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The spot has been chosen by the King with the utmost care, for it is his last throw. He names it the Etheling's eig or island, "Athelney." Probably his young son, the Etheling of England, is there among the first, with his mother and his grandmother Eadburgha, the widow of Ethelred Mucil, the venerable lady whom Asser saw in later years, and who has now no country but her daughter's.
These fasts from sleep will parch your young brains. I go up to the platform because I would rather walk than rest; but do you remain here by the fire and try to catch a drowsiness from its heat." But the page advanced with the old wilful shake of his curly head. "I also would rather walk, if you please." As he looked at him, compassion came into the Etheling's face.
"I do not understand you," Sebert said slowly, and quite truthfully. The Dane grinned at him. "I mean that I will fetch you in to the one who sent you the summons." "The one who sent you the summons?" Certainly that sounded as though he were using the words to conceal a name. Neither the Etheling's patience nor his temper was long enough to reach below the knee.
The Etheling's eyes were riveted on the other's lips; his every muscle strained toward him. Under the stimulus the page's words seemed to come a little less uncertainly, a little more quickly. "I think I could manage it for you, lord. They think me your unwilling captive: you remember what the messenger said about freeing me?
The old proverb has it right, 'When the chief fails, the host quails. It was when they had become frightened about him that they began to give way, and after that it was easy for any oaf to jump out of the bushes and put them to flight." This time the Etheling's smile was rather unwilling. "Oh! If you think fit to set at naught a brave deed because nothing arose from it!
Pitching his cloak higher on his shoulders, he fastened his eyes on a hole in the tapestry behind the Etheling's chair and began monotonously to recite his lesson: "Rothgar, the son of Lodbrok, sends you greeting, Sebert Oswaldsson; and it is his will that you surrender to him the odal and Tower of Ivarsdale; as is right, because the odal was created and the Tower was built by Ivar Vidfadmi, who was the first son of Lodbrok and the father's father's father of my chief " In spite of himself, he was obliged to stop to take in breath.
Yonder comes Wikel making strange signs to you." All heads but Randalin's turned in the direction he was looking. She was still too lethargic for curiosity; and she found a kind of dreamy content in lying with her eyes upon the Etheling's handsome face.
Like smoke in the wake of a firebrand, confusion rose behind him; a din of exclamations loosed on the air and the clangor of weapons caught down from the wall. Through it, the Etheling's voice sounded strongly. "To the palisade, all of you! They may not wait till morning. To the forest side; and keep them from it as you would keep off death!" He bent and shook the crouching page. "My armor, boy!
I will make a condition with Edmund that the Etheling's odal shall not be included in the land which is peace-holy, and that to ravage it shall not be looked upon as breaking the truce. Then can you betake yourself thither and sit down with your following, and have no one but yourself to blame if you fail a second time.
As the red-cloaked figure still hung back, he pulled it gently forward until the light of the notched candles fell brightly on the face, pitifully white for all its blood-stains, in the frame of tumbled black tresses. "A Dane?" the women cried shrilly; then, with equal unanimity, burst out laughing. Randalin drew a little nearer the Etheling's sheltering side.
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