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"Here I am," quietly said the hero of the English army, for such he was, although not recognised as such by the government of his father. "Here I am; what Englishman will bind me?" The men stood as if paralysed. "Will you not obey?" shouted the weak Ethelred, and stamped in impotent anger on the floor. But they would not they could not touch Edmund. Edric whispered in the king's ear.
Canute reserved to himself the northern division, consisting of Mercia, East Anglia, and Northumberland, which he had entirely subdued; the southern parts were left to Edmond. This prince survived the treaty about a month. He was murdered at Oxford by two of his chamberlains, accomplices of Edric, who thereby made way for the succession of Canute the Dane to the crown of England.
It appears that Edric, returning from hunting, lost his way in the Forest of Dean, and accompanied only by one boy, reached about midnight a large house which turned out to be a drinking-shop, such as the English, Map says, call a guildhouse. On approaching it he saw a light, and looking in, he beheld a number of women dancing.
The clergy, who kept up a constant communication with Rome, and were in effect the Saxon legislators, could not avoid gathering some informations from a law which never was perfectly extinguished in that part of the world. Accordingly we find one of its principles had strayed hither so early as the time of Edric and Lothaire.
Edric and his sympathisers would fain have denied the claim, but they could not resist the bishop, backed as he was by the popular voice, for the cry, "The ordeal! yes, the ordeal!" was taken up at once by the populace. While he was hesitating, his brother Goda appeared amongst the crowd. "Canute," he whispered, "draws nigh Oxenford. He has heard what is going on."
Then too came Edric Streone, the great Earl of Mercia, Eadmund's uncle by marriage and his foster father, praying for and gaining full forgiveness for having seemed to side with Swein, as he said. With these was Ulfkytel, our East Anglian earl, and many more, while word came from Utred of Northumbria that he would not hold back.
"Oh, this was to have been my wedding day, my wedding day!" and he clasped his hands in agony; then the thought of his master his slain lord returned, and he cried, "O Edmund! my master, my dear master, so good, so gentle, yet so brave; who else could slay him? what fiend else than Edric, the murderer Edric?
"Alfgar," said he, "you must have slept soundly. Tell us what you heard and saw." He briefly related the particulars with which the reader is acquainted. "But how could they enter? Was your door unfastened?" "No; it was bolted on the inside, even as I left it last night." "Bolted on the inside! then they must have entered through the window," said Edric, noting the words.
Ah, I am choked!" Alfgar's sword had pierced his lungs, and a gush of blood rushing to the mouth stopped the breath of Higbald for ever. "I have brought the foe upon you. We are tracked," said Alfgar. "Edric and the Danes are in alliance." "But they have not taken this place yet; neither shall they, by God's help! Ha! was that lightning? Nay, it is winter."
His father, Wolnoth, had been "Childe" of the South Saxons, or thegn of Sussex, a nephew of Edric Streone, Earl of Mercia, the unprincipled but able minister of Ethelred, who betrayed his master to Canute, by whom, according to most authorities, he was righteously, though not very legally, slain as a reward for the treason.
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