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Therefore shall you see to all that, and you shall have writings from me to back you. But men must know that you yourself have power there, and, therefore, I make you lord of all Quantock side, from Watchet stream to Parret, and from the borders of your own land at Cannington to Severn shore between those two.
Now I bethought me of the many boats that ever lay in the creek under Combwich, and wondered if any were yet whole. For if they were, surely one might swim over and bring one back. And that I said. Then of a sudden, the bishop rose up, and seemed to have come to a decision, saying: "See here, thanes; ever as we march to Bridgwater, we draw nearer Parret.
Then we crossed Parret river, and I watched a salmon leap as we did so; and then on over the level marshes till I could see that the wide circle on Brent top was black with swarming people.
But I gave him four silver pennies, which he would have refused, but that I bade him think of them as fasten pennies, which contented him well. This, too, pleased both Alswythe and Wulfhere, who were glad of the addition to our party. So we rode on. But many were the far-off columns of smoke we looked back on beyond Parret, before the hills rose behind us and hid them.
"Look at the tide, Heregar, look at the tide!" she said, pointing to Parret river, where the mud banks lay bare and glistening with the falling water. "Let them drive these Danes back to their stranded ships, and how many will go home again to Denmark, think you?" And I prayed that this might be so: for I knew she spoke truth.
This place was about a mile from the house of Ambrose Benett, the justice who the summer before had sent me and some other Friends to Aylesbury prison from the burial of Edward Parret of Amersham; and he, by what means I know not, getting notice not only of the meeting, but, as was supposed, of our being there, came himself to it, and as he came caught up a stackwood stick, big enough to have knocked any man down, and brought it with him, hidden under his cloak.
All this took long, but at last I came up the Severn, and so into the river Parret for the weather would serve me no longer and laid up the ship in a creek there is at Bridgwater, where Heregar, the king's standard bearer, was sheriff.
And the end of that council was that Eanulf should take his Somerset men up Parret valley, and so drive down the Danes, while Ealhstan should fall on them by Bridgwater as they came down, and so scatter them. Therefore would the Somerset levy march very early, before light; while we should wait till the next night, unless word should come beforehand. So we went to sleep.
It was not until evening that I at last came out upon the banks of the Bristol Channel, at a place called Shurton Bars, where the muddy Parret makes its way into the sea. At this point the channel is so broad that the Welsh mountains can scarcely be distinguished.
If one came from the sea, one must land at Watchet, and then win a path across the Quantocks, and there is the ancient camp of Dowsborough to block the way; or else put into the Parret, and there, at the first landing place, where they say that Joseph of Arimathaea landed, bearing the holy thorn staff in his hand, is the strong hill fort of Combwich, old as the days of that Joseph, or maybe older.
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