The King's Sons by George Manville Fenn (popular books to read .txt) 📗

daring thing to do, for it might have ended in being made a prisoner without the chance of giving the alarm; but the brave act turned out to be quite wise, for when at last the boy had drawn near to the great body of armed men and crouched lower till he found a place through which he could peer cautiously, he sprang to his feet with a shout of joy.

For there in front rode his father, King Ethelwulf, mounted upon a sturdy horse, but so changed that he hardly knew him, for he was wearing a Danish helmet ornamented with a pair of grey gull’s wings, half-opened and pointed back, while in his left hand he carried a Danish shield painted with a black raven, and in his right was a shining double battle-axe.

Alfred’s cry was answered by a shout from the men, and Ethelwulf rode forward to meet his son, who grasped his extended hands and sprang up to sit in front of him upon the horse.

“Your mother—Osburga?” said the King hoarsely.

“Ill, father, because you do not come,” cried the boy excitedly.

“Hah! Then she will soon be well,” said the King, with a sigh of content. “Yonder is plump little Swythe coming to welcome me, I see,” he continued; “but where are your brothers?”

“I don’t know, father,” replied the boy, innocently enough. “They have not come back from hunting, I think.”

King Ethelwulf frowned, but said no more then, contenting himself with pressing forward to give his hand to Swythe, who had followed the boy as soon as he saw him change his course; and soon after the King’s heart was gladdened by seeing Osburga with her train of women and serfs coming to meet them, answering the Saxon soldiers’ cheers. But Bald, Bert, and Red had even then not come back from the chase.

That night the King told of the great victory which he had at last gained over the Danish invaders, who had been defeated with great slaughter near Farringdon, and it was in memory of that victory that the King returned to the battlefield with his men on a peaceful errand, and that was to use the spade instead of the battle-axe and sword, while they cut down through the green turf on one hill-side, right down to the clean, white, glistening chalk, after the lines had been marked out and the shape cleverly designed, working for weeks and weeks till there, on the slope they had carved out a huge white horse over a hundred yards in length—the Great White Horse of the Berkshire downs, which has remained as if galloping along until this day.

Year after year the scouring of that horse, as it is called, takes place, when men go and clear out the brown earth that has crumbled through frost and rain into the ditch-like lines which mark the horse’s shape on the green hill-side, and make it stand out white and clear as ever.

No one will think it strange after what has been told that the youngest of those four boys grew up under Swythe’s teaching wise and learned, and as brave as, or braver than, either of his three brothers, who, when at last King Ethelwulf died, succeeded in turn to be King of England. They each sat on the throne—Ethelbald, Ethelbert, and Ethelred; but their reigns were short, for in twenty years they too had passed away, to be succeeded by the strong, brave, and learned man who drove the Danish’ invaders finally from the shores of England, or forced them to become peaceful workers of the soil. He was the brave warrior who never knew what it was to be conquered, but tried again and again till the enemy fled before him and his gallant men.

Old chronicles tell many stories of his deeds—stories that have grown old and old—and they tell too that the studious boy’s teacher Swythe became Bishop of Winchester and was called a saint, while old writers have worked up a legend about the rain christening the apples on Saint Swithin’s Day, and when it does, keeping on sprinkling them for forty days more; but, like many other stories, that one is not at all true, as any young reader may find out by watching the weather year by year.

But that does not matter to us, who have to deal with Alfred the Little, and who willingly agree that as he grew up he was worthily given the name of Alfred the Great.