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Updated: June 18, 2025
He was a master hand at riddles, and for hours the housecarles would puzzle their wits over his efforts. This was the manner of them. "Who," Leif would ask, "are the merry maids that glide above the land to the joy of their father; in winter they bear a white shield, but black in summer?" The answer was "Snowflakes and rain."
So soon as we had stepped ashore there came in haste one of our housecarles with word from my mother that Eadmund, the king, had that day come to our house from Caistor; so at once my father bade the man return and bring changes of clothes for himself and me and Lodbrok to our steward's house, that we might appear in more decent trim before our guest and master.
He says he wants to go to Jerusalem Land some day and that would be a good cruise." Now the day after the housecarles left Pevensea, there befell a matter which would have brought them back hastily had we not been in the haven. There was always a beacon fire ready to recall them, and they watched for it even as they wrought in the upland fields, or if they were among the woods.
Just behind me, as I rode with Wulfhere and Wislac to right and left, came my six men, big powerful housecarles, all in black armour and carrying red and black shields, and with a red cross on their helms' fronts. And the squarest of these six, he who seemed to be their leader, looked up at me, when I turned again, with a grin that I seemed to know.
Nor is there need, for the housecarles sing them even yet. Now before we went to rest, Eanulf bade me wait on him early in the morning, and so, being refreshed by a long, quiet night, I went to him as he had bidden me. There he thanked me as man to man for that crossing of Parret, and for staying the going of the Danes, saying that a greater man than he should add to the thanks.
He was clapped on the back, turned round and round, admired from head to foot, shouted at by old companions of his boyhood, naughty young housecarles of his old troop, now settled down into honest thriving yeomen, hard working and hard fighting, who had heard again and again, with pride, of his doughty doings over sea.
We rode with twenty housecarles of Relf's behind us, and it was a new thing to me that I should see the wayside folk run out into the trackway to see us pass; that the farm thralls in the fields should but rise up, straightening stiffened backs and laughing, and stay their work for a moment to watch us; that no man who met us should ask with anxious face, "What news of the Danes?"
And at the bottom of the misty hall, on the other side of the column of blue vapor which went trembling up from the great heap of burning turf amidst, were housecarles, monks, wild men from the Baltic shores, crowded together to hear what was done in that parliament of their betters. They spoke like free Danes; the betters from the upper end of the hall, but every man as he chose.
He was ill; he was laid up at a farm-house far away in the forest, and begged the countess to excuse his absence. He had sent fresh supplies of game, and a goodly company of his men, knights and housecarles, who would escort her royally to Crowland. Judith cared little for his absence; he was but an English barbarian.
The king is treated with great respect by his people, he is finely clad, and his commands are carried out, however abhorrent or absurd, as long as they do not upset customary or statute law. The king has slaves in his household, men and women, besides his guard of housecarles and his bearsark champions.
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