Wulfric the Weapon Thane: A Story of the Danish Conquest of East Anglia, Whistler [best ebook reader for laptop .TXT] 📗

silent with his strong hands clasped together behind him, gazing at the king, whose lips moved in prayer, the psalm being ended, and, as I think, his strength ebbing fast from his many wounds.

Now they were about to shoot once more, unbidden, keeping up their torture if they might; but there was one more merciful than the rest. Forward before the bowmen strode Raud, with his sword drawn, and he cried to Ingvar:

"Let me slay him, king, and end this for pity's sake!"

Ingvar turned his eyes gloomily on him for a moment, and then answered:

"What know you of pity? Slay him if you will."

Then when he heard that, Eadmund looked at Raud, smiling on him with a wondrous smile and saying:

"Thanks, good friend."

So Raud slew him in pity, and that was now the best deed that might be done.

Thereat I cried out once, and my senses left me, and I knew no more.

CHAPTER XIII. HOW BISHOP HUMBERT JOINED THE KING.

When I began to come to myself it was late afternoon. At first into my mind came the fancy that I sat on the side of King Eadmund's bed in the king's chambers at Reedham, and that he told me a wondrous dream; how that--and then all of a sudden I knew that it was no shadowy dream, but that I had seen all come to pass, and that through the arrow storm Eadmund had passed to rest.

All round me the trees dripped with the damp November mist that creeps from the river, and the smell of dead leaves was in my nostrils, and for a while I lay still, hardly yet knowing true from false, dream from deed. So quiet was I that a robin came and perched close to me on a bramble, whose last leaves were the colour of the bird's red breast, and there it sang a little, so that I roused to life with the sound. Then swooped down a merlin with flash of gray wings on the robin and took it, and that angered me so that I rose on my elbow to fray it away; and with that the last cloud left my mind and I knew where I was. Then, too, from where he waited my waking came Vig, my great Danish dog, who had been tied at the thane's house, and must have left the flying party to seek me. And he bounded in gladness about me.

Now I found that my bonds were gone, and next that my weapons were left me, and that but for cramp and stiffness I had not any tokens of what had befallen. And at first it seemed to me that Ingvar thus showed his scorn of me, though soon I thought that he had forgotten me, and that it was Raud who had freed me.

I heeded not the dog, looking only in one place. But the body of the king was gone, and his arms and mail were gone. The hoofmarks of Ingvar's horses were everywhere; but at last I made out that they had gone on through the wood.

Presently the dog growled, looking towards the village, and I heard voices coming nearer, and with them I heard the tread of a horse. But soon the dog ceased, and began to wag his tail as if to welcome friends, and when the comers entered the clearing, I saw that they were Egfrid's men, and that it was my horse that they were leading. My axe was yet at the saddle bow.

"Why, master," said the foremost, "surely we looked to find you slain. This is well--but what has befallen?"

For I must have looked wildly and strangely on them.

"Well would it be if I were slain," I said. "Why did you seek me?"

"We found the horse coming homewards, and one knew that you had gone into the wood after the king. Yet we would seek you before we fled."

I saw that all were armed, and I thanked them. But--

"What ails you, master?" said the leader of the group.

"They have slain Eadmund the king," I answered, "and they have taken his body away."

Thereat they groaned, wondering and cast down, and one said:

"They will not have carried him far. Let us search."

We did so, and after a long time we found the king's body in a thicket where it had been cast. But his head we could not find, though now I bade my dog search also. He led us westward through the wood, until we came to a rising ground, and there we could go no further. For thence we saw the Danish horsemen by scores pressing towards us, searching for cattle and sheep as the army passed southward. And the farms were blazing in the track that they had crossed everywhere.

Then said the men:

"We must fly. We who live must save ourselves, and must come back and end this search when we may."

"Let us bear back the king's body," I said, "and find some hiding place for it at Hoxne."

So we did, hurriedly, and hid it in a pit near the village, covering it with boards and gravel as well as we could for haste. Then I asked the men where they would go.

"By boat down the river," they said, "and so join the thane and his party wherever they might be. They have gone to Beccles, for they hear that a ship lies there whose master will gladly take them to London."

That was good hearing, for so would all be safe. The men pressed me to come with them, but I would not do so, meaning to hasten on to the bishop's place and make him fly to Beccles and take ship also, starting this very night. So I bid them go, and on that their leader, a stout freeman named Leof, whom I knew well as one of Egfrid's best men, said that he would come with me. Nor would he hear of aught else.

"What would Egfrid my master say if I left his brother to go alone?" he asked me simply; and so I suffered him, and we two went towards South Elmham together.

Soon Leof saw a horse in a field and caught it, mounting bareback, and after that we went on well enough.

Darkness fell, and all the low clouds were reddened with the light of fires behind us, and ever as we looked back would be a fresh fire and light in the sky, for the Danes were at their work. We pushed on steadily, but the lanes were rough, and the miles seemed very long in the darkness; but at last we crossed the Elmham stream and rode to the stockaded house that was the bishop's, and which stands pleasant and well placed on a little hill beyond the low ground, and with no woodland very near it.

We shouted, and at last men fully armed came and let us in. And as I looked back once before the gates closed after me, I thought that the fires were nearer. The Danes were not staying their hands for darkness, for so the terror they spread would be the greater. So also was the bishop's peril therefore.

"Where is Bishop Humbert?" I asked.

"Master, he is in the church, nor will he leave it," said the old steward. "He says he must pray for king and land day and night now till this terror is overpast."

"I will go to him--he must fly," I said.

"Aye, pray him to do so, Wulfric; he will listen to you," said the old man earnestly.

"Have all things ready," I said. "See--there is little time."

"What of the king, master?" asked he, looking at the fires with a white face as he once more opened the gate.

"The king has gone where he would wish to be," I answered very gravely; and he understood me, turning away that I might not see his weeping.

Then Leof and I splashed back through the stream that ran between house and church, and came quickly to the porch. The church is very small and more ancient than I can say, for it is built of flint bound together with such mortar as the Romans used in their castles, hard as stone itself, and it stands in the midst of the Roman camp that guarded the ford, so that maybe it was the first church in all East Anglia, for we use wood; and, moreover, this stone church is rounded at the east end, and has a barrier dividing the body of the building into two, beyond which the as yet unbaptized must sit, as men say. And so strong and thick are the walls that I do not know how they can ever fall.

Now through the narrow windows shone lights, and I heard the sound of chanting. Leof held my horse, and I opened the door gently and went in.

At once there was a shrinking together of a group of men, mostly monks, who stood at the upper end of the church where the chancel begins. They were chanting the third psalm, for help against the heathen, and it faltered for a moment. But they were mostly monks of the bishop's own household, and knew me well enough, and they ended it shortly.

Then there was silence, for they were holding none of the set services, but rather as it seemed doing the bishop's bidding, and praying with him in the best way for the ceasing of this new trouble, as in time of pestilence once I remembered that he made litanies for us. And Humbert himself knelt before the altar during that psalm, fully vested, but as in times of fast and penitence.

When he rose, I came up the aisle towards him, and my mail clanged noisily as I walked in the hush. At the chancel steps I stood, helm in hand, and did reverence, not daring to speak first.

"What is it?" asked the bishop, when he turned and saw me. "Speak, Wulfric, my son. Is all well?"

"I have heavy news, father," I answered. "Close on us are the Danes, and you must fly. Then I will tell you all on the way."

"I will fly no more," he answered, "here I will bide. Is the king at my house?"

"He is not there, father," I said; and then I urged him to fly at once, and with me his monks joined, even going on their knees in their grief. Yet he would not be moved.

"Surely the king will come here," he said, "nor will I go without him."

"Father," I said, "the Danes have taken the king."

"Then must I bide here, and pray and scheme for his release."

Now I knew not how to tell him all, but at last I said:

"Eadmund the king has escaped from the hands of the heathen."

At that the bishop looked long at me, judging perhaps what I meant, by my voice. But the monks rejoiced openly, at first, until they saw what was meant also, and then they trembled.

"Where is he?" he asked, speaking low.

"Father," I said, "this twentieth day of November will be the day when England shall honour a new martyr. Eadmund the King is numbered among them."

"How died he?" then said the bishop, folding his hands.

But now the monks bade him fly, and reasoned with and prayed him. But he bade them save themselves, for that there would be work for them to do among the heathen.

"As for me, I am an old man," he said, "and I would fain go the same road as the king."

Still they clung to him, and at last, speaking to each by name, and giving each some message to take to cell or abbey where they must go at his bidding, he commanded them; and so, unwillingly, kissing his hand and receiving his blessing, they went one by one, till he and I and one or two laymen besides were left in the little church. Then he spoke to the other men, and they went also, and we were alone.

"That is well," said the bishop; "tell me all, and then do you fly."

He sat down in his great chair, leaning his head in his hand while I told him all in that quiet place. Never once was there trembling flash from the great jewel of his ring, that shone in the candlelight, to show how moved he was; but when I had ended, the tears were running down his venerable face, and he said:

"Now is there truly one more added to the noble army of martyrs, and he is at rest. Now do you go, my son."

But I had other thoughts in my mind, and I rose up silently from beside him, saying only: "Not yet, father," and I went down the aisle and out into the darkness to Leof.

"See yonder!" said he pointing, and there was a fresh fire not many miles from us.