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Updated: May 31, 2025
Now it was not long after Streone's death that I had a message from Emma the queen to bid me to her wedding with Cnut, that should be completed with all magnificence. And I went with Thorkel the jarl and Egil, and I could not complain of the welcome I had both from the queen and from Cnut.
"It is ill biding here after sunset. The slain are unquiet by reason of Streone's deeds." "They will not harm me, Thrand," I answered. "I would I lay here with them even now . . . but that is past." I rose up and went down the hill with him, and the sun set behind it, and it was gray and black against the red evening sky.
"But there are thanes and such-like left outside," he said, laughing more yet. "Now Godwine is not here, I dare say that you have felt, more than once, the queen's tongue for nought." "I will deny it," said I, "to anyone but Elfric the abbot," whereat he laughed till the tears came into his eyes. He had known our queen in the old days before Streone's treachery.
But I saw nought of the battle that was at Pen-Selwood, and even as I heard thereof from men who had left the levy, the greatest battle of all was being fought within a morning's ride of us, at Sherston. Two days that battle raged, and all men say that Eadmund would surely have chased the Danes in the end to their ships, but for a trick of Edric Streone's.
Now the goldsmith stood where he could see the long streak of light that shone from the door across the street, and he said to me in a low voice: "There are a dozen armed men outside, lord." Thrand turned round to tell me this message, and as he did so Streone's messenger pushed by him into the hail, rudely enough.
After Streone's death it was plain that Cnut was king indeed, for his Danish jarls knew him too well to despise him. They went each to his place, and the land began to smile again with the peace that had come, and Cnut sent Eirik the jarl home to Denmark with the host, as I have said.
One will, I suppose, never know what hands did the deed, but Streone's doing it was when all is told. There is more in my mind about this than I will say. But Thrand, who had been with me, begged that he might go to Colchester for a while; and I let him go, for he waxed restless, though I knew not what he would leave me for.
And then Streone's eyes lit on one Osmer, a warrior of the Danish host, standing near him, and he saw that he was like our king. Therefore he slew him, and set his head on a spear, and rode forward to where the English line pressed most hardly on the Danish ranks. There he raised the head aloft, shouting in his great voice: "Fly, English, fly! Eadmund is dead. Know his head!"
"Lord king," I said, "let us make a wedge and cut through the Danes inland. So shall we win back to the open country, and we can gather men afresh." He smiled wearily at me, and it seemed to me that at last he had given up hope. And but for Streone's treachery that thing would never have been. It had broken our king's spirit. "Friend," he said, "I will die here if I can."
"But I am going to hang you," and he chuckled in his evil way. There were many meanings in that laugh of Streone's. "You can do as you like with me, as it happens," I answered, "but I had rather swing at a rope's end as an honest man than sit at Cnut's table as Streone the traitor." He tried to laugh, but it stuck in his throat, and so he turned to rage instead. "Smite him," he said to the Danes.
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