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Better wait for peace, as they say." "It is not so sure that Cnut will come back," I said. "Is it not?" said Olaf.
The gates also were barred by the obstacle. The chains of the drawbridge had at once been cut. Cnut encouraged his followers by his shouts, and armed with a heavy axe, did good service upon the assailants. But four of his party had fallen, and the rest were giving way, when a shout was heard, and over the drawbridge poured Cuthbert and 150 of the outlaws of the forest.
"I fear we shall be too late to cut them off," Cnut said, "they have so long a start; but at least we will waste no time in gossiping."
These thanes told Eadmund their news, and it was this: That Cnut had been hailed as king by the Danish host at Gainsborough, but that the English people begged Ethelred to return to them, promising that a good force should be ready to meet him on his landing.
In the course of the next year, six shillings was levied on every hide of land to meet a pressing need. The powers of the North were again threatening; the danger, if it was danger, was greater than when Waltheof smote the Normans in the gate at York. Swegen and his successor Harold were dead. Cnut the Saint reigned in Denmark, the son-in-law of Robert of Flanders.
"It is certain that you shall win Norway," I said, "for so also ran the words of the Senlac witch, 'For Olaf a kingdom and more than a kingdom a name that shall never die'." "I think men will remember me if I beat Cnut in my own land," he said lightly. "So I came back as far as the Seine river, and there was Eadward Atheling trying to raise men against Cnut his stepfather.
And Eadmund looked on his foes to see what chance might be for a charge that would break them when arms grew weary. Many were the brave deeds that I saw done in that little time, as the first lines fought man to man. And presently I knew that over against us was Cnut the king, for I saw one who was little more than a boy, whose helm bore a golden crown.
"I heed it no more," said Cnut, "than the outcry of wild fowl, when one comes upon them suddenly on a lake in winter. It means no more than that; and I reckon that they are trying to encourage themselves fully as much as to frighten us. However, we shall soon see. If they can fight as well as they can scream, they certainly will get no answering shouts from us.
Cnut and the archers were all bleeding freely from various wounds inflicted upon them in the struggle, breathless and exhausted from their exertions, and thoroughly awe-struck by the tremendous phenomenon of which they had been witnesses, and which they had only escaped from their good fortune in happening to be in a place so formed that the force of the avalanche had swept over their heads.
Two days after this the Danish host followed in the track of Eadmund and his flying levies: but Egil stayed in command of the ships, and I with him. I had not seen Cnut, but Egil had spoken of me to him. "I have heard of Redwald of Bures before," the king had said. "What know I of him? I think it is somewhat good." "He nearly got Emma the queen out of England," Egil had answered.
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