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A King\'s Comrade written by Charles Whistler

C >> Charles Whistler >> A King\'s Comrade



A KING'S COMRADE:

A Story of Old Hereford,

by Charles W. Whistler

PREFACE.

INTRODUCTORY.

CHAPTER I. HOW THE FIRST DANES CAME TO ENGLAND.

CHAPTER II. HOW WILFRID KEPT A PROMISE, AND SWAM IN PORTLAND

CHAPTER III. HOW WILFRID MET ECGBERT THE ATHELING.

CHAPTER IV. HOW WILFRID MET AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE IN NORWICH

CHAPTER V. HOW WILFRID MET THE FLINT FOLK, AND OTHERS.

CHAPTER VI. HOW WILFRID SPOKE WITH ETHELBERT THE KING.

CHAPTER VII. HOW ETHELBERT'S JOURNEY BEGAN WITH PORTENTS.

CHAPTER VIII. HOW ETHELBERT CAME TO THE PALACE OF SUTTON.

CHAPTER IX. HOW QUENDRITHA THE QUEEN WOVE HER PLOTS.

CHAPTER X. HOW GYMBERT THE MARSHAL LOST HIS NAME AS A GOOD

CHAPTER XI. HOW ETHELBERT THE KING WENT TO HIS REST.

CHAPTER XII. HOW QUENDRITHA THE QUEEN HAD HER WILL.

CHAPTER XIII. HOW WILFRID AND ERLING BEGAN THEIR SEARCH.

CHAPTER XIV. HOW WILFRID HAD A FRESH CARE THRUST ON HIM.

CHAPTER XV. HOW WILFRID'S SEARCH WAS REWARDED.

CHAPTER XVI. HOW WILFRID SPOKE ONCE MORE WITH OFFA.

CHAPTER XVII. HOW WILFRID AND HIS CHARGE MET JEFAN THE

CHAPTER XVIII. HOW JEFAN THE PRINCE GUARDED HIS GUESTS.

CHAPTER XIX. HOW WILFRID CAME HOME TO WESSEX.



PREFACE.


Hereford Cathedral bears the name of Ethelbert of East Anglia, king
and martyr, round whose death, at the hands of the men of Offa of
Mercia, this story of his comrade centres, and dates its foundation
from Offa's remorse for the deed which at least he had not
prevented. In the sanctuary itself stands an ancient battered
statue--somewhat hard to find--of the saint, and in the pavement
hard by a modern stone bears a representation of his murder. The
date of the martyrdom is usually given as May 20, 792 A.D.

A brief mention of the occurrence is given under that date in the
"Anglo-Saxon Chronicle," and full details are recorded by later
historians, Matthew of Westminster and Roger of Wendover being the
most precise and full. The ancient Hereford Breviary preserves
further details also, for which I am indebted to my friend the Rev.
H. Housman, B.D., of Bradley.

These authorities I have followed as closely as possible, only slightly
varying the persons to whom the portents, so characteristic of the
times, occurred, and referring some--as is quite possible, without
detracting from their significance to men of that day--to natural
causes. Those who searched for the body of the king are unnamed by the
chroniclers, and I have, therefore, had no hesitation in putting the
task into the hands of the hero of the tale. The whole sequence of
events is unaltered.

Offa's own part in the removal of the hapless young king is given
entirely from the accounts of the chroniclers, and the characters
of Quendritha the queen and her accomplice Gymbert are by no means
drawn here more darkly than in their pages. The story of her voyage
and finding by Offa is from Brompton's Annals.

The first recorded landing of the Danes in Wessex, with which the
story opens, is from the "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle;" the name of the
sheriff, and the account of the headstrong conduct which led to his
end, being added from Ethelwerd. The exact place of the landing is
not stated; but as it was undoubtedly near Dorchester, it may be
located at Weymouth with sufficient probability. For the reasons
which led to the exile of Ecgbert, and to his long stay at the
court of Carl the Great, the authority is William of Malmesbury.
The close correspondence between the Mercian and Frankish courts
is, of course, historic--Offa seeming most anxious to ally himself
with the great Continental monarch, if only in name. The position
of the hero as an honoured and independent guest at the hall of
Offa would certainly be that assigned to an emissary from Carl.

With regard to the proper names involved, I have preferred to use
modern forms rather than the cumbrous if more correct spelling of
the period. The name of the terrible queen, for example, appears on
her coins as "Cynethryth," and varies in the pages of the
chroniclers from "Quendred" to the form chosen as most simple for
use today. And it has not seemed worth while to substitute the
ancient names of places for those in present use which sufficiently
retain their earlier form or meaning.

The whole story of King Ethelbert's wooing and its disastrous
ending is a perfect romance in all truth, without much need for
enhancement by fiction, and perhaps has its forgotten influence on
many a modern romance, by the postponement of a wedding day until
the month of May--so disastrous for him and his bride--has passed.

C. W. WHISTLER.

STOCKLAND, 1904.



INTRODUCTORY.


A shore of dull green and yellow sand dunes, beyond whose low tops
a few sea-worn pines and birch trees show their heads, and at whose
feet the gray sea hardly breaks in the heavy stillness that comes
with the near thunder of high summer. The tide is full and nearing
the turn, and the shore birds have gone elsewhere till their food
is bared again at its falling. Only a few dotterels, whose eggs lie
somewhere near, run and flit, piping, to and fro, for a boat and
two men are resting at the very edge of the wave as if the ebb
would see them afloat again.

Armed men they are, too, and the boat is new and handsome, graceful
with the beautiful lines of a northern shipwright's designing. She
has mast and sail and one steering oar, but neither rowlocks nor
other oars to fit in them. One of the men is pacing quietly up and
down the sand, as if on the quarterdeck of a ship, and the other
rests against the boat's gunwale.

"Nigh time," says one, glancing at the fringe of weed which the
tide is beginning to leave.

"Ay, nigh, and I would it were past and over. It is a hard doom."

"No harder than is deserved. The doom ring and the great stone had
been the end in days which I can remember. That was the old Danish
way."

The other man nods.

"But the jarl is merciful, as ever."

"When one finds a coiled adder, one slays it. One does not say,
'Bide alive, because I saw you too soon to be harmed by you.' Mercy
to the beast that might be, but not to the child who shall some day
set his hand on it."

"Eh, well! The wind is off shore, and it is a far cry to succour,
and Ran waits the drowning."

"I know not that Ran cares for women."

"Maybe a witch like herself. They are coming!"

Now through a winding gap in the line of dunes comes from inland a
little company of men and women, swiftly and in silence. The two
men range themselves on either bow of the boat, and stand at
attention as the newcomers near them, and so wait. Maybe there are
two-score people, led by a man and woman, who walk side by side
without word or look passing between them. The man is tall and
handsome, armed in the close-knit ring-mail shirt of the Dane, with
gemmed sword hilt and golden mountings to scabbard and dirk, and
his steel helm and iron-gray hair seem the same colour in the
shadowless light of the dull sky overhead. One would set his age at
about sixty years.

But the woman at his side is young and wonderfully lovely. She is
dressed in white and gold, and her hair is golden as the coiled
necklace and armlets she wears, and hangs in two long plaits far
below her knees, though it is looped in the golden girdle round her
waist. Fastened to the girdle hangs the sheath of a little dagger,
but there is no blade in it. She is plainly of high rank, and
unwedded. Now her fair face is set and hard, and it would almost
seem that despair was written on it.

After those two the other folk seem hardly worth a glance, though
they are richly dressed, and the men are as well armed as the jarl
their leader. Nor do they seem to have eyes for any but those two
at their head, and no word passes among them. Their faces also are
set and hard, as if they had somewhat heavy to see to, and would
fain carry it through to the end unflinching.

So they come to the edge of the sea, where the boat waits them, and
there halt; and the tall jarl faces the girl at his side, and
speaks to her in a dull voice, while the people slowly make a half
circle round them, listening.

"Now we have come to the end," he says, "and from henceforth this
land shall know you and the ways of you no more. There were other
dooms which men had thought more fitting for you, but they were
dooms of death. You shall not die at our hands. You are young, and
you have time to bethink you whither the ways you have trodden
shall lead you. If the sea spares you, begin life afresh. If it
spares you not, maybe it is well. No others shall be beguiled by
that fair face of yours. The Norns heed not the faces of men."

He pauses; but the girl stands silent, hand locked in hand, and
with no change of face. Nor does she look at her accuser, but gazes
steadily out to the still sea, which seems endless, for there is no
line between sea and sky in the hot haze. For all its exceeding
beauty, hers is an evil face to look on at this time. And the women
who gaze on her have no pity in their eyes, nor have the men.

Once again the great jarl speaks, and his words are cold and
measured.

"Also, I and our wisest hold that what you have tried to compass
was out of the longing for power that ever lies in the heart of
youth. We had done no more than laugh thereat had you been content
to try to win your will with the ancient wiles of woman that lie in
beauty and weakness. But for the evil ways in which you have
wrought the land is accursed, and will be so as long as we suffer
you. Go hence, and meet elsewhere what fate befalls you. In the
skill you have in the seaman's craft is your one hope. We leave it
you."

Then, without a word of answer or so much as a look aside, the girl
of her own accord steps into the boat; and at a sign from their
lord the two men launch her from the shelving sand into the sea,
following her, knee deep, among the little breakers that hardly
hinder their steps. They see that in her look is deepest hate and
wrath, but they pay no heed to it. And even as their hands leave
the gunwale, the girl goes to the mast, and with the skill and ease
of long custom hoists the sail, and so making fast the halliard
deftly, comes aft again to ship the steering oar, and seat herself
as the breeze wakes the ripples at the bow and the land slips away
from her. She has gone, and never looks back.

Then a sort of sigh whispers among the women folk on shore; but it
is not as a sigh of grief, but rather as if a danger had passed
from the land. They know that the boat must needs drive but as the
wind takes her, for oars wherewith to row against it are none, and
the long summer spell of seaward breezes has set in. The jarl folds
his arms and bides still in his place, and the two men still stand
in the water, watching. And so the boat and its fair burden of
untold ill fades into the mist and grows ghostly, and is lost to
sight; and across the dunes the clouds gather, and the thunder
mutters from inland with the promise of long-looked-for rain to a
parched and starving folk.

* * * *

Through the long summer morning Offa, the young King of Mercia, has
hunted across the rich Lindsey marshes which lie south of the
Humber; and now in the heat of the noon he will leave his party
awhile and ride with one thane only to the great Roman bank which
holds back the tides, and seek a cool breath from the salt sea,
whose waves he can hear. So he sets spurs to his great white steed,
and with the follower after him, rides to where the high sand dunes
are piled against the bank, and reins up on their grassy summit,
and looks eastward across the most desolate sands in all England,
gull-haunted only.

"Here is a marvel," he cries, turning to his thane. "Many a time
have I hunted along this shore, but never before have I seen the
like of this here."

He laughs, and points below him toward the sand, and his thane
rides nearer. The tide has crept almost to the foot of the ancient
sea wall, and gently rocking on it lies a wondrously beautiful boat
with red and white sail set, but with no man, or aught living
beyond the white terns which hover and swoop about it, to be seen.

"'Tis a foreign boat," says the thane. "Our folk cannot frame such
an one as this. Doubtless she has broken her line from astern of
some ship last night, and so has been wafted hither."

"Men do not tow a boat with her sail set," laughs the king. "Let us
go and see her."

So they ride shoreward across the dunes, and ever the breeze edges
the boat nearer and nearer, till at last she is at rest on the edge
of the tide, lifting now and then as some little wave runs beneath
her sharp stern. For once the North Sea is still, and even the
brown water of the Humber tides is blue across the yellow sands.

The horses come swiftly and noiselessly across the strand, but the
white steed of the king is restless as he nears the boat, sniffing
the air and tossing his head. The king speaks to him, thinking that
it is the swinging sail which he pretends to fear. And then the
horse starts and almost rears, for at the sound of the clear voice
there rises somewhat from the hollow of the little craft, and the
king himself stays in amaze.

For he sees before him the most wondrously beautiful maiden his
eyes have rested on, golden-haired and blue-eyed, wan and weary
with the long voyage from the far-off shore, and holding out to him
piteous hands, blistered with the rough sheet and steering oar. She
says naught, but naught is needed.

"Lady," he says, doffing his gold-circled cap, "have no fear. All
is well, and you are safe. Whence come you?"

But he has no answer, for the maiden sinks back into the boat
swooning. Then in all haste the king sends his thane for help to
the party they have left; and so he sits on the boat's gunwale and
watches the worn face pityingly.

Now come his men, and at his word they tend the maiden with all
care, so that very soon she revives again, and can tell her tale.
Beyond the hunger and thirst there has indeed been little hardship
to a daughter of the sea in the summer weather, for the breeze has
been kindly and steady, and the boat stanch and swift. There has
been rain too, gentle, and enough to stave off the utmost thirst.

All this she tells the king truly; and then he must know how she
came to lose her own shore. And at that she weeps, but is ready. In
the long hours she has conned every tale that may be made, and it
is on her lips.

She is the orphan daughter of a Danish jarl, she says, and her
father has been slain. She has been set adrift by the chief who has
taken her lands, for her folk had but power to ask that grace for
her. He would have slain her, but that they watched him. Doubtless
he had poisoned their minds against her, or they would not have
suffered thus far of ill to her even. Otherwise she cannot believe
so ill of them. It is all terrible to her.

And so, with many tears, she accounts for her want of oars, and
provides against the day when some chapman from beyond seas shall
know her and tell the tale of her shame. At the end she weeps, and
begs for kindness to an outcast pitifully.

There is no reason why men should not believe the tale, and told
with those wondrous tear-dimmed eyes on them, they doubt not a word
of it. It is no new thing that a usurper should make away with the
heiress, and doubtless they think her beauty saved her from a worse
fate.

So in all honour the maiden is taken to Lincoln, and presently
given into the care of one of the great ladies of the court.

But as they ride homeward with the weary maiden in the midst of the
company, Offa the king is silent beyond his wont, so that the thane
who rode yonder with him asks if aught is amiss.

"Naught," answers Offa. "But if it is true that men say that none
but a heaven-sent bride will content me, maybe this is the one of
whom they spoke."

Now, if it was longing for power and place which had tempted this
maiden to ill in the old home, here she sees her way to more than
her wildest dream plain before her; and she bends her mind to
please, and therein prospers. For when wit and beauty go hand in
hand that is no hard matter. So in no long time it comes to pass
that she has gained all she would, and is queen of all the Mercian
land, from the Wash to the Thames, and from Thames to Trent, and
from Severn to the Lindsey shore; for Offa has wedded her, and all
who see her rejoice in his choice, holding her as a heaven-sent
queen indeed, so sweetly and lowly and kindly she bears herself.
Nor for many a long year can she think of aught which would bring
her more power, so that even she deems that the lust of it is dead
within her. Only for many a year she somewhat fears the coming of
every stranger from beyond the sea lest she may be known, until it
is certain that none would believe a tale against their queen.

Yet when that time comes there are old counsellors of the Witan who
will say among themselves that they deem Quendritha the queen the
leader and planner of all that may go to the making great the
kingdom of the Mercians; and there are one or two who think within
themselves that, were she thwarted in aught she had set her mind
on, she might have few scruples as to how she gained her ends. But
no man dare put that thought into words.



CHAPTER I. HOW THE FIRST DANES CAME TO ENGLAND.


Two fair daughters had Offa, the mighty King of Mercia, and
Quendritha his queen. The elder of those two, Eadburga, was wedded
to our Wessex king, Bertric, in the year when my story begins, and
all men in our land south of the Thames thought that the wedding
was a matter of full rejoicing. There had been but one enemy for
Wessex to fear, besides, of course, the wild Cornish, who were of
no account, and that enemy was Mercia. Now the two kingdoms were
knit together by the marriage, and there would be lasting peace.

Wherefore we all rejoiced, and the fires flamed from the hilltops,
and in the towns men feasted and drank to the alliance, and dreamed
of days of unbroken ease to come, wherein the weapons, save always
for the ways of the border Welsh, should rust on the wall, and the
trodden grass of the old camps of the downs on our north should
grow green in loneliness. And that was a good dream, for our land
had been torn with war for overlong--Saxon against Angle,
Kentishman against Sussexman, Northumbrian against Mercian, and so
on in a terrible round of hate and jealousy and pride, till we
tired thereof, and the rest was needed most sorely.

And in that same year the shadow of a new trouble fell on England,
and none heeded it, though we know it over well now--the shadow of
the coming of the Danes. My own story must needs begin with that,
for I saw its falling, and presently understood its blackness.

I had been to Winchester with my father, Ethelward the thane of
Frome Selwood, to see the bringing home of the bride by our king,
and there met a far cousin of ours, with whom it was good to enjoy
all the gay doings of the court for the week while we were there.
He belonged to Dorchester, and taking as much fancy to my company
as a man double his age can have pleasure in the ways of a lad of
eighteen, he asked me to ride home with him, and so stay in his
house for a time, seeing the new country, and hunting with him for
a while before I went home. And my father being very willing that I
should do so, I went accordingly, and merry days on down and in
forest I had with Elfric the thane, this new-found cousin of ours.

So it came to pass that one day we found ourselves on the steep of
a down whence we could overlook the sea and the deep bay of
Weymouth, with the great rock of Portland across it; and the width
and beauty of that outlook were wonderful to me, whose home was
inland, in the fair sunshine of late August. We had come suddenly
on it as we rode, and I reined up my horse to look with a sort of
cry of pleasure, so fair the blue water and dappled sky and
towering headland, grass and woodland and winding river, leaped on
my eyes. And in the midst of the still bay three beautiful ships
were heading for the land, the long oars rising and falling
swiftly, while the red and white striped sails hung idly in the
calm. One could see the double of each ship in the water, broken
wonderfully by the ripple of the oars, and after each stretched a
white wake like a path seaward.

My cousin stayed his horse also with a grip of the reins that
brought him up short, and he also made an exclamation, but by no
means for the same reason as myself.

"Ho!" he said, "what are these ships?"

Then he set his hand to his forehead and looked long at them from
under it, while I watched them also, unknowing that there was
anything unusual in the sight for one who lived so near the sea and
the little haven of Weymouth below us.

"Well, what do you think of them?" I asked presently.

"On my word, I do not know," he answered thoughtfully. "They are no
Frisian traders, and I have never seen their like before. Moreover,
it seems to me that they are full of armed men. See how the sun
sparkles on their decks here and there!"

But we were too far off to make out more than that, and as we
watched it was plain that the ships would make for the river mouth
and haven.

"We will ride down and see more of them," said my cousin. "I only
hope--"

There he stayed his words; but I saw that his face had grown grave
of a sudden, and knew that some heavy thought had crossed his mind.

"What?" I asked.

"It must be impossible," he said slowly--"and this is between you
and me--for it seems foolish. But have you heard of the northern
strangers who have harried the Welsh beyond the Severn sea?"

I had heard of them, of course, for they traded with the Devon men
at times, having settled in towns of their own in Wales beyond the
Severn. It was said that they were heathen, worshipping the same
gods whom our forefathers had worshipped, and were akin to
ourselves, with a tongue not unlike our own at all, and easy to be
understood by us. Also they had fought the Welsh, as we had to
fight them; but one heard of them only as strangers who had naught
to do with us Saxons.

"Well, then," my cousin said, "suppose these are more of the
northern folk."

"If they are, they will have come to trade," I said lightly. "But
they will more likely be men from the land across this sea--men
from the land of the Franks, such as we saw at Winchester the other
day."

"Maybe, maybe," he said. "We shall see presently."

So we rode on. I dare say we had four miles to go before we came to
the outskirts of Weymouth village, and by that time the ships were
in the haven. By that time also the Weymouth folk were leaving the
place, and that hastily; and before we were within half a mile of
the nearest houses we met two men on horseback, who rode fast on
the road toward Dorchester.

"What is amiss?" cried my cousin as they neared us.

The men knew him well, and stayed.

"Three strange ships in the haven, and their crews ashore armed,
and taking all they can lay their hands on. We are going to the
sheriff; where is he?"

"Home at Dorchester. Whence are the ships? Have they hurt any one?"

"We cannot tell whence they are. They speak a strange sort of
English, as it were, like the Northumbrian priest we have.
Red-headed, big men they are, and good-tempered so far, seeing that
none dare gainsay them. But they are most outrageously thievish."

"What have they taken, then?"

"Ask the bakers and butchers. Now they are gathering up all the
horses, and they say they are going to drive the cattle."

"Sheriff's business that, in all truth. Get to him as soon as you
may. I will go and see if I can reason with them meanwhile."

"Have a care, thane!" they cried, and spurred their horses again.

Then my cousin turned to me, and his face was grave.

"Wilfrid," he said, "you had better go with those messengers. I am
going to see if aught can be done; but it sounds bad. I don't like
an armed landing of this sort."

"No, cousin," I answered. "Let me go with you. It would be hard if
you must send me back, for I would fain see the ships. That talk of
driving the cattle can be naught but a jest."

"Likely enough," he answered, laughing. "It is no new thing for a
crew to come ashore and clear out the booths of the tradesmen
without troubling to pay offhand. Presently their captains will
come and pay what is asked, grumbling, and there will be no loss to
our folk. As for this talk of taking the horses--well, a sailor
always wants a ride when he first comes ashore, if it is only on an
ass. Then if there is not enough meat ready to hand in the town, no
doubt they would say they would find it for themselves. Well, come
on, and we will see."

So we rode on, but the laugh faded from the face of my kinsman as
we did so.

"They have no business to come ashore armed," he said, half to
himself, "and Weymouth folk ought to be used to the ways of seamen
by this time. I don't like it, Wilfrid."

Nevertheless, we did not stop, and presently came among the first
houses of the village, where there was a little crowd of the folk,
half terrified, and yet not altogether minded to fly. They said
that the strangers were sacking the houses along the water's edge,
but not harming any one. However, they were taking all the ale and
cider casks they could find on board their ships, and never a word
of payment.