lived to figure later in history as one of
England's many Edwards.

II

NOW although King Edgar had dearly
loved his wife, who was also beloved
by all his people on account of her sweet
and gentle disposition as well as of her ex-
ceeding beauty, it was not in his nature to
brood long over such a loss. He had too
keen a zest for life and the many interests
and pleasures it had for him ever to become
a melancholy man. It was a delight to him
to be king, and to perform all kingly duties
and offices. Also he was happy in his friends,
especially in his favourite, the Earl Athel-
wold, who was like him in character, a man
after his own heart. They were indeed like
brothers, and some of those who surrounded
the king were not too well pleased to witness
this close intimacy. Both were handsome
men, witty, of a genial disposition, yet under
a light careless manner brave and ardent,
18

DEAD MAN'S PLACK 19

devoted to the pleasure of the chase and all
other pleasures, especially to those bestowed
by golden Aphrodite, their chosen saint,
albeit her name did not figure in the
Calendar.

Hence it was not strange, when certain
reports of the wonderful beauty of a woman
in the West Country were brought to Edgar's
ears that his heart began to burn within him,
and that by and by he opened himself to
his friend on the subject. He told Athelwold
that he had discovered the one woman in
England fit to be Ethelfled's successor, and
that he had resolved to make her his queen
although he had never seen her, since she and
her father had never been to court. That,
however, would not deter him ; there was no
other woman in the land whose claims were
equal to hers, seeing that she was the only
daughter and part heiress of one of the
greatest men in the kingdom, Ongar, Earl-
doman of Devon and Somerset, a man of
vast possessions and great power. Yet all
that was of less account to him than her fame,
her personal worth, since she was reputed to

20 DEAD MAN'S PLACK

be the most beautiful woman in the land. It
was for her beauty that he desired her, and
being of an exceedingly impatient temper in
any case in which beauty in a woman was
concerned, he desired his friend to proceed
at once to Earl Ongar in Devon with an offer
of marriage to his daughter, Elfrida, from
the king.

Athelwold laughed at Edgar in this his
most solemn and kingly mood, and with a
friend's privilege told him not to be so simple
as to buy a pig in a poke. The lady, he
said, had not been to court, consequently she
had not been seen by those best able to judge
of her reputed beauty. Her fame rested
wholly on the report of the people of her
own country, who were great as every one
knew at blowing their own trumpets. Their
red and green county was England's paradise ;
their men the bravest and handsomest and
their women the most beautiful in the land.
For his part he believed there were as good
men and as fair women in Mercia and East
Angiia as in the West. It would certainly
be an awkward business if the king found

DEAD MAN'S PLACK 21

himself bound in honour to wed with a person
he did not like. Awkward because of her
father's fierce pride and power. A better
plan would be to send some one he could trust
not to make a mistake to find out the truth
of the report.

Edgar was pleased at his friend's wise
caution, and praised him for his candour,
which was that of a true friend, and as he
was the only man he could thoroughly trust
in such a matter he would send him. Ac-
cordingly, Athelwold, still much amused at
Edgar's sudden wish to make an offer of
marriage to a woman he had never seen, set
out on his journey in great state with many
attendants as befitted his person and his
mission, which was ostensibly to bear greet-
ings and loving messages from the king to
some of his most important subjects in the
West Country.

In this way he travelled through Wilts,
Somerset and Devon, and in due time arrived
at Earl Ongar's castle on the Exe.

Ill

ATHELWOLD, who thought highly
of himself, had undertaken his mission
with a light heart, but now when his progress
in the West had brought him to the great
earldoman's castle it was borne in on him
that he had put himself in a very responsible
position. He was here to look at this woman
with cold, critical eyes, which was easy enough ;
and having looked at and measured and
weighed her, he would make a true report to
Edgar ; that too would be easy for him, since
all his power and happiness in life depended
on the king's continual favour. But Ongar
stood between him and the woman he had
come to see and take stock of with that clear
unbiassed judgment which he could safely
rely on. And Ongar was a proud and stern
old man, jealous of his great position, who
had not hesitated to say on Edgar's accession
22

DEAD MAN'S PLACK 23

to the kingship, knowing well that his words
would be reported in due time, that he refused
to be one of the crowd who came flocking
from all over the land to pay homage to a
boy. It thus came about that neither then
nor at any subsequent period had there been
any personal relations between the king and
this English subject, who was prouder than all
the Welsh kings who had rushed at Edgar's
call to make their submission.

But now when Ongar had been informed
that the king's intim-ate friend and confidant
was on his way to him with greetings and
loving messages from Edgar, he was flattered,
and resolved to receive him in a friendly and
loyal spirit and do him all the honour in his
power. For Edgar was no longer a boy : he
was king over all this hitherto turbulent realm,
East and West from sea to sea and from the
Land's End to the Tweed, and the strange
enduring peace of the times was a proof of
his power.

It thus came to pass that Athelwold's
mission was made smooth to him, arid when
they met and conversed, the fierce old Earl

24 DEAD MAN'S PLACK

was so well pleased with his visitor, that all
trace of the sullen hostility he had cherished
towards the court passed away like the
shadow of a cloud. And later, in the ban-
queting-room, Athelwold came face to face
with the woman he had come to look at with
cold, critical eyes, like one who examines a
horse in the interests of a friend who desires
to become its purchaser.

Down to that fatal moment the one desire
of his heart was to serve his friend faithfully
in this delicate business. Now, the first
sight of her, the first touch of her hand,
wrought a change in him, and all thought of
Edgar and of the purpose of his visit vanished
out of his mind. Even he, one of the great
nobles of his time, the accomplished courtier
and life of the court, stood silent like a person
spell-bound before this woman who had been
to no court, but had lived always with that
sullen old man in comparative seclusion in a
remote province. It was not only the beauti-
ful dignity and graciousness with which she
received him, with the exquisite beauty in
the lines and colour of her face, and her hair

DEAD MAN'S PLACK 25

which, if unloosed, would have covered her
to the knees as with a splendid mantle.
That hair of a colour comparable only to
that of the sweet gale when that sweet plant
is in its golden withy or catkin stage in the
month of May, and is clothed with catkins
as with a foliage of a deep shining red gold,
that seems not a colour of earth but rather
one distilled from the sun itself. Nor was
it the colour of her eyes, the deep pure blue
of the lungwort, that blue loveliness seen in
no other flower on earth. Rather it was the
light from her eyes which was like lightning
that pierced and startled him ; for that light,
that expression, was a living spirit looking
through his eyes into the depths of his soul,
knowing all its strength and weakness, and
in the same instant resolving to make it her
own and have dominion over it.

It was only when he had escaped from the
power and magic of her presence, when alone
in his sleeping room, that reflection came to
him and the recollection of Edgar and of his
mission. And there was dismay in the
thought. For the woman was his, part and
c

26 DEAD MAN'S PLACK

parcel of his heart and soul and life ; for that
was what her lightning glance had said to
him, and she could not be given to another.
No, not to the king ! Had any man, any
friend, ever been placed in so terrible a
position ? Honour ? Loyalty ? To which-
ever side he inclined he could not escape the
crime, the base betrayal and abandonment !
But loyalty to the king would be the greater
crime. Had not Edgar himself broken every
law of God and man to gratify his passion
for a woman ? Not a woman like this !
Never would Edgar look on her until he,
Athelwold, had obeyed her and his own heart
and made her his for ever ! And what would
come then ! He would not consider it — he
would perish rather than yield her to another !
That was how the question came before
him, and how it was settled, during the long
sleepless hours when his blood was in a fever
and his brain on fire ; but when day dawned
and his blood grew cold and his brain was
tired, the image of Edgar betrayed and in a
deadly rage became insistent, and he rose
desponding and in dread of the meeting to

DEAD MAN'S PLACK 27

come. And no sooner did he meet her than
she overcame him as on the previous day ;
and so it continued during the whole period
of his visit, racked with passion, drawn now
to this side, now to that, and when he was
most resolved to have her then most furiously
assaulted by loyalty, by friendship, by honour,
and he was like a stag at bay righting for his
life against the hounds. And every time he
met her — and the passionate words he dared
not speak were like confined fire, burning him
up inwardly — seeing him pale and troubled
she would greet him with a smile and look
which told him she knew that he was troubled
in heart, that a great conflict was raging in
him, also that it was on her account and was
perhaps because he had already bound him-
self to some other woman, some great lady
of the land ; and now this new passion had
come to him. And her smile and look were
like the world-irradiating sun when it rises,
and the black menacing cloud that brooded
over his soul would fade and vanish, and he
knew that she had again claimed him and
that he was hers.

28 D;EAD MAN'S PLACK

So it continued till the very moment of
parting, and again as on their first meeting
he stood silent and troubled before her ;
then in faltering words told her that the
thought of her would travel and be with
him ; that in a little while, perhaps in a
month or two, he would be rid of a great
matter which had been weighing heavily on
his mind, and once free he could return to
Devon, if she would consent to his paying
her another visit.

She replied smilingly with gracious words,
with no change from that exquisite perfect
dignity which was always hers ; nor tremor
in her speech, but only that understanding
look from her eyes, which said : Yes, you
shall come back to me in good time, when
you have smoothed the way, to claim me
for your own.

IV

ON Athelwold's return the king embraced
him warmly, and was quick to observe
a change in him — the thinner, paler face and
appearance generally of one lately recovered
from a grievous illness or who had been
troubled in mind. Athelwold explained that
it had been a painful visit to him, due in the
first place to the anxiety he experienced of
being placed in so responsible a position, and
in the second place the misery it was to him
to be the guest for many days of such a
person as the earldoman, a man of a rough,
harsh aspect and manner, who daily made
himself drunk at table, after which he would
grow intolerably garrulous and boastful.
Then, when his host had been carried to bed
by his servants, his own wakeful, troubled
hours would begin. For at first he had
been struck by the woman's fine, handsome
29

3o DEAD MAN'S PLACK

presence, albeit she was not the peerless
beauty she had been reported ; but when he
had seen her often and more closely and had
conversed with her he had been disappointed.
There was something lacking ; she had not
the softness, the charm, desirable in a woman ;
she had something of her parent's harshness,
and his final judgment was that she was not
a suitable person for the king to marry.

Edgar was a little cast down at first, but
quickly recovering his genial manner, thanked
his friend for having served him so well.

For several weeks following the king and
the king's favourite were constantly together ;
and during that period Athelwold developed
a peculiar sweetness and affection towards
Edgar, often recalling to him their happy
boyhood's days in East Anglia, when they
were like brothers, and cemented the close
friendship which was to last them for the
whole of their lives. Finally, when it seemed
to his watchful, crafty mind that Edgar had
cast the whole subject of his wish to marry
Elfrida into oblivion, and that the time was
now ripe for carrying out his own scheme,

DEAD MAN'S PLACK 31

he reopened the subject, and said that although
the lady was not a suitable person to be the
king's wife it would be good policy on his,
Athelwold's, part, to win her on account of
her position as only daughter and part heiress
of Ongar, who had great power and posses-
sions in the West. But he would not move
in the matter without Edgar's consent.

Edgar, ever ready to do anything to please
his friend, freely gave it, and only asked him
to give an assurance that the secret object of
his former visit to Devon would remain
inviolate. Accordingly Athelwold took a
solemn oath that it would never be revealed,
and Edgar then slapped him on the back and
wished him Godspeed in his wooing.

Very soon after thus smoothing the way,
Athelwold returned to Devon, and was once
more in the presence of the woman who had
so enchanted him, with that same meaning
smile on her lips and light in her eyes which
had been her good-bye and her greeting, only
now it said to him : You have returned as
I knew you would, and I am ready to give
myself to you.

32 DEAD MAN'S PLACK

From every point of view it was a suitable
union, seeing that Athelwold would inherit
power and great possessions from his father,
Earldoman of East Anglia, and before long
the marriage took place, and by and by
Athelwold took his wife to Wessex, to the
castle he had built for himself on his estate
of Wherwell, on the Test. There they lived
together, and as they had married for love
they were happy.

But as the king's intimate friend and the
companion of many of his frequent journeys
he could not always bide with her nor be
with her for any great length of time. For
Edgar had a restless spirit and was exceedingly
vigilant, and liked to keep a watchful eye on
the different lately hostile nations of Mercia,
East Anglia, and Northumbria, so that his
journeys were frequent and long to these
distant parts of his kingdom. And he also
had his naval forces to inspect at frequent
intervals. Thus it came about that he was
often absent from her for weeks and months
at a stretch. And so the time went on, and
during these long absences a change would

DEAD MAN'S PLACK 33

come over Elfrida ; the lovely colour, the
enchanting smile, the light of her eyes — the
outward sign of an intense brilliant life —
would fade, and with eyes cast down she
would pace the floors or the paths or sit
brooding in silence by the hour.

Of all this Athelwold knew nothing, since
she made no complaint, and when he returned
to her the light and life and brilliance would
be hers again, and there was no cloud or
shadow on his delight. But the cloud would
come back over her when he again went away.
Her only relief in her condition was to sit
before a fire or when out of doors to seat
herself on the bank of the stream and watch
the current. For although it was still sum-
mer, the month being August, she would
have a fire of logs lighted in a large chamber
and sit staring at the flames by the hour, and
sometimes holding her outstretched hands
before the flames until they were hot, she
would then press them to her lips. Or when
the day was warm and bright she would be
out of doors and spend hours by the river
gazing at the swift crystal current below as if

34 DEAD MAN'S PLACK

fascinated by the sight of the running water.
It is a marvellously clear water, so that look-
ing down on it you can see the rounded
pebbles in all their various colours and mark-
ings lying at the bottom, and if there should
be a trout lying there facing the current and
slowly waving his tail from side to side, you
could count the red spots on his side, so clear
is the water. Even more did the floating
water-grass hold her gaze — that bright green
grass that, rooted in the bed of the stream,
sends its thin blades to the surface where
they float and wave like green floating hair.
Stooping, she would dip a hand in the stream
and watch the bright clear water running
through the fingers of her white hand, then
press the hand to her lips.

Then again when day declined she would
quit the stream to sit before the blazing logs,
staring at the flames. What am I doing
here ? she would murmur. And what is
this my life ? When I was at home in
Devon I had a dream of Winchester, of
Salisbury, or other great towns further away,
where the men and women who are great in

DEAD MAN'S PLACK 35

the land meet together, and where my eyes
would perchance sometimes have the hap-
piness to behold the king himself — my
husband's close friend and companion. My
waking has brought a different scene before
me ; this castle in the wilderness, a solitude
where from an upper window I look upon
leagues of forest, a haunt of wild animals.
I see great birds soaring in the sky and listen
to the shrill screams of kite and buzzard ;
and sometimes when lying awake on a still
night the distant long howl of a wolf. Also,
it is said, there are great stags, and roe-deer,
and wild boars, and it is Athelwold's joy to
hunt them and slay them with his spear.
A joy too when he returns from the hunt or
from a long absence to play with his beautiful
wife — his caged bird of pretty feathers and a
sweet song to soothe him when he is tired.
But of his life at court he tells me little, and
of even that little I doubt the truth. Then
he leaves me and I am alone with his retainers
— the crowd of serving men and women and
the armed men to safeguard me. I am alone
with my two friends which 1 have found.

36 DEAD MAN'S PLACK

one out of doors, the other in — the river
which runs at the bottom of the ground
where I take my walks, and the fire I sit
before. The two friends, companions, and
lovers to whom all the secrets of my soul are
confided. I love them, having no other in
the world to love, and here I hold my hands
before the flames until it is hot and then kiss
the heat, and by the stream I kiss my wetted
hands. And if I were to remain here until
this life became unendurable I should con-
sider as to which one of these two lovers
I should give myself. This one I think is
too ardent in his love — it would be terrible
to be wrapped round in his fiery arms and
feel his fiery mouth on mine. I should
rather go to the other one to lie down on his
pebbly bed, and give myself to him to hold
me in his cool, shining arms and mix his
green hair with my loosened hair. But my
wish is to live and not die. Let me then
wait a little longer ; let me watch and listen,
and perhaps some day, by and by, from his
own lips, I shall capture the secret of this
my caged solitary life.

DEAD MAN'S PLACK 37

And the very next day Athelwold, having
just returned with the king to Salisbury, was
once more with her ; and the brooding cloud
had vanished from her life and countenance ;
she was once more his passionate bride, lavish-
ing caresses on him, listening with childish
delight to every word that fell from his lips,
and desiring no other life and no greater
happiness than this.

IT was early September, and the king with
some of the nobles who were with him,
after hunting the deer over against Cran-
bourne, returned at evening to Salisbury, and
after meat with some of his intimates they
sat late drinking wine and fell into a merry,
boisterous mood. They spoke of Athelwold,
who was not with them, and indulged in some
mocking remarks about his frequent and pro-
longed absences from the king's company.
Edgar took it 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 stagger-
38

DEAD MAN'S PLACK 39

ing 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 —

40 DEAD MAN'S PLACK

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 J 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

DEAD MAN'S PLACK 41

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 be-
trayed him in this monstrous way — wounding
him in his tenderest part ? The very thought
that such a thing might be was like a mad-
ness 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 com-
panions 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 com-
pany he would regard himself as the loneliest
man in the kingdom. Then in a short time
D

42 DEAD MAN'S PLACK

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 suit-
able 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 Salis-
bury 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 his castle.

Now his hard task and the most painful
moment of his life had come. Alone with
Elfrida in her chamber he cast himself down

DEAD MAN'S PLACK 43

before her, and with his bowed head resting
on her knees, made a clean breast of the
whole damning story of the deceit he had
practised towards the king in order to win
her for himself. In anguish and shedding
tears he implored her forgiveness, begging
her to think of that irresistible power of love
she had inspired in him, which would have
made it worse than death to see her the wife
of another — even of Edgar himself — his
friend, the brother of his soul. Then he
went on to speak of Edgar, who was of a
sweet and lovable nature, yet capable of a
deadly fury against those who offended him ;
and this was an offence he would take more
to heart than any other ; he would be im-
placable if he once thought that he had been
wilfully deceived, and she only could now
save them from certain destruction. For
now it seemed to him that Edgar had con-
ceived a suspicion that the account he had of
her was not wholly true, which was that she
was a handsome woman but not surpassingly
beautiful as had been reputed, not graceful,
not charming in manner and conversation.

44 DEAD MAN'S PLACK

She could save them by justifying his
description of her — by using a woman's art
to lessen instead of enhancing her natural
beauty, by putting away her natural charm
and power to fascinate all who approached
her.

Thus he pleaded, praying for mercy, even
as a captive prays to his conqueror for life,
and never once daring to lift his bowed head
to look at her face ; while she sat motionless
and silent, not a word, not a sigh, escaping
her ; and she was like a woman carved in
stone, with knees of stone on which his head
rested.

Then, at length, exhausted with his
passionate pleading and frightened at her
silence and deadly stillness, he raised his
head and looked up at her face to behold it
radiant and smiling. Then, looking down
lovingly into his eyes, she raised her hands
to her head, and loosening the great mass of
coiled tresses let them fall over him, covering
his head and shoulders and back as with a
splendid mantle of shining red gold. And
he, the awful fear now gone, continued

DEAD MAN'S PLACK 45

silently gazing up at her, absorbed in her
wonderful loveliness.

Bending down she put her arms round his
neck and spoke : Do you not know, O
Athelwold, that I love you alone and could
love no other, noble or king ; that without
you life would not be life to me ? All you
have told me endears you more to me, and
all you wish me to do shall be done, though
it may cause your king and friend to think
meanly of you for having given your hand
to one so little worthy of you.

She having thus spoken, he was ready to
pour forth his gratitude in burning words,
but she would not have it. No more
words, she said, putting her hand on his
mouth. Your anxious day is over — your
burden dropped. Rest here on the couch
by my side, and let me think on all there
is to plan and do against to-morrow
evening.

And so they were silent, and he, reclining
on the cushions, watched her face and saw
her smile and wondered what was passing in
her mind to cause that smile. Doubtless it

46 DEAD MAN'S PLACK

was something to do with the question of
her disguising arts.

What had caused her to smile was a happy
memory of the days with Athelwold before
their marriage, when one day he came in to
her with a leather bag in his hand and said :
Do you, who are so beautiful yourself,
love all beautiful things ? And do you love
the beauty of gems ? And when she replied
that she loved gems above all beautiful things,
he poured out the contents of his bag in her
lap — brilliants, sapphires, rubies, emeralds,
opals, pearls in gold setting, in bracelets,
necklets, pendants, rings and brooches. And
when she gloated over this splendid gift,
taking up gem after gem, exclaiming de-
lightedly at its size and colour and lustre,
he told her that he once knew a man who
maintained that it was a mistake for a beauti-
ful woman to wear gems. Why ? she asked,
would he have then: wholly unadorned ?
No, he replied, he liked to see them wearing
gold, saying that gold makes the most perfect
setting for a woman's beauty, just as it does
for a precious stone, and its effect is to

DEAD MAN'S PLACK 47

enhance the beauty it surrounds. But the
woman's beauty has its meeting and central
point in the eyes, and the light and soul in
them illumines the whole face. And in the
stone nature simulates the eye, and although
without a soul its brilliant light and colour
make it the equal of the eye, and therefore
when worn as an ornament it competes with
the eye, and in effect lessens the beauty it is
supposed to enhance. He said that gems
should be worn only by women who are not
beautiful, who must rely on something ex-
traneous to attract attention, since it would
be better to a homely woman that men should
look at her to admire a diamond or sapphire
than not to look at her at all. She had
laughed and asked him who the man was
who had such strange ideas, and he had
replied that he had forgotten his name.

Now, recalling this incident after so long
a time, it all at once flashed into her mind
that Edgar was the man he had spoken of ;
she knew now because, always secretly watch-
ful, she had noted that he never spoke of
Edgar or heard Edgar spoken of without a

48 DEAD MAN'S PLACK

slight subtle change in the expression of his
face, also, if he spoke, in the tone of his
voice. It was the change that comes into
the face, and into the tone, when one re-
members or speaks of the person most loved
in all the world. And she remembered now
that he had that changed expression and tone
of voice, when he had spoken of the man
whose name he pretended to have forgotten.
And while she sat thinking of this it grew
dark in the room, the light of the fire having
died down. Then presently, in the profound
stillness of the room, she heard the sound of
his deep, regular breathing and knew that he
slept, and that it was a sweet sleep after his
anxious day. Going softly to the hearth she
moved the yet still glowing logs, until they
sent up a sudden flame and the light fell
upon the sleeper's still face. Turning, she
gazed steadily at it — the face of the man who
had won her ; but her own face in the fire-
light was white and still and wore a strange
expression. Now she moved noiselessly to
his side and bent down as if to whisper in his
ear, but suddenly drew back again and moved

DEAD MAN'S PLACK 49

towards the door, then turning gazed once
more at his face and murmured : No, no,
even a word faintly whispered would bring
him a dream, and it is better his sleep should
be dreamless. For now he has had his day
and it is finished, and to-morrow is mine.

VI

ON the following day Athelwold was
occupied with preparations for the
king's reception and for the next day's
boar-hunt in the forest. At the same time
he was still somewhat anxious as to his
wife's more difficult part, and from time to
time he came to see and consult with her.
He then observed a singular change in her,
both in her appearance and conduct. No
longer the radiant, loving Elfrida, her beauty
now had been dimmed and she was un-
smiling and her manner towards him
repellant. She had nothing to say to him
except that she wished him to leave her
alone. Accordingly he withdrew, feeling a
little hurt, and at the same time admiring her
extraordinary skill in disguising her natural
loveliness and charm, but almost fearing that
5°

DEAD MAN'S PLACK 51

she was making too great a change in her
appearance.

Thus passed the day, and in the late
afternoon Edgar duly arrived, and when he
had rested a little, was conducted to the
banqueting-room, where the meeting with
Elfrida would take place.

Then Elfrida came, and Athelwold has-
tened to the entrance to take her hand and
conduct her to the king ; then, seeing her,
he stood still and stared in silent astonish-
ment and dismay at the change he saw in
her, for never before had he beheld her
so beautiful, so queenly and magnificent.
What did it mean — did she wish to destroy
him ? Seeing the state he was in she placed
her hand in his, and murmured softly : I
know best. And so, holding her hand, he
conducted her to the king, who stood waiting
to receive her. For all she had done that
day to please and to deceive him had now
been undone, and everything that had been
possible had been done to enhance her
loveliness. She had arrayed herself in a
violet-coloured silk gown with a network of

52 DEAD MAN'S PLACK

gold thread over the body and wide sleeves
to the elbows, and rope of gold round her
waist with its long ends falling to her knee.
The great mass of her coiled hair was sur-
mounted with a golden comb, and golden
pendants dropped from her ears to her
shoulders. Also she wore gold armlets
coiled serpent-wise round her white arms
from elbow to wrist. Not a gem — nothing
but pale yellow gold.

Edgar himself was amazed at her love-
liness, for never had he seen anything
comparable to it ; and when he gazed into
her eyes she did not lower hers, but returned
gaze for gaze, and there was that in her eyes
and their strange eloquence which kindled a
sudden flame of passion in his heart, and for
a moment it appeared in his countenance.
Then, quickly recovering himself, he greeted
her graciously but with his usual kingly
dignity of manner, and for the rest of the
time he conversed with her and Athelwold
in such a pleasant and friendly way that his
host began to recover somewhat from his
apprehensions. But in his heart Edgar was

DEAD MAN'S PLACK 53

saying : And this is the woman that Athel-
wold, the close friend of all my days, from
boyhood until now, the one man in the
world I loved and trusted, has robbed me
of!

And Athelwold at the same time was
revolving in his mind the mystery of
Elfrida's action. What did she mean when
she whispered to him that she knew best ?
And why, when she wished to appear in that
magnificent way before the king, had she
worn nothing but gold ornaments — not one
of the splendid gems of which she possessed
such a store ?

She had remembered something which he
had forgotten.

Now when the two friends were left alone
together drinking wine, Athelwold was still
troubled in his mind, although his suspicion
and fear were not so acute as at first, and the
longer they sat talking — until the small
hours — the more relieved did he feel from
Edgar's manner towards him. Edgar in his
cups opened his heart and was more loving
and free in his speech than ever before. He

54 DEAD MAN'S PLACK

loved Athelwold as he loved no one else in
the world, and to see him great and happy
was his first desire ; and he congratulated
him from his heart on having found a wife
who was worthy of him and would eventually
bring him, through her father, such great
possessions as would make him the chief
nobleman in the land. All happiness and
glory to them both ; and when a child was
born to them he would be its godfather, and
if happily by that time there was a queen,
she should be its godmother.

Then he recalled their happy boyhood's
days in East Anglia, that joyful time when
they first hunted and had many a mishap
and fell from their horses when they pursued
hare and deer and bustard in the wide open
stretches of sandy country ; and in the
autumn and winter months when they were
wild-fowling in the great level flooded lands
where the geese and all wild-fowl came in
clouds and myriads. And now he laughed
and now his eyes grew moist at the
recollection of the irrecoverable glad days.

Little time was left for sleep ; yet they

DEAD MAN'S PLACK 55

were ready early next morning for the day's
great boar-hunt in the forest, and only when
the king was about to mount his horse did
Elfrida make her appearance. She came out
to him from the door, not richly dressed
now, but in a simple white linen robe and
not an ornament on her except that splendid
crown of the red-gold hair on her head.
And her face too was almost colourless now,
and grave and still. She brought wine in a
golden cup and gave it to the king, and he
once more fixed his eyes on her and for
some moments they continued silently
gazing, each in that fixed gaze seeming to
devour the secrets of the other's soul. Then
she wished him a happy hunting, and he
said in reply he hoped it would be the
happiest hunting he had ever had. Then,
after drinking the wine, he mounted his
horse and rode away. And she remained
standing very still, the cup in her hand,
gazing after him as he rode side by side with
Athelwold, until in the distance the trees hid
him from her sight.

Now when they had ridden a distance of

56 DEAD MAN'S PLACK

three miles or more into the heart of the
forest, they came to a broad drive-like
stretch of green turf, and the king cried :
This is just what I have been wishing for !
Come, let us give our horses a good gallop.
And when they loosened the reins, the
horses, glad to have a race on such a ground,
instantly sprang forward ; but Edgar,
keeping a tight rein, was presently left
twenty or thirty yards behind ; then, setting
spurs to his horse, he dashed forward, and
on coming abreast of his companion, drew
his knife and struck him in the back, dealing
the blow with such a concentrated fury that
the knife was buried almost to the hilt.
Then violently wrenching it out, he would
have struck again had not the earl, with a
scream of agony, tumbled from his seat.
The horse, freed from its rider, rushed on in
a sudden panic, and the king's horse side by
side with it. Edgar, throwing himself back
and exerting his whole strength, succeeded
in bringing him to a stop at a distance of
fifty or sixty yards, then turning, came
riding back at a furious speed.

DEAD MAN'S PLACK 57

Now when Athelwold fell, all those who
were riding behind, the earl's and the king's
men to the number of thirty or forty, dashed
forward, and some of them, hurriedly dis-
mounting, gathered about him as he lay
groaning and writhing and pouring out his
blood on the ground. But at the king's
approach they drew quickly back to make
way for him, and he came straight on and
caused his horse to trample on the fallen
man. Then pointing to him with the knife
he still had in his hand, he cried : That is
how I serve a false friend and traitor !
Then, wiping the stained knife-blade on his
horse's neck and sheathing it, he shouted :
Back to Salisbury ! and setting spurs to
his horse, galloped off towards the Andover
road.

His men immediately mounted and
followed, leaving the earl's men with their
master. Lifting him up, they placed him on
a horse, and with a mounted man on each
side to hold him up, they moved back at a
walking pace towards Wherwell.

Messengers were sent ahead to inform

58 DEAD MAN'S PLACK

Elfrida of what had happened, and then, an
hour later, yet another messenger to tell
that Athelwold, when half-way home, had
breathed his last. Then at last the corpse
was brought to the castle and she met it
with tears and lamentations. But afterwards
in her own chamber, when she had dismissed
all her attendants, as she desired to weep
alone, her grief changed to joy. O,
glorious Edgar, she said, the time will
come when you will know what I feel now,
when at your feet, embracing your knees
and kissing the blessed hand that with one
blow has given me life and liberty. One
blow and your revenge was satisfied and you
had won me ; I know it, I saw it all in that
flame of love and fury in your eyes at our
first meeting, which you permitted me to
see, which, if he had seen, he would have
known that he was doomed. O perfect
master of dissimulation, all the more do I
love and worship you for dealing with him
as he dealt with you and with me ; caressing
him with flattering words until the moment
came to strike and slay. And I love you all

DEAD MAN'S PLACK 59

the more for making your horse trample on
him as he lay bleeding his life out on the
ground. And now you have opened the
way with your knife you shall come back
or call me to you when it pleases you, and
for the rest of your life it will be a satis-
faction to you to know that you have taken
a modest woman as well as the fairest in the
land for wife and queen, and your pride in
me will be my happiness and glory. For
men's love is little to me since Athelwold
taught me to think meanly of all men, except
you that slew him. And you shall be free
to follow your own mind and be ever
strenuous and vigilant and run after kingly
pleasures, pursuing deer and wolf and
beautiful women all over the land. And I
shall listen to the tales of your adventures
and conquests with a smile like that of a
mother who sees her child playing seriously
with its dolls and toys, talking to and
caressing them. And in return you shall
give me my desire, which is power and
splendour ; for these I crave, to be first
and greatest, to raise up and cast down,

60 DEAD MAN'S PLACK

and in all our life I shall be your help
and stay in ruling this realm, so that our
names may be linked together and shine in
the annals of England for all time.

When Edgar slew Athelwold his age was
twenty-two, and before he was a year older
he had married Elfrida, to the rage of that
great man and primate and more than
premier, who, under Edgar, virtually ruled
England. And in his rage, and remembering
how he had dealt with a previous boy king,
whose beautiful young wife he had hounded
to her dreadful end, he charged Elfrida with
having instigated her husband's murder, and
commanded the king to put that woman
away. This roused the man and passionate
lover, and the tiger in the man, in Edgar,
and the wise and subtle-minded ecclesiastic
quickly recognised that he had set himself
against one of a will more powerful and
dangerous than his own. He remembered
that it was Edgar, who, when he had been
deprived of his abbey and driven in disgrace
from the land, had recalled and made him

DEAD MAN'S PLACK 61

so great, and he knew that the result of a
quarrel between them would be a mighty
upheaval in the land and the sweeping away
of all his great reforms. And so, cursing
the woman in his heart and secretly vowing
vengeance on her, he was compelled in the
interests of the Church to acquiesce in this
fresh crime of the king.

VII

EIGHT years had passed since the king's
marriage with Elfrida, and the one
child born to them was now seven, the darling
of his parents, Ethelred the angelic child,
who to the end of his long life would be
praised for one thing only — his personal
beauty. But Edward, his half-brother, now
in his thirteenth year, was regarded by her
with an almost equal affection, on account of
his beauty and charm, his devotion to his
step-mother, the only mother he had known,
and, above all, for his love of his litttle half-
brother. He was never happy unless he
was with him, acting the part of guide and
instructor as well as playfellow.

Edgar had recently completed one of his
great works, the building of Corfe Castle,
and now whenever he was in Wessex pre-
ferred it as a residence, since he loved best
62

DEAD MAN'S PLACK 63

that part of England with its wide moors
and hunting forests, and its neighbour-
hood to the sea and to Portland and Poole
water. He had been absent for many weeks
on a journey to Northumbria, and the last
tidings of his movements were that he was
on his way to the south, travelling on the
Welsh border, and intended visiting the
Abbot of Glastonbury before returning to
Dorset. This religious house was already
very great in his day ; he had conferred
many benefits on it, and contemplated still
others.

It was summer time, a season of great
heats, and Elfrida with the two little princes
often went to the coast to spend a whole day
in the open air by the sea. Her favourite
spot was at the foot of a vast chalk down
with a slight strip of woodland between its
lowest slope and the beach. She was at this
spot one day about noon where the trees
were few and large, growing wide apart, and
had settled herself on a pile of cushions
placed at the roots of a big old oak tree,
where from her seat she could look out over

64 DEAD MAN'S PLACK

the blue expanse of water. But the hamlet
and church close by on her left hand were
hidden by the wood, though sounds issuing
from it could be heard occasionally — shouts
and bursts of laughter, and at times the
music of a stringed instrument and a voice
singing. These sounds came from her armed
guard and other attendants who were speed-
ing the idle hours of waiting in their own
way, in eating and drinking and in games
and dancing. Only two women remained to
attend to her wants, and one armed man to
keep watch and guard over the two boys at
their play.

They were not now far off, not above fifty
yards, among the big trees ; but for hours
past they had been away out of her sight,
racing on their ponies over the great down ;
then bathing in the sea, Edward teaching his
little brother to swim ; then he had given
him lessons in tree-climbing, and now, tired
of all these exertions, and for variety's sake,
they were amusing themselves by standing
on their heads. Little Ethelred had tried
and failed repeatedly, then at last, with hands

DEAD MAN'S PLACK 65

and head firmly planted on the sward, he had
succeeded in throwing his legs up and keep-
ing them in a vertical position for a few
seconds, this feat being loudly applauded by
his young instructor.

Elfrida, who had witnessed this display
from her seat, burst out laughing, then said
to herself : O how I love these two beauti-
ful boys almost with an equal love, albeit
one is not mine ! But Edward must be ever
dear to me because of his sweetness and his
love of me and, even more, his love and
tender care of my darling. Yet am 1 not
wholly free from an anxious thought of the
distant future. Ah, no, let me not think of
such a thing ! This sweet child of a boy-
father and girl-mother — the frail mother that
died in her teens — he can never grow to be
a proud, masterful, ambitious man — never
aspire to wear his father's crown ! Edgar's
first-born, it is true, but not mine, and he can
never be king. For Edgar and I are one ;
is it conceivable that he should oppose me in
this — that we that are one in mind and soul
shall at the last be divided and at enmity ?

66 DEAD MAN'S PLACK

Have we not said it an hundred times that
we are one ? One in all things except in
passion. Yet this very coldness in me in
which I differ from others is my chief
strength and glory, and has made our two
lives one life. And when he is tired and
satiated with the common beauty and the
common passions of other women he returns
to me only to have his first love kindled
afresh, and when in love and pity I give
myself to him and am his bride afresh as
when first he had my body in his arms, it is
to him as if one of the immortals had stooped
to a mortal, and he tells me 1 am the flower
of womankind and of the world, that my
white body is a perfect white flower, my hair
a shining gold flower, my mouth a fragrant
scarlet flower, and my eyes a sacred blue
flower, surpassing all others in loveliness.
And when I have satisfied him, and the
tempest in his blood has abated, then for
the rapture he has had I have mine, when,
ashamed at his violence, as if it had been an
insult to me, he covers his face with my hair
lejars of love and contrition on my

DEAD MAN'S PLACK 67

breasts. O nothing can ever disunite us!
Even from the first, before I ever saw him,
when he was coming to me I knew that we
were destined to be one. And he too knew
it from the moment of seeing me, and knew
that I knew it ; and when he sat at meat with
us and looked smilingly at the friend of his
bosom and spoke merrily to him, and re-
solved at the same time to take his life, he
knew that by so doing he would fulfil my
desire, and as my knowledge of the betrayal
was first, so the desire to shed that abhorred
blood was in me first. Nevertheless, I can-
not be free of all anxious thoughts, and fear
too of my implacable enemy and traducer
who from a distance watches all my move-
ments, who reads Edgar's mind even as he
would a book, and what he finds there writ
by me he seeks to blot out ; and thus does
he ever thwart me. But though I cannot
measure my strength against his, it will not
always be so, seeing that he is old and I am
young, with Time and Death on my side,
who will like good and faithful servants
bring him to the dust, so that my triumph

68 DEAD MAN'S PLACK

must come. And when he is no more I
shall have time to unbuild the structure he
has raised with lies for stones and my name
coupled with some evil deed cut in every
stone. For I look ever to the future, even
to the end to see this Edgar, with the light
of life shining so brightly in him now, a
venerable king with silver hair, his passions
cool, his strength failing, leaning more heavily
on me ; until at last, persuaded by me, he
will step down from the throne and resign
his crown to our son — our Ethelred. And
in him and his son after him, and in his son's
sons we shall live still in their blood, and
with them rule this kingdom of Edgar the
Peaceful — a realm of everlasting peace.

Thus she mused, until overcome by her
swift, crowding thoughts and passions, love
and hate, with memories dreadful or beauti-
ful, of her past and strivings of her mind to
pierce the future, she burst into a violent
storm of tears so that her frame was shaken,
and covering her eyes with her hands she
strove to get the better of her agitation lest
her weakness should be witnessed by her

DEAD MAN'S PLACK 69

attendants. But when this tempest had left
her and she lifted her eyes again, it seemed
to her that the burning tears which had
relieved her heart had also washed away
some trouble that had been like a dimness
on all visible nature, and earth and sea and
sky were glorified as if the sunlight flooding
the world fell direct from the heavenly
throne, and she sat drinking in pure delight
from the sight of it and the soft, warm air
she breathed.

Then, to complete her happiness, the
silence that reigned around her was broken
by a sweet, musical sound of a little bird that
sang from the tree-top high above her head.
This was the redstart, and the tree under
which she sat was its singing-tree, to which
it resorted many times a day to spend half
an hour or so repeating its brief song at
intervals of a few seconds — a small song
that was like the song of the redbreast, sub-
dued, refined and spiritualised, as of a spirit
that lived within the tree.

Listening to it in that happy, tender mood
which had followed her tears, she gazed up

70 DEAD MAN'S PLACK

and tried to catch sight of it, but could see
nothing but the deep-cut, green, translucent,
clustering oak leaves showing the blue of
heaven and shining like emeralds in the sun-
light. O sweet, blessed little bird, she said,
are you indeed a bird ? I think you are a
messenger sent to assure me that all my
hopes and dreams of the distant days to
come will be fulfilled. Sing again and again
and again ; I could listen for hours to that
selfsame song.

But she heard it no more ; the bird had
flown away. Then, still listening, she caught
a different sound — the loud hoof-beats of
horses being ridden at furious speed
towards the hamlet. Listening intently to
that sound she heard, on its arrival at the
hamlet, a sudden, great cry as if all the men
gathered there had united their voices in one
cry ; and she stood up, and her women came
to her, and all together stood silently gazing
in that direction. Then the two boys who
had been lying on the turf not far off came
running to them and caught her by the
hands, one on each side, and Edward, look-

DEAD MAN'S PLACK 71

ing up at her white, still face, cried, Mother,
what is it you fear ? But she answered no
word. Then again the sound of hoofs was
heard and they knew the riders were now
coming at a swift gallop to them. And
in a few moments they appeared among
the trees, and reining up their horses at u
distance of some yards, one sprang to the
ground, and advancing to the queen, made
his obeisance, then told her he had been sent
to inform her of Edgar's death. He had
been seized by a sudden violent fever in
Gloucestershire, on his way to Glastonbury,
and had died after two days* illness. He
had been unconscious all the time, but more
than once he had cried out, On to Glaston-
bury ! and now in obedience to that com-
mand his body was being conveyed thither
for interment at the abbey.

VIII

SHE had no tears to shed, no word to
say, nor was there any sense of grief at
her loss. She had loved him — once upon
a time ; she had always admired him for his
better qualities ; even his excessive pride and
ostentation had been pleasing to her ; finally
she had been more than tolerant of his vices
or weaknesses, regarding them as matters
beneath her attention. Nevertheless, in their
eight years of married life they had become
increasingly repugnant to her stronger and
colder nature. He had degenerated, bodily
and mentally, and was not now like that
shining one who had come to her at Wher-
well Castle, who had not hesitated to strike
the blow that had set her free. The tidings
of his death had all at once sprung the truth
on her mind that the old love was dead, that
72

DEAD MAN'S PLACK 73

it had indeed been long dead, and that she
had actually come to despise him.

But what should she do — what be — with-
out him ! She had been his queen, loved
to adoration, and he had been her shield ;
now she was alone, face to face with her
bitter, powerful enemy. Now it seemed to
her that she had been living in a beautiful
peaceful land, a paradise of fruit and flowers
and all delightful things ; that in a moment,
as by a miracle, it had turned to a waste of
black ashes still hot and smoking from the
desolating flames that had passed over it.
But she was not one to give herself over to
despondency so long as there was anything
to be done. Very quickly she roused herself
to action, and despatched messengers to all
those powerful friends who shared her hatred
of the great archbishop, and would be glad
of the opportunity now offered of wresting
the rule from his hands. Until now he had
triumphed because he had had the king to
support him even in his most arbitrary and
tyrannical measures ; now was the time to
show a bold front, to proclaim her son as

74 DEAD MAN'S PLACK

the right successor, and with herself, assisted
by chosen councillors to direct her boy, the
power would be in her hands, and once
more, as in King Edwin's day, the great
Dunstan, disgraced and denounced, would
be compelled to fly from the country lest a
more dreadful punishment should befall him.
Finally, leaving the two little princes at
Corfe Castle, she travelled to Mercia to be
with and animate her powerful friends and
fellow-plotters with her presence.

All their plottings and movements were
known to Dunstan, and he was too quick
for them. Whilst they, divided among them-
selves, were debating and arranging their
plans, he had called together all the leading
bishops and councillors of the late king, and
they had agreed that Edward must be pro-
claimed as the first-born ; and although but
a boy of thirteen, the danger to the country
would not be so great as it would to give
the succession to a child of seven years.
Accordingly Edward was proclaimed king
and removed from Corfe Castle while the
queen was still absent in Mercia.

DEAD MAN'S PLACK 75

For a while it looked as if this bold and
prompt act on the part of Dunstan would
have led to civil war ; but a great majority
of the nobles gave their adhesion to Edward,
and Elfrida's friends soon concluded that
they were not strong enough to set her boy
up and try to overthrow Edward, or to
divide England again between two boy kings
as in Edwin and Edgar's early years.

She accordingly returned discomfited to
Corfe and to her child, now always crying
for his beloved brother who had been taken
from him ; and there was not in all England
a more miserable woman than Elfrida the
queen. For after this defeat she could hope
no more ; her power was gone past recovery
— all that had made her life beautiful and
glorious was gone. Now Corfe was like
that other castle at Wherwell, where Earl
Athelwold had kept her like a caged bird
for his pleasure when he visited her ; only
worse, since she was eight years younger
then, her beauty fresher, her heart burning
with secret hopes and ambitions, and the
great world where there were towns and a

76 DEAD MAN'S PLACK

king, and many noble men and women
gathered round him yet to be known. And
all these things had come to her and were
now lost — now nothing was left but bitterest
regrets and hatred of all those who had failed
her at the last. Hatred first of all and
above all of her great triumphant enemy,
and hatred of the boy king she had loved
with a mother's love until now, and cherished
for many years. Hatred too of herself when
she recalled the part she had recently played
in Mercia, where she had not disdained to
practise all her fascinating arts on many
persons she despised in order to bind them
to her cause, and had thereby given cause
to her monkish enemy to charge her with
immodesty. It was with something like
hatred too that she regarded her own child
when he would come crying to her, begging
her to take him to his beloved brother ;
carried away with sudden rage, she would
strike and thrust him violently from her,
then order her women to take him away
and keep him out of her sight.

DEAD MAN'S PLACK 77

Three years had gone by, during which
she had continued living alone at Corfe, still
under a cloud and nursing her bitter re-
vengeful feeling in her heart, until that fatal
afternoon on the eighteenth day of March,
978.

The young king, now in his seventeenth
year, had come to these favourite hunting-
grounds of his late father, and was out
hunting on that day. He had lost sight
of his companions in a wood or thicket of
thorn and furze, and galloping in search of
them he came out from the wood on the
further side ; and there before him, not a
mile away, was Corfe Castle, his old beloved
home, and the home still of the two beings
he loved best in the world — his stepmother
and his little half-brother. And although
he had been sternly warned that they were
his secret enemies, that it would be dangerous
to hold any intercourse with them, the sight
of the castle and his craving to look again
on their dear faces overcame his scruples.
There would be no harm, no danger to him
and no great disobedience on his part to

y8 DEAD MAN'S PLACK

ride to the gates and see and greet them
without dismounting.

When Elfrida was told that Edward him-
self was at the gates calling to her and
Ethelred to come out to him she became
violently excited, and cried out that God
himself was on her side, and had delivered
the boy into her hands. She ordered her
servants to go out and persuade him to come
in to her, to take away his horse as soon
as he had dismounted, and not to allow him
to leave the castle. Then, when they returned
to say the king refused to dismount and again
begged them to go to him, she went to the
gates, but without the boy, and greeted him
joyfully, while he, glad at the meeting, bent
down and embraced her and kissed her face.
But when she refused to send for Ethelred,
and urged him persistently to dismount and
come in to see his little brother who was
crying for him, he began to notice the ex-
treme excitement which burned in her eyes
and made her voice tremble, and beginning
to fear some design against him, he refused
again more firmly to obey her wish ; then

DEAD MAN'S PLACK 79

she, to gain time, sent for wine for him to
drink before parting from her. And during
all this time while his departure was being
delayed, her people, men and women, had
been coming out until, sitting on his horse,
he was in the midst of a crowd, and these
too all looked on him with excited faces,
which increased his apprehension, so that
when he had drunk the wine he all at once
set spurs to his horse to break away from
among them. Then she, looking at her
men, cried out : Is this the way you serve
me ? And no sooner had the words fallen
from her lips than one man bounded forward,
like a hound on its quarry, and coming
abreast of the horse, dealt the king a blow
with his knife in the side. The next moment
the horse and rider were free of the crowd
and rushing away over the moor. A cry of
horror had burst from the women gathered
there when the blow was struck ; now all
were silent, watching with white, scared faces
as he rode swiftly away. Then presently
they saw him swerve on his horse, then fall,
with his right foot still remaining caught in

8o DEAD MAN'S PLACK

the stirrup, and that the panic-stricken horse
was dragging him at furious speed over the
rough moor.

Only then the queen spoke, and in an
agitated voice told them to mount and follow ;
and charged them that if they overtook the
horse and found that the king had been
killed, to bury the body where it would not
be found, so that the manner of his death
should not be known.

When the men returned they reported
that they had found the dead body of the
king a mile away, where the horse had got
free of it, and they had buried it in a thicket
where it would never be discovered.

IX

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
li

82 DEAD MAN'S PLACK

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 drag-
ging 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

DEAD MAN'S PLACK 83

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, how-
ever 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

84 DEAD MAN'S PLACK

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

DEAD MAN'S PLACK 85

the whole people in the same way. Further-
more, 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

86 DEAD MAN'S PLACK

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 school-
masters 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

DEAD MAN'S PLACK 87

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

88 DEAD MAN'S PLACK

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

DEAD MAN'S PLACK 89

is mine, saith the Lord, 1 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 ?

90 DEAD MAN'S PLACK

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-grand-
father, should have the body. Shaftesbury
then, in order to advertise so important an
acquisition to the world, resolved to make

DEAD MAN'S PLACK 91

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, brood-
ing on her desolation, heard of all these
happenings and doings with increasing excite-
ment ; then all at once resolved to take part
herself in the procession. This was seem-
ingly 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

92 DEAD MAN'S PLACK

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 some-
thing 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

DEAD MAN'S FLACK 93

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

94 DEAD MAN'S PLACK

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.

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
95

96 DEAD MAN'S PLACK

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 mas-
tery 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

DEAD MAN'S PLACK 97

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

98 DEAD MAN'S PLACK

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 gover-
nor 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 mes-
senger 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,

DEAD MAN'S PLACK 99

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

ioo DEAD MAN'S PLACK

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 black-
ness 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,

DEAD MAN'S PLACK 101

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.

102 DEAD MAN'S PLACK

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 soli-
tary 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

DEAD MAN'S PLACK 103

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 com-
mitted 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

io4 DEAD MAN'S PLACK

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

DEAD MAN'S PLACK 105

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

106 DEAD MAN'S PLACK

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.

XI

THE time had arrived when Elfrida
was deprived of this her one relief
and consolation — her rides on the Downs and
the exercise of her religion at the temple of
the Great Stones — when in the second winter
of her residence at Amesbury there fell a
greater darkness than that of winter on
England, when the pirate kings of the north
began once more to frequent our shores, and
the daily dreadful tale of battles and massacres
and burning of villages and monasteries was
heard throughout the kingdom. These in-
vasions were at first confined to the eastern
counties, but the agitation, with movements
of men and outbreaks of lawlessness, were
everywhere in the country, and the queen
was warned that it was no longer safe for her
to go out on Salisbury Plain.

The close seclusion in which she had now
107

io8 DEAD MAN'S PLACK

to live, confined to house and enclosed land,
affected her spirits, and this was her darkest
period, and it was also the turning-point in
her life. For I now come to the strange
story of her maid Editha, who, despite her
humble position in the house, and albeit she
was but a young girl in years, one, moreover,
of a meek, timid disposition, was yet destined
to play an exceedingly important part in the
queen's history.

It happened that by chance or design the
queen's maid, who was her closest attendant,
who dressed and undressed her, was suddenly
called away on some urgent matter, and this
girl Editha, a stranger to all, was put in her
place. The queen, who was in a moody
and irritable state, presently discovered that
the sight and presence of this girl produced
a soothing effect on her darkened mind.
She began to notice her when the maid
combed her hair, when sitting with half-closed
eyes in profound dejection she first looked
attentively at that face behind her head in
the mirror and marvelled at its fairness, the
perfection of its lines and its delicate colour-

DEAD MAN'S PLACK 109

ing, the pale gold hair and strangely serious
grey eyes that were never lifted to meet her
own.

What was it in this face, she asked herself,
that held her and gave some rest to her
tormented spirit ? It reminded her of that
crystal stream of sweet and bitter memories,
at Wherwell, on which she used to gaze
and in which she used to dip her hands,
then to press the wetted hands to her
lips. It also reminded her of an early
morning sky, seen beyond and above the
green dew-wet earth, so infinitely far away,
so peaceful with a peace that was not of
this earth.

It was not then merely its beauty that
made this face so much to her, but something
greater behind it, some inner grace, the peace
of God in her soul.

One day there came for the queen as a
gift from some distant town a volume of
parables and fables for her entertainment.
It was beautiful to the sight, being richly
bound in silk and gold embroidery ; but on
opening it she soon found that there was

no DEAD MAN'S PLACK

little pleasure to be got from it on account
of the difficulty she found in reading the
crabbed handwriting. After spending some
minutes in trying to decipher a paragraph or
two she threw the book in disgust on the
floor.

The maid picked it up, and after a glance
at the first page said it was easy to her, and
she asked if the queen would allow her to
read it to her.

Elfrida, surprised, asked how it came about
that her maid was able to read a difficult
script with ease, or was able to read at all ;
and this was the first question she had con-
descended to put to the girl. Editha replied
that she had been taught as a child by a
great-uncle, a learned man ; that she had
been made to read volumes in a great variety
of scripts to him, until reading had come
easy to her, both Saxon and Latin.

Then, having received permission, she read
the first fable aloud, and Elfrida listening,
albeit without interest in the tale itself,
found that the voice increased the girl's
attraction for her. From that time the queen

DEAD MAN'S PLACK in

made her read to her every day. She would
make her sit a little distance from her, and
reclining on her couch, her head resting on
her hand, she would let her eyes dwell on
that sweet saint-like face until the reading
was finished.

One day she read from the same book a
tale of a great noble, an earldoman who was
ruler under the king of that part of the
country where his possessions were, whose
power was practically unlimited and his word
law. But he was a wise and just man,
regardful of the rights of others, even of the
meanest of men, so that he was greatly
reverenced and loved by the people. Never-
theless, he too, like all men in authority,
both good and bad, had his enemies, and the
chief of these was a noble of a proud and
froward temper who had quarrelled with him
about their respective rights in certain proper-
ties where their lands adjoined. Again and
again it was shown to him that his contention
was wrong ; the judgments against him only
served to increase his bitterness and hostility
until it seemed that there would never be

ii2 DEAD MAN'S PLACK

an end to that strife. This at length so in-
censed his powerful overlord that he was
forcibly deprived of his possessions and
driven out beggared from his home. But
no punishment, however severe, could change
his nature ; it only roused him to greater
fury, a more fixed determination to have his
revenge, so that outcast as he was his enmity
was still to be feared and he was a danger to
the ruler and the community in general.
Then, at last, the great earl said he would
suffer this state of things no longer, and he
ordered his men to go out and seek and take
him captive and bring him up for a final
judgment. This was done, and the ruler
then said he would not have him put to death
as he was advised to do, so as to be rid of
him once for all, but would inflict a greater
punishment on him. He then made them
put heavy irons on his ankles, riveted so
that they should never be removed, and con-
demned him to slavery and to labour every
day in his fields and pleasure-grounds for the
rest of his life. To see his hated enemy
reduced to that condition would, he said, be

DEAD MAN'S PLACK 113

a satisfaction to him whenever he walked in
his gardens.

These stern commands were obeyed, and
when the miserable man refused to do his
task and cried out in a rage that he would
rather die, he was scourged until the blood
ran from the wounds made by the lash ; and
at last, to escape from this torture, he was
compelled to obey, and from morning to
night he laboured on the land, planting and
digging and doing whatever there was to do,
always watched by his overseer, his food
thrown to him as to a dog ; laughed and
jeered at by the meanest of the servants.

After a certain time, when his body grew
hardened so that he could labour all day
without pain, and, being fatigued, sleep all
night without waking, though he had nothing
but straw on a stone floor to lie upon ; and
when he was no longer mocked or punished
or threatened with the lash, he began to
reflect more and more on his condition, and
to think that it would be possible to him to
make it more endurable. When brooding
on it, when he repined and cursed, it then

ii4 DEAD MAN'S PLACK

seemed to him worse than death ; but when,
occupied with his task, he forgot that he was
the slave of his enemy, who had overcome
and broken him, then it no longer seemed
so heavy. The sun still shone for him as
for others ; the earth was as green, the sky
as blue, the flowers as fragrant. This reflec-
tion made his misery less ; and by and by it
came into his mind that it would be lessened
more and more if he could forget that his
master was his enemy and cruel persecutor,
who took delight in the thought of his suffer-
ings ; if he could imagine that he had a
different master, a great and good man who
had ever been kind to him and whom his
sole desire was to please. This thought
working in his mind began to give him a
satisfaction in his toil, and this change in him
was noticed by his taskmaster, who began to
see that he did his work with an understand-
ing so much above that of his fellows that
all those who laboured with him were in-
fluenced by his example, and whatsoever the
toil was in which he had a part the work was
better done. From the taskmaster this change

DEAD MAN'S PLACK 115

became known to the chief head of all the
lands, who thereupon had him set to other
more important tasks, so that at last he was
not only a toiler with pick and spade and
pruning knife, but his counsel was sought in
everything that concerned the larger works
on the land ; in forming plantations, in the
draining of wet grounds and building of
houses and bridges and the making of new
roads. And in all these works he acquitted
himself well.

Thus he laboured for years, and it all
became known to the ruler, who at length
ordered the man to be brought before him
to receive yet another final judgment. And
when he stood before him, hairy, dirty and
unkempt, in his ragged raiment, with toil-
hardened hands and heavy irons on his legs,
he first ordered the irons to be removed.

The smiths came with their files and
hammers, and with much labour took them
off.

Then the ruler, his powerful old enemy,
spoke these words to him : I do not know
what your motives were in doing what you

n6 DEAD MAN'S PLACK

have done in all these years of your slavery ;
nor do I ask to be told. It is sufficient for
me to know you have done these things,
which are for my benefit and are a debt
which must now be paid. You are hence-
forth free, and the possessions you were
deprived of shall be restored to you, and as
to the past and all the evil thoughts you had
of me and all you did against me, it is
forgiven and from this day will be forgotten.
Go now in peace.

When this last word had been spoken by
his enemy, all that remained of the old
hatred and bitterness went out of him, and it
was as if his soul as well as his feet had been
burdened with heavy irons and that they had
now been removed, and that he was free
with a freedom he had never known before.

When the reading was finished, the queen
with eyes cast down remained for some time
immersed in thought ; then with a keen
glance at the maid's face she asked for the
book, and opening it began slowly turning
the leaves. By and by her face darkened,
and in a stern tone of voice she said ; Come

DEAD MAN'S PLACK 117

here and show me in this book the parable
you have just read, and then you shall also
show me two or three other parables you
have read to me on former occasions, which
I cannot find.

The maid, pale and trembling, came and
dropped on her knees and begged forgiveness
for having recited these three or four tales,
which she had heard or read elsewhere and
committed to memory, and had pretended to
read them out of the book.

Then the queen in a sudden rage said :
Go from me and let me not see you again
if you do not wish to be stripped and scourged
and thrust naked out of the gates ! And you
only escape this punishment because the deceit
you have been practising on me is, to my
thinking, not of your own invention, but that
of some crafty monk who is making you his
instrument.

Editha, terrified and weeping, hurriedly
quitted the room.

By and by, when that sudden tempest of
rage had subsided, the despondence, which
had been somewhat lightened by the maid's

n8 DEAD MAN'S PLACK

presence, came back on her so heavily that
it was almost past endurance. She rose and
went to her sleeping-room, and knelt before
a table on which stood a crucifix with an
image of the Saviour on it — the emblem of
the religion she had so great a quarrel with.
But not to pray. Folding her arms on
the table and dropping her face on them
she said : What have I done ? And again
and again she repeated : What have I
done ? Was it indeed a monk who taught
her this deceit, or some higher being who
put it in her mind to whisper a hope to my
soul ? To show me a way of escape from
everlasting death — to labour in his fields and
pleasure-grounds, a wretched slave with irons
on her feet, to be scourged and mocked at, and
in this state to cast out hatred and bitter-
ness from my own soul and all remembrance
of the injuries he had inflicted on me — to
teach myself through long miserable years
that this powerful enemy and persecutor is
a kind and loving master ? This is the
parable, and now my soul tells me it would
be a light punishment when I look at the

DEAD MAN'S PLACK 119

red stains on these hands, and when the
image of the boy I loved and murdered
comes back to me. This then was the
message, and I drove the messenger from
me with cruel threats and insult.

Suddenly she rose, and going hurriedly
out, called to her maids to bring Editha to
her. They told her the maid had departed
instantly on being dismissed, and had gone
upwards of an hour. Then she ordered
them to go and search for her in all the
neighbourhood, at every house, and when
they had found her to bring her back by
persuasion or by force.

They returned after a time only to say
they had sought for her everywhere and
had failed to find or hear any report of her,
but that some of the mounted men who had
gone to look for her on the roads had not
yet returned.

Left alone once more she turned to a
window which looked towards Salisbury, and
saw the westering sun hanging low in a sky
of broken clouds over the valley of the
Avon and the green downs on either side.

120 DEAD MAN'S PLACK

And, still communing with herself, she said :
I know that I shall not endure it long —
this great fear of God — I know that it will
madden me. And for the unforgiven who
die mad there can be no hope. Only the
sight of my maid's face with God's peace in
it could save me from madness. No, I shall
not go mad ! I shall take it as a sign that
I cannot be forgiven if the sun goes down
without my seeing her again. I shall kill
myself before madness comes and rest ob-
livious of life and all things, even of God's
wrath, until the dreadful waking.

For some time longer she continued stand-
ing motionless, watching the sun, now sinking
behind a dark cloud, then emerging and
lighting up the dim interior of her room and
her stone-white, desolate face.

Then once more her servants came back,
and with them Editha, who had been found
on the road to Salisbury, half-way there.

Left alone together, the queen took the
maid by the hand and led her to a seat,
then fell on her knees before her and clasped
her legs and begged her forgiveness. When

DEAD MAN'S PLACK 121

the maid replied that she had forgiven her,
and tried to raise her up, she resisted, and
cried : No, I cannot rise from my knees
nor loose my hold on you until 1 have con-
fessed to you and you have promised to
save me. Now I see in you not my maid
who combs my hair and ties my shoe-strings,
but one that God loves, whom he exalts
above the queens and nobles of the earth,
and while I cling to you he will not strike.
Look into this heart that has hated him,
look at its frightful passions, its blood-guilti-
ness, and have compassion on me ! And if
you, O Editha, should reply to me that it is
his will, for he has said it, that every soul
shall save itself, show me the way. How
shall I approach him ? Teach me humility !
Thus she pleaded and abased herself.
Nevertheless it was a hard task she imposed
upon her helper, seeing that humility, of all
virtues, was the most contrary to her nature.
And when she was told that the first step
to be taken was to be reconciled to the
church, and to the head of the church, her
chief enemy and persecutor, whose monks,

122 DEAD MAN'S PLACK

obedient to his command, had blackened her
name in all the land, her soul was in fierce
revolt. Nevertheless she had to submit, see-
ing that God himself through his Son when
on earth and his Son's disciples had estab-
lished the church, and by that door only
could any soul approach him. So there was
an end to that conflict, and Elfrida, beaten
and broken, although ever secretly hating
the tonsured keepers of her soul, set forth
under their guidance on her weary pilgrim-
age— the long last years of her bitter
expiation.

Yet there was to be one more conflict
between the two women — the imperious mis-
tress and the humble-minded maid. This
was when Editha announced to the other
that the time had now come for her to
depart. But the queen wished to keep her,
and tried by all means to do so, by pleading
with her and by threatening to detain her
by force. Then repenting her anger and
remembering the great debt of gratitude
owing to the girl, she resolved to reward
her generously, to bestow wealth on her,

DEAD MAN'S PLACK 123

but in such a form that it would appear to
the girl as a beautiful parting gift from one
who had loved her : only afterwards, when
they were far apart, would she discover its
real value.

A memory of the past had come to her —
of that day, sixteen years ago, when her
lover came to her and using sweet flattering
words poured out from a bag a great quantity
of priceless jewels into her lap, and of the
joy she had in the gift. Also how from the
day of Athelwold's death she had kept those
treasures put away in the same bag out of her
sight. Nor in all the days of her life with
Edgar had she ever worn a gem, though she
had always loved to array herself magnificently,
but her ornaments had been gold only, the
work of the best artists in Europe. Now,
in imitation of Athelwold, when his manner
of bestowing the jewels had so charmed her,
she would bestow them on the girl.

Accordingly when the moment of separation
came and Editha was made to seat herself,
the queen standing over her with the bag
in her hand said : Do you, Editha, love all

i24 DEAD MAN'S PLACK

beautiful things ? And when the maid had
replied that she did, the other said : Then
take these gems, which are beautiful, as a
parting gift from me. And with that she
poured out the mass of glittering jewels into
the girl's lap.

But the maid without touching or even
looking at them, and with a cry, I want no
jewels ! started to her feet so that they were
all scattered upon the floor.

The queen stared astonished at the face
before her with its new look of pride and
excitement, then with rising anger she said :
Is my maid too proud then to accept a gift
from me ? Does she not know that a single
one of those gems thrown on the floor would
be more than a fortune to her ?

The girl replied in the same proud way :
I am not your maid, and gems are no more
to me than pebbles from the brook !

Then all at once recovering her meek, gentle
manner she cried in a voice that pierced the
queen's heart : O, not your maid, only your
fellow-worker in our Master's fields and
pleasure-grounds ! Before I ever beheld

DEAD MAN'S PLACK 125

your face, and since we have been together,
my heart has bled for you, and my daily cry
to God has been : Forgive her ! Forgive her,
for his sake who died for our sins ! And
this shall I continue to cry though I shall
see you no more on earth. But we shall
meet again. Not, O unhappy queen, at life's
end, but long afterwards — long, long years !
long ages !

Dropping on her knees she caught and
kissed the queen's hand, shedding abundant
tears on it, then rose and was quickly gone.

Elfrida, left to herself, scarcely recovered
from the shock of surprise at that sudden
change in the girl's manner, began to wonder
at her own blindness in not having seen
through her disguise from the first. The
revelation had come to her only at the last
moment in that proud gesture and speech
when her gift was rejected, not without scorn.
A child of nobles great as any in the land,
what had made her do this thing ? What
indeed but the heavenly spirit that was in
her, the spirit that was in Christ — the divine
passion to save !

126 DEAD MAN'S PLACK

Now she began to ponder on those last
words the maid had spoken, and the more
she thought of them the greater became her
sadness until it was like the approach of
death. O terrible words ! Yet it was what
she had feared, even when she had dared to
hope for forgiveness. Now she knew what
her life after death was to be since the word
had been spoken by those inspired lips. O
dreadful destiny ! To dwell alone, to tread
alone that desert desolate, that illimitable
waste of burning sand stretching from star
to star through infinite space, where was no
rock nor tree to give her shade, no fountain
to quench her fiery thirst ! For that was
how she imaged the future life, as a desert
to be dwelt in until in the end, when in
God's good time — the time of One to
whom a thousand years are as one day —
she would receive the final pardon and be
admitted to rest in a green and shaded
place.

Overcome with the agonising thought she
sank down on her couch and fell into a
faint. In that state she was found by her

DEAD MAN'S PLACK 127

reclining, still as death, with eyes
closed, the whiteness of death in her face ;
and thinking her dead they rushed out
terrified, crying aloud and lamenting that
the queen was dead.

XII

SHE was not dead. She recovered from
that swoon, but never from the deep,
unbroken sadness caused by those last words
of the maid Editha, which had overcome and
nearly slain her. She now abandoned her
seclusion, but the world she returned to was
not the old one. The thought that every
person she met was saying in his or her
heart : This is Elfrida ; this is the queen
who murdered Edward the Martyr, her step-
son, made that world impossible. The men
and women she now consorted with were
the religious and ecclesiastics of all degrees,
and abbots and abbesses. These were the
people she loved least, yet now into their
hands she deliberately gave herself ; and to
those who questioned her, to her spiritual
guides, she revealed all her life and thoughts
and passions, opening her soul to their eyes
128

DEAD MAN'S PLACK 129

like a manuscript for them to read and
consider ; and when they told her that in
God's sight she was guilty of the murder
both of Edward and Athelwold, she replied
that they doubtless knew best what was in
God's mind, and whatever they commanded
her to do that should be done, and if in her
own mind it was not as they said this could
be taken as a defect in her understand-
ing. For in her heart she was not changed,
and had not yet and never would learn the
bitter lesson of humility. Furthermore, she
knew better than they what life and death
had in store for her, since it had been re-
vealed to her by holier lips than those of any
priest. Lips on which had been laid a coal
from the heavenly altar, and what they had
foretold would come to pass — that unearthly
pilgrimage and purification — that destiny,
dreadful, ineluctable, that made her soul
faint to think of it. Here, on this earth,
it was for her to toil, a slave with heavy
irons on her feet, in her master's fields and
pleasure-grounds, and these gowned men
with shaven heads, wearing ropes of beads

130 DEAD MAN'S PLACK

and crucifixes as emblems of their authority
—these were the taskmasters set over her,
and to these, she, Elfrida, one time queen
in England, would bend in submission and
humbly confess her sins, and uncomplain-
ingly take whatever austerities or other
punishments they decreed.

Here, then, at Amesbury itself, she began
her works of expiation, and found that she,
too, like the unhappy man in the parable,
could experience some relief and satisfaction
in her solitary embittered existence in the
work itself.

Having been told that at this village where
she was living a monastery had existed and
had been destroyed in the dreadful wars of
two to three centuries ago, she conceived the
idea of founding a new one, a nunnery, and
endowing it richly, and accordingly the
Abbey of Amesbury was built and generously
endowed by her.

This religious house became famous in
after days, and was resorted to by the noblest
ladies in the land who desired to take the
veil, including princesses and widow queens ;

DEAD MAN'S PLACK 131

and it continued to flourish for centuries,
down to the Dissolution.

This work completed, she returned, after
nineteen years, to her old home at Wherwell.
Since she had lost sight of her maid Editha,
she had been possessed with a desire to
re-visit that spot, where she had been happy
as a young bride and had repined in solitude
and had had her glorious triumph and stained
her soul with crime. She craved for it again,
especially to look once more at the crystal
current of the Test in which she had been
accustomed to dip her hands. The grave,
saintly face of Editha had reminded her of
that stream ; and Editha she might not see.
She could not seek for her, nor speak to her,
nor cry to her to come back to her, since she
had said that they would meet no more on
earth.

Having become possessed of the castle which
she had once regarded as her prison and cage,
she ordered its demolition and used the
materials in building the abbey she founded
at that spot, and it was taken for granted by
the Church that this was done in expiation

132 DEAD MAN'S PLACK

of the part she had taken in Athelwold's
murder. And at this spot where the stream
had become associated in her mind with the
thought of Editha, and was a sacred stream,
she resolved to end her days. But the time
of her retirement was not yet, there was
much still waiting for her to do in her
master's fields and pleasure-grounds. For
no sooner had the tidings -of her work in
founding these monasteries and the lavish
use she was making of her great wealth been
spread abroad, than from many religious
houses all over the land the cry was sent to
her — the Macedonian cry to St. Paul to come
over and help us.

From the houses founded by Edgar the cry
was particularly loud and insistent. There
were forty-seven of them, and had not Edgar
died so soon there would have been fifty,
that being the number he had set his heart
on in his fervid zeal for religion. All, alas !
were insufficiently endowed ; and it was for
Elfrida, as they were careful to point out,
to increase their income from her great
wealth, seeing that this would enable them

DEAD MAN'S PLACK 133

to associate her name with that of Edgar and
keep it in memory, and this would be good
for her soul.

To all such calls she listened, and she
performed many and long journeys to the
religious houses all over the country to look
closely into their conditions and needs, and
to all she gave freely or in moderation, but
not always without a gesture of scorn. For
in her heart of hearts she was still Elfrida
and unchanged, albeit outwardly she had
attained to humility ; only once during these
years of travel and toil when she was getting
rid of her wealth did she allow her secret
bitterness and hostility to her ecclesiastical
guides and advisers to break out.

She was at Worcester, engaged in a con-
ference with the bishop and several of his
clergy ; they were sitting at an oak table
with some papers and plans before them,
when the news was brought into the room
that Archbishop Dunstan was dead.

They all, except Elfrida, started to their
feet with looks and exclamations of dismay
as if some frightful calamity had come to

134 DEAD MAN'S PLACK

pass. Then dropping upon their knees with
bowed heads and lifted hands they prayed for
the repose of his soul. They prayed silently,
but the silence was broken by a laugh from
the queen. Starting to his feet the bishop
turned on her a severe countenance, and
asked why she laughed at that solemn
moment.

She replied that she had laughed unthink-
ingly, as the linnet sings, from pure joy of
heart at the glad tidings that their holy
archbishop had been translated to paradise.
For if he had done so much for England
when burdened with the flesh, how much
more would he be able to do now from the
seat or throne to which he would be exalted
in heaven in virtue of the position his blessed
mother now occupied in that place.

The bishop, angered at her mocking words,
turned his back on her, and the others,
following his example, averted their faces,
but not one word did they utter.

They remembered that Dunstan in former
years, when striving to make himself all
powerful in the kingdom, had made free

DEAD MAN'S PLACK 135

use of a supernatural machinery ; that when
he wanted a thing done and it could not be
done in any other way, he received a com-
mand from heaven, brought to him by some
saint or angel, to have it done, and the
command had then to be obeyed. They
also remembered that when Dunstan, as he
informed them, had been snatched up into
the seventh heaven, he did not on his return
to earth say modestly, like St. Paul, that it
was not lawful for him to speak of the things
which he had heard and seen, but he pro-
claimed them to an astonished world in his
loudest trumpet voice. Also, that when, by
these means, he had established his power
and influence and knew that he could trust
his own subtle brains to maintain his position,
he had dropped the miracles and visions.
And it had come to pass that when the arch-
bishop had seen fit to leave the supernatural
element out of his policy, the heads of the
Church in England were only too pleased
to have it so. The world had gaped
with astonishment at these revelations long
enough, and its credulity had come near to

136 DEAD MAN'S PLACK

the breaking point, on which account the
raking up of these perilous matters by the
queen was fiercely resented.

But the queen was not yet satisfied that
enough had been said by her. Now she
was in full revolt she must give out once
for all the hatred of her old enemy, which
his death had not appeased.

What mean you. Fathers, she cried, by
turning your backs on me and keeping
silence ? Is it an insult to me you intend
or to the memory of that great and holy
man who has just quitted the earth ? Will
you dare to say that the reports he brought
to us of the marvellous doings he witnessed
in heaven, when he was taken there, were
false and the lies and inventions of Satan,
whose servant he was ?

More than that she was not allowed to
say, for now the bishop in a mighty rage
swung round, and dealing a blow on the
table with such fury that his arm was dis-
abled by it, he shouted at her : Not another
word 1 Hold your mocking tongue, fiendish
woman ! Then plucking up his gown with

DEAD MAN'S PLACK 137

his left hand for fear of being tripped up by
it he rushed out of the room.

The others, still keeping their faces averted
from her, followed at a more dignified pace ;
and seeing them depart she cried after them :
Go, Fathers, and tell your bishop that if he
had not run away so soon he would have
been rewarded for his insolence by a slap in
the face.

This outburst on her part caused no last-
ing break in her relations with the Church.
It was to her merely an incident in her long
day's toil in her master's fields — a quarrel
she had had with an overseer ; while he, on
his side, even before he recovered the use of
his injured arm, thought it best for their
souls, as well as for the interests of the
Church, to say no more about it. Her great
works of expiation were accordingly con-
tinued. But the time at length arrived for
her to take her long-desired rest before facing
the unknown dreaded future. She was not
old in years, but remorse and a deep settled
melancholy and her frequent fierce wrestlings
with her own rebellious nature as with an

138 DEAD MAN'S PLACK

untamed dangerous animal chained to her
had made her old. Furthermore, she had
by now well-nigh expended all her pos-
sessions and wealth, even to the gems she
had once prized and then thrust away out
of sight for many years, and which her maid
Editha had rejected with scorn, saying they
were no more to her than pebbles from the
brook.

Once more at Wherwell, she entered the
Abbey, and albeit she took the veil herself
she was not under the same strict rule as
her sister nuns. The Abbess herself retired
to Winchester and ruled the convent from
that city, while Elfrida had the liberty she
desired, to live and do as she liked in her
own rooms and attend prayers and meals
only when inclined to do so. There, as
always, since Edward's death, her life was a
solitary one, and in the cold season she
would have her fire of logs and sit before it
as in the old days in the castle, brooding
ever on her happy and unhappy past and on
the awful future, the years and centuries of
suffering and purification.

DEAD MAN'S PLACK 139

It was chiefly this thought of the solitariness
of that future state, that companionless way,
centuries long, that daunted her. Here in
this earthly state, darkened as it was, there
were yet two souls she could and constantly
did hold communion with — Editha still on
earth, though not with her, and Edward in
heaven ; but in that dreadful desert to
which she would be banished there would
be a great gulf set between her soul and
theirs.

But perhaps there would be others she had
known, whose lives had been interwoven with
hers, she would be allowed to commune with
in that same place. Edgar of a certainty
would be there, although Glastonbury had
built him a chapel and put him in a silver
tomb and had begun to call him Saint Edgar.
Would he find her and seek to have speech
with her ? It was anguish to her even to
think of such an encounter. She would say,
Do not come to me, for rather would I be
alone in this dreadful solitude for a thousand
years than have you, Edgar, for company.
For I have not now one thought or memory

140 DEAD MAN'S PLACK

of you in my soul that is not bitter. It is
true that I once loved you : even before
I saw your face I loved you, and said in my
heart that we two were destined to be one.
And my love increased when we were united,
and you gave me my heart's desire — the
power I loved, and glory in the sight of
the world. And although in my heart I
laughed at your pretended zeal for a pure
religion while you were gratifying your lower
desires and chasing after fair women all over
the land, I admired and gloried in your
nobler qualities, your activity and vigilance
in keeping the peace within your borders,
and in making England master of the seas,
so that the pirate kings of the North ven-
tured not to approach our shores. But on
your own gross appetites you would put no
restraint, but gave yourself up to wine and
gluttony and made a companion of Death,
even in the flower of your age you were
playing with Death, and when you had lived
but half your years you rode away with
Death and left me alone ; you, Edgar, the
mighty hunter and slayer of wolves, you rode

DEAD MAN'S PLACK 141

away and left me to the wolves, alone, in a
dark forest. Therefore the guilt of Edward's
death is yours more than mine, though my
soul is stained red with his blood, seeing
that you left me to fight alone, and in my
madness, not knowing what I did, I stained
myself with this crime.

But what you have done to me is of little
moment, seeing that mine is but one soul
of the many thousands that were given into
your keeping, and your crime in wasting
your life for the sake of base pleasures was
committed against an entire nation, and not
of the living only but also the great and
glorious dead of the race of Cerdic — of the
men who have laboured these many cen-
turies, shedding their blood on a hundred
stricken fields, to build up this kingdom of
England ; and when their mighty work was
completed it was given into your hands to
keep and guard. And you died and aban-
doned it ; Death, your playmate, has taken
you away, and Edgar's peace is no more.
Now your ships are scattered or sunk in the
sea, now the invaders are again on your

i42 DEAD MAN'S PLACK

coasts as in the old dreadful days, burning
and slaying, and want is everywhere and fear
is in all hearts throughout the land. And the
king, your son, who inherited your beautiful
face and nought beside except your vices and
whatever was least worthy of a king, he too
is now taking his pleasure, even as you took
yours, in a gay bejewelled dress, with some
shameless woman at his side and a wine-cup
in his hand. O unhappy mother that I am,
that I must curse the day a son was born to
me ! O grief immitigable that it was my
deed, my dreadful deed, that raised him to
the throne — the throne that was Alfred's and
Edmund's and Athelstan's !

These were the thoughts that were her
only company as she sat brooding before
her winter fire, day after day, and winter
following winter, while the years deepened
the lines of anguish on her face and whitened
the hair that was once red gold.

But in the summer time she was less
unhappy, for then she could spend the long
hours out of doors under the sky in the

DEAD MAN'S PLACK 143

large shaded gardens of the convent with
the stream for boundary on the lower side.
This stream had now become more to her
than in the old days when, languishing in
solitude, she had made it a companion and
confidant. For now it had become asso-
ciated in her mind with the image of the
maid Editha, and when she sat again at
the old spot on the bank gazing on the swift
crystal current, then dipping her hand in it
and putting the wetted hand to her lips, the
stream and Editha were one.

Then one day she was missed, and for
a long time they sought for her all through
the building and in the grounds without
finding her. Then the seekers heard a loud
cry, and saw one of the nuns running
towards the convent door, with her hands
pressed to her face as if to shut out some
dreadful sight ; and when they called to her
she pointed back towards the stream and ran
on to the house. Then all the sisters
who were out in the grounds hurried down
to the stream to the spot where Elfrida was

i44 DEAD MAN'S PLACK

accustomed to sit, and were horrified to see
her lying drowned in the water.

It was a hot, dry summer and the stream
was low, and in stooping to dip her hand in
the water she had lost her balance and fallen
in, and although the water was but three feet
deep she had in her feebleness been unable
to save herself. She was lying on her back
on the clearly seen bed of many-coloured
pebbles, her head pointing downstream, and
the swift fretting current had carried away
her hood and pulled out her long abundant
silver-white hair, and the current played with
her hair, now pulling it straight out, then
spreading it wide over the surface, mixing its
silvery threads with the hair-like green blades
of the floating water-grass. And the dead
face was like marble ; but the wide-open
eyes that had never wholly lost their brilliance
and the beautiful lungwort blue colour were
like living eyes — living and gazing through
the crystal-clear running water at the group of
nuns staring down with horror-struck faces
at her.

Thus ended Elfrida's darkened life : nor

DEAD MAN'S PLACK 145

did it seem an unfit end ; for it was as if she
had fallen into the arms of the maiden who
had in her thoughts become one with the
stream — the saintly Editha through whose
sacrifice and intercession she had been saved
from death everlasting.

AN OLD THORN

I

THE little village of Ingden lies in a
hollow of the South Wiltshire Downs,
the most isolated of the villages in that
lonely district. Its one short street is crossed
at right angles in the middle part by the
Salisbury road, and standing just at that
point, the church on one hand, the old inn
on the other, you can follow it with the eye
for a distance of nearly three miles. First it
goes winding up the low down under which
the village stands, then vanishes over the brow
to reappear again a mile and a half further
away as a white band on the vast green slope
of the succeeding down, which rises to a
height of over 600 feet. On the summit it
vanishes once more, but those who use it
know it for a laborious road crossing several
high ridges before dropping down into the
valley road leading to Salisbury.
149

150 AN OLD THORN

When, standing in the village street, your
eye travels up that white band, you can
distinctly make out even at that distance a
small, solitary tree standing near the summit
— an old thorn with an ivy growing on it.
My walks were often that way, and invariably
on coming to that point 1 would turn twenty
yards aside from the road to spend half an hour
seated on the turf near or under the old tree.
These half-hours were always grateful ; and
conscious that the tree drew me to it I
questioned myself as to the reason. It was,
I told myself, nothing but mental curiosity :
my interest was a purely scientific one.
For how comes it, I asked, that a thorn can
grow to a tree and live to a great age in
such a situation, on a vast, naked down,
where for many centuries, perhaps for thou-
sands of years, the herbage has been so
closely fed by sheep as to have the appear-
ance of a carpet, or newly mown lawn ? The
seed is carried and scattered everywhere by
the birds, but no sooner does it germinate
and send up a shoot than it is eaten down
to the roots ; for there is no scent that

AN OLD THORN 151

attracts a sheep more, no flavour it has
greater taste for, than that of any forest
seedling springing up amidst the minute
herbaceous plants which carpet the downs.
The thorn, like other organisms, has its own
unconscious intelligence and cunning, by
means of which it endeavours to save itself
and fulfil its life. It opens its first tender
leaves under the herbage, and at the same
time thrusts up a vertical spine to wound
the nibbling mouth ; and no sooner has it
got a leaf or two and a spine than it spreads
its roots all round, and from each of them
springs a fresh shoot, leaves, and protecting
spine, to increase the chances of preservation.
In vain ! the cunning animal finds a way to
defeat all this strategy, and after the leaves
have been bitten off again and again, the
infant plant gives up the struggle and dies
in the ground. Yet we see that from time
to time one survives — one perhaps in a
million ; but how — whether by a quicker
growth or a harder or more poisonous thorn,
an unpalatable leaf, or some other secret
agency — we cannot guess. First as a diminu-

152 AN OLD THORN

tive scrubby shrub, with numerous iron-hard
stems, with few and small leaves but many
thorns, it keeps its poor flowerless frustrate
life for perhaps half a century or longer,
without growing more than a couple of feet
high ; and then, as by a miracle, it will
spring up until its top shoots are out of
reach of the browsing sheep, and in the end
it becomes a tree with spreading branches
and fully developed leaves, and flowers and
fruit in their season.

One day I was visited by an artist from
a distance who, when shown the thorn,
pronounced it a fine subject for his pencil,
and while he made his picture we talked
about the hawthorn generally as compared
with other trees, and agreed that, except
in its blossoming time when it is merely
pretty, it is the most engaging and perhaps
the most beautiful of our native trees. We
said that it was the most individual of trees,
that its variety was infinite, for you never
find two alike, whether growing in a forest,
in groups, or masses, or alone. We were
almost lyrical in its praises. But the solitary

AN OLD THORN 153

thorn was always best, he said, and this one
was perhaps the best of all he had seen :
strange and at the same time decorative in
its form, beautiful too in its appearance of
great age with unimpaired vigour and some-
thing more in its expression — that elusive
something which we find in some trees and
don't know how, to explain.

Ah, yes, thought I, it was this appeal to
the aesthetic faculty which attracted me from
the first, and not, as I had imagined, the
mere curiosity of the naturalist interested
mainly and always in the habits of living
things, plant or animal.

Certainly the thorn had strangeness. Its
appearance as to height was deceptive ; one
would have guessed it eighteen feet ; measur-
ing it I was surprised to find it only ten.
It has four separate boles, springing from
one root, leaning a little away from each
other, the thickest just a foot in circum-
ference. The branches are few, beginning
at about five feet from the ground, the
foliage thin, the leaves throughout the
summer stained with grey, rust-red, and

i54 AN OLD THORN

purple colour. Though so small and ex-
posed to the full fury of every wind that
blows over that vast naked down, it has yet
an ivy growing on it — the strangest of the
many strange ivy-plants I have seen. It
comes out of the ground as two ivy trunks
on opposite sides of the stoutest bole, but at
a height of four feet from the surface the
two join and ascend the tree as one round
iron-coloured and iron-hard stem, which goes
curving and winding snakewise among the
branches as if with the object of roping them
to save them from being torn off by the
winds. Finally, rising to the top, the long
serpent stem opens out in a flat disc-shaped
mass of close-packed branchlets and twigs
densely set with small round leaves, dark
dull green and tough as parchment. One
could only suppose that thorn and ivy had
been partners from the beginning of life,
and that the union was equally advantageous
to both.

The small ivy disc or platform on top of
the tree was a favourite stand and look-out
for the downland birds. I seldom visited the

AN OLD THORN 155

spot without disturbing some of them, now
a little company of missel-thrushes, now a
crowd of starlings, then perhaps a dozen
rooks, crowded together, looking very big
and conspicuous on their little platform.

Being curious to find out something about
the age of the tree, I determined to put the
question to my old friend Malachi, aged
eighty-nine, who was born and had always
lived in the parish and had known the downs
and probably every tree growing on them
for miles around from his earliest years. It
was my custom to drop in of an evening and
sit with him, listening to his endless remin-
iscences of his young days. That evening I
spoke of the thorn, describing its position
and appearance, thinking that perhaps he had
forgotten it. How long, I asked him, had
the thorn been there ?

He was one of those men, usually of the
labouring class, to be met with in such
lonely, out-of-the-world places as the Wilt-
shire Downs, whose eyes never look old
however many their years may be, and are
more like the eyes of a bird or animal than

156 AN OLD THORN

a human being, for they gaze at you and
through you when you speak without appear-
ing to know what you say. So it was on this
occasion ; he looked straight at me with no
sign of understanding, no change in his clear
grey eyes, and answered nothing. But I
would not be put off, and when, raising my
voice, I repeated the question, he replied,
after another interval of silence, that the
thorn " was never any different." 'Twas just
the same, ivy and all, when he were a small
boy. It looked just so old ; why, he remem-
bered his old father saying the same thing —
'twas the same when he were a boy, and
'twas the same in his father's time. Then
anxious to escape from the subject he began
talking of something else.

It struck me that after all the most
interesting thing about the thorn was its
appearance of great age, and this aspect I had
now been told had continued for at least a
century, probably for a much longer time.
It produced a reverent feeling in me such as
we experience at the sight of some ancient
stone monument. But the tree was alive,

AN OLD THORN 157

and because of its life the feeling was perhaps
stronger than in the case of a granite cross
or cromlech or other memorial of antiquity.

Sitting by the thorn one day it occurred to
me that, growing at this spot close to the
road and near the summit of that vast down,
numberless persons travelling to and from
Salisbury must have turned aside to rest on
the turf in the shade after that laborious
ascent or before beginning the long descent
to the valley below. Travellers of all condi-
tions, on foot or horseback, in carts and
carriages, merchants, bagmen, farmers, drovers,
gipsies, tramps and vagrants of all descrip-
tions, and from time to time troops of soldiers.
Yet never one of them had injured the tree in
any way ! I could not remember ever finding
a tree growing alone by the roadside in a
lonely place which had not the marks of
many old and new wounds inflicted on its
trunk with knives, hatchets, and other im-
plements. Here not a mark, not a scratch
had been made on any one of its four trunks
or on the ivy stem by any thoughtless or
mischievous person, nor had any branch been

158 AN OLD THORN

cut or broken off. Why had they one and
all respected this tree ?

It was another subject to talk to Malachi
about, and to him I went after tea and found
him with three of his neighbours sitting by
the fire and talking ; for though it was
summer the old man always had a fire in
the evening.

They welcomed and made room for me,
but I had no sooner broached the subject
in my mind than they all fell into silence,
then after a brief interval the three callers
began to discuss some little village matter.
I was not going to be put off in that way,
and, leaving them out, went on talking to
Malachi about the tree. Presently one by
one the three visitors got up and, remarking
that it was time to be going, they took their
departure.

The old man could not escape nor avoid
listening, and in the end had to say some-
thing. He said he didn't know nothing
about all them tramps and gipsies and other
sorts of men who had sat by the tree ; all
he knowed was that the old thorn had been a

AN OLD THORN 159

good thorn to him — first and last. He re-
membered once when he was a young man,
not yet twenty, he went to do some work
at a village five miles away, and being winter
time he left early, about four o'clock, to
walk home over the downs. He had just
got married, and had promised his wife to
be home for tea at six o'clock. But a thick
fog came up over the downs, and soon
as it got dark he lost himself. 'Twas the
darkest, thickest night he had ever been out
in ; and whenever he came against a bank
or other obstruction he would get down on
his hands and knees and feel it up and down
to get its shape and find out what it was, for
he knew all the marks on his native downs ;
'twas all in vain — nothing could he recognise.
In this way he wandered about for hours,
and was in despair of getting home that
night, when all at once there came a sense
of relief, a feeling that it was all right, that
something was guiding him.

I remarked that I knew what that meant :
he had lost his sense of direction and had
now all at once recovered it ; such a thing

160 AN OLD THORN

had often happened ; I once had such an
experience myself.

No, it was not that, he returned. He
had not gone a dozen steps from the moment
that sense of confidence came to him, before
he ran into a tree, and feeling the trunk
with his hands he recognised it as the old
thorn and knew where he was. In a couple
of minutes he was on the road, and in less
than an hour, just about midnight, he was
safe at home.

No more could I get out of him, at all
events on that occasion ; nor did I ever
succeed in extracting any further personal
experience in spite of his having let out
that the thorn had been a good thorn to
him, first and last. I had, however, heard
enough to satisfy me that I had at length
discovered the real secret of the tree's fascina-
tion. I recalled other trees which had
similarly affected me, and how, long years
ago, when a good deal of my time was
spent on horseback, whenever I found my-
self in a certain district I would go miles
out of my way just to look at a solitary old

AN OLD THORN 161

tree growing in a lonely place, and to sit
for an hour to refresh myself, body and
soul, in its shade. I had indeed all along
suspected the thorn of being one of this
order of mysterious trees ; and from other
experiences I had met with, one some years
ago in a village in this same county of Wilts,
I had formed the opinion that in many
persons the sense of a strange intelligence
and possibility of power in such trees is not
a mere transitory state but an enduring in-
fluence which profoundly affects their whole
lives.

Determined to find out something more,
I went to other villagers, mostly women,
who are more easily disarmed and made to
believe that you too know and are of the
same mind with them, being under the same
mysterious power and spell. In this way,
laying many a subtle snare, I succeeded in
eliciting a good deal of information. It was,
however, mostly of a kind which could not
profitably be used in any inquiry into the
subject ; it simply went to show that the
feeling existed and was strong in many of

162 AN OLD THORN

the villagers. During this inquiry I picked
up several anecdotes about a person who
lived in Ingden close upon three generations
ago, and was able to piece them together so
as to make a consistent narrative of his life.
This was Johnnie Budd, a farm labourer,
who came to his end in 1821, a year or so
before my old friend Malachi was born. It
is going very far back, but there were cir-
cumstances in his life which made a deep
impression on the mind of that little com-
munity, and the story had lived on through
all these years.

ONTARIO

II

JOHNNIE had fallen on hard times when
in an exceptionally severe winter season
he with others had been thrown out of em-
ployment at the farm where he worked ; then
with a wife and three small children to keep
he had in his desperation procured food for
them one dark night in an adjacent field.
But alas ! one of the little ones playing in
the road with some of her companions, who
were all very hungry, let it out that she wasn't
hungry, that for three days she had had as
much nice meat as she wanted to eat ! Play
over, the hungry little ones flew home to tell
their parents the wonderful news — why didn't
they have nice meat like Tilly Budd, instead
of a piece of rye bread without even dripping
on it, when they were so hungry ? Much talk
followed, and spread from cottage to cottage
until it reached the constable's ears, and he,
163

164 AN OLD THORN

already informed of the loss of a wether
taken from its fold close by, went straight
to Johnnie and charged him with the offence.
Johnnie lost his head, and dropping on his
knees confessed his guilt and begged his old
friend Lampard to have mercy on him and
to overlook it for the sake of his wife and
children.

It was his first offence, but when he was
taken from the lock-up at the top of the
village street to be conveyed to Salisbury,
his friends and neighbours who had gathered
at the spot to witness his removal shook
their heads and doubted that Ingden would
ever see him again. The confession had
made the case so simple a one that he had
at once been committed to take his trial at the
Salisbury Assizes, and as the time was near
the constable had been ordered to convey
the prisoner to the town himself. Accord-
ingly he engaged old Joe Blaskett, called
Daddy in the village, to take them in his
pony cart. Daddy did not want the job,
but was talked or bullied into it, and there
he now sat in his cart, waiting in glum

AN OLD THORN 165

silence for his passengers ; a bent old man
of eighty, with a lean, grey, bitter face, in
his rusty cloak, his old rabbit-skin cap drawn
down over his ears, his white disorderly beard
scattered over his chest. The constable
Lampard was a big, powerful man, with a
great round, good-natured face, but just now
he had a strong sense of responsibility, and
to make sure of not losing his prisoner he
handcuffed him before bringing him out and
helping him to take his seat on the bottom
of the cart. Then he got up himself to his
seat by the driver's side ; the last good-bye
was spoken, the weeping wife being gently
led away by her friends, and the cart rattled
away down the street. Turning into the
Salisbury road it was soon out of sight over
the near down, but half an hour later it
emerged once more into sight beyond the
great dip, and the villagers who had re-
mained standing about at the same spot
watched it crawling like a beetle up the
long white road on the slope of the vast
down beyond.

Johnnie was now lying coiled up on his

i66 AN OLD THORN

rug, his face hidden between his arms,
abandoned to grief, sobbing aloud. Lampard,
sitting athwart the seat so as to keep an eye
on him, burst out at last : u Be a man,
Johnnie, and stop your crying ! 'Tis making
things no better by taking on like that.
What do you say, Daddy ? "

"I say nought," snapped the old man,
and for a while they proceeded in silence
except for those heartrending sobs. As they
approached the old thorn tree, near the top
of the long slope, Johnnie grew more and
more agitated, his whole frame shaking with
his sobbing. Again the constable rebuked
him, telling him that 'twas a shame for a
man to go on like that. Then with an
effort he restrained his sobs, and lifting a
red, swollen, tear-stained face he stammered
out : " Master Lampard, did I ever ask 'ee
a favour in my life ? "

" What be after now ? " said the other
suspiciously. "Well, no, Johnnie, not as
1 remember."

"An* do 'ee think I'll ever come back
home again, Master Lampard ? "

AN OLD THORN 167

" Maybe no, maybe yes ; 'tis not for me
to say."

" But 'ee knows 'tis a hanging matter ? "

" 'Tis that for sure. But you be a young
man with a wife and childer, and have never
done no wrong before — not that I ever heard
say. Maybe the judge '11 recommend you to
mercy. What do you say, Daddy ? "

The old man only made some inarticulate
sounds in his beard, without turning his head.

" But, Master Lampard, suppose I don't
swing, they'll send I over the water and
I'll never see the wife and children no

more."

" Maybe so ; I'm thinking that's how
'twill be."

" Then will 'ee do me a kindness ? 'Tis
the only one I ever asked 'ee, and there'll be
no chance to ask 'ee another."

" I can't say, Johnnie, not till I know
what 'tis you want."

0 'Tis only this, Master Lampard. When
we git to th' old thorn let me out o' the cart
and let me stand under it one minnit and no

more."

168 AN OLD THORN

" Be you wanting to hang yourself before
the trial then ? " said the constable, trying to
make a joke of it.

" I couldn't do that," said Johnnie, simply,
" seeing my hands be fast and you'd be
standing by."

" No, no, Johnnie, 'tis nought but just
foolishness. What do you say, Daddy ? "

The old man turned round with a look of
sudden rage in his grey face which startled
Lampard ; but he said nothing, he only
opened and shut his mouth two or three
times without a sound.

Meanwhile the pony had been going
slower and slower for the last thirty or forty
yards, and now when they were abreast of
the tree stood still.

" What be stopping for ? " cried Lampard.
" Get on — get on, or we'll never get to
Salisbury this day."

Then at length old Blaskett found a voice.

"Does thee know what thee's saying,
Master Lampard, or be thee a stranger in
this parish ? "

" What d'ye mean, Daddy ? I be no

AN OLD THORN 169

stranger ; I've a-known this parish and
known 'ee these nine years."

"Thee asked why I stopped when 'twas
the pony stopped, knowing where we'd got
to. But thee's not born here or thee'd a-
known what a hoss knows. An' since 'ee
asks what I says, I say this, 'twill not hurt
'ee to let Johnnie Budd stand one minute by
the tree."

Feeling insulted and puzzled the constable
was about to assert his authority when he
was arrested by Johnnie's cry, u Oh, Master
Lampard, 'tis my last hope ! " and by the
sight of the agony of suspense on his swollen
face. After a short hesitation he swung him-
self out over the side of the cart, and letting
down the tailboard laid rough hands on
Johnnie and half helped, half dragged him
out.

They were quickly by the tree, where
Johnnie stood silent with downcast eyes
a few moments ; then dropping upon his
knees leant his face against the bark, his
eyes closed, his lips murmuring.

" Time's up ! " cried Lampard presently,
M

170 AN OLD THORN

and taking him by the collar pulled him
to his feet ; in a couple of minutes more
they were in the cart and on their way.

It was grey weather, very cold, with an
east wind blowing, but for the rest of that
dreary thirteen-miles journey Johnnie was
very quiet and submissive and shed no
more tears.

ONTARIO

Ill

WHAT had been his motive in wish-
ing to stand by the tree ? What
did he expect when he said it was his last
hope? During the way up the long,
laborious slope, an incident of his early
years in connection with the tree had been
in his mind, and had wrought on him until
it culminated in that passionate outburst and
his strange request. It was when he was a
boy, not quite ten years old, that, one after-
noon in the summer time, he went with
other children to look for wild raspberries
on the summit of the great down. Johnnie,
being the eldest, was the leader of the little
band. On the way back from the brambly
place where the fruit grew, on approaching
the thorn, they spied a number of rooks
sitting on it, and it came into Johnnie's

mind that it would be great fun to play
171

172 AN OLD THORN

at crows by sitting on the branches as near
the top as they could get. Running on,
with cries that sent the rooks cawing away,
they began swarming up the trunks, but in
the midst of their frolic, when they were
all struggling for the best places on the
branches, they were startled by a shout,
and looking up to the top of the down,
saw a man on horseback coming towards
them at a gallop, shaking a whip in anger as
he rode. Instantly they began scrambling
down, falling over each other in their haste,
then, picking themselves up, set off down
the slope as fast as they could run. Johnnie
was foremost, while close behind him came
Marty, who was nearly the same age and,
though a girl, almost as swift-footed, but
before going fifty yards she struck her foot
against an ant-hill and was thrown violently,
face down, on the turf. Johnnie turned at
her cry and flew back to help her up, but
the shock of the fall, and her extreme terror,
had deprived her for the moment of all
strength, and while he struggled to raise
her, the smaller children, one by one,

AN OLD THORN 173

overtook and passed them, and in another
moment the man was off his horse, standing
over them.

<c Do you want a good thrashing ? " he
said, grasping Johnnie by the collar.

" Oh, sir ; please don't hit me ! " answered
Johnnie ; then looking up he was astonished
to see that his captor was not the stern old
farmer, the tenant of the down, he had taken
him for, but a stranger and a strange-looking
man, in a dark grey cloak with a red collar.
He had a pointed beard and long black
hair and dark eyes that were not evil yet
frightened Johnnie, when he caught them
gazing down on him.

"No, I'll not thrash you," said he,
" because you stayed to help the little
maiden, but I'll tell you something for
your good about the tree you and your
little mates have been climbing, bruising
the bark with your heels and breaking off
leaves and twigs. Do you know, boy, that
if you hurt it, it will hurt you ? It stands
fast here with its roots in the ground and
you — you can go away from it, you think.

174 AN OLD THORN

'Tis not so ; something will come out of it
and follow you wherever you go and hurt
and break you at last. But if you make it
a friend and care for it, it will care for you
and give you happiness and deliver you
from evil."

Then touching Johnnie's cheeks with his
gloved hand he got on his horse and rode
away, and no sooner was he gone than
Marty started up, and hand in hand the two
children set off at a run down the long slope.

Johnnie's playtime was nearly over then,
for by and by he was taken as farmer's
boy at one of the village farms. When he
was nineteen years old, one Sunday evening,
when standing in the road with other young
people of the village, youths and girls, it
was powerfully borne on his mind that his
old playmate Marty was not only the prettiest
and best girl in the place, but that she had
something which set her apart and far, far
above all other women. For now, after
having known her intimately from his first
years, he had suddenly fallen in love with
her, a feeling which caused him to shiver in

AN OLD THORN 175

a kind of ecstasy, yet made him miserable,
since it had purged his sight and made him see,
too, how far apart they were and how hopeless
his case. It was true they had been comrades
from childhood, fond of each other, but she
had grown and developed until she had
become that most bright and lovely being,
while he had remained the same slow-witted,
awkward, almost inarticulate Johnnie he had
always been. This feeling preyed on his
poor mind, and when he joined the evening
gathering in the village street he noted
bitterly how contemptuously he was left out
of the conversation by the others, how in-
capable he was of keeping pace with them in
their laughing talk and banter. And, worst
of all, how Marty was the leading spirit,
bandying words and bestowing smiles and
pleasantries all round, but never a word or a
smile for him. He could not endure it, and
so instead of smartening himself up after
work and going for company to the village
street, he would walk down the secluded
lane near the farm to spend the hour before
supper and bedtime sitting on a gate, brood-

176 AN OLD THORN

ing on his misery ; and if by chance he met
Marty in the village he would try to avoid
her, and was silent and uncomfortable in her
presence.

After work, one hot summer evening,
Johnnie was walking along the road near the
farm in his working clothes, clay-coloured
boots, and old dusty hat, when who should
he see but Marty coming towards him,
looking very sweet and fresh in her light-
coloured print gown. He looked to this
side and that for some friendly gap or open-
ing in the hedge so as to take himself out
of the road, but there was no way of escape
at that spot, and he had to pass her, and so
casting down his eyes he walked on, wishing
he could sink into the earth out of her sight.
But she would not allow him to pass ; she
put herself directly in his way and spoke.

u What's the matter with 'ee, Johnnie,
that 'ee don't want to meet me and hardly
say a word when I speak to 'ee ? "

He could not find a word in reply; he
stood still, his face crimson, his eyes on the
ground.

AN OLD THORN 177

" Johnnie, dear, what is it ? " she asked,
coming closer and putting her hand on his
arm.

Then he looked up, and seeing the sweet
compassion in her eyes, he could no longer
keep the secret of his pain from her.

"Tis 'ee, Marty," he said. "Thee '11
never want I — there's others 'ee'll like
better. 'Tisn't for I to say a word about
that, I'm thinking, for I be — just nothing.
An' — an' — I be going away from the village,
Marty, and I'll never come back no more."

" Oh, Johnnie, don't 'ee say it ! Would
'ee go and break my heart ? Don't 'ee
know I've always loved 'ee since we were
little mites together ? "

And thus it came about that Johnnie, most
miserable of men, was all at once made happy
beyond his wildest dreams. And he proved
himself worthy of her ; from that time there
was not a more diligent and sober young
labourer in the village, nor one of a more
cheerful disposition, nor more careful of his
personal appearance when, the day's work
done, the young people had their hour of

178 AN OLD THORN

social intercourse and courting. Yet he was
able to put by a portion of his weekly wages
of six shillings to buy sticks, so that when
spring came round again he was able to
marry and take Marty to live with him in
his own cottage.

One Sunday afternoon, shortly after this
happy event, they went out for a walk on
the high down.

" Oh, Johnnie, 'tis a long time since we
were here together, not since we used to
come and play and look for cowslips when
we were little."

Johnnie laughed with pure joy and said
they would just be children and play again,
now they were alone and out of sight of the
village ; and when she smiled up at him he
rejoiced to think that his union with this
perfect girl was producing a happy effect on
his poor brains, making him as bright and
ready with a good reply as any one. And in
their happiness they played at being children
just as in the old days they had played at
being grown-ups. Casting themselves down

AN OLD THORN 179

on the green, elastic, flower-sprinkled turf,
they rolled one after the other down the
smooth slopes of the terrace, the old " shep-
herd's steps," and by and by Johnnie, coming
upon a patch of creeping thyme, rubbed his
hands in the pale purple flowers, then rubbed
her face to make it fragrant.

" Oh, 'tis sweet ! " she cried. " Did 'ee
ever see so many little flowers on the down ?
— 'tis as if they came out just for us."
Then, indicating the tiny milkwort faintly
sprinkling the turf all about them, " Oh,
the little blu« darlings ! Did 'ee ever see
such a dear blue ? "

a Oh, aye, a prettier blue nor that," said
Johnnie. u 'Tis just here, Marty," and
pressing her down he kissed her on the
eyelids a dozen times.

" You silly Johnnie ! "

" Be I silly, Marty ? but I love the red
too," and with that he kissed her on the
mouth. " And, Marty, I do love the red
on the breasties too — won't 'ee let me have
just one kiss there ? "

i8o AN OLD THORN

And she, to please him, opened her dress
a little way, but blushingly, though she was
his wife and nobody was there to see, but it
seemed strange to her out of doors with
the sun overhead. Oh, 'twas all delicious !
Never was earth so heavenly sweet as on
that wide green down, sprinkled with in-
numerable little flowers, under the wide blue
sky and the all-illuminating sun that shone
into their hearts I

At length, rising to her knees and looking
up the green slope, she cried out : " Oh,
Johnnie, there's the old thorn tree ! Do 'ee
remember when we played at crows on it
and had such a fright ? 'Twas the last time
we came here together. Come, let's go to
the old tree and see how it looks now."

Johnnie all at once became grave, and said
No, he wouldn't go to it for anything. She
was curious and made him tell her the
reason. He had never forgotten that day
and the fear that came into his mind on
account of the words the strange man had
spoken. She didn't know what the words

AN OLD THORN 181

were ; she had been too frightened to listen,
and so he had to tell her.

"Then, 'tis a wishing-tree for sure,"
Marty exclaimed. When he asked her
what a wishing-tree was, she could only
say that her old grandmother, now dead,
had told her. 'Tis a tree that knows us
and can do us good and harm, but will
do good only to some ; but they must
go to it and ask for its protection, and
they must offer it something as well as
pray to it. It must be something bright —
a little jewel or coloured bead is best, and if
you haven't got such a thing, a bright-
coloured ribbon, or strip of scarlet cloth
or silk thread — which you must tie to one
of the twigs.

"But we hurted the tree, Marty, and
'twill do no good to we."

They were both grave now ; then a
hopeful thought came to her aid. They
had not hurt the tree intentionally ; the tree
knew that — it knew more than any human
being. They might go and stand side by

182 AN OLD THORN

side under its branches and ask it to forgive
them, and grant them all their desires. But
they must not go empty-handed, they must
have some bright thing with them when
making their prayer. Then she had a fresh
inspiration. She would take a lock of her
own bright hair, and braid it with some of
his, and tie it with a piece of scarlet thread.

Johnnie was pleased with this idea, and they
agreed to take another Sunday afternoon
walk and carry out their plan.

The projected walk was never taken, for
by and by Marty's mother fell ill, and
Marty had to be with her, nursing her
night and day. And months went by, and
at length, when her mother died, she was
not in a fit condition to go long walks and
climb those long, steep slopes. After the
child was born, it was harder than ever to
leave the house, and Johnnie, too, had so
much work at the farm that he had little
inclination to go out on Sundays. They
ceased to speak of the tree, and their long-
projected pilgrimage was impracticable until

AN OLD THORN 183

they could see better days. But the wished
time never came, for, after the first child,
Marty was never strong. Then a second
child came, then a third ; and so five years
went by, of toil and suffering and love, and
the tree, with all their hopes and fears and
intentions regarding it, was less and less in
their minds, and was all but forgotten.
Only Johnnie, when at long intervals his
master sent him to Salisbury* with the cart,
remembered it all only too well when,
coming to the top of the down, he saw
the old thorn directly before him. Passing
it, he would turn his face away not to see it
too closely, or, perhaps, to avoid being
recognised by it. Then came the time of
their extreme poverty, when there was no
work at the farm and no one of their own
people to help tide them over a season of
scarcity, for the old people were dead or
in the workhouse or so poor as to want
help themselves. It was then that, in his
misery at the sight of his ailing anxious
wife — the dear Marty of the beautiful

184 AN OLD THORN

vanished days — and his three little hungry
children, that he went out into the field one
dark night, to get them food.

The whole sad history was in his mind as
they slowly crawled up the hill, until it came
to him that perhaps all their sufferings and
this great disaster had been caused by the
tree — by that something from the tree which
had followed him, never resting in its
mysterious enmity until it broke him.
Was it too late to repair that terrible
mistake ? A gleam of hope shone on his
darkened mind, and he made his passionate
appeal to the constable. He had no offering
— his hands were powerless now ; but at
least he could stand by it and touch it with
his body and face and pray for its for-
giveness, and for deliverance from the doom
which threatened him. The constable had
compassionately, or from some secret motive,
granted his request ; but alas ! if in very
truth the power he had come to believe
in resided in the tree, he was too late in
seeking it.

AN OLD THORN 185

The trial was soon over ; by pleading
guilty Johnnie had made it a very simple
matter for the court. The main thing was
to sentence him. By an unhappy chance
the judge was in one of his occasional bad
moods ; he had been entertained too well by
one of the local magnates on the previous
evening and had sat late, drinking too much
wine, with the result that he had a bad liver,
with a mind to match it. He was only too
ready to seize the first opportunity that
offered — and poor Johnnie's case was the
first that morning — of exercising the awful
power a barbarous law had put into his
hands. When the prisoner's defender
declared that this was a case which called
loudly for mercy, the judge interrupted him
to say that he was taking too much upon
himself, that he was, in fact, instructing the
judge in his duties, which was a piece of
presumption on his part. The other was
quick to make a humble apology and to
bring his perfunctory address to a conclusion.
The judge, in addressing the prisoner, said he
N

186 AN OLD THORN

had been unable to discover any extenuating
circumstances in the case. The fact that he
had a wife and family dependent on him
only added to his turpitude, since it proved
that no consideration could serve to deter
him from a criminal act. Furthermore, in
dealing with this case, he must take into
account the prevalence of this particular
form of crime ; he would venture to say
that it had been encouraged by an extreme
leniency in many cases on the part of those
whose sacred duty it was to administer the
law of the land. A sterner and healthier
spirit was called for at the present juncture.
The time had come to make an example,
and a more suitable case than the one now
before him could not have been found for
such a purpose. He would accordingly
hold out no hope of a reprieve, but would
counsel prisoner to make the best use of the
short time remaining to him.

Johnnie standing in the dock appeared to
the spectators to be in a half-dazed condition
— as dull and spiritless a clodhopper as they

AN OLD THORN 187

had ever beheld. The judge and barristers,
in their wigs and robes and gowns, were
unlike any human beings he had ever looked
on. He might have been transported to
some other world, so strange did the whole
scene appear to him. He only knew, or
surmised, that all these important people
were occupied in doing him to death, but
the process, the meaning of their fine phrases,
he could not follow. He looked at them,
his glazed eyes travelling from face to face,
to be fixed finally on the judge, in a vacant
stare ; but he scarcely saw them, he was all
the time gazing on, and his mind occupied
with, other forms and scenes invisible to the
court. His village, his Marty, his dear little
playmate of long ago, the sweet girl he had
won, the wife and mother of his children,
with her white, terrified face, clinging to him
and crying in anguish : " Oh, Johnnie, what
will they do to 'ee ? " And all the time,
with it all, he saw the vast green slope of
the down, with the Salisbury road lying
like a narrow white band across it, and

i88 AN OLD THORN

close to it, near the summit, the solitary old
tree.

During the delivery of the sentence, and
when he was led from the dock and conveyed
back to the prison, that image or vision was
still present. He sat staring at the wall of
his cell as he had stared at the judge, the
fatal tree still before him. Never before
had he seen it in that vivid way in which it
appeared to him now, standing alone on the
vast green down, under the wide sky, its
four separate boles leaning a little way from
each other, like the middle ribs of an open
fan, holding up the widespread branches,
the thin, open foliage, the green leaves
stained with rusty brown and purple ; and
the ivy, rising like a slender black serpent of
immense length, springing from the roots,
winding upwards, and in and out, among
the grey branches, binding them together,
and resting its round, dark cluster of massed
leaves on the topmost boughs. That green
disc was the ivy-serpent's flat head and was
the head of the whole tree, and there it had
its eyes, which gazed for ever over the wide

AN OLD THORN 189

downs, watching all living things, cattle and
sheep and birds and men in their comings
and goings ; and although fast-rooted in the
earth, following them, too, in all their ways,
even as it had followed him, to break him
at last.

POSTSCRIPT

DEAD MAN S PLACK

ONE of my literary friends, who has
looked at the Dead Man's Plack in
manuscript, has said by way of criticism that
Elfrida's character is veiled. I am not to
blame for that ; for have I not already said,
by implication at all events, in the Preamble,
that my knowledge of her comes from out-
side. Something, or, more likely, Somebody,
gave me her history, and it has occurred to
me that this same Somebody was no such
obscurity as, let us say, the Monk John of
Glastonbury, who told the excavators just
where to look for the buried chapel of Edgar,
king and saint. I suspect that my informant
was some one who knew more about Elfrida
than any mere looker-on, monk or nun, and
gossip-gatherer of her own distant day ; and
193

194 POSTSCRIPT

this suspicion or surmise was suggested by
the following incident :

After haunting Dead Man's Plack, where
I had my vision, I rambled in and about
Wherwell on account of its association, and
in one of the cottages in the village I became
acquainted with an elderly widow, a woman
in feeble health, but singularly attractive inher
person and manner. Indeed, before making
her acquaintance I had been informed by
some of her relations and others in the place
that she was not only the best person to seek
information from, but was also the sweetest
person in the village. She was a native born ;
her family had lived there for generations, and
she was of that best South Hampshire type
with an oval face, olive-brown skin, black
eyes and hair, and that soft melancholy ex-
pression in the eyes common in Spanish
women and not uncommon in the dark-
skinned Hampshire women. She had been
taught at the village school, and having
attracted the attention and interest of the
great lady of the place on account of her
intelligence and pleasing manners, she was

DEAD MAN'S PLACK 195

taken when quite young as lady's-maid, and
in this employment continued for many
years until her marriage to a villager.

One day, conversing with her, I said I had
heard that the village was haunted by the
ghost of a woman : was that true ?

Yes, it was true, she returned.

Did she know that it was true ? Had she
actually seen the ghost ?

Yes, she had seen it once. One day, when
she was lady's-maid, she was in her bedroom,
dressing or doing something, with another
maid. The door was closed, and they were
in a merry mood, talking and laughing, when
suddenly they both at the same moment
saw a woman with a still, white face walking
through the room. She was in the middle
of the room when they caught sight of her,
and they both screamed and covered their
faces with their hands. So great was her
terror that she almost fainted ; then in a few
moments when they looked the apparition
had vanished. As to the habit she was wear-
ing, neither of them could say afterwards
what it was like : only the white, still face

196 POSTSCRIPT

remained fixed in their memory, but the
figure was a dark one, like a dark shadow
moving rapidly through the room.

If Elfrida then, albeit still in purgatory, is
able to revisit this scene of her early life
and the site of that tragedy in the forest,
it does not seem to me altogether improbable
that she herself made the revelation I have
written. And if this be so, it would account
for the veiled character conveyed in the
narrative. For even after ten centuries it
may well be that all the coverings have not
yet been removed, that although she has
been dropping them one by one for ages, she
has not yet come to the end of them. Until
the very last covering, or veil, or mist is
removed, it would be impossible for her to
be absolutely sincere, to reveal her inmost
soul with all that is most dreadful in it.
But when that time comes, from the very
moment of its coming she would cease
automatically to be an exiled and tormented
spirit.

If, then, Elfrida is herself responsible for
the narrative, it is only natural that she does

DEAD MAN'S PLACK 197

not appear in it quite as black as she has
been painted. For the monkish chronicler
was, we know, the Father of Lies, and so
indeed in a measure are all historians and
biographers, since they cannot see into hearts
and motives or know all the circumstances
of the case. And in this case they were
painting the picture of their hated enemy
and no doubt were not sparing in the use of
the black pigment.

To know all is to forgive all, is a good
saying, and enables us to see why even the
worst among us can always find it possible to
forgive himself.

II

AN OLD THORN

I WAS pleased at this opportunity of
rescuing this story from a far-back
number of the English Review, in which it
first appeared, and putting it in a book. It
may be a shock to the reader to be brought
down from a story of a great king and queen
of England in the tenth century to the
obscure annals of a yokel and his wife who
lived in a Wiltshire village only a century
ago; or even less, since my poor yokel was
hanged for sheep-stealing in 1821. But it
is, I think, worth preserving, since it is the
only narrative I know of dealing with that
rare and curious subject, the survival of
tree-worship in our own country. That,
however, was not the reason of my being

pleased.

198

AN OLD THORN 199

It was just when I had finished writing the
story of Elfrida that I happened to see in my
morning paper a highly eulogistical paragraph
about one of our long-dead and, I imagine,
forgotten worthies. The occasion of the para-
graph doesn't matter. The man eulogised
was Mr. Justice Park — Sir James Allan Park,
a highly successful barrister, who was judge
from 1816 to his death in 1838. "As
judge, though not eminent, he was sound,
fair and sensible, a little irascible, but highly
esteemed." He was also the author of a
religious work. And that is all the par-
ticular Liar who wrote his biography in the
D.N.B. can tell us about him.

It was the newspaper paragraph which
reminded me that I had written about this
same judge, giving my estimate of his char-
acter in my book, A Shepherd's Life, also
that I was thinking about Park, the sound
and fair and sensible judge, when I wrote
"An Old Thorn." Here then, with
apologies to the reader for quoting from
my own book, I reproduce what 1 wrote in
1905.

200 POSTSCRIPT

<c From these memories of the old villagers
I turn to the newspapers of the day to make
a few citations.

"The law as it was did not distinguish
between a case of the kind just related, of
the starving, sorely-tempted Shergold, and
that of the systematic thief : sheep-stealing
was a capital offence and the man must be
hanged, unless recommended to mercy, and
we know what was meant by ' mercy ' in
those days. That so barbarous a law existed
within memory of people to be found living
in most villages appears almost incredible to
us ; but despite the recommendations to
* mercy ' usual in a large majority of cases,
the law of that time was not more horrible
than the temper of the men who administered
it. There are good and bad among all, and
in all professions, but there is also a black
spot in most, possibly all hearts, which may be
developed to almost any extent, to change the
justest, wisest, most moral men into ' human
devils/ In reading the old reports and the
expressions used by the judges in their
summings-up and sentences, it is impossible

AN OLD THORN 201

not to believe that the awful power they
possessed, and its constant exercise, had not
only produced the inevitable hardening
effect, but had made them cruel in the
true sense of the word. Their pleasure in
passing dreadful sentences was very thinly
disguised by certain lofty conventional
phrases as to the necessity of upholding
the law, morality, and religion ; they were,
indeed, as familiar with the name of the
Deity as any ranter in a conventicle, and
the c enormity of the crime ' was an expres-
sion as- constantly used in the case of the
theft of a loaf of bread, or of an old coat
left hanging on a hedge, by some ill-clad,
half-starved wretch, as in cases of burglary,
arson, rape, and murder.

" It is surprising to find how very few the
real crimes were in those days, despite the
misery of the people ; that nearly all the
'crimes 'for which men were sentenced to
the gallows and to transportation for life, or
for long terms, were offences which would
now be sufficiently punished by a few weeks*,
or even a few days', imprisonment. Thus
o

202 POSTSCRIPT

in April, 1825, I note that Mr. Justice Park
commented on the heavy appearance of the
calendar. It was not so much the number
(170) of the offenders that excited his con-
cern as it was the nature of the crimes with
which they were charged. The worst crime
in this instance was sheep-stealing !

" Again, this same Mr. Justice Park, at
the Spring Assizes at Salisbury, 1827, said
that though the calendar was a heavy one,
he was happy to find, on looking at the
depositions of the principal cases, that they
were not of a very serious character. Never-
theless he passed sentence of death on
twenty-eight persons, among them being
one for stealing half a crown !

<c Of the twenty-eight all but three were
eventually reprieved, one of the fated three
being a youth of 19, who was charged with
stealing a mare and pleaded guilty in spite of
a warning from the judge not to do so.
This irritated the great man who had the
power of life and death in his hand. In
passing sentence the judge c expatiated on
the prevalence of the crime of horse-stealing

AN OLD THORN 203

and the necessity of making an example.
The enormity of Read's crime rendered him
a proper example, and he would therefore
hold out no hope of mercy towards him.7
As to the plea of guilty, he remarked that
nowadays too many persons pleaded guilty,
deluded with the hope that it would be taken
into consideration and they would escape
the severer penalty. He was determined to
put a stop to that sort of thing ; if Read
had not pleaded guilty no doubt some ex-
tenuating circumstance would have come
up during the trial and he would have saved
hi< life.

cc There, if ever, spoke the c human devil '
in a black cap !

" I find another case of a sentence of
transportation for life on a youth of 18,
named Edward Baker, for stealing a pocket-
handkerchief. Had he pleaded guilty it
might have been worse for him.

"At the Salisbury Spring Assizes, 1830,
Mr. Justice Gazalee, addressing the grand
jury, said that none of the crimes appeared
to be marked with circumstances of great

204 POSTSCRIPT

moral turpitude. The prisoners numbered
130; he passed sentences of death on twenty-
nine, life transportations on five, fourteen
years on five, seven years on eleven, and
various terms of hard labour on the others."
(A Shepherd's Life, pp. 241-4.)

Johnnie Budd was done to death before my
principal informants, one 89 years old, the
other 93, were born ; but in their early years
they knew the widow and her three children,
and had known them and their children all
their lives ; thus the whole story of Johnnie
and Marty was familiar to them. Now, when
I thought of Johnnie's case and how he was
treated at the trial, as it was told me by these
old people, it struck me as so like that of
the poor young man Read, who was hanged
because he pleaded guilty, that I at once
came to the belief that it was Mr. Justice
Park who had tried him. I have accordingly
searched the newspapers of that day, but
have failed to find Johnnie's case. I can
only suppose that this particular case was
probably considered too unimportant to be
reported at large in the newspapers of 1821.

AN OLD THORN 205

He was just one of a number convicted and
sentenced to capital punishment.

When Johnnie was hanged his poor wife
travelled to Salisbury and succeeded in
getting permission to take the body back
to the village for burial. How she in her
poverty, with her three little children to
keep, managed it 1 don't know. Probably
some of the other poor villagers who pitied
and perhaps loved her helped her to do it.
She did even more : she had a grave-stone
set above him with his name and the dates
of his birth and death cut on it. And there
it is now, within a dozen yards of the church
door in the small old churchyard — the
smallest village churchyard known to me ;
and Johnnie's and Marty's children's children
are still living in the village.

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by a certificate signed by the Artist.

/'This exquisite portfolio . . . artistic work of the highest
distinction. It is impossible to imagine a more delightful
present for the lover of animal life." — Daily Telegraph.

Published by J. M. DENT & SONS, LTD.
ALDINE HOUSE, BEDFORD STREET, W.C.2

A BOOK FOR FLOWER LOVERS

NAME THIS FLOWER

By GASTON BONNIER

Professor of Botany at the Sorbonne ; Member of the Institute

A simple way of finding out the names of

common plants without any previous

knowledge of Botany

Fcap. 8vo, js. 6d. net.
With 372 Coloured Plates and 2715 other Figures.

This is a first book on a novel plan. Technical
terms are avoided as far as possible, a glossary
being given of those that are unavoidable. In
addition to the usual Latin names, the popular
or " folk " names of the plants are given.

By a very carefully constructed adaptation of
the system of dichotomous keys, a young child,
or the merest tyro, is enabled to run down the
name of any of the flowering plants commonly
met with in this country, in France or Belgium.
The volume is of pocketable size ; but as a work
for home reference it contains also in one of
its indexes an indication of the uses of the various
species, of their value to the bee-keeper, and
especially of their employment in that excellent
old-world system of herbal remedies which has
been too much neglected in modern times.

Published by J. M. DENT & SONS, LTD.
ALDINE HOUSE, BEDFORD STREET, W.C.2

THE HADDON HALL LIBRARY

Edited by the MARQUESS OF GRANBY and
GEORGE A. B. DEWAR

With Illustrations, Decorative End Papers, Head-
pieces, etc.
Large Crown 8vo, 5*. net per volume.

FLY FISHING

By VISCOUNT GREY OF FALLODON

With Photogravure Illustrations by Miss JESSIE

MACGREGOR and WILLIAM HYDE, and Coloured

Plates of Flies. (Sixth Edition.)

OUR GARDENS

By The Very Rev. S. REYNOLDS HOLE, Dean of
Rochester

With Illustrations from Paintings by GEORGE S.

ELGOOD, R.I., the Frontispiece being in Colours.

(Fifth Edition.)

OUR
FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

By JOHN NISBET

With Photogravure and Half-Tone Illustrations.
(New Revised Edition.)

FARMING

By W. M. TOD

With Illustrations in Colour and Photogravure by
LUCY KEMP-WELCH.

Published by J. M. DENT & SONS, LTD.
ALDINE HOUSE, BEDFORD STREET, W.C. 2

PLEASE DO NOT REMOVE
CARDS OR SLIPJfpROM THIS POCKET

UNIVERSITY OF%ORONTO LIBRARY

PR Hudson, W.H. (William Henry)

6015 Dead Man's Plack