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Updated: June 16, 2025
The prelate seemed favourably impressed with his youthful guest, whom he dismissed with a warm commendation to Dunstan. One of Elfric's ancestors had fought on the side of Offa, and the exploits of this doughty warrior had formed the subject of a ballad often sung in the winter evenings at Aescendune, so that Elfric explored the scene with great curiosity.
The route taken by the cavalcade led them in the first place to Warwick, even then a flourishing Saxon town: this was the limit of Elfric's previous wanderings, and when they left it for the south, the whole country was strange to him.
Close by him, with the head cleft literally in two by a battle-axe, lay a horseman, and his blood reddened all the ground around Elfric's feet, and had deeply dyed the youth's lower garments; a horse, his own, lay dead, the jugular vein cut through, with all the surrounding muscles and sinews; hard by, a rider had fallen with such impetus, that his helmet had fixed itself deeply in the ground, and the body seemed as if it had quivered for the moment in the air; a dart had transfixed another through belt and stomach, and he lay with the weapon appearing on either side the body.
Elfric's looks expressed surprise. "You will find out by and by; you have little idea how strictly we are kept here, and how much one is indebted to one's servants for the gift of liberty, especially in Lent and on fast days, when one does not get half enough to eat, and must sometimes escape the gloom and starvation of the palace." "Starvation?"
Alfred, who felt it tremble, cried: "Back, Elfric! Back if you value your life!" while at the same moment, true to his duty, without raising his axe or any other attempt at offence, he opposed his own body in passive resistance to Elfric's passage over the beam. Elfric knew the voice, and drew back in utter amazement.
And then came a rush of horsemen, and my cousin gripped my arm, and cried out in a choked voice: "Mercy!" he gasped, "is the man mad?" The new horsemen were men of our own from Dorchester. I saw one or two of Elfric's housecarls among them, and the rest were the sheriff's own men, with a few franklins who had joined him on the road.
We last beheld him a boy of twelve, at the date of Elfric's arrival at the court of Edred. By his side rode Siward, Ealdorman of Northumbria. "Who is this?" cried the latter, as he saw Alfred and his attendant waiting to receive him. "Alfred of Aescendune, with a petition for aid against Redwald, who has seized his father's castle." "Alfred of Aescendune!" cried Edgar.
They drank a parting cup, then separated, while the king took Elfric's arm and led him aside. "Elfric," said he, "did I not know my friend and most faithful follower, I should suspect that he feared the morrow's conflict." "I cannot help it," said Elfric; "perhaps I do fear it, yet, had I but my father's forgiveness, could I but see him once more, I could laugh at the danger.
Only an hour later, and Edred, hearing from the physician of Elfric's sudden illness, came in to see the boy, whose bright cheerful face and merry disposition had greatly attracted him. This was hardest of all for Elfric to bear; he had to evade the kind questions of the king, and to hear expressions of sympathy which he felt he did not deserve.
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