Page:Stories from Old English Poetry-1899.djvu/51

Rh father comes back, and perchance he will take pity on him.”

But the governor dared not consent, and Constance must go to the ship, carrying her babe in her arms. Through the street she walked, the people following her with tears, she with eyes fixed on heaven and the infant sobbing on her bosom. Thus she went on board ship and drifted away again.

Now, for another season, she went about at the mercy of winds and waves, in icy waters where winds whistled through the frozen rigging, and down into tropical seas where she lay becalmed for months in the glassy water. Then fresh breezes would spring up and drive her this way or that, as they listed. But this time she had her babe for comfort, and he grew to be a child near five years old before she was rescued. And this is the way it happened.

When the Emperor of Rome heard of the deeds the cruel Soldaness had done, and how his daughter’s husband had been slain, he sent an army to Syria, and all these years they had besieged the royal city till it was burnt and destroyed. Now the fleet, returning to Rome, met the ship in which Constance sailed, and they fetched her and her child to her native country. The senator who commanded the fleet was her uncle, but he knew her not, and she did not