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There is Malcolm here, and Bertric, a Saxon thane, who is my friend also and a good Christian, and the poor young queen, and no more." The hermit threw up his hands. "All drowned!" he cried. "Alack, alack! May their souls rest in peace!" "We sailed without them, father. There were none, and so they are all safe at home."
They know how to befriend a woman who needs help. These men whom you fear and who seek the wreck can only be the men of our enemy." Then Bertric said: "I cannot mistake the boat which I have helped to pull so many a weary time. It is Heidrek's. He has followed us, and has somewhere heard of the fate of the ship.
I asked Gerda, under my breath and pointing. She laughed gently, and her hand tightened on my arm. "We were wont to call it Thor's hammer," she said. "We see it from time to time, and it brings luck. Now it greets me and you but it is not the old sign to me any longer." "It is strange," said Bertric. "Once you called on Asa Thor and here is that one to whom you called, and yonder "
The enemy seized me, and would have slain me, but Elfwyn and his brother, Father Cuthbert, delivered me; and now thou hast slain their Bertric, and burnt both hall and priory." "Think not that I owe them gratitude for aught they have done. They tampered with thy faith, I now apprehend, even before the night of St.
It was the head of a square, brown sail, the ship herself to which it belonged being hull down, but holding the same course as ourselves, or thereabouts, so far as one could judge as yet. And before long a second hove up from astern the first. "They are running a bit freer than we," Bertric said. "They have a shift of wind astern of them, whereby they are overhauling us."
For the moment I thought that she saw some vision of the Asir beyond my ken, and then knew that it was indeed to myself that she spoke. For I stood at the door of the house of the dead, with Thor's weapon the hammer in my hand, and she wandered in her mind with the weakness that comes after a swoon. "Hush, lady, hush," said Bertric in a wonderfully gentle voice.
"That is all I needed to hear," she said simply. "I have feared lest it had been rather the other way." Now I looked aft, and saw Bertric staring under his hand astern, and stepped to the other gunwale to see what it was at which he looked. But I could make out nothing. The sea was rising a little, but that was of course as the breeze freshened steadily.
He held out his hands, and they were hard with the oar, and there were yet traces of cords round the strong wrists. "Tell us how you came into this trouble," I said, "it is likely that we shall be comrades for a while." "Easily told," he said. "When I was at home in England, I was Bertric the ship thane, and had my place in Lyme, in Dorset.
Already it was plain that Heidrek meant fighting, if he could make no gain of these ships elsewise, for we could see that his men had hung the war boards the shields along the gunwales. He would see the same here directly, and make up his mind either to fight or fly. As we armed ourselves, Bertric and I had some thoughts that he might choose the latter.
My brother Elfwyn married Hilda, the daughter of Ceolfric, a Thane of Wessex, in the year 985. He has two children Bertric, a fine lad of twelve, and as good as he is manly; and Ethelgiva, a merry girl of ten. His household is well-ordered and happy nurtured in the admonition of the Lord. For myself I have had many offers of promotion in the brotherhood of St. Benedict, but have refused them.
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