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Updated: June 10, 2025
"Wait yet longer," she answered; "peace will come, and he will bring Hertha back to Bures." That ought to have been my own plan, but I had rather hoped to hear her say that I was right in holding myself free to choose afresh as I would. The thought of being bound seemed irksome to me; though why I, landless and luckless, should have found it so, I could not say. It mattered not at all at present.
I do not altogether hold with these early betrothals; but what is, must be. Wait a little, and then when peace comes, and you can dwell, one at Bures and one at Wormingford in the old way seeing one another and learning what shall be best for both all will be well. Be content. Your place and hers lie in ruins. Why, Redwald, what home have you to give her?"
Long before the Civil War, the Pinckneys lived at a house called Bures in Legare Street. A fine old house it was, and is still. Well, I was a cousin with a little money of my own, and I was left lonely and they took me in. James Pinckney was head of the family then, and he had two sons, Rupert and Charles.
There were none left to remind me of her, for one by one my few Bures men had fallen, and Edred, who had been my servant at the court, gave his life for mine in my first battle. Into Swein's East Anglia our levies never made their way. What need for me to say aught of those three years of warfare? Their tale is written in fire over all the fair face of England.
The joy of going back to my old home at Bures had been clouded with the knowledge of loss, and with the sight of the trail of war. But here were none of these things.
There is no wonder in it, for you have grown from childhood to womanhood since we fled from Bures, and I have gone through much that blotted your face from my mind. Rather do I wonder where you have been all this time." "One secret I may not tell you today," she said; "and that is where our safest hiding place has been in sorest peril. Some day I will show it you, for it is not far.
"I am but the atheling's comrade his servant, rather," I said, growing red as I did so, for I had surely forgotten myself in my gladness. "Redwald is no servant, King Olaf," said Eadmund quickly. "He is my closest comrade here, and has fought well at my side. Thane of Bures in East Anglia he is but now the Danes hold his place." "Why then," said Olaf, "Thoralf's grandson surely?"
And indeed across the open rode a few men in that direction, and I knew that they were scouts who would take the news of our coming; but they were too far away to be stopped even had I wished to do so. Olaf would not be led far from Bures and the river, but would have the foe come to him.
And the trouble was because my growing thought of Sexberga taught me, all in a flash as it were, when the remembrance of Hertha was brought thus clearly back to me, what tie bound me to Bures and to this more than playmate of mine. In truth, I think that had it not been for this, until I had been back in Bures again I should not have recalled it.
Then began to creep into my mind a longing to be back in my own place again at Bures, to see the river and woods that I loved, and to take up the old quiet life that was half forgotten, but none the less sweet to remember after all this war and wearing trouble.
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