THERE.
CHAPTER II. HOW ALDRED THE THANE KEPT HIS FAITH, AND OWEN FLED WITH
OSWALD.
CHAPTER III. HOW KING INA'S FEAST WAS MARRED, AND OF A VOW TAKEN BY
OSWALD.
CHAPTER IV. HOW THE LADY ELFRIDA SPOKE WITH OSWALD, AND OF THE MEETING
WITH GERENT.
CHAPTER V. HOW OSWALD FELL INTO BAD HANDS, AND FARED EVILLY, ON THE
QUANTOCKS.
CHAPTER VI. HOW OSWALD HAD AN UNEASY VOYAGE AND A PERILOUS LANDING AT
ITS END.
CHAPTER VII. HOW OSWALD CROSSED THE DYFED CLIFFS, AND MET WITH FRIENDS.
CHAPTER VIII. HOW OSWALD LOST A HUNT, AND FOUND SOMEWHAT STRANGE IN
CAERAU WOODS.
CHAPTER IX. WHY IT WAS NOT GOOD FOR OWEN TO SLEEP IN THE MOONLIGHT.
CHAPTER X. HOW THE EASTDEAN MANORS AND SOMEWHAT MORE PASSED FROM
OSWALD TO ERPWALD.
CHAPTER XI. HOW ERPWALD FELL FROM CHEDDAR CLIFFS; AND OF ANOTHER
WARNING.
CHAPTER XII. OF THE MESSAGE BROUGHT BY JAGO, AND A MEETING IN
DARTMOOR.
CHAPTER XIII. HOW OSWALD AND HOWEL DARED THE SECRET OF THE MENHIR, AND
MET A WIZARD.
CHAPTER XIV. HOW OSWALD FOUND WHAT HE SOUGHT, AND RODE HOMEWARD WITH
NONA THE PRINCESS.
CHAPTER XV. HOW ERPWALD SAW HIS FIRST FIGHT ON HIS WEDDING DAY.
CHAPTER XVI. OF MATTERS OF RANSOM, AND OF FORGIVENESS ASKED AND
GRANTED.
CHAPTER XVII. HOW OSWALD FOUND A HOME, AND OF THE LAST PERIL OF OWEN
THE PRINCE.
NOTES.
PREFACE.
A few words of preface may save footnotes to a story which deals
with the half-forgotten days when the power of a British prince had
yet to be reckoned with by the Wessex kings as they slowly and
steadily pushed their frontier westward.
The authority for the historical basis of the story is the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which gives A.D. 710 as the year of the
defeat of Gerent, king of the West Welsh, by Ina of Wessex and his
kinsman Nunna. This date is therefore approximately that of the
events of the tale.
With regard to the topography of the Wessex frontier involved,
although it practically explains itself in the course of the story,
it may be as well to remind a reader that West Wales was the last
British kingdom south of the Severn Sea, the name being, of course,
given by Wessex men to distinguish it from the Welsh principalities
in what we now call Wales, to their north. In the days of Ina it
comprised Cornwall and the present Devon and also the half of
Somerset westward of the north and south line of the river Parrett
and Quantock Hills. Practically this old British "Dyvnaint"
represented the ancient Roman province of Damnonia, shrinking as it
was under successive advances of the Saxons from the boundary which
it once had along the Mendips and Selwood Forest. Ina's victory
over Gerent set the Dyvnaint frontier yet westward, to the line of
the present county of Somerset, which represents the limit of his
conquest, the new addition to the territory of the clan of the
Sumorsaetas long being named as "Devon in Wessex" by the
chroniclers rather than as Somerset.
The terms "Devon" or "Dyvnaint," as they are respectively used by
Saxon or Briton in the course of the story, will therefore be
understood to imply the ancient territory before its limitation by
the boundaries of the modern counties, which practically took their
rise from the wars of Ina.
With regard to names, I have not thought it worth while to use the
archaic, if more correct, forms for those of well-known places. It
seems unnecessary to write, for instance, "Glaestingabyrig" for
Glastonbury, or "Penbroch" for Pembroke. I have treated proper
names in the same way, keeping, for example, the more familiar
latinised "Ina" rather than the Saxon "Ine," as being more nearly
the correct pronunciation than might otherwise be used without the
hint given by a footnote.
The exact spot where Wessex and West Wales met in the battle
between Ina and Gerent is not certain, though it is known to have
been on the line of the hills to the west of the Parrett, and
possibly, according to an identification deduced from the Welsh
"Llywarch Hen," in the neighbourhood of Langport. Local tradition
and legend place a battle also at the ancient Roman fortress of
Norton Fitzwarren, which Ina certainly superseded by his own
stronghold at Taunton after the victory. As Nunna is named as
leader of the Saxons, together with the king himself, it seems most
likely that there were two columns acting against the Welsh advance
on the north and south of the Tone River, and that therefore there
were battles at each place. On the Blackdown Hills beyond Langport
a barrow was known until quite lately as "Noon's barrow," and it
would mark at least the line of flight of the Welsh; and if not the
burial place of the Saxon leader, who is supposed to have fallen,
must have been raised by him over his comrades.
The line taken by the story will not be far wrong, therefore, as in
any case the Blackdown and Quantock strongholds must have been
taken by the Saxons to guard against flank attacks, from whichever
side of the Tone the British advance was made.
The course of the story hangs to some extent on the influence of
the old feud between the British and Saxon Churches, which dated
from the days of Augustine and his attempt to compel the adoption
of Western customs by the followers of the Church which had its
rise from the East. There is no doubt that the death of the wise
and peacemaking Aldhelm of Sherborne let the smouldering enmity
loose afresh, with the result of setting Gerent in motion against
his powerful neighbour. Ina's victory was decisive, Gerent being
the last king of the West Welsh named in the chronicles, and we
hear of little further trouble from the West until A.D. 835, when
the Cornish joined with a new-come fleet of Danes in an
unsuccessful raid on Wessex.
Ina's new policy with the conquered Welsh is historic and well
known. Even in the will of King Alfred, two hundred years later,
some of the best towns in west Somerset and Dorset are spoken of as
"Among the Welsh kin," and there is yet full evidence, in both
dialect and physique, of strongly marked British descent among the
population west of the Parrett.
There is growing evidence that very early settlements of Northmen,
either Norse or Danish, or both, contemporary with the well-known
occupation of towns, and even districts, on the opposite shores of
South Wales, existed on the northern coast of Somerset and Devon.
Both races are named by the Welsh and Irish chroniclers in their
accounts of the expulsion of these settlers from Wales in A.D. 795,
and the name of the old west country port of Watchet being claimed
as of Norse origin, I have not hesitated to place the Norsemen
there.
Owen and Oswald, Howel and Thorgils, and those others of their
friends and foes beyond the few whose names have already been
mentioned as given in the chronicles, are of course only historic
in so far as they may find their counterparts in the men of the
older records of our forefathers. If I have too early or late
introduced Govan the hermit, whose rock-hewn cell yet remains near
the old Danish landing place on the wild Pembrokeshire coast
between Tenby and the mouth of Milford Haven, perhaps I may be
forgiven. I have not been able to verify his date, but a saint is
of all time, and if Govan himself had passed thence, one would
surely have taken his place to welcome a wanderer in the way and in
the name of the man who made the refuge.
CHAS. W. WHISTLER.
STOCKLAND, 1904.
CHAPTER I. HOW OWEN OF CORNWALL WANDERED TO SUSSEX, AND WHY HE BIDED THERE.
The title which stands at the head of this story is not my own. It
belongs to one whose name must come very often into that which I
have to tell, for it is through him that I am what I may be, and it
is because of him that there is anything worth telling of my doings
at all. Hereafter it will be seen, as I think, that I could do no
less than set his name in the first place in some way, if indeed
the story must be mostly concerning myself. Maybe it will seem
strange that I, a South Saxon of the line of Ella, had aught at all
to do with a West Welshman--a Cornishman, that is--of the race and
line of Arthur, in the days when the yet unforgotten hatred between
our peoples was at its highest; and so it was in truth, at first.
Not so much so was it after the beginning, however. It would be
stranger yet if I were not at the very outset to own all that is
due from me to him. Lonely was I when he first came to me, and
lonely together, in a way, have he and I been for long years that
for me, at least, have had no unhappiness in them, for we have been
all to each other.
I have said that I was lonely when he first came to me, and I must
tell how that was. I suppose that the most lonesome place in the
world is the wide sea, and after that a bare hilltop; but next to
these in loneliness I would set the glades of a beech forest in
midwinter silence, when the snow lies deep on the ground under
boughs that are too stiff to rustle in the wind, and the birds are
dumb, and the ice has stilled the brooks. Set a lost child amid the
bare grey tree trunks of such a winter forest, in the dead silence
of a great frost, with no track near him but that which his own
random feet have made across the snow, and I think that there can
be nought lonelier than he to be thought of: and in the depth of
the forest there is peril to the lonely.
I had no fear of the forest till that day when I was lost therein,
for the nearer glades round our village had been my playground ever
since I could remember, and before I knew that fear therein might
be. That was not so long a time, however, save that the years of a
child are long years; for at this time, when I first learned the
full wildness of the woods of the great Andredsweald and knew what
loneliness was, I was only ten years old. Since I could run alone
my old nurse had tried to fray me from wandering out of sight of
those who tended me, with tales of wolf and bear and pixy, lest I
should stray and be lost, but I had not heeded her much. Maybe I
had proved so many of her tales to be but pretence that, as I began
to think for myself, I deemed them all to be so.
But now I was lost in the forest, and what had been a playground
was become a vast and desolate land for me, and all the things that
I had ever heard of what dangers lurked within it, came back to my
mind. I remembered that the grey wolf's skin on which I slept had
come hence, and I minded the calf that the pack had slain close to
the village a year ago, and I thought of the girl who went mazed
and useless about the place, having lost her wits through being
pixy led, as they said, long ago. The warnings seemed to me to be
true enough, now that all the old landmarks were lost to me, and
all the tracks were buried under the crisp snow. I did not know
when I had left the road from the village to the hilltop, or in
which direction it lay.
It was very silent in the aisles of the great beech trunks, for the
herds were in shelter. There was no sound of the swineherds' horn,
though the evening was coming on, and but for the frost it was time
for their charges to be taken homeward, and the woodmen's axes were
idle. Even the scream of some hawk high overhead had been welcome
to me, and the harsh cry of a jay that I scared was like the voice
of a friend.
It was the fault of none but myself that I was lost. I had planned
to go hunting alone in the woods while the old nurse, whose care I
was far beyond, slept after her midday meal before the fire. So,
over my warm woollen clothing I had donned the deerskin short cloak
that was made like my father's own hunting gear, and I had taken my
bow and arrows, and the little seax {i} that a thane's son may
always wear, and had crept away from the warm hall without a soul
seeing me. I had thought myself lucky in this, but by this time I
began to change my mind in all truth. Well it was for me that there
was no wind, so that I was spared the worst of the cold.
I went up the hill to the north of the village by the track which
the timber sleds make, climbing until I was on the crest, and there
I began to wander as the tracks of rabbit and squirrel led me on.
Sometimes I was set aside from the path by deep drifts that had
gathered in its hollows with the wind of yesterday, and so I left
it altogether in time. Overhead the sky was bright and clear as the
low sun of the month after Yule, the wolf month, can make it. I
wandered on for an hour or two without meeting with anything at
which to loose an arrow, and my ardour began to cool somewhat, so
that I thought of turning homewards. But then, what was to me a
wondrous quarry crossed my way as I stood for a moment on the edge
of a wide aisle of beech trees looking down it, and wondering if I
would not go even to its end and so return. Then at once the wild
longing for the chase woke again in me, and I forgot cold and time
and place and aught else in it.
Across the glade came slowly and lightly over the snow a great red
hare, looking against the white background bigger than any I had
ever set eyes on before. It paid no heed at all to me, even when I
raised my bow to set an arrow on the string with fingers which
trembled with eagerness and haste. Now and again it stopped and
seemed to listen for somewhat, and then loped on again and stopped,
seeming hardly to know which way it wished to go. Now it came
toward me, and then across, and yet again went from me, and all as
if I were not there.
It was thirty paces from me when I shot, and I was a fair marksman,
for a boy, at fifty paces. However, the arrow skimmed just over its
back, and it crouched for a second as it heard the whistle of the
feathers, and then leapt aside and on again in the same way. But
now it crossed the glade and passed behind some trees before I was
ready with a second arrow, and I ran forward to recover the first,
which was in the snow where it struck, hoping thence to see the
hare again.
When I turned with the arrow in my hand I saw what made the hare
pay no heed to me. There was a more terrible enemy than even man on
its track. Sniffing at my footprints where they had just crossed
those of the hare was a stoat, long and lithe and cruel. I knew it
would not leave its quarry until it had it fast by the throat, and
the hare knew it also by some instinct that is not to be fathomed,
for I suppose that no hare, save by the merest chance, ever escaped
that pursuer. The creature seemed puzzled by my footprint, and sat
up, turning its sharp eyes right and left until it spied me; but
when it did so it was not feared of me, but took up the trail of
the hare again. And by that time I was ready, and my hand was
steady, and the shaft sped and smote it fairly, and the hare's one
chance had come to it. I sprang forward with the whoop of the Saxon
hunter, and took up and admired my prey, not heeding its scent at
all. It was in good condition, and I would get Stuf, the
house-carle, who was a sworn ally of mine, to make me a pouch of
it, I thought.
I mind that this was the third wild thing that I had slain. One of
the others was a squirrel who stayed motionless on a bough to stare
at me, in summer time, and the second was a rabbit which Stuf had
shown me in its seat. This was quite a different business, and I
was proud of my skill with some little reason. I should have some
real wild hunting to talk of over the fire tonight.
Then I must follow up the hare, of course, and I thrust the long
body of the stoat through my girdle, so that its head hung one way
and its tail the other, and took up the trail of the hare where my
prey had left it. Now, I cannot tell how the mazed creature learned
that its worst foe was no longer after it, but so it must have
been, else it had circled slowly in lessening rings until the stoat
had it, and presently it would have begun to scream dolefully. But
I only saw it once again, and then it seemed to be listening at
longer spaces. Yet it took me a long way before it suddenly fled
altogether, as its footmarks told me. A forest-bred lad learns
those signs soon enough, if he is about with the woodmen in snow
time.
Then I turned to make my way home, following my own track for a
little way. That was crooked, and I went to take a straighter path,
and after that I was fairly lost.
Yet I held on, hoping every minute to come into some known glade or
sight, some familiar landmark, before the sun set. But I found
nought but new trees, and new views over unknown white country all
round me as I turned my steps hither and thither as one mark after
another drew me. Then the sun set and the short day was over, and
the grey twilight of snow weather came after the passing of the
warm red glow from the west, shadowless and still.
That was about the time when I was missed at home, for my father
came back from Chichester town, and straightway asked for me. And
when I came not for calling, nor yet for the short notes of the
horn which my father had always used to bring me to him, one ran
here and another there, seeking me in wonted places about the
village, until one minded that he had seen a boy, who must have
been myself, go up the hill track forestwards.
Then was fear enough for me, seeing that from our village more than
one child has wandered forth thus and been seen no more, and I was
the only son of the long-widowed thane, and the last of the ancient
line that went back to Ella, and beyond him even to Woden. So in
half an hour there was not a man left in the village, and all the
woods and hillsides rang with their calls to me, while in the hall
itself bided only the old nurse, who wept and wailed by the hearth,
and my father, whose tall form came and went across the doorway,
restless; for he waited here lest he should miss my coming
homeward. Up the steep street of the village the wives stood in the
doorways silent, and forgetting their ailments for once in
listening for the cries that should tell that I was found. If they
spoke at all, they said that I should not be seen again, for the
cold had driven the wolves close to the villages.
But I was by this time far beyond the reach of friendly voices, on
the edge of the great hill that falls sheer down through many a
score feet of hanging woods and thicket to the Lavington valley far
below, and there at last I knew for certain that I was lost
utterly, for this place or its like I had never seen before. Then I
stayed my feet, bewildered, for the sun was gone, and I had nothing
to tell me in which direction I was heading, for at that time the
stars told me nought, though there were enough out now to direct
any man who was used to the night. When I stood still I found that
I was growing deadly cold, and the weariness that I had so far
staved off began to creep over me, so that I longed to sleep.
And I suppose that I should have done so, and thereby met my death
shortly, but for a thing that roused me in an instant, and set the
warm blood coursing through me again.
There came a rustling in the undergrowth of the hillside below me,
and that was the most homely sound that I had heard since the wild
geese flew over me seaward with swish and whistle of broad wings
and call that I knew well. The silence of the great brown owls that
circled swiftly over me now and then was uncanny.
The rustling drew nearer, and then out into the open place under
the tall bare tree trunks where I stood trotted a grey beast that
was surely a shepherd's dog, for he stayed and looked back and
whined a little as if his master must be waited for. I thought that
I could hear the cracking of more branches once farther down the
hill.
Then I called to the dog, knowing that he and the shepherd would
not be far apart, and at the call the dog turned quickly toward me
and leaped back a yard, cowering a little with drooping tail. So I
called him again, and more loudly.
"Hither, lad! Hither, good dog!"
But the beast backed yet more from me, and I saw the dull gleam of
yellow teeth and heard him snarl as he did so, and then he growled
fiercely, so that I thought him sorely ill-tempered. But I had no
fear of dogs, and I called him again cheerily, and at that he sank
on his haunches and set back his head and howled and yelled as I
had never heard any dog give tongue before. And presently from a
long way off I heard the like howls, as if all the dogs of some
village answered him, and I thought their tongue was strange also.
Then came the shout of a man, even as I expected, and there was the
noise of one who tears his way through briers and brambles in
haste; but at that shout the dog turned and fled like a grey shadow
into the farther thickets, and was gone.
"Who calls?" one said loudly, and from the hillside climbed hastily
into the open a tall man, bearded and strong, and with a
pleasant-looking, anxious face. He was dressed in leather like our
shepherds, and like them carried but quarterstaff and seax for
weapons. I suppose that I was in some shadow, for at first he did
not see me.
"Surely I heard a child's voice," he said out loud--"or was it some
pixy playing with the grey beast of the wood?"
"Here I am," I cried, running to him; "take me home, shepherd, for
I think that I am lost."
He caught me up in haste, looking round him the while.
"Child," he said, "how came you here--and to what were you
calling?"
"I was calling your dog," I answered, "but he is not friendly. Does
he look for a beating? for he ran away yonder when he heard you
coming."
"Ay, sorely beaten will that dog be if he comes near me just now,"
the man said grimly. "Never mind him, but tell me how you came
here, and where you belong."
So I told him that I was Oswald, the son of Aldred, the thane of
Eastdean, thinking, of course, that all men would know of us, and
so I bade him take me home quickly.
"I have been hunting," I said, showing him my unsavoury prey, which
by this time was frozen stiff in my belt. "Then I followed the hare
this was after, and I cannot tell how far I have come."
All this while the man had me in his strong arms, and he had looked
at the track of the dog in the snow, and now was walking swiftly
from it, through the beech trees, looking up at their branches as
if wondering at the way the great trunks shot up smooth and bare
from the snow at their roots before they reached the first forking,
fathoms skyward.
"I am a stranger, Oswald, the thane's son," he said. "I do not
rightly know in which direction your home may lie."
I know now that he was himself as lost as I, but that he did not
tell me, for my sake. It is an easy thing for a stranger to go
astray in the Andredsweald. But I could not tell him more than that
I knew that I had left the sea always behind me so long as I knew
where it lay. So he turned southwards at once when he heard that,
and went on swiftly. Then I heard the howl of his dog again, and I
laughed, for the other howls that answered him were nearer.
"Listen, shepherd," I said. "Your dog is making his comrades howl
for him, and the beating that is to come.
"Are you cold?"
For he had shivered suddenly, and his pace quickened. He had heard
the howl of the single wolf that has found its quarry, and calls
the answering pack to follow. But he did not tell me of my mistake.
"I am not cold overmuch," he answered. "Let us run and warm me."
Then he ran until we came to the top of a hill whence the last
glimmer of the sea over Selsea was plain before him, and there I
asked him to set me down lest I tired him.
"Nay, but you keep me warm," he said. "Tell me, are there oak trees
as one goes seaward?"
"Ay, many and great ones in some places."
Then he ran down the hill, and the sway of his even stride lulled
me so that I dozed a little. I roused when he stayed suddenly.
"Sit here, Oswald, for a moment, and fear nought while I rest me,"
he said in a strange voice.
We were halfway up a long slope and among fresh trees. Then he
lifted me and set me on the curved arm of a great oak tree, some
eight feet from the ground, asking me if I was safe there. And when
I laughed and answered that I was, he set his back against the
trunk, and drew his heavy seax, putting his staff alongside him,
where he could reach it at once if it was needed. It was light
enough, with the clear frosty starlight on the snow.
Then I heard the swift patter of feet over the crisp surface, and
the grey beast came and halted suddenly not three yards from us,
and on his haunches he sat up and howled, and I heard the answering
yells in no long space of time coming whence we had come. His eyes
glowed green with a strange light of their own as he stared at my
friend, and for a moment I looked to see him come fawning to his
master's feet.
Suddenly he gathered himself together, and sprung silently at the
throat of the man who waited him, and there was a flash of the keen
steel, and a sound as of the cleaving of soft wood, and the beast
was in a twitching heap at the man's feet. I knew what it was at
last, yet I could say nothing. The wolf was quite dead, with its
head cleft.
Swiftly my friend hewed the great head from the trunk and tore one
of the leather cross garterings from his leg, and so leapt at a
branch which hung above him and pulled it down. Then he bound the
head to its end with the thong and let it go, so that it dangled a
fathom and a half above him, and then he lifted me from my place
and ran as I had not thought any man could run, until he stayed at
the brow of the hill for sheer want of breath.
Behind us at that moment rose the sound as of hungry dogs that
fight over the food in their kennels, and my friend laughed under
his breath strangely.
"That will be a wild dance beneath the tree anon," he said, as if
to himself.
Then he said to me, "Are you frayed, bairn?" as he ran on again.
"No," I answered, "You can smite well, shepherd."
"Needs must, sometime," he said. "Now, little one, have you a
mother waiting you at home?"
"No. Only father and old nurse."
"Nor brother or sister?"
"None at all," I said.
"An only child, and his father lonely," the man said. "Well, I will
chance it while the trees last. The head will stay them awhile,
maybe."
Now he went swiftly across the rolling woodlands, and again I slept
in his arms, but uneasily and with a haunting fear in my dreaming
that I should wake to see the wild eyes of the wolf glaring across
the snow on us again. So it happens that all I know of the rest of
that flight from Woden's pack has been told me by others, so that I
can say little thereof.
The howls of the pack as they stayed to fall on the carcass of
their fellow, after their wont, died away behind us, and before
they were heard again my friend had come across a half-frozen
brook, and for a furlong or more had crashed and waded through its
ice and water that our trail might be lost in it. Then he lit on
the path that a sounder of wild swine had made through the snow on
either side of it as they crossed it, and that he followed, in
hopes that the foe would leave us to chase the more accustomed
quarry. From that he leapt aside presently with a wondrous leap and
struck off away from it. He would leave nothing untried, though
indeed by this time he had reason to think that the pack had lost
us at the brook, for he heard no more of them.
So at last he came within sound of some far-off shouts of those who
were seeking me, and he guessed well what those shouts meant, and
turned in their direction. Had he not heard them I do not know what
place of refuge, save the trees, he would have found that night,
for he was then passing across the valley that winds down to our
home.
So it happened that when at last he saw the red light from the door
of our hall gleaming across the snow, for it had been left open
that perchance I might see it, he was close to the place, and he
came into the courtyard inside the stockading without meeting any
one, for he came from the side on which the village is not.
There I woke as the house dogs barked, and at first it was with a
cry of fear lest the wolves were on us again; but the fear passed
as I saw my father come quickly into the light of the doorway, and
heard his voice as he stilled the dogs and cried to ask if the boy
was found.
"Ay, Thane, he is here, and safe," my friend answered, and he set
me down in the midst of the court, while the dogs leapt and fawned
round me.
Then I ran to the arms that were held out for me, forgetting for
the moment the one who had brought me back to them, and left him
standing there.
Then the man who had saved me turned after one long look at that
meeting, and I think that he was going his way in silence, content
with that he had done, but my father saw it and called to him:
"Friend, stay, for I have not thanked you, and I hold that there is
reward due to you for what you have brought back to me."
"It was a chance meeting, Thane, and I am glad to have been of use.
No need to speak of reward, for it is indeed enough to have seen
the boy home safely."
"Why, then," said my father, "I cannot have a stranger pass my hall
at this time in the evening, when it is too late to reach the town
in safety. Here you must at least lodge for the night, or Eastdean
will be shamed. Your voice tells me that you are a stranger--but
maybe you have your men waiting for you at hand? There will be room
for them also."
For there was that in the tones of the voice of this man which told
my father that here he had no common wanderer.
"I am alone," my friend said. "But your men seek the little one
even yet in the forest. Will you not call them in?"
My father looked at the man for a moment, and smiled.
"Ay, I forgot in my joy. They are well-nigh as anxious as I have
been."
Then he took down the great horn that hung by the door, and wound
the homing call that brings all within its hearing back to the
hall, and its hoarse echoes went across the silent woods until it
was answered by the other horns that passed on the message until
the last sounds came but faintly to us. I heard men cheering also,
for they knew by the token that all was well. My father had me in
his arms all this time, standing in the door.
"There would have been sorrow enough had he been lost indeed," my
father said. "He is the last of the old line, and the fathers of
those men whom you hear have followed his fathers since the days of
Ella. Come in, and they will thank you also. Where did you find
him?"
Then as he turned and went into the hall the light flashed red on
my jerkin suddenly, and he cried, "Here is blood on his
clothing!--Is he hurt?"
"No," I said stoutly; "maybe it is the blood of the stoat I slew,
or else it has come off the shepherd's sleeves. He hewed off the
wolf's head and hung it on the tree."
Then my father understood what my peril had been--even that which
he and all the village had feared for me, and his face paled, and
he held out his hand to the man, drawing in his breath sharply.
"Woden!" he cried, "what is this, friend? Are you hurt, yourself?
For the wolf must be slain ere his head can be hefted, as we say."
"No hurt to any but the wolf," the man said, smiling a little. "We
did but meet with one who called the pack on us. So I even hung his
head on a tree, that the pack when it came might stay to leap at
it. They were all we had to fear, and maybe that saved us."
"I marvel that you are not even now in the tree, yourself--with the
boy."
"Nay, but the frost is cruel, and he would have been sorely feared
with the leaping and howls of the beasts. There were always trees
at hand as we fled, if needs were to take to them. It was in my
mind that it were best to try to get him home, or near it."
Then said my father, gripping the hand that met his: "There is more
that I would say, but I cannot set thoughts into words well. Only,
I know that I have a man before me. Tell me your name, that neither
I nor the boy may ever forget it."
"Here, in the Saxon lands, men call me Owen the Briton," he
answered simply.
"I thought your voice had somewhat of the Welsh tone," my father
said. "And your English is of Mercia. I have heard that there are
Britons in the fenland there."
"I am of West Wales, Thane, but I have bided long in Mercia."
Then came my old nurse, and there were words enough for the time.
Her eyes were red with weeping, but it was all that my father could
do to prevent her scolding me soundly then and there for the fright
I had given her. But she set a great bowl of bread and milk before
me, and the men began to come in at that time, and they stood in a
ring round me and watched me eat it as if they had never seen me
before, while my father spoke aside of the flight to Owen on the
high place. But concerning his own story my father asked the
stranger no more until he chose to open the matter himself.
After supper there was all the tale to be told, and when that was
done the Welshman slept before the hall fire with the house-carles,
but my father had me with him in the closed chamber beyond the high
seat, for it seemed that he would not let me go beyond his sight
again yet.
Now, that is how Owen came to me at first, and the first thing
therefore that I owe to him is nothing less than life itself. And
from that time we have been, as I have said, together in all
things.
On the next morning my father made his guest take him back over the
ground we had crossed together, for no fresh snow had fallen, and
the footprints were plain to be followed almost from the gate of
the hall stockade. So they came at last to the tree, and on it the
head hung yet, but the body was clean gone. All round the tree the
snow was reddened and trampled by the fierce beasts who leapt to
reach the head, and the marks of their clawing was on the trunk,
where they had tried to climb it. From the footmarks it seemed that
there were eight or nine of them. Three great ones had left the
head and followed us presently as far as the brook, half a mile
away.
After that the two men went on to the place where Owen had found
me, and there my father, judging from the dress and loneliness of
the Briton that he might be able to help him somewhat, said:
"I do not know what your plans may be, but is there any reason why
you should not bide here and help me tend the life you have kept
for me?"
Then answered Owen: "You know nought of me, Thane. For all you ken,
I may be but an outlaw who is fleeing from justice."
"Do I know nought about you? I think that last night and what I
have seen today have told me much, and I have been held as a good
judge of a man. If so be that you were an outlaw, which I do not
think, what you have done is enough to inlaw you again with any
honest man--even had you taken a life, for you have saved one. Did
I know you were an outlaw I would see to your pardon. But maybe you
are on a journey that may not be hindered?"
Now Owen was silent for a little, and there came a shadow over his
face as he answered, slowly and with his eyes on the far sea:
"No man's man am I, and I am but drifting Westward again at random.
Yet I can say in all truth, that I am no wanderer for ill reason in
any wise. I will tell you, Thane, here and alone, that there are
foes in my home for whose passing, in one way or another, I must
needs wait. Even now I was on my way to Bosham, where they tell me
are Western monks with whom I might bide for a time, if not
altogether. I was lost in the forest last night."
Now my father saw that some heavy sorrow of no common sort lay
beneath the quiet words of the man before him, and he forbore to
ask him more. Also, he deemed that in the Welsh land he would
surely rank as a thane, for his ways and words bespoke more than
his dress would tell. Therefore he said:
"Wait here with us for a while at least. There will be no more
welcome guest."
"Let me be of some use, rather," Owen answered. "If I bide with
you, Thane, and I thank you for the offer, let it be as I have
bided elsewhere from time to time--as one of the household, not as
an idle guest, if it were but to help the woodmen in the forest."
"Why, that will be well. I need a forester, and it is plain that
you are a master of woodcraft. Let it be so. Yet I must tell you
one thing fairly, and that is, that I am what you would call a
heathen. I know that you are a good Christian man, for I saw you
sign your holy sign before you ate last night and this morning. Yet
I do not hate Christians."
"I had heard that all Sussex was turned to the faith," Owen said.
"If one says that all the men have gone to market, one knows that
here and there one is excepted for good reason. It is not for a
thane of the line of Woden to give up the faith of his fathers
idly. I do not know what may be in the days to come, but here in
the Andredsweald some dozen of us will not leave the old gods. It
was the bidding of Ethelwalch the king that we should do so, but
that is not a matter wherein a king may meddle, as it seems to us."
"I do not know why I should not bide with you, Thane, if so be that
there is no hindrance to my faith."
"That there will be none. Why, the most of my folk are Christian
enough. And if a man of the Britons did not honour his old faith it
would be as strange as if I honoured not that of my fathers. I have
no quarrel with the faith of any man, either king or thrall."
"Then I will be your forester, Thane, for such time as I may, and I
thank you."
"Nay, but the thanks are all on my side," answered my father. "Now
I shall know that the boy will have one with whom he may live all
day in the woods if he will, and I shall be content."
So Owen bided with us, half as honoured guest and half as forester,
and as time went on he was well loved by all who knew him, for he
was ever the same to each man about the place. As for me, it was
the best day that could have dawned when he found me in the woods
as a lost child. And that my father said also.