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Updated: June 13, 2025
"Come," she said, "take me to the hut again. My father is well-nigh raving because he is too weak to fight. Once he rose and staggered to the door, and there fell. He cried to you as you stood alone with those savage men before you in the gate. Did you not hear him?" So she spoke fast, and drew me away to the hut, and there Sighard bade me tell him all I might of the fight.
"It is wizardry," said Sighard, groaning, while cold drops broke out on his forehead. "He has been spirited away." "I saw him on the rampart," answered Erling; "but it was his ghost that I saw. I knew it, and came and told my master here." Now there came a silence in which we looked at one another.
To tell the truth, if I feared for any one, it was for Offa himself. Now Ethelbert rose and said that he grew weary and would go to rest. Sighard said that he would get him a light from the council chamber; but he would rather bide in the moonlight, which was enough to fill all the room. So we three went into his sleeping chamber with him.
It is told him that Quendritha has sworn the death of four men of the thane who rides the great pied horse, of his housecarl, of Sighard of Anglia, and of Witred of Bradley, who helped the Anglians to escape." "How knows he all this? It is more than I have heard if I have guessed some of it." The man shrugged his shoulders.
Soon after that they brought Sighard, Hilda's father, there also, and I thought I was in good company, and had no wish to go further. I told the man to bid Erling the Dane come hither when his work in the stables was done, and so he left me. Sighard's men, of whom there were two, had followed him with his packs.
And at that she gave a little plaintive cry, and would have taken his arm, saying for us to hear that he was surely distraught. "Thanes, tell me what is wrong!" she said. "We have no need to tell you," said Sighard savagely, and unheeding the warning grasp of the priest on his arm. "What has been done is your doing." "What mean you?" she flashed on him with a terrible look.
Sighard shook hands with me as if he would set all that he wanted to say into that grasp, and then they passed down the passage once more and were gone. For a while I waited, fearing lest I should hear the sounds of a fight at the far end, but no noise came. But just as I was about to set the trapdoor back in its place I heard footsteps, and stayed. They came from whence my friends had gone.
So it came to pass that before long Erling and I were together and almost alone; out of earshot from any one else, at all events, for Sighard was behind us with one or two more of our own party, and the Mercians whom we followed were ahead. "What have you done to offend this Gymbert?" asked Erling, of a sudden. "Naught that I ken," I answered.
Thence we might find our way when the days wore on and Sighard could travel. That remained to be seen; and, take it all round, I was more easy than I had been. So also seemed the archbishop presently, when I told him the message I had had. And he agreed with us that we might do worse than go to Jefan at once with Hilda; matters being as they were, it was not safe in Mercia.
The six thanes who waited in the council chamber stared at me, but I did not heed them. Across to the king's door I went, and passed in. Selred and the old thane were talking quietly under their breath, and I had but been gone three minutes. "Back again, Wilfrid? Eh, what is amiss?" said Sighard, starting as he set eyes on Erling. "Has the king called you?" I asked hastily.
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