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Updated: June 29, 2025
It was learned long afterward from one to whom Offa told it, and I have set it here because it seems needful. Nor can I tell, even if I would, how Ethelbert met Etheldrida, his promised bride.
Then Hilda smiled also, and with that made the best of it, and walked with me to and fro under the trees. The king and the princess were here, she told me, for a little time, and she was in attendance. Presently she told me also of the goodness of Etheldrida, saying that she thought the king and the land alike happy in this match.
She seemed well-nigh as young as the stately and pale Etheldrida, her daughter. After that she and the other ladies left the hall after the custom, and we sat on telling tales and listening to the gleemen and harpers, and taking each our turn in singing. The East Anglian thanes had a way of singing together which was new to me and pleased me well.
The rough housecarls heard also, and there went a word or two among them; and their grim faces lightened, for one shame, at least, had been taken from the house of their master. Now there was a sound as of a woman's weeping from the litter, and Selred heard it and rose to his feet. "It is Etheldrida the princess," he whispered to me.
I tell you that we shall find the far end of that passage closed in one way or another if we haste not." "My daughter!" said Sighard, groaning; "she is in the queen's bower." "So also is Etheldrida the princess," said Witred. "She is of her court, as one may say, and will be safe. No harm can come to her." "I fear for her," said Sighard, still hesitating.
Now they take Ethelbert to his chamber, and Offa and Quendritha seek their own in the queen's bower. "A gallant son-in-law this of ours, in all truth," says the king gaily. "Ay. And now you hold East Anglia in your hand, King Offa." "Faith, I suppose so," he answers, laughing "that is, if Etheldrida can manage him as you rule me, my queen! She is ever a dutiful daughter."
He will never marry, but he can cut Robert off with almost the bare title if he displeases him." "Yes," I said. "Torquilstone's mother was one of the housemaids. The old duke married her before he was twenty-one, and she, fortunately, joined her beery ancestors a year or so afterwards; and then much later he married Robert's mother, Lady Etheldrida Fitz Walter.
And at Marden, where Offa built at once the little church which should mark where Ethelbert was hidden, that water which welled from the place whence we took him healed many. Now we went forth from the church for a little while, and presently I went back alone and placed the little gift which Etheldrida had given me on the breast of the king, hiding it next his heart in his robes.
"Father," I said, "I have had a token from the Lady Hilda to say that she is in sore need of help." And with that I told him of our talk yesterday in the little wood, and of the coming of the page to me. "I do not know what this may mean," he said gravely. "They say that the poor Princess Etheldrida is overborne with grief, so that they fear for her life.
But Ethelbert was bright and cheerful as ever; and he bade me see him home to his apartment, for he would talk with me. And I thought rightly that as he had spoken in the Thetford garden of Etheldrida, and as he had also spoken with me more than once on the road hither, so he had much to say of her now.
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