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Updated: June 22, 2025
Wilfred, whom you first learned to love at Aescendune, as you have often told me." "Yes," said Edwy; "you remember, Ella, how I used to steal away even from the chase, and visit his chapel at the priory which your worthy father founded. Truly, I mused upon the saint so much that I marvel he appeared not to me; I think he did once." "Indeed!" exclaimed his auditors.
Yet I was deeply puzzled to understand what motive could have brought a war party so far, and why they had passed so many flourishing homes to come to poor secluded Aescendune. Surely, thought I, there is some great mystery hidden in this, which time may perhaps show.
It was the evening of Thursday, the fifth of October, in year of grace one thousand and sixty and six. The setting sun was slowly sinking towards a dense bank of clouds, but as yet he gladdened the woods and hills around the old hall of Aescendune with his departing light.
He recognised us by our habits, and came and looked with me at the orphan as he lay on the bank. The boy had received no serious wound, but was exhausted, as much I thought by the violence of his emotions as by his injuries. He was wet through; his clothes were torn with brambles, for he had followed a straight path through six miles of tangled forest, from Aescendune.
"Why, oh why did I leave Aescendune, dear Aescendune? fool that I was I will go back." And a sweet desire of home and kindred rose up before him of his father's loving welcome, his fond mother's chaste kiss, and of the dear old woods and waters the hallowed associations of his home life. He rose up to seek Father Benedict, determined to enter upon the path of peace at any cost, when Edwy entered.
Benedict, have come, in the name of the rightful owners of this house, and in the power of the Church, to demand that he deliver up Elfric of Aescendune to the safe keeping of his friends." "I will send your message; but keep a civil tongue in your mouth, Sir Monk, and don't begin muttering any of your accursed Latin, or I will see whether the Benedictine frock is proof against an arrow."
"Why, a wretched exercise to write out. There, you see it before you; isn't it a nuisance?" "It is not very hard, is it?" "Don't you think it hard? See whether you can do it!" Elfric smiled, and wrote out the simple Latin with ease, for he had been well instructed by Father Cuthbert at Aescendune. He had scarcely finished when a firm step was heard upon the stairs.
"Nay, my brother, it cannot be; thou art jesting; not, at least, the Wilfred of Aescendune I once knew, and by whom I fear I dealt somewhat hardly; he died, and was buried at Oxenford thirty years agone. I saw his dead body; I beheld his burial; I have joined in masses for his soul; I have prayed for his repose; nay, it cannot be!"
There, swathed in woollen winding sheets, lay the mute form of Wilfred of Aescendune. "Let him see thee when he arises. The sight of this deathly place may slay him. He will awake as from sleep. Take this sponge bathe well the brow; how the aromatic odour fills the vaults!" A minute no result. Another. "Dog, hast thou deceived me and slain him? If so, thou shalt not escape."
"Parricide!" exclaimed the indignant prisoner. "My father, more fortunate than I, died fighting against thee at Senlac." "Hugo of Aescendune and Malville was nevertheless thy father by adoption; and by the law of civilised nations, carried with that adoption the rights and prerogatives of a sire. But we waste time. Herald, summon the accuser."
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