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Updated: May 20, 2025
Indeed, I had seen but two men write before, and one was our old priest at Cannington, and the other was Matelgar, and I ever wondered that this latter should be able to do so, and why of late he was often sending men with letters. Yet it seems to me now that surely they had to do with his schemes that had so come to nought.
They knew who I was well enough; but thralls may not question the ways of a thane, as I was yet in their eyes, though outlawed. Yet they asked me for news of the fight, and I told them lest they should raise a panic, or maybe leave us themselves only that our men stood against the Danes on Cannington Hill, and that beyond them the invaders could not come. And that satisfied them.
Then one stood in front of me, hands on hips, and stared at me, and all at once he shouted: "Ho, comrades, this is the saint of Cannington hill! I saw him there, and soundly did he rate me for running, even as I deserved." And at that there was a mighty shouting and crowding, so that I could in no wise go on my way, and I began to wax wroth.
Past the church and the manor house, with its odd little turreted summer-house, or gazébo, perched on the corner of the garden-wall; past a row of ancient larch-trees and a grove of Scotch pines; past smooth-rolling meadows full of cattle and sheep; past green orchards full of fruit for the famous and potent Somereset cider; past the old town of Cannington, where the fair Rosamund was born, and where, on our day, we saw the whole population in the streets, perturbed by some unknown excitement and running to and fro like mad folks; past sleepy farms and spacious parks and snug villas, we rolled along the high-road, into Bridgewater, a small city, where they make "Bath bricks," and where the statue of Admiral Blake swaggers sturdily in the market-place.
For, as we left the gates, something in the sky over towards the battleground caught my eyes, and I turned cold with dread. It was the smoke from burning houses at Cannington. I was glad we had not to go through the town, for the sights there were such as Alswythe could not bear to look on.
And I, coming to a dark place, sat down among a few and ate and drank as well for half an hour, and then passing the guards at the entrance to the town on the road to Cannington, struck out for Stert, that I might be near Alswythe, and wait for the possible coming of the Danes, and the battle in which I might join. I went along the highroad now, for it was dark, and few were about.
It was many days since we started from Salisbury town, however, before we came to Cannington, and in that time we had sought the house of Turkil's father, the franklin, lodging with him for a day and night, that we might seek Leofwine the hermit.
Pym, John, b. 1584, at Brymore, near Cannington; politician; one of the five members of the Commons whom Charles I. sought to arrest; d. 1643. Quekett, John Thomas, b. 1815, at Langport; microscopist and histologist; conservator of the Hunterian Museum; d. 1861. Speke, John Hanning, b. 1827, at Ashill; African explorer; discovered Lakes Tanganyika and Victoria Nyanza; accidentally shot, 1864.
So inside these ramparts were we with some six hundred men, and there we were watched by three times our number. There was a strong post on Cannington hill, between us and Bridgwater; another and that the main body between us and the ships, on a little, sharp hill crest across a stony valley two bowshots wide that lay between it and the fort; and so we were well guarded.
Then, very suddenly, he turned his ships' bows to the bank at the one place where he saw that the land was high almost to the river's edge; and before we knew that we must be there to stay him, his men were ashore, and had passed the strip of marsh, and were on a long, gentle rise that ends in Cannington hill and the Combwich fort, half a mile away.
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