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Updated: May 24, 2025
Until now the Mercian brothers might be a trouble, but they were not strong enough to be a danger to the kingdom. Now that they hold half of it in their hands this marriage has become a necessity. I must stand aside. What is my happiness and my life that I should be an obstacle alike to my lord's glory and the peace of England?
But the war of the English people with the Britons seems at this moment to have died down for a season, and the Mercian ruler boldly broke through the barrier which had parted the two races till now by allying himself with a Welsh King, Cadwallon, for a joint attack on Eadwine. The armies met in 633 at a place called the Heathfield, and in the fight which followed Eadwine was defeated and slain.
"A wedding, and a son-in-law whom you may bend to your will," answers the king; but his eyes are bright, and there comes a flash into them. That would be a mighty realm indeed, greater than any which had yet been in our land. If the East Anglian levies were his, he would march across Wales at their head, with the Mercian hosts to right and left of him.
The man shook his head, but laughed. "They are bold enough to shoot at us, however," he said. "You would do the same if you met a Mercian cattle lifter," laughed Kynan. "That is naught." Jefan rode in slowly, bidding us good morrow cheerfully as he came. Kynan said that he supposed the owners of the kine were about.
"If he had been a Mercian, or even a Saxon, I would have had him here, but a fisher has had no training in arms after all." "Some of us have," said I. The captain looked me up and down, and then walked round me, saying nothing until we were face to face again. "That, I take it, is a hint that you might like to be a housecarl of the king's," he said. "Are you a Lindseyman?"
For the Thames Valley was that which divided the vague Mercian land from which we get our weights, our measures, and the worst of our national accent, and cut it off from that belt of the south country which was the head and the heart of England until the last industrial revolution of our history.
The West-Saxons were driven across the Thames, and nearly all their settlements to the north of that river were annexed to the Mercian realm.
Now is given me to see plainly what shall be in the time to come to what all tends even now. For now in the time of my death comes to me rede unearthly, as I think. There must be a strong hand who shall weld England into one who shall bid our land forget that difference has ever been betwixt Angle and Saxon, Jute and Northumbrian, Mercian and Wessexman, Saxon and English and Dane.
The boards were of hewn oak, and how thick one could not tell. "Fetch Offa the king," said a Mercian; "we had better tell him. No use in gaping here. We can swear that Ethelbert has not passed out of these doors." "No," said Selred quickly; "that were to wake the whole palace. Let us seek further into this. Thanes, if aught has been done amiss to our king, we are all in danger."
Missing the Mercian, it struck down a man at his side; and high above the voice of the ill-fated King rose the shrill alarms of the traitor's heralds. "Fly, ye men of Dorsetshire and Devon! Fly and save yourselves! Here is your Edmund's head!" Randalin stared about her, doubting her senses. But light had begun to dawn on Canute. He wheeled sharply, as Thorkel pushed his horse to their sides.
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