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Now when I heard that I wondered, and asked the Sheriff, at whose house I was made most welcome, how this was. Eadmund had been with his father, and had gone to Malmsbury, and there had seen the Lady Algitha, the widow of Earl Sigeferth whom Edric Streone slew, and had married her, and now had gone to take over the Five Boroughs for himself.
If we win them to peace, Cnut cannot come back." Thereat Sigeferth of Stamford spoke hotly, minding Streone that the harm was done in Lindsey by pillage and burning wrought among peaceful folk, who were thus made enemies to the king. The thingmen would submit quietly if they knew they must; but if they were left, they would send word to Cnut that there was no force to oppose him.
At this time, however, these matters puzzled me, and had it not been for the slaying of Sigeferth and Morcar and one or two others, maybe I should have thought little of danger to myself. It was only as Olaf's kinsman that I was worth a thought of the man whose deep statecraft I could not pretend to understand. So I said: "The earl's life must be uneasy with all these doubts.
Sigeferth and Morcar, whom Edric slew at Oxford, have been here, and they said they would come back and drag me with them to some judgment seat; now take thine axe, Edmund, my son, and slay them when they enter; they want killing again." A look of indescribable pain passed over the features of Edmund.
"See, they come to drag me thither; they all come Edward; the victims whom I slew sixteen years agone in Cumbria; the slain on St. Brice's day; Elfhelm of Shrewsbury and his sons, with their empty sockets, and their eyes hanging down; Sigeferth, Morcar, and a thousand others. See, Dunstan bids them all await me at the judgment seat. I will not come; nay, they drag me.
"I could not discover that, but I think there must have been some secret door. Edric had perhaps lived in the Place before; he once resided in Oxenford." "He did, and in that very house," said Herstan. "I was here at the time when he assassinated Sigeferth and Morcar in the banqueting hall." "That may supply a clue, I know no other possible one." "But how, then, did he get your dagger?"
For of the Danish nobles, Utred of Northumbria and the two earls of the old seven boroughs, Sigeferth and Morcar, were at one with our earl and Eadmund for gathering a great levy, and keeping it together by marching through the Danelagh, and calling on the Danish thingmen, in the towns they yet held, to surrender.
Think of Sigeferth, of Morcar, of Elfhelm, nay, of a hundred others; then think not how he has plotted against my life, but how he made my own father hate and disown me; while he, the pampered favourite, swayed all the councils and betrayed the land. O Alfgar! couldst thou forgive him?"
So it seemed most likely that the next thing would be that he would march on us, and Ethelred gathered all the forces to him here in London that he could, against his coming. At once the English thanes came in, and even Sigeferth and Morcar, the powerful lords of the old Danish seven boroughs in Mercia, brought their men to his help, and that was almost more than could have been hoped.
He had occupied it one well-remembered season, during which, in that very banqueting hall where we have introduced our readers, Sigeferth and Morcar, the earls of the seven burghs, were treacherously murdered at the banquet after Edric had previously made them heavy with wine. There was the usual gathering that evening.
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