“Ho, brother!” I said, for there was no
one near us. “What is that call you are
whistling?”
He started and looked up at me suddenly, and I saw
that his trouble was on him again.
“In my dream,” he said slowly, “there
is a man on a great horse, and he wears such bracelets
as Ragnar of Norwich, and he winds his horn with that
call, and I run to him; and then I myself am on the
horse, and I go to the stables, and after that there
is nothing but the call that I hear. Now it has
gone again.”
And his hand went up in the way that made me sad to
see.
“It will come back by-and-by. Trouble not
about it.”
“I would that we were back in Grimsby,”
he said, with a great sigh. “This is a
place of shadows. Ghosts are these of days that
I think can never have been.”
“Well,” said I, wanting to take him out
of himself, “this is no ghost, at all events.
I would that one of our brothers would come from home
that I might send it to them in Grimsby. We do
not need it.”
So I showed him the gold, and he wondered at it, and
laughed, saying that the housecarls had the best place
after all. And so he went on, and I back to the
gate.
Surely he minded at last the days when Gunnar his
father had ridden home to the gate, as the Danish
earl had ridden even now, and had called his son to
him with that call. It was all coming back, as
one thing or another brought it to his mind; and I
wondered what should be when he knew that the dream
was the truth. For what should Havelok, foster-son
of the fisher, do against a king who for twelve long
years had held his throne? And who in all the
old land would believe that he was indeed the son
of the lost king? Better, it seemed to me, that
this had not happened, and that he had been yet the
happy, careless, well-loved son of Grim, with no thought
of aught higher than the good of the folk he knew.
When I got back to the gate, we were marched down
the town, that we might be ready to receive the princess;
and as I went through the market, I saw one of the
porters whom I knew, and I beckoned to him, so that
he came alongside me in the ranks, and I asked him
if he would go to Grimsby for me for a silver penny.
He would do it gladly; and so I sent him with word
to Arngeir that I needed one of them here to take a
gift that I had for them. I would meet whoever
came at the widow’s house, and I set a time
when I would look for them. I thought it was
well that the king’s gold should not be wasted,
even for a day’s use, if I could help it.
And I wearied to see one of the brothers, and hear
all that was going on.
There is no need for me to tell aught of the entry
of the Lady Goldberga into the town, for anyone may
know how the people cheered her, and how the party
were met by the Norfolk thanes and many others, and
so rode on up the hill to the palace. What the
princess was like I hardly noticed at that time, for
she was closely hooded, and her maidens were round
her. And I had something else to think of; for
foremost, and richly dressed, with a gold chain round
his neck, rode a man whose strange way of carrying
his head caught my eye at once, so that I looked more
than a second time at him.
