For a moment I looked and then turned away, with but one thought in
my mind, and that was the knowledge that it was a good thing that
the punishment of this man had been taken from our hands. I do not
think that I took in all the terror of it at the time, for on that
field there was death in so many forms--death brought needlessly by
his contriving again, and in all injustice--and this end of his was
to me but right and fitting. Some terrible fate the man deserved,
and he had met it. Now I had my own friends to think of.
"See to Jefan!" I said to Kynan, without a word of Gymbert. "He
fell at the gate, in the first onset."
"My fault," groaned the brother, "my fault. I should have waited
his word before sallying out. I heard you call me back, too, and
heeded not."
He called some men, and they opened the gate and passed out
hastily, while I knelt at the side of Erling. The old priest was
trying to stay the bleeding from a great wound in his side; but he
shook his head at me, and I knew that it was hopeless.
Erling knew it also.
"Get to the others, father," he said; "I am past your heeding."
"They will fetch me if I am needed, my son," the old man answered.
"There are few of us who cannot tend a common wound. I am but
wanted at the last."
"Ay, for the one thing," said Erling, with a great light springing
into his weary eyes. "For me also, father.
"Tell him, master."
The old man looked at me, and I nodded. He was a British priest,
and one had been told that they and our priests hated each other
and quarrelled over deep matters; but what was that in this moment?
Neither Briton nor Englishman, priest of St. David's nor of
Canterbury would heed that here and thus. He rose and went
hurriedly, and we two were alone.
"We kept the gate," he said.
"Ay, we kept it; and all is well."
"Jefan is not dead," he said next; "he lay and watched it all. I
could see him."
Then across my shoulder he saw some one, and smiled. I turned, and
there was Hilda, white and still, standing by us, and she set her
hand on my shoulder. Then she bent toward my comrade.
"Ay, you two kept the gate, and all are praising you. They say that
but for you the fort had been lost."
The lightning came again, and after a second or two the thunder,
close still, but not so terribly so. The rain would come presently,
and I longed for it, but not yet. I dared not move Erling, and
there was the priest to come.
Now he came, and with him brought that which was needed; and so we
two knelt, and there came one or two Welshmen, gently, and knelt
also, unlike our Saxons, who would have stood aloof, with bared
heads indeed, but unsharing.
I will say naught of that little service. When it was ended Erling
closed his eyes and sighed, as one who is content; and we waited
for them to open again, but they did not. It was the first and last
sacrament of the new-made Christian.
The priest ended his words, and looked at me. Hilda took her cloak
and gave it to him, and he set it across my comrade, and that was
all. He was Ethelbert's first follower to the new place he had won,
and that also seemed good to me.
Through the gate came Kynan, followed by four men who bore on a
spear-framed stretcher their prince who had fallen.
"All well," he called up to me cheerfully. "Naught but a broken leg
from the fall, and no wound."
Then the rain came, sweeping in a sheet across the open hilltop.
Hilda took my arm.
"Come," she said, "take me to the hut again. My father is well-nigh
raving because he is too weak to fight. Once he rose and staggered
to the door, and there fell. He cried to you as you stood alone
with those savage men before you in the gate. Did you not hear
him?"
So she spoke fast, and drew me away to the hut, and there Sighard
bade me tell him all I might of the fight. It had been hard for him
to lie and hear the din going on, to know that the battle was for
Hilda and for him, and not to be able to share it. And he grumbled
that the girl would not look out on it and tell him how it went.
"But I saw Wilfrid in the gate," she said, "and I feared for him
for a moment, until I saw that the foe feared him; and then I was
proud. But Erling has gone, father."
"A good man and steadfast," Sighard said. "I think that you and I
owe life to him and Wilfrid alike. It will be long before we forget
him, or before you find such another comrade and follower,
Wilfrid."
More there was said of him at that time, but not too much. I had
known him but a little while, but in that we had gone through peril
together with but one mind. It hardly seemed possible that it was
only a matter of six weeks since I took him from the Norwich
marketplace.
The thunder rolled round us while we talked of him, passing but
slowly, and the rain fell in sheets, washing away the more terrible
stains of war. Through it came back, unarmed and humbly, some of
the Mercians, begging truce wherein to take away their comrades,
and Kynan spoke to them. As we had reason to think, the whole
affair was the doing of Gymbert, so far as his men knew. Behind him
was the hand of Quendritha, of course, but of that they had heard
no more than that to take us would please her.
When the storm ended, with naught but a far-off mutter of thunder
among the hills beyond the Wye to mind us of it, I went out to find
Jefan. At that time there were folk from the Welsh woodlands coming
up to help in any way that was needed, for a fire on the highest
point of the ramparts was sending a tall smoke curling and wavering
into the air, and the meaning of that was well known to them. One
might see by the way in which they were tending the wounded and
digging two long trenches without the ramparts, where the slain
should rest presently, that such fights were no new thing to them
on the marches of Mercia.
Jefan the prince lay in a hut, and he smiled ruefully as I came in.
His ankle was broken, and the old priest had set it, skilfully
enough, but it would be many a long day before he could use it
again. He held out his hand to me before I could speak.
"Are you hurt?" he said anxiously.
I was not, save for a scratch or two of no account. More was Kynan,
and that was a wonder, or his luck, as he would have it. But Jefan
said, trying to laugh:
"I would that I might see just one bout of sword play betwixt you
two. I had held my brother as the best swordsman in all the West,
but I saw a better in the gate. There I must lie helpless, with a
Mercian across me moreover, and it was somewhat of a comfort that
there was that to watch. I had seen naught of it but for the fall."
So I had not been learning all that the best men in the Frankish
armies could teach me of weapon craft for nothing, and hereafter I
learned that such praise from Jefan was worth having.
But as for my thanking them for this protection of us, they would
have it that the whole trouble was of their own making, since they
had stayed so near the border after a raid. Even now we must hence,
for the sheriff would gather a levy to follow them no doubt. It
needed no command from Offa for that; but he would be here anon, in
leisurely wise perhaps, but certainly.
"Wherefore we must go," said Kynan. "Then, as usual, he will find
no one to fight with, and naught but a few broken marrow bones to
remind him that last night we feasted on Mercian cattle up here."
Now I would that Erling might have been laid to rest in Fernlea,
near to Ethelbert, but that could not be. We set him in a place
near the gate which he had kept so well, raising a little mound
over him, and Jefan said that it should be a custom with every
warrior of the Cymro who entered the camp in the days to come that
he should salute him, and that the tale of his deed should be told
at the camp fire here from age to age, so long as harp was strung
and men should sing of deeds worth minding. Maybe that was the
resting and that the honour the viking would have chosen for
himself.
And he was set there with all the still rites of the ancient Church
of the Briton, in the way which he had learned to love.
Alone, unmarked Gymbert lies, out of sight of the warriors against
whom he came. The Mercians dared not touch him, and the Welsh would
not. But Jefan bade that man who had shot at him see to him, and
that was the punishment for his deed. Men say that when a storm
breaks round Dynedor hill fort it is ill to be there, for then he
wanders round the gate unquiet and wailing; and so he also is not
forgotten, nor the evil which he wrought.
That evening we were in some Welsh thane's house, far in the folds
of the Black Mountains, and there not even Offa could reach us. The
people had come with litters and hill ponies, and slowly and
somewhat painfully we had gone our way from the hill, gathering the
cattle, and leaving men to bring them after us still more slowly.
"Hurry no man's cattle," quoth Kynan, "except when they are by way
of becoming yours by right of haste homeward to the hills."
In this homestead, whose name I cannot write, we rested for a
fortnight or so, while Sighard gathered his strength again and
Jefan's ankle knit itself together. For me there was the best of
hunting in the hills and rich forests with Kynan, who was a master
of all woodcraft, and with our host. Wonderfully plentiful was game
of all sorts, whether red deer or fallow, boar, or wolf, or badger
in the forests, and here and there beaver as well as otter in the
swift trout streams. There were the white wild cattle also; and
there were tales of a bear somewhere in the hills, but we never
came on his tracks, though I knew them well from having seen them
often enough on the Basque frontier lands. That one chance of
having slain the bear there was the only matter of hunting in which
I was ahead of my hosts.
At the end of the fortnight we went from this village to the
ancient city of Caerleon, travelling slowly, though Jefan made
shift to mount a horse, and so ride with us. Pleasant were the June
days that passed among the hilly ways, under the great green
mountains, and through the forest lands, with good friends and
pleasant halts by the way. And I was going homeward now in all
truth.
Jefan had a wonderful palace in Caerleon, which his forbears had
held since the days when they took the place of the Roman governor
by whom it had been built. I think that it had been but little
altered, and on its walls were still the pictures the artists
brought from far-off Rome had painted, and its floors were laid
with the wondrous patterned pavement of the old days, so beautiful
that it almost seemed a shame to tread on them. The old Roman walls
stood round the town, and there were more houses, less but
well-nigh as good, in the place, and the great tower the Romans
made.
Yet, being a Saxon and a forest-bred man, I cared not at all for
the stone-walled houses. They seemed low and hot to me, and above
one was the ceiled roof, all unlike the high open timbering of our
halls, where the smoke curls, and the birds are as free to perch on
the timbers as they were in the oaks whence they were cut. The
walls round the town irked me also, for one does not like to feel
shut in from the open country. One must have fences, of course, and
maybe in border places earthworks and stockades, but surely no more
should be needed. Yet in a day or two I grew used to all this, and
I have naught but good to say of Caerleon elsewise.
For when we had been there a few days Jefan would speak with me,
and together we went to the walls of the city and looked southward
across the river toward the Severn sea, beyond which lay my home.
"See, friend," he said, "there is your way, and there is a ship
crossing to the old port at Worle tomorrow. Now, from all you have
told me, there is a chance that through her daughter Quendritha may
yet try to harm you."
"I think she cannot," I said. "So far as I know, she has never
learned where my home is."
"Yet," he said, "go home and see how things are for you. Well I
know that your first thought is for the Lady Hilda, and that is
right. I am going to see your wedding. But you cannot take her home
without going there first to learn whether she will have any home
to go to."
"That is what I have been thinking," said I. "You are but first in
speaking of the matter by a day or so."
"Well, then, do you go at once. If all is well, then you shall come
back here, and so there will be a wedding. If not, come back, and I
will give you a place with me.
"Nay, but listen. I have sorely troublesome tenants, the Danes, in
our land of Gower, and you can take them in hand for me. You are
the man I need as what you would call the ealdorman there. You may
take such a place in all honour."
"Jefan," I said, "you are indeed a friend, and I will not say no to
you. All seems to go well when you have a hand in it."
"Sometimes," said he, laughing. "I only wish that everything was as
easily arranged as this. Well, go. I want you back to stay, and yet
I don't, as one may say. At all events, we will have the wedding
here."
Now it need not be said that on the next day I did go, landing in
the early morning under the ancient walled camp of Worle, which the
Eastern traders made when they used to come for our Mendip metals;
and there I hired a horse and rode homeward, sorely longing for my
good skew-bald steed, which stood in a Roman stable at Caerleon.
Now I cannot tell all the thoughts which came into my mind as I
climbed the last hill and looked down into the wooded hollow where
lay our home. The long years seemed to roll back, and it was but as
yesterday that I had been there. And then I met a man I knew, one
of our own thralls; and he seemed to have aged all in a moment, for
I had thought, before he drew near, to see his face as it had been
on the day when I went to Winchester to see the bride of our king
brought home. He did not know me, but he doffed his cap.
"Wulf," said I, "how fares the thane?"
"Well, lord," he answered, staring at me. "He is in the hall an you
want him."
And then of a sudden a great smile began to grow across his face,
and he roared in his honest Wessex voice:
"By staff and thorn, if it is not our young master home from the
wars! Good lack, but how you have grown and widened!"
He clutched at my hand and shook it, and then kissed it, after a
friend's fashion first, and then as a thrall should, saying all
sorts of welcomes. And then he turned, forgetting any business
which was taking him to the hill, and must needs lead my horse with
all care down to the hall. And as he went, whenever he saw any man
of the place he shouted to him, and one by one men came running,
until I had half the village after me. That was a good old Saxon
welcome, and I could not find fault with it.
So we came to the hall gate, and the dogs ran out and barked; and I
thought I could tell those which had been but pups when I left
home, for they had been my charge. Then they bayed and yelled,
mistrusting what all the noise meant, though they saw none but
friends there, till two gray old hounds rose from the sunny corner
of the court and came running, and they knew me; and I called them
by name, and the rest stilled their clamour.
Then, with his sword caught up to him, my father came to the great
door and called for silence, and so saw me as I sat in my outland
mail and stretched my hands to him; and after him came my mother.
So I was home once more, and all was well.
I need say naught of the feasting which they made for me, nor of
all that I had to tell of my doings since that day when the Danes
came and took me. Little enough there was to tell me, save of the
village happenings; and that was well, for it meant that there had
in every way been peace.
Two days after I came home my cousin came from Weymouth, rejoicing
to see me safe and well once more, for he had ever blamed himself
for my loss.
Presently we spoke of Ecgbert, but there was yet no chance for him
to return. Our Wessex queen, Quendritha's daughter, was bad as her
mother, in all truth; but Bertric the king was just and wise, save
only when he was swayed by her. Moreover, to him Ecgbert had sworn
fealty when he came to the crown, and until he was gone he would do
naught.
And then there was the question as to whether it was safe for me to
come home.
There was an old thane who came to see me at this time, and he had
been to Winchester within a few days; and he settled the matter,
having heard all the court news from Mercia.
"Quendritha's power is over for good and all," he said. "Offa has
sworn a great oath that he will never set eyes on her again. They
say that she is shut up in some stronghold, with none but men of
the king's own round her, and that there she pines and rages in
turn, helpless for harm. You may be sure that no word of you has
come hither. Doubtless she believes you fled back to Carl the
Great. You may sleep in peace."
"Get married, my son, and settle down," said my mother softly. "I
may not bear to lose you again."
So that other matter was easily settled, as may be supposed, though
no doubt my good mother would have fain had somewhat more say in
the choice of a wife for me. But when my father and cousin heard of
the way in which we two had met, and what we had gone through
together, they said it was good that I had found no fair weather,
fireside bride, and there was a great welcome ready for her as soon
as we could bring her home.
Ten miles south of Selwood, on the forest's edge, lies that hall
which was my mother's, and to which I had the right as her son, and
there I was to live. I think that I have spoken of it before as
that which gave me the right to the rank of thane. Now and then we
had gone there and bided in the hall, seeing to the lands, and so
forth, but mostly it had been left to the care of the steward. So
it was waiting for me, and thither I should bring Hilda as soon as
all was ready.
And I need not tell of that time of preparation, which seemed long
to me; but at last we sailed across the still sea from Worle to
Caerleon--my father, and my cousin, and half a dozen others of our
friends--for word had gone and come from Jefan by the fishers of
the Parrett river, and he would welcome all whom we would bring
with us.
"Make it as good a wedding as you may," was his word to me.
I think that Offa once sent an embassy to Caerleon, and that they
were the first of our race who had ever been within its old walls.
But I know that never before had a Saxon party been welcomed there
as we were welcomed, nor had there been such a feast since Jefan
himself was wedded.
It seems to me that I am leaving out a many things now; but who
wants to hear of that wedding? If any one does, he must even go to
Caerleon and call the bards to him, if they will come, and ask them
to sing the songs they made thereon. Otherwise he may ask any man
of Caerleon to tell him what he saw of it himself, for indeed I
cannot say that I had thought or eyes for any but one figure in all
the splendour of that ancient court. I do mind that Jefan's fair
princess had clad Hilda in wondrous British array, which passes me
to tell of, and that Kynan and Jefan and the men of their host had
decked her with gold and pearl and mountain gems, such as lured the
Roman hither. They had a splendid sword and mail shirt and helm for
me, too, better even than that which Carl gave me, because of the
holding of the gate.
Now if one listens, as I have said, to the tales they tell over
there, it will be heard how I was said to have kept that gate
against all the host of Mercia, not to say Offa himself; for, like
our own gleemen, the Welsh bards do not fail to make the most of a
story. But how much thereof to believe those who have read my own
tale will know. I suppose they are obliged to make too much of a
matter, so that about the rights thereof may be believed.
At that wedding there were a surprise and a pleasure for me which
Jefan had prepared. He had heard of a vessel new come to Swansea,
where the Danes are, and he had sent thither to learn what she was.
And when he heard, he bade her captain to this feast to meet me.
And so it came to pass that when we landed I saw two men in the
Danish array standing behind the Welsh nobles, and I seemed to know
them. One was tall and grim and scarred, and the other broad of
shoulder and white of hair and beard. They were Thorleif and old
Thrond, come from Ireland to see their friends in this land, and so
Jefan's guests.
So that was a great wedding, in which I had the least part, being
overlooked, as mostly happens with a bridegroom. And after it we
passed home again to peace and happiness in the old hall in the
land of Wessex, and there none will care to follow me. It is the
troublous part of a man's life that makes the story to all but
himself. He is glad enough when it is over and there is no more
danger left of which to make a tale.
When I first came back to Caerleon I had some news to hear from the
Mercian border, and that was nothing more or less than that after
all Offa had stretched out his hand to grasp that realm which
Quendritha had plotted to give him; for he had gathered his levies,
and marched eastward into East Anglia. There was none to oppose
him, and he took it, and so reigned from the Wye to the sea, the
greatest king who had ever sat on an English throne.
And Quendritha was dead. That which her daughter had boded for her
as she left the palace had come to pass, and she had gone. She had
never set eyes on her husband again, and never heard how that which
she planned had come to pass.
That death seemed to take the last doubt of our peace from us; but
now Sighard would no more go back to his lands.
"I was Ethelbert's thane and his father's; I will not hold from
Offa. Let me come back with you now until I know what I can do."
So when our wedding was over he crossed with us to Wessex, and
there for a time he bided. Then came a message from Thetford that
the widowed queen, Ethelbert's mother, would speak with him, and
without delay he went to her. Offa had left her in peace in her own
house; but now she would go to Crowland, that she might be with her
who should have been her daughter, and thither Sighard took her.
Then he went to see what had happened with his own place, and found
it untouched. Offa, when he took the realm, had at least proved
that he had no mind to enrich himself with lesser spoils.
So Sighard sold his right of succession, and all else that was his
own in East Anglia, and thereafter bought a place for himself near
us; and there he lives now, well loved by all and honoured. Many
and kind were the messages which he brought back from the queen to
me and to Hilda, whom she had loved, rejoicing that the way to
Sutton had at least brought happiness to us two.
My good skew-bald steed I could not take across the sea with me,
and I was loath to sell him. At last I persuaded Jefan, our friend,
to take him as a gift, for I cared for none save the prince himself
to ride him.
"He is nowise a safe steed to go cattle-raiding on," said Kynan,
"for one can mark him for miles. Nevertheless he is a princely
mount, and a good rallying point for the men after they have been
scattered in a charge."
So they laughed, and were well pleased, as was I. Erling's horse I
gave to that man who had been our guide when we fled, and there was
no difficulty in finding owners for the rest.
Now one will ask concerning Ecgbert the atheling, whose friend I
had been for so long.
All men know that today he is the king of all England, and the
greatest who ever sat on her throne. But for long years we waited
till the time for his return came. While Bertric lived, to whom he
had sworn fealty, he would do naught, in utmost loyalty, and with
the Mercian throne he had no mind to meddle.
Two years after the death of Ethelbert, Offa died. His bright young
son took the throne, and was gone also in a few months, and then
the house of Offa was at an end. An atheling of some younger branch
of the Mercian royal line took his place peaceably, and under this
king, Kenulf, Mercia was at her greatest. The doom of Offa fell not
on him.
Ecgbert bided with Carl the emperor, learning all he might of
statecraft and of war until his time came, and well he learned his
lesson. Then at last, through Quendritha's teaching, came the end
of the Wessex line, and thereafter the fall of Mercia from her
first place among the English kingdoms. For, after Quendritha's
way, Eadburga would poison some thane of the court who had offended
her; and Bertric drank the cup she had made ready for his servant,
and so perished. Eadburga fled to Carl the emperor, as men had then
hailed him; and he received her kindly for Offa's sake, and at
least England knew her ways no more. Then we had all ready, and
sent for Ecgbert; and from the time of his coming began that day of
greatness for Wessex which has led him to the overlordship of all
England and the end of the old divided and warring kingdoms.
One may see many tokens of the repentance of Offa for that deed
which was wrought unhindered by him. Greatest of all, perhaps, is
the cathedral which he built at Hereford over the remains of the
murdered king. There the saint rests in peace, and will be honoured
while time is. But where Offa himself lies no man knows. His folk
buried him in a little church which he had loved, hard by Bedford,
in the heart of his realm, on the banks of the Ouse. But in one
night of storm and rain the ancient river rose and swept away both
church and tomb and what lay therein, not leaving so much as the
foundations to tell where the place had been. And yet, not a
stone's throw from the edge of the rapid Lugg, the little church of
Marden, built where we found the body of the murdered king, stands,
and will stand, unharmed by the waters which once made soft his
resting.
The wonderful palace of Sutton lies shunned and ruined. After that
which had been done there, Offa would live within its walls no
longer, and it was deserted by all men. Only, as the wind and rain
wrought their will unchecked on the timbered halls, the thralls
took what they would for huts and for firing, and slowly at first,
and then apace, the palace sank to heaps of rotting rubbish, where
the fox and the badger have their lairs, and the boar from the
forest roots unscared. Presently naught hut the ancient Roman
earthworks will be left to tell that once it was a place of
strength against the Briton.
And with bated breath the thralls tell of a white wolf which haunts
the ruin from time to time, deeming it the witch queen herself, who
may not leave the scene of her ill doing.
Now, for myself, I have but to say that for the sake of old days in
the Frankish land I stand high in the honour of Ecgbert the king.
And yet it seems to me that greater honour still it is that I
should have ridden across England on that strange wedding journey
as the comrade of Ethelbert the king and saint.
Often I am asked to tell the story of that ride and all that came
thereafter, for men say that they cannot learn it better than from
me. And so I have set all down here that men may read. Yet, whether
I write or not, I know well that forgotten Ethelbert can never be.
THE END.