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Updated: May 16, 2025
Our people had never forgotten that the Wessex kings were far from them, and that little help came from thence. Now, when I came to Egil, I told him that the letter I had gotten bore messages to me from Eadmund, and I read it to him so far as I have written here. "This is good," he answered, when I said that it should be as the king said. "Now are you Cnut's man and my friend indeed.
Then came a fisher's boat with word that Cnut's great fleet was putting into Sandwich, but before we had planned to throw our force between him and London came the strange news that again he had left Kent and had sailed northwards. We sailed then to Sandwich to learn what we might, sending two swift ships to watch if Cnut put into the Essex creeks.
But at the death of Harthacnut Cnut's policy had become impossible, and abandoning the Danish cause Godwine drifted with the tide of popular feeling which called Eadward, the one living son of Æthelred, to the throne. Eadward had lived from his youth in exile at the court of Normandy.
"Why, what should the king think of Olaf but that he has been his best friend?" "The earl tells me that he has heard that Cnut will offer Olaf some under-kingship if he will take his part," I said. "I cannot tell how he has heard that," Eadmund said, and he looked puzzled. "By your spies in Cnut's court," said I. "We have no spies there. I hate spying," the Atheling said. "What means he?"
Streone the traitor is no more." I took him away to a quiet place, for this news was strange, and the thralls were listening wonderingly, and I asked him how this came about. "Master, I slew him myself," he said grimly. Then said I: "By subtlety after his own manner?" "Not so, master. But even in Cnut's own presence." So I was amazed, and bade him tell all.
We were close on him when his main force fell back upon his earthworks, where they stand on the little hill above the river banks that men will call "Cnut's dune" henceforward, in memory of what he won there. And Ulfkytel and I and the few East Anglians that we had were with the advance guard, and drove in the pickets that were between us and the hill.
Cnut's party had indeed long got rid of these badges, the first act of a serf when he took to the woods being always to file off his collar; but they were liable when caught to be punished, even by death, and were delighted at having achieved their freedom. "And what can I do for you, Cuthbert?" Sir Walter said, as they rode homeward.
"But I am going to hang you," and he chuckled in his evil way. There were many meanings in that laugh of Streone's. "You can do as you like with me, as it happens," I answered, "but I had rather swing at a rope's end as an honest man than sit at Cnut's table as Streone the traitor." He tried to laugh, but it stuck in his throat, and so he turned to rage instead. "Smite him," he said to the Danes.
While the king of Sweden, and St. Olaf Tryggvason, king of Norway, were setting on Denmark during Cnut's pilgrimage to Rome, and Cnut, sailing with a mighty fleet to Norway, was driving St. Olaf into Russia, to return and fall in the fratricidal battle of Stiklestead during, strangely enough, a total eclipse of the sun Vinland was like enough to remain still uncolonised.
Cnut's fleet went from the Medway northward, and it was in the thoughts of all men that the end had come, and that he sought his own land at last. And that seemed the more certain to most because Streone had submitted, as if he knew that he had no further hope of honour from the Danish king.
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