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TITLE: THE PATH OF THE KING
AUTHOR: JOHN BUCHAN
EBOOK: E04894 (O'Briens Book Cellar)

THE PATH OF THE KING

by John Buchan

TO
MY WIFE
I DEDICATE THESE CHAPTERS
FIRST READ BY A COTSWOLD FIRE

CONTENTS

     PROLOGUE
1.   HIGHTOWN UNDER SUNFELL
2.   THE ENGLISHMAN
3.   THE WIFE OF FLANDERS
4.   EYES OF YOUTH
5.   THE MAID
6.   THE WOOD OF LIFE
7.   EAUCOURT BY THE WATERS
8.   THE HIDDEN CITY
9.   THE REGICIDE
10.  THE MARPLOT
11.  THE LIT CHAMBER
12.  IN THE DARK LAND
13.  THE LAST STAGE
14.  THE END OF THE ROAD
     EPILOGUE

Linum fumigans non exstinguet; in veritate educet judicium. ISA. XLII.3.

THE PATH OF THE KING

by John Buchan

PROLOGUE

The three of us in that winter camp in the Selkirks were talking the slow
aimless talk of wearied men.

The Soldier, who had seen many campaigns, was riding his hobby of the Civil
War and descanting on Lee's tactics in the last Wilderness struggle. I said
something about the stark romance of it--of Jeb Stuart flitting like a
wraith through the forests; of Sheridan's attack at Chattanooga, when the
charging troops on the ridge were silhouetted against a harvest moon; of
Leonidas Polk, last of the warrior Bishops, baptizing his fellow generals
by the light of a mess candle. "Romance," I said, "attended the sombre grey
and blue levies as faithfully as she ever rode with knight-errant or
crusader."

The Scholar, who was cutting a raw-hide thong, raised his wise eyes.

"Does it never occur to you fellows that we are all pretty mixed in our
notions? We look for romance in the well-cultivated garden-plots, and when
it springs out of virgin soil we are surprised, though any fool might know
it was the natural place for it."

He picked up a burning stick to relight his pipe.

"The things we call aristocracies and reigning houses are the last places
to look for masterful men. They began strongly, but they have been too long
in possession. They have been cosseted and comforted and the devil has gone
out of their blood. Don't imagine that I undervalue descent. It is not for
nothing that a great man leaves posterity. But who is more likely to
inherit the fire--the elder son with his flesh-pots or the younger son with
his fortune to find? Just think of it! All the younger sons of younger sons
back through the generations! We none of us know our ancestors beyond a
little way. We all of us may have kings' blood in our veins. The dago who
blacked my boots at Vancouver may be descended by curious byways from
Julius Caesar.

"Think of it!" he cried. "The spark once transmitted may smoulder for
generations under ashes, but the appointed time will come, and it will
flare up to warm the world. God never allows waste. And we fools rub our
eyes and wonder, when we see genius come out of the gutter. It didn't begin
there. We tell ourselves that Shakespeare was the son of a woolpedlar, and
Napoleon of a farmer, and Luther of a peasant, and we hold up our hands at
the marvel. But who knows what kings and prophets they had in their
ancestry!"

After that we turned in, and as I lay looking at the frosty stars a fancy
wove itself in my brain. I saw the younger sons carry the royal blood far
down among the people, down even into the kennels of the outcast.
Generations follow, oblivious of the high beginnings, but there is that in
the stock which is fated to endure. The sons and daughters blunder and sin
and perish, but the race goes on, for there is a fierce stuff of life in
it. It sinks and rises again and blossoms at haphazard into virtue or vice,
since the ordinary moral laws do not concern its mission. Some rags of
greatness always cling to it, the dumb faith that sometime and somehow that
blood drawn from kings it never knew will be royal again. Though nature is
wasteful of material things, there is no waste of spirit And then after
long years there comes, unheralded and unlooked-for, the day of the
Appointed Time....

This is the story which grew out of that talk by the winter fire.

CHAPTER I. HIGHTOWN UNDER SUNFELL

When Biorn was a very little boy in his father's stead at Hightown he had a
play of his own making for the long winter nights. At the back end of the
hall, where the men sat at ale, was a chamber which the thralls used of a
morning--a place which smelt of hams and meal and good provender. There a
bed had been made for him when he forsook his cot in the women's quarters.
When the door was shut it was black dark, save for a thin crack of light
from the wood fire and torches of the hall. The crack made on the earthen
floor a line like a golden river. Biorn, cuddled up on a bench in his
little bear-skin, was drawn like a moth to that stream of light. With his
heart beating fast he would creep to it and stand for a moment with his
small body bathed in the radiance. The game was not to come back at once,
but to foray into the farther darkness before returning to the sanctuary of
bed. That took all the fortitude in Biorn's heart, and not till the thing
was dared and done could he go happily to sleep.

One night Leif the Outborn watched him at his game. Sometimes the man was
permitted to sleep there when he had been making sport for the housecarles.

"Behold an image of life!" he had said in his queer outland speech. "We
pass from darkness to darkness with but an instant of light between. You
are born for high deeds, princeling. Many would venture from the dark to
the light, but it takes a stout breast to voyage into the farther dark."

And Biorn's small heart swelled, for he detected praise, though he did not
know what Leif meant.

In the long winter the sun never topped Sunfell, and when the gales blew
and the snow drifted there were lights in the hall the day long. In Biorn's
first recollection the winters were spent by his mother's side, while she
and her maids spun the wool of the last clipping. She was a fair woman out
of the Western Isles, all brown and golden as it seemed to him, and her
voice was softer than the hard ringing speech of the Wick folk. She told
him island stories about gentle fairies and good-humoured elves who lived
in a green windy country by summer seas, and her air would be wistful as if
she thought of her lost home. And she sang him to sleep with crooning songs
which had the sweetness of the west wind in them. But her maids were a
rougher stock, and they stuck to the Wicking lullaby which ran something
like this:

Hush thee, my bold one, a boat will I buy thee,
 A boat and stout oars and a bright sword beside,
A helm of red gold and a thrall to be nigh thee,
 When fair blows the wind at the next wicking-tide.

There was a second verse, but it was rude stuff, and the Queen had
forbidden the maids to sing it.

As he grew older he was allowed to sit with the men in the hall, when bows
were being stretched and bowstrings knotted and spear-hafts fitted. He
would sit mum in a corner, listening with both ears to the talk of the old
franklins, with their endless grumbles about lost cattle and ill
neighbours. Better he liked the bragging of the young warriors, the
Bearsarks, who were the spear-head in all the forays. At the great feasts
of Yule-tide he was soon sent packing, for there were wild scenes when the
ale flowed freely, though his father, King Ironbeard, ruled his hall with a
strong hand. From the speech of his elders Biorn made his picture of the
world beyond the firths. It was a world of gloom and terror, yet shot with
a strange brightness. The High Gods might be met with in beggar's guise at
any ferry, jovial fellows and good friends to brave men, for they
themselves had to fight for their lives, and the End of All Things hung
over them like a cloud. Yet till the day of Ragnarok there would be
feasting and fine fighting and goodly fellowship, and a stout heart must
live for the hour.

Leif the Outborn was his chief friend. The man was no warrior, being lame
of a leg and lean and sharp as a heron. No one knew his begetting, for he
had been found as a child on the high fells. Some said he was come of the
Finns, and his ill-wishers would have it that his birthplace had been
behind a foss, and that he had the blood of dwarves in him. Yet though he
made sport for the company, he had respect from them, for he was wise in
many things, a skilled leech, a maker of runes, and a crafty builder of
ships. He was a master hand at riddles, and for hours the housecarles would
puzzle their wits over his efforts. This was the manner of them. "Who,"
Leif would ask, "are the merry maids that glide above the land to the joy
of their father; in winter they bear a white shield, but black in summer?"
The answer was "Snowflakes and rain." Or "I saw a corpse sitting on a
corpse, a blind one riding on a lifeless steed?" to which the reply was "A
dead horse on an ice-floe." Biorn never guessed any of the riddles, but the
cleverness of them he thought miraculous, and the others roared with glee
at their own obtuseness.

But Leif had different moods, for sometimes he would tell tales, and all
were hushed in a pleasant awe. The fire on the hearth was suffered to die
down, and men drew closer to each other, as Leif told of the tragic love of
Helgi and Sigrun, or how Weyland outwitted King Nidad, or how Thor went as
bride to Thrym in Giantland, and the old sad tale of how Sigurd
Fafnirsbane, noblest of men, went down to death for the love of a queen not
less noble. Leif told them well, so that his hearers were held fast with
the spell of wonder and then spurred to memories of their own. Tongues
would be loosened, and there would be wild recollections of battles among
the skerries of the west, of huntings in the hills where strange sights
greeted the benighted huntsman, and of voyaging far south into the lands of
the sun where the poorest thrall wore linen and the cities were all gold
and jewels. Biorn's head would be in such a whirl after a night of
story-telling that he could get no sleep for picturing his own deeds when
he was man enough to bear a sword and launch his ship. And sometimes in his
excitement he would slip outside into the darkness, and hear far up in the
frosty sky the whistle of the swans as they flew southward, and fancy them
the shield-maids of Odin on their way to some lost battle.


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