Читать книгу Hamlet had an Uncle - James Branch Cabell - Страница 5
ОглавлениеTHE TWO SONS OF GERVENDILE CUT-THROAT
People talked, of course, as to this fratricide in the reigning family of Jutland, but all persons of responsibility applauded Fengon. His honesty no less than his anguish was evident; for Fengon had loved his dead brother: that was known, even by his own admission. Few other persons, excepting gentlewomen whose tenderness was to be rented on a commercial basis, had loved this overbearing, boisterous, dissolute Horvendile; and the Jutlanders upon the whole were content to be rid of him. If in his drunken frenzy he had succeeded in murdering the King of Denmark's daughter (that noble lady whom demonstrably he had already wounded), why, then, it was obvious, Denmark would have punished all small Jutland. In protecting Geruth, heroic Fengon had protected also his people. Such was the applausive verdict of the subjects of Fengon, who now reigned alone.
Before this time, he and his brother Horvendile had ruled jointly over the province of Jutland. They were sons to that Gervendile (called rightly the Cut-Throat) who in his own day had been King of Jutland up to the hour of his death by burning. His overlord, the King of Denmark, had then given Jutland to the valiant and warlike heirs of his deceased servitor; and both of them had since proved noble Vikings, who killed and plundered their adversaries with distinction. So the two Kings of Jutland got praise which they well deserved. Even though they showed at their supreme best in piracy, because of their more constant practice of this art, yet in no form of marauding or of high-handed assault did they at any time fall short of a spirited rendition. Fengon, it was granted, displayed the more finesse in entrapping the foe; Fengon fought subtly, through small steady demolitions, so that many of his rivals declared some of Fengon's most excellent work to be lacking in gusto: but the buccaneering of Horvendile was in an heroic style which not even the unfriendly could shrug away as merely grandiose. Horvendile attacked any and all opponents with the bright candour of a thunderbolt; and got very much the same results, usually.
Thus it was Horvendile who, in a most tremendous battle, which was talked about in the north parts of the world for weeks, and became the subject of four drapas (as the Norse called their heroic poems), had defeated and killed King Collere of Norway, and pillaged the King's fleet of inordinate riches. Horvendile killed moreover at this time, after ravishing her in public, on the foredeck of her own ship, the King's sister Svafa, who was considered the best warrior of her day. In that day many women followed the profession of arms. Of the treasures which Horvendile fetched home from these glorious doings, he of his own accord sent one-third to his liege-lord, Rörek Slyngebond; and the pleased King of Denmark, in fair exchange, brought his fair daughter Geruth into Jutland and there married her to Horvendile.
Horvendile liked Geruth well enough: but gallant Fengon worshipped his sister-in-law from the first instant he saw her. He confessed as much to her, because candour is a virtue becoming to nobly born persons. As a gentlewoman of refined taste, she could not help but prefer the sincere and courteous love-making of Fengon to the rough ways of Horvendile; as a kind-hearted person, she could not but pity the distressful condition of Fengon. So the inevitable followed. They sinned, technically at all events, no great while after Geruth's marriage; and if they continued sinning, the affair was managed with discretion, and to their finding, nobody was a penny the worse for it. Certainly Horvendile did not suffer because of their mutual affection; for that loud-mouthed brusque fighting-man, having got a son to succeed him, had nowadays the leisure for such broad-minded ladies as entertained him in bedchambers far more lively than he had ever shared with Geruth.
Fengon alone was not wholly happy during these years of deceit and adultery. He loved Geruth with entire faithfulness. But he loved likewise, or at any rate he intensely admired, his elder brother, that fine strong splendid animal who got so much zest out of life. Time and again kind-hearted Fengon had put aside the idea of bewitching or of poisoning his brother, as well as the more noble notion of securing Horvendile's happiness in Valhalla with a battle-axe or a knife-thrust, because although one or the other of these sedatives was the plainly sensible remedy, yet fraternal affection found every one of them to be repugnant.
It was dangerous to let Horvendile live. Such unwise clemency involved a daily discomfort and continual subterfuges which the native frankness of Fengon abhorred. Yet so unbounded was his brotherly love that he did not ever dispose of Horvendile until accident had compelled Fengon to do this, out of hand, in mere self-protection. The huge, bull-headed, stupid, wholly dear creature had blundered in upon Geruth and Fengon in circumstances which could not possibly have been explained away. Fengon had thus either to kill or to be killed instantly; and but for the adroit aid and the convenient testimony of Prince Wiglerus, affairs might have turned out badly.
Wiglerus meantime was yet further enforced by his moral duty to protect the credit of his sister and of his family at large. He said farewell to Thora Fairskin with gallant regret; and then journeyed towards Elsinore, where he told his father, King Rörek Slyngebond, as much about the manner of Horvendile's death as seemed advisable.
