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"I have told thee, Ordgar, son of Haga." "Thou art a vassal of Aescendune?" "I was." "And art: my rights over thee cease not." "I do not acknowledge thee as my lord." "Thou mayst think better of it anon. Now thou wilt please answer my questions. "Scribe, take down his replies." "He will not fill much parchment." "We shall see. "Where hast thou been hiding from thy lawful master?"
At what monastery hast thou made thy profession?" "At the priory of St. Wilfred, Aescendune," said Father Kenelm, for it was he, as he bent the knee to the primate. "A pious and learned home, doubtless, but its fame has not reached my ears." "But it has mine," said Geoffrey, who started and listened with great attention.
I managed to reach him without raising his suspicion, and he pointed out the figure of his visitor receding in the distant gloom of the street. "'Follow and learn who he is. "I followed and dogged him to his lodging it was the present lord of Aescendune.
The prelate seemed favourably impressed with his youthful guest, whom he dismissed with a warm commendation to Dunstan. One of Elfric's ancestors had fought on the side of Offa, and the exploits of this doughty warrior had formed the subject of a ballad often sung in the winter evenings at Aescendune, so that Elfric explored the scene with great curiosity.
The people of Aescendune were diminishing daily the English people thereof, we should say, for the places of those who fled their homes, and went no one knew whither, were filled by Normans, French, Bretons, or other like "cattle," as Wilfred called them in his wrath. Everywhere he heard the same "jabbering" tongue, that Norman French French with a Danish accent, and he liked it little enough.
The sight in question was a gallows, from which rotted, pendant, the corpse of an unhappy Englishman, hanged for killing a deer. "If every oak in Aescendune woods bore such acorns, civilised folk might soon be happy." Wilfred uttered a deep malediction, which he could not suppress, and, leaving the party, disappeared from sight in the woods.
"And when I look at that castle," Elfric continued, "our own hall of Aescendune, rising from its ashes, I picture to myself how you will marry some day and be happy there; how our dear mother will see your children growing up around her knee, and teach them as she taught you and me; how, perhaps, you will name one after me, and there shall be another Elfric, gay and happy as the old one, but, I hope, ten times as good; and you will not let him go to court, I am sure, Alfred."
When they reached the camp, Edward of Aescendune exerted his powers of persuasion in vain to induce the Knight of the Holy Sepulchre to accompany him to his father's tent, there to receive the paternal thanks. "Once more? have you ever met before?" "We have, but long ago let it pass, my son.
It will not have escaped thy remembrance, most holy father in God, that on the fatal field of Senlac fatal, that is, to my countrymen, for I am not ashamed to call myself an Englishman thou didst favourably notice a youth, who sought and found his father's dead body, by name Wilfred, son of Edmund of Aescendune.
"I forgot, I haven't asked to whom I am indebted. Aren't you two brothers?" "Our father is the Thane of Aescendune. His hall is not far from here. Will you not go home with us? We have plenty of room for you and yours." "To be sure I will. Aescendune? I have heard the name: I can't remember where. Have you horses?" "No; we were hunting on foot, and expecting to let fly our shafts at some deer.
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