"The king! the king!--long live the king!" shouted the guests in chorus, and the war-counts brandished their bared swords overhead while all present drained their wine-cups to the bottom.
As Olvir sheathed Al-hatif, he looked down, eager to rejoin Fastrada. In this, however, he was to be disappointed. The duenna dame had risen from her chair and was leaving the table. Immediately all the women present, dames and maidens alike, rose to follow their leader. None longed more to stay than did Fastrada, and she lingered beside Olvir to the very last. Already the women had drawn aside. Olvir looked at the girl ruefully.
"So we must part, sweetheart," he sighed.
Fastrada gazed into his dark face, and half whispered her answer: "Ah, my hero, would that the time had come when we need never part!"
"That, I trust, may soon be," replied Olvir, and he drew aside for the girl to pass. She would still have lingered beside him, but the old dame beckoned to her, and she glided away to join the other bower-maidens.
As the women swept after their leader through a private passage, Duke Lupus reached out to refill the king's gold flagon. He was met by a quick gesture of refusal, and Karl turned his empty cup brim down upon the table.
"Enough of wine," he said. "I am not over-fond of wassail, and the feast is dull without our fair ones to grace the board."
Lupus opened his lips to protest, but caught a glance from Hardrat, and changed at once to bowing compliance: "Your Majesty, dancing and juggling were to have followed. Yet whatever may be your pleasure--"
"You are a kind host, and we give thanks for the feast. Another time we may enjoy the mountebanks. Farewell, lord duke. God keep you! Anselm, a word in private; and you, Fulrad. Farewell, my bright Dane."
Olvir wheeled about to salute the king. As his hand fell, his eye met Karl's smiling gaze, and he glanced down at the royal couch. The king looked, and saw the arrow wrapped in his kerchief. He nodded gravely to Olvir, and, arrow in hand, left the chamber, between Anselm and Fulrad.
Released from restraint by the departure of the king, the remaining guests gathered about the head of the table, and many accepted the duke's invitation to join in a wassail bout. Most of the priests, however, and a few of the counts at once withdrew from the banquet-chamber. In their midst went Olvir, so intent on the vision of Fastrada's loveliness that he had no thought for his foster-brother.