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Updated: May 15, 2025
There should be no such division as had been between Cnut and Edmund, between Harthacnut and the first Harold, such as Edwin and Morkere had dreamed of in later times. Nor should the kingdom be split asunder in that subtler way which William of all men best understood, the way in which the Frankish kingdoms, East and West, had split asunder.
This is a lonesome place, and strange fancies weigh down a man's mind when all he may hear is the wind singing to the surges. Maybe these are but dreams. What matters it if Cnut reigns over the old Danelagh as Guthrum reigned, if Ethelred is overlord? It will be again as in Alfred's days, and once more an English king over the English folk, when Cnut is gone."
You will have dangers enough to encounter yourself, more even than I shall, for your brave follower, Cnut, can speak no language but his own, and your archers will be hard to pass as any other than what they are. You must be my messenger to England, should you arrive there without me.
Cnut was with his feudal chief for such Cuthbert had now, by his accession to the rank of Earl of Evesham, become and three or four English archers. "I fear, my lords," the king said to his knights as he sat in a little room in an inn at Zara, "that my plight is a bad one. I am surrounded by enemies, and, alas! I can no longer mount my steed and ride out as at Jaffa to do battle with them.
"First, that the queen has little choice in the matter," said I; "and next, that, between ourselves, I think that she would do much to remain a queen in truth, if it must be over Denmark instead of England; and lastly, that if Cnut weds her, he keeps the duke, her brother, quiet, and maybe brings over more of our people to his side."
The moon was half full, and her light was welcome indeed, for in those days the streets were unlighted, and the pavement so bad that passage through the streets after dark was a matter of difficulty, and even of danger. Here and there before some roadside shrine a lamp dimly burned; before these they paused, and, as good Catholics, Cnut and Cuthbert crossed themselves.
As David, the holy king, grew from boy to man suddenly in his days, which seem so like ours when one hears them read of in Holy Writ, so it had been with Olaf with Eadmund and Eadward his brother so it would be with Cnut, and so it was with myself. I have often spoken with men who were rightly held as veteran warriors, and who yet had seen less warfare in ten years than we saw in those three.
Now the many live in the brain-sweat of the few; and it must be so, for as little as great King Cnut could stay the sea until it had reached the appointed place, so little can we raise a barrier to the wave of progress, and say, "Thus far and no further shalt thou come." What then?
The caution of William and his ecclesiastical adviser reckoned it among possible chances that even Thomas of Bayeux might crown an invading Cnut or Harold in opposition to his native sovereign and benefactor. For some of his own purposes, William had perhaps chosen his minister too wisely. The objects of the two colleagues were not always the same.
"Lord," said he softly, albeit panting a little, "these men were fools! We do but wait our comrades' signals now." And he fell to cleansing his dagger-blade carefully with a handful of bracken. "Ha list ye!" whispered Cnut, "there sounds Ulf's warning, methinks!" And from the gloom on their left a frog croaked hoarsely.
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