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THE WARD OF KING CANUTE
A Romance of the Danish Conquest
by Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
Acknowledgment
For the facts of this romance I have made free use of the following
authorities: The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle; The Venerable Bede's Ecclesiastical
History of England; Ingulph's History of the Abbey of Croyland; William of
Malmesbury's Chronicle of the Kings of England; The Chronicles of Florence of
Worcester; Lingard's History and Antiquities of the Anglo-Saxon Church, and
Lingard's History of England; Dean Spencer's The White Robe of Churches;
Collier's Ecclesiastical History of Great Britain; Montalembert's Monks of the
West; Thrupp's Anglo-Saxon Home; Hall's Queens Before the Conquest; Kemble's
Saxons in England; Ridgway's Gem of Thorney Island; Brayley and Britton's
History of the Ancient Palace and Late Houses of Parliament; Loftie's
Westminster Abbey and Loftie's History of London; Allen's History and
Antiquities of London; Lappenberg's History of England Under the Anglo-Saxon
Kings; Sharon Turner's History of the Anglo-Saxons; Knight's Old England;
Hume's History of England; Green's Conquest of England; Thierry's History of
the Conquest of England by the Normans; Freeman's History of the Norman
Conquest.
For the translations of Ha'vama'l, etc., used at the beginnings of the
chapters, I am indebted to Professor Rasmus B. Anderson and Mr. Paul du
Chaillu.
O. A. L.
Chicago, April 1, 1903.
Contents
Chapter
I. The Fall of the House of Frode
II. Randalin, Frode's Daughter
III. Where War-Dogs Kennel
IV. When Royal Blood is Young Blood
V. Before the King
VI. The Training of Fridtjof the Page
VII. The Game of Swords
VIII. Taken Captive
IX. The Young Lord oi Ivarsdale
X. As the Norns decree
XI. When my Lord comes Home from War
XII. The Foreign Page
XIII. When Might made Right
XIV. How the Fates cheated Randalin
XV. How Fridtjof cheated the Jotun
XVI. The Sword of Speech
XVII. The Judgment of the Iron Voice
XVIII. What the Red Cloak hid
XIX. The Gift of the Elves
XX. A Royal Reckoning
XXI. With the Jotun as Chamberlain
XXII. How the Lord of Ivarsdale paid his Debt
XXIII. A Blood-Stained Crown
XXIV. On the Road to London
XXV. The King's Wife
XXVI. In the Judgment Hall
XXVII. Pixie-Led
XXVIII. When Love meets Love
XXIX. The Ring of the Coiled Snake
XXX. When the King takes a Queen
XXXI. The Twilight of the Gods
XXXII. In Time's Morning
The Ward of King Canute
Foreword
There is an old myth of a hero who renewed his strength each time he touched
the earth, and finally was overcome by being raised in the air and crushed.
Whether or not the Angles risked a like fate as they raised themselves away
from the primitive virtues that had been their life and strength, no one can
tell; but it has been well said that when Northern blood mingled with English
blood at the time of the Danish Conquest, the Anglo-Saxon race touched the
earth again.
Chapter I
The Fall of the House of Frode
Full stocked folds
I saw at the sons of Fitjung,
Now they carry beggars' staffs;
Wealth is
Like the twinkling of an eye,
The most unstable of friends.
Ha'vama'l.
As the blackness of the midsummer night paled, the broken towers and wrecked
walls of the monastery loomed up dim and stark in the gray light. The long-
drawn sigh of a waking world crept through the air and rustled the ivy leaves.
The pitying angel of dreams, who had striven all night long to restore the
plundered shrine and raise from their graves the band of martyred nuns, ceased
from his ministrations, softly as a bubble frees itself from the pipe that
shaped it, and floated away on the breath of the wind. Through a breach in the
moss-grown wall, the first sunbeam stole in and pointed a bright finger across
the cloister garth at the charred spot in the centre, where missals and
parchment rolls had made a roaring fire to warm the invaders' blood-stained
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