The Last of the Vikings
9781465598592
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
Adown the valley one bright September morning, in the year 1066, was speeding Ethel, the only daughter of the Danish thane Beowulf, who is lord of the domain of Rivenwood, and whose hall looks down from the wooded heights in the distance like a grim sentinel. This fair girl Ethel was probably not more than fifteen years of age—just at the juncture where coy and blushing maidenhood, with its unconscious assumptions of grace and dignity, joins issue with the freer and bolder manners of girlhood, and when the wholesome, innocent, and graceful blending is wholly interesting, and often most piquant. Most piquant indeed, at all events, was this graceful specimen of budding womanhood. Her brow was open and expressive, her countenance somewhat broad, in sympathy with her manner of life; the free, unfettered, and merry out-of-door life of sylvan England. Her blue eyes glanced, and sparkled, and glowed, betokening a mind responsive and alert as the falcon which perched upon her embroidered leathern gauntlet. Her nose was perfectly straight, but had just so much of an upward trend as to indicate the point positive, and the attitude—"beware all." Upon her head she wore a sort of cap of blue silk, broad at the crown and drooping over the broad scarlet band with which it was bound. In the front of this head-dress stood erect a couple of eagles' feathers; whilst from underneath it the flaxen curls, like the fetterless things they were, burst luxuriantly, and circled across her forehead and over her ears; and though the wanton tresses were captured again at the back of her head, yet they burst away again and ran riot over her shoulders and down to her girdle. Of jewellery, she wore a handsome gold torc which encircled her neck, on which, and on the pendants attached thereto, were skilfully engraved strange mystical runic devices. She wore a mantle trimmed with fur, which on this occasion flowed loosely down her back, leaving free her arms, but which, at needs be, became a cloak covering the upper parts of her body entirely. Her under dress was of woollen material and tight-fitting, whilst her sandals had a stout sole of leather with toe-piece and overstraps of prepared deer skin. Accompanying this fair girl was a favourite maid, and one of her father's housecarles who filled the office of ranger and provider for the household, in the matters of fish and game. At his heels there followed a couple of dogs, whilst on his left arm there perched a falcon with all his furniture on. On Ethel's arm also there perched another falcon, ready for flight. "Let the dogs go now, Bretwul, for we should have good sport hereabouts, and have a capital view of it too, on this hillside," said the maiden. At a word of encouragement from Bretwul the dogs, with wagging tails, immediately clapped nose to ground, and commenced threading in and out amongst the gorse and brushwood to start the game. Presently a loud fluttering of wings and a scream, sent the hawks into a violent agitation, and a handsome-plumaged pheasant took to wing. Ethel immediately whipped off the hood of her hawk, and quick almost as a flash of lightning it covered the helpless quarry. Then down it swooped, and a struggling mass of feathers and mingled plumage came fluttering to the ground. "Oh, that is wretchedly poor, Bretwul!" exclaimed Ethel impatiently. "I like a good long chase which puts master Grey-eye thoroughly upon his mettle. Such sluggard creatures as that one are poor sport. Come, let us climb higher, for amid yon gorse and bracken on the hill we shall meet with partridge, moorfowl, or perhaps, better still, a woodcock. Then we shall test the mettle of little Grey-eye." So together they clambered through the brackened steep, until they reached the fringe of the heather which crowned the brow of the hill. Soon they espied a covey of grouse racing along before them stealthily amid the cover; but promptly these sprang aloft with whirring sound of wing, and loud, peculiar cries.
