Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune<br />A Tale of the Days of Saint Dunstan by A. D. Crake (books to read romance .TXT) 📗

morning he saw them coming, muttered his spells, and while the king —that stone yonder—was in front looking down on his prey, the five knights all whispering together, and the sixty soldiers behind in a circle, they were all suddenly changed into stone.”

They all laughed heartily at this, and leaving the Rholdrwyg Stones, turned aside to the hospitable hall where they ought to have spent the previous night. So delighted was the Thane of Rholdrwyg or Rollrich to receive his guests that he detained them almost by force all that day, and it was only on the morrow that he permitted them to continue their journey.

They joined the Foss Way again after a few miles at Stow on the Wold; the road was so good that they succeeded in reaching Cirencester, the ancient Corinium, that night, a distance of nearly thirty miles. Here they found a considerable population, for the town had been one of great importance, and was still one of the chief cities of southern Mercia, full of the remains of her departed Roman greatness, with shattered column and shapely arch yet diversifying the thatched hovels of the Mercians.

Two more days brought them to Bath, but the old Roman city had been utterly destroyed, and long subsequently the English town had been founded upon its site, so that there seemed no identity between Bath and Aqua Solis, such as prevailed between Cirencester and Corinium.

One day’s journey from Bath brought them at eventide within an easy day of Glastonbury, so that they paused in their journey for the last time at a well-known hostelry, chiefly occupied by pilgrims bound for Glastonbury, for the morrow was a high festival, or rather the commencement of one, and Dunstan was expected to conduct the ceremonies in person.

So crowded was the hostelry that Alfred and his revered tutor could only obtain a small chamber for their private accommodation, while their servants were forced to content themselves with such share of the straw of the outbuildings as they could obtain, in company with many others.

It was still early when they stopped at the inn, for one of their horses, which they had purchased by the way, had broken down so completely that they could not well proceed, and they were about to enter a dark and dangerous forest, full of ravenous bears and wolves, which had already cast its shade upon their path.

But this was not an uncommon feature in English travelling of that century, when there were no horses to be hired at the inns, and travellers could only purchase the animals they needed (if there were any to be sold); the forest, too, was reported to be the haunt of freebooters, and men dared to affirm that they were encouraged by the king to prey upon the fraternity at Glastonbury.

Still the dangers of the forest did not deter Alfred, who dearly loved woodland scenery and sport, from strolling therein when their hasty meal had been despatched, weary of the continuous objurgations and smalltalk of the crowded inn.

He had wandered some distance, lost in thought, when all at once he started in some surprise, for the spot on which he was seemed familiar to him, although he had never been in Wessex before.

Yes, he certainly knew the glade, with the fine beech trees surrounding it: where could he have seen it before? All at once he remembered his dream in the ruined temple, and started to discover the secret foreknowledge he had thus possessed.

He wandered up and down the glade till it became dusk, and then shook off the thoughts to which he had been a prey, and started to return to the inn, when, to his dismay, he found he had forgotten in which direction it lay.

While seeking to find the path by which he had entered the glade, he suddenly noticed a beaten track between two huge rocks, which seemed to point in the direction he had come, and yet which he recognised as the path he had been bidden to follow in his dream. He hesitated not, but committed himself to it, while darkness seemed to increase each moment.

He was beginning to fear the dangers of a night in the woods, when he was startled by a sound as of many low voices, and at the same moment became conscious that a light was tinging with red the upper branches of the trees at no little distance, as if proceeding from some fire, hidden by the formation of the ground.

At first he thought that he was in the neighbourhood of outlaws, and tried to retire, but, as in his dream, he felt so strong an impulse to discover the party whom the woods concealed that he persevered.

Suddenly he stopped short, for he had come to the edge of a kind of natural amphitheatre, a deep hollow in the earth, the sides of which were covered with bushes and trees, while the area at the bottom might perhaps have covered a hundred square yards, and was clothed with verdant turf. Not one, but several fires were burning, and around them were reclining small groups of armed men, while some were walking about chatting with each other.

Alfred gazed in much surprise, for the party did not at all realise his conception of a body of freebooters or robbers; they all seemed to wear the same uniform, and to resemble each other in their accoutrements and characteristics; they rather resembled, in short, a detachment of regular forces than a body of men whom chance might have thrown together, or the fortune of predatory war.

While he gazed upon them, two of their number, whose attire was rich and costly, and who seemed to be of higher rank than the rest, perhaps their officers, attracted his attention as they walked near the spot where, clinging to a tree, he overlooked the encampment from above.

One of them was a tall, dark warrior, whose whole demeanour was that of the professional soldier, whose dress was plain yet rich, and who might easily be guessed to be the commander of the party. He was talking earnestly, but in a subdued tone, to his younger companion, whom he seemed to be labouring to convince of the propriety of some course of action.

Alfred watched them eagerly; the form of the younger—for so he appeared by his slender frame—seemed familiar to him, and when at last they turned their faces and walked towards him, the light of a neighbouring fire showed him the face of his brother Elfric.

“My dream!” he mentally exclaimed.

They were evidently talking about some very important subject, and it was also evident that the objections of the younger, whatever they might be, were becoming rapidly overruled, when, as chance, if it were chance, would have it, they paused in their circuit of the little camp just beneath the tree where Alfred was posted.

“You see,” said the elder, “that our course is clear, so definitely clear that we have but to do our duty to the king, while we avenge a thousand little insults we have ourselves received from this insolent monk—such insults as warriors wash out with blood.”

“Yet he is a churchman, and it would be called utter sacrilege.”

“Sacrilege! is a churchman’s blood redder than that of layman, and is he not doomed as a traitor by a judgment as righteous as ever English law pronounced! did he not keep Edwy from his throne during the lifetime of the usurper Edred!”

“That was the sentence of the Witan, and you served Edred.”

“I did not owe the allegiance of an Englishman to either, being of foreign birth, and so was no traitor; as for the Witan, it is well known Dunstan influenced their decision at the death of the royal Edmund.”

“I never heard the assertion before.”

“You have many things still to learn; you are but young as yet. But let it pass. Does not his conduct to Queen Elgiva merit death!”

“I think it does. But still not without sentence of law.”

“That sentence has been in fact pronounced, for in such cases as these, where the subject is too powerful for the direct action of the law to reach him, the decision of the king and council must pass for law, and they have decided that Dunstan must die, and have left the execution of the sentence—to us.”

He did not add that the council in question consisted of the giddy young nobles who had surrounded Edwy from the first, aided by a few hoary sinners whose lives of plunder and rapine had given them a personal hatred of the Church.

Elfric heaved a sigh, and said:

“If so, I suppose I must obey; but I wish I had not been sent on the expedition.”

“It is to test your loyalty.”

“Then it shall be proved. I have no personal motives of gratitude towards Dunstan.”

“Rather the contrary.”

“Rather the contrary, as you say. But what sound was that? Surely something stirred the bush!”

“A rabbit or a hare. You are becoming fanciful and timid. Well, you will remember that tomorrow there must be no timidity, no yielding to what some would call conscience, but wise men the scruples of superstition. We shall not reach the monastery till dark, most of the visitors will then have quitted it, and we shall take the old fox in a trap.”

“You will not slay him in cold blood!”

“No. I shall bid him follow me to the king, and if he and his resist, as probably they will, then their blood be on their own heads. But surely—”

At that moment a large stone, which Alfred had most inopportunely dislodged, rolled down the bank, and made Elfric, who was in its path, leap aside. Alfred, whose foot had rested upon it, slipped, and for a moment seemed in danger of following the stone, but he had happily time to grasp the tree securely, and by its aid he drew himself back and darted into the wood.

Luckily there was moonlight enough to guide him by the track he had hitherto followed, and he ran forward, dreading nothing so much as to fall into the hands of the friends of his brother, and trusting that he might prevent the execution of the foul deed he had heard meditated. He ran for a long distance before he paused, when he became aware that pursuers were on his track. Luckily his life had been spent so much in the open air that he was capable of great exertion, and could run well. So he resumed his course, although he knew not where it would lead him, and soon had the pleasure of feeling that he was distancing his pursuers. Yet every time he ran over a piece of smooth turf he fancied he could hear them in his rear, and it was with the greatest feeling of relief that he suddenly emerged from the wood upon the Foss Way, and saw the lights of the hostelry at no great distance below him.

His pursuers did not follow him farther, probably unwilling to betray their presence to the neighbourhood, and perhaps utterly unconscious that the intruder upon their peace was possessed of any dangerous secrets, or other than some rustic woodman belated on his homeward way, who would be unable in any degree to interfere with them or to guess their designs.

But it was not till the ardour of his flight had abated, that Alfred could fully realise that his unhappy brother was committed to a deed of scandalous atrocity, and the discovery was hard for him to bear. The strong impression which his dream had made upon him—an impression that he was to be the means of saving his brother from some great sin—came upon him now with greater force than ever, and was of great comfort. The identity of the scenery he had seen in dreamland with the actual scenery he had gone through, made him feel that he was under the special guidance of Providence.

Returning to the inn he sought Father Cuthbert, and found him somewhat uneasy at his long absence, and to him he communicated all that he had seen and heard.

The good father was a man of sound sense but of much affection, and at first he could not credit that the boy he had loved so well, Elfric of Æscendune, should have grown to be the associate of murderers, for such only could either he or Alfred style the agents of Edwy’s wrath.

But, once fully convinced, he was equal to the emergency.

“We will not start at once, we should but break down on the road, and defeat our own object. We must rest quietly, and sleep soundly if possible, and start with the earliest dawn. We shall reach Glastonbury by midday, and be able to warn the holy abbot of his danger in good time.”

So Alfred was