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Updated: June 20, 2025
"As you will, as you will, dear our King," cried Vebba, as spokesman for the soldiers. "Fear us not life and death, we are yours." "Life and death yours, and freedom's," cried the Kent men. Coming now towards the royal tent beside the standard, the discipline was more perfect, and the hush decorous.
He set his teeth firmly, looked on, and only by gesture and smothered exclamations showed his emotions of hope and fear. At length he cried: "Gallant Gurth! brave Leofwine, look to their pennons; right, right; well fought, sturdy Vebba! Ha! they are moving this way. The wedge cleaves on it cuts its path through the heart of the foe."
Some of the Kentish men gave chase to the fugitives, but in vain; for the nature of the ground favoured flight. Vebba, and the rest, now joined by Hilda's lithsmen, gained the spot where Harold, bleeding fast, yet strove to keep his footing, and, forgetful of his own wounds, was joyfully assuring himself of Edith's safety.
"Enough," cried Vebba, the blunt thegn from Saxon Kent; "it is plain that neither King nor Witan can replace thee in thine earldom. Tell us not farther of these atrocities; or by're Lady, if the Northumbrians had chased thee not, we would."
"To Edward, son of Ethelred, his most gracious king and lord, Godwin, son of Wolnoth, sends faithful and humble greeting, by Vebba, the thegn-born. He prays the King to hear him in kindness, and judge of him with mercy.
"Return, brave and dear friend," he said to Vebba, "find out Siward the Earl; tell him that I, Godwin, his foe in the old time, place honour and life in his hands, and what he counsels that will we do. Go." The Kent man nodded, and regained his boat. Then spoke Harold. "Father, yonder are the forces of Edward; as yet without leaders, since the chiefs must still be in the halls of the King.
The stout Vebba looked perplexed; but after stroking his beard thoughtfully, he answered thus: "Though of Kent, and therefore in his earldom, I am not one of Godwin's especial party; for that reason was I chosen his bode. Those who are under him doubtless love a chief liberal to give and strong to protect. The old age of a great leader gathers reverence, as an oak gathers moss.
"Troth and faith!" said Vebba, wiping his brow, "this crowd is enow to make plain roan stark wode. I would not live in London for all the gauds in the goldsmith's shops, or all the treasures in King Edward's vaults. My tongue is as parched as a hay-field in the weyd-month. Holy Mother be blessed! I see a Cumen-hus open; let us in and refresh ourselves with a horn of ale."
Meanwhile the land forces drew up close to the Strand, almost within bow-shot of the King's troops, that kept the ground inland; thus Vebba saw before him, so near as scarcely to be distinguished from each other, on the river the rival fleets, on the shore the rival armaments. High above all the vessels towered the majestic bark, or aesca, that had borne Harold from the Irish shores.
Again I say, failing the Atheling, whom could we choose but Harold, brother-in-law to the King: descended through Githa from the royalties of the Norse, the head of all armies under the Herr-ban, the chief who has never fought without victory, yet who has always preferred conciliation to conquest the first counsellor in the Witan the first man in the realm who but Harold? answer me, staring Vebba?"
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