Child Christopher and Goldilind the FairMorris, William
Science
Child Christopher and Goldilind the Fair
Morris, William
Fantasy fiction
She looked up, wondering and timorous, but all about her the men sprang
up and shouted, and tossed up bill and sword, and the echo of their
cries came back from the bowmen on the left, and Christopher's sword
came rattling out of the scabbard and went gleaming up aloft. Then words
came into the cry of the folk, and Goldilind heard it, that they cried
"Child Christopher! King Christopher!" Then over her head came a sound
of flapping and rending as the evening wind beat about the face of the
wood; and she heard folk cry about her: "The banner, the banner! Ho for
the Wood-wife of Oakenrealm!"
Then her eyes cleared for what was aloof before her, and she saw a dark
mass come spreading down over the bent on the other side of the river,
and glittering points and broad gleams of white light amidst of it, and
noise came from it; and she knew that here were come the foemen. But
she thought to herself that they looked not so many after all; and she
looked at the great and deft bodies of their folk, and their big-headed
spears and wide-bladed glaves and bills, and strove with her heart and
refrained her fear, and thrust back the image which had arisen before
her of Greenharbour come back again, and she lonely and naked in the
Least Guard-chamber: and she stood firm, and waved her hand to greet the
folk.
And lo! there was Christopher kneeling before her and kissing her hand,
and great shouts arising about her of "The Lady of Oakenrealm! The Lady
of Meadham! For the Lady! For the Lady!"
CHAPTER XXX. OF THE FIELD THAT WAS SET IN THE HOLM OF HAZELDALE.
Now thither cometh Jack o' the Tofts, and spake to Christopher: "See
thou, lad--Lord King, I should say; this looketh not like very present
battle, for they be stayed half way down the bent; and lo thou, some
half score are coming forth from the throng with a white shield raised
aloft. Do we in likewise, for they would talk with us."
"Shall we trust them, father?" said Christopher.
"Trust them we may, son," said Jack; "Gandolf is a violent man, and a
lifter of other men's goods, but I deem not so evil of him as that he
would bewray troth."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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