A King's Comrade Part 43

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 s.h.i.+p 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 Wess.e.x 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 fas.h.i.+on 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 Wess.e.x 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 emba.s.sy 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 pa.s.ses 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 s.h.i.+rt 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 pa.s.s that when we landed I saw two men in the Danish array standing behind the Welsh n.o.bles, 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 pa.s.sed home again to peace and happiness in the old hall in the land of Wess.e.x, 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 pa.s.s, and she had gone. She had never set eyes on her husband again, and never heard how that which she planned had come to pa.s.s.

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 Wess.e.x, 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.