第66章

The King of Britain received them very graciously, and treated them with costly and royal pomp.During the feast he asked anxiously whether Feng was alive and prosperous.His son-in-law told him that the man of whose welfare he was vainly inquiring had perished by the sword.With a flood of questions he tried to find out who had slain Feng, and learnt that the messenger of his death was likewise its author.And when the king heard this, he was secretly aghast, because he found that an old promise to avenge Feng now devolved upon himself.For Feng and he had determined of old, by a mutual compact, that one of them should act as avenger of the other.Thus the king was drawn one way by his love for his daughter and his affection for his son-in-law;another way by his regard for his friend, and moreover by his strict oath and the sanctity of their mutual declarations, which it was impious to violate.At last he slighted the ties of kinship, and sworn faith prevailed.His heart turned to vengeance, and he put the sanctity of his oath before family bonds.But since it was thought sin to wrong the holy ties of hospitality, he preferred to execrate his revenge by the hand of another, wishing to mask his secret crime with a show of innocence.So he veiled his treachery with attentions, and hid his intent to harm under a show of zealous goodwill.His queen having lately died of illness, he requested Amleth to undertake the mission of making him a fresh match, saying that he was highly delighted with his extraordinary shrewdness.He declared that there was a certain queen reigning in Scotland, whom he vehemently desired to marry.Now he knew that she was not only unwedded by reason of her chastity, but that in the cruelty of her arrogance she had always loathed her wooers, and had inflicted on her lovers the uttermost punishment, so that not one but of all the multitude was to be found who had not paid for his insolence with his life.

Perilous as this commission was Amleth started, never shrinking to obey the duty imposed upon him, but trusting partly in his own servants, and partly in the attendants of the king.He entered Scotland, and, when quite close to the abode of the queen, he went into a meadow by the wayside to rest his horses.Pleased by the look of the spot, he thought of resting -- the pleasant prattle of the stream exciting a desire to sleep -- and posted men to keep watch some way off.The queen on hearing of this, sent out ten warriors to spy on the approach of the foreigners and their equipment.One of these, being quick-witted, slipped past the sentries, pertinaciously made his way up, and took away the shield, which Amleth had chanced to set at his head before he slept, so gently that he did not ruffle his slumbers, though he was lying upon it, nor awaken one man of all that troop; for he wished to assure his mistress not only by report but by some token.With equal address he filched the letter entrusted to Amleth from the coffer in which it was kept.When these things were brought to the queen, she scanned the shield narrowly, and from the notes appended made out the whole argument.Then she knew that here was the man who, trusting in his own nicely calculated scheme, had avenged on his uncle the murder of his father.She also looked at the letter containing the suit for her band, and rubbed out all the writing; for wedlock with the old she utterly abhorred, and desired the embraces of young men.

But she wrote in its place a commission purporting to be sent from the King of Britain to herself, signed like the other with his name and title, wherein she pretended that she was asked to marry the bearer.Moreover, she included an account of the deeds of which she had learnt from Amleth's shield, so that one would have thought the shield confirmed the letter, while the letter explained the shield.Then she told the same spies whom she had employed before to take the shield back, and put the letter in its place again; playing the very trick on Amleth which, as she had learnt, he had himself used in outwitting his companions.

Amleth, meanwhile, who found that his shield had been filched from under his head, deliberately shut his eyes and cunningly feigned sleep, hoping to regain by pretended what he had lost by real slumbers.For he thought that the success of his one attempt would incline the spy to deceive him a second time.And he was not mistaken.For as the spy came up stealthily, and wanted to put back the shield and the writing in their old place, Amleth leapt up, seized him, and detained him in bonds.Then he roused his retinue, and went to the abode of the queen.As representing his father-in-law, he greeted her, and handled her the writing, sealed with the king's seal.The queen, who was named Hermutrude, took and read it, and spoke most warmly of Amleth's diligence and shrewdness, saying, that Feng had deserved his punishment, and that the unfathomable wit of Amleth had accomplished a deed past all human estimation; seeing that not only had his impenetrable depth devised a mode of revenging his father's death and his mother's adultery, but it had further, by his notable deeds Of prowess, seized the kingdom of the man whom he had found constantly plotting against him.She marvelled therefore that a man of such instructed mind could have made the one slip of a mistaken marriage; for though his renown almost rose above mortality, he seemed to have stumbled into an obscure and ignoble match.For the parents of his wife had been slaves, though good luck had graced them with the honours of royalty.