ord. And these Normans
have a code of their own, more grave than all morals, more binding than
even their fanatic religion. Thou knowest it well, mother, for it comes
from thy race of the North, and this code of honour, they call it, makes
Wolnoth's head as sacred as the relics of a saint set in zimmes. Ask
only, my brother, when thou comest in sight of the Norman Duke, ask only
'the kiss of peace,' and, that kiss on thy brow, thou wilt sleep more
safe than if all the banners of England waved over thy couch." [106]

"But how long shall the exile be?" asked Githa, comforted. Harold's brow
fell.

"Mother, not even to cheer thee will I deceive. The time of the
hostageship rests with the King and the Duke. As long as the one affects
fear from the race of Godwin, as long as the other feigns care for such
priests or such knights as were not banished from the realm, being not
courtiers, but scattered wide and far in convent and homestead, so long
will Wolnoth and Haco be guests in the Norman halls."

Githa wrung her hands.

"But comfort, my mother; Wolnoth is young, his eye is keen, and his
spirit prompt and quick. He will mark these Norman captains, he will
learn their strength and their weakness, their manner of war, and he will
come back, not as Edward the King came, a lover of things un-Saxon, but
able to warn and to guide us against the plots of the camp-court, which
threatens more, year by year, the peace of the world. And he will see
there arts we may worthily borrow: not the cut of a tunic, and the fold
of a gonna, but the arts of men who found states and build nations.
William the Duke is splendid and wise; merchants tell us how crafts
thrive under his iron hand, and war-men say that his forts are
constructed with skill and his battle-schemes planned as the mason plans
key-stone and arch, with weight portioned out to the prop, and the force
of the hand made tenfold by the science of the brain. So that the boy
will return to us a man round and complete, a teacher of greybeards, and
the sage of his kin; fit for earldom and rule, fit for glory and England.
Grieve not, daughter of the Dane kings, that thy son, the best loved,
hath nobler school and wider field than his brothers."

This appeal touched the proud heart of the niece of Canute the Great, and
she almost forgot the grief of her love in the hope of her ambition.

She dried her tears and smiled upon Wolnoth, and already, in the dreams
of a mother's v