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"How to the Earl's loss?" asked Vebba. "Why, simple thegn," answered Godrith, "why, suppose that Edward had refused to acknowledge the Atheling as his heir, suppose the Atheling had remained in the German court, and our good King died suddenly, who, thinkest thou, could succeed to the English throne?" "Marry, I have never thought of that at all," said the Kent man, scratching his head.
The king left his enemies no time to recover this disaster; he followed his blow, and drove all who adhered to Edgar Atheling out of all the countries northward of the Humber.
Woe for us therefore, for unless a leader was raised up among us, surely all England must own Danish overlords! But I had heard Alfred the Wessex Atheling well spoken of as a warrior. However, what was that to us of East Anglia? We had been deserted by Wessex at our need as it seemed, and these Danes were as near kin to us as Wessex Saxons. "How did you come to leave Ingvar's service?"
He owned frankly, nevertheless, that it was the difficulties so created, that had made him incline to the Atheling; but, convinced of that prince's incapacity, even in the most ordinary times, to rule England, he shrank yet more from such a choice, when the swords of the Norman were already sharpening for contest.
"Ere thy tall vessel had disappeared from our sight the fair-haired Atheling was ingulfed in the stormy billows that swelled round our frail bark, and I, only I, am, by the especial mercy of God, preserved to tell thee the sad fate of thy father's son, whom thou wert, in an evil hour, moved by a treacherous villain to destroy."
It was with difficulty that he restrained the tears which filled his eyes from overflowing, but turning meekly away, he said "It is the first time the Atheling has condescended to upbraid his page with the bounty of his royal brother, the generous Athelstane, whom may heaven long preserve and bless."
"Out of the line of Cerdic! but that line is gone, root and branch, save the Atheling, and he thou seest is more German than English.
"You cannot see the Atheling, thane," he said. "It is as much as my life is worth to disturb him." "I will do it myself, then," I said. "Take me into the house." "What is amiss?" he asked, hesitating. "Is the king dead?" "Nay, worse than that," I answered shortly, and the officer stared at me in horror. "Oh, fool!" I said; "Cnut is landed, and it is Eadmund only who can save our land.
Edgar Atheling saw likewise that the innocence of his conduct could not make amends for the guilt of an undoubted title to the crown, and that the Conqueror, soured by continual opposition, and suspicious through age and the experience of mankind, regarded him with an evil eye. He therefore desired leave to accompany Robert out of the kingdom, and then to make a voyage to the Holy Land.
The prelate shook his head, and the group gained again the ante-hall. "Fit leader of bearded men! fit king for the Saxon land!" cried a thegn. "No more of your Atheling, Alred my father!" "No more of him, indeed!" said the prelate, mournfully. "It is but the fault of his nurture and rearing, a neglected childhood, a Norman tutor, German hirelings. We may remould yet the pliant clay," said Harold.
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