us and the Danes was sure, and that even did they come we
should be ready. When I pressed them indeed, they sent round word
to the sheriffs to be on the watch, and so were content. For our
king was ever a man of peace, hating the name of war and bloodshed,
and only happy in seeing to the welfare of his people, giving them
good laws, and keeping up the churches and religious houses so well
that there were none better to be found than ours in all England.

This pleased me not altogether, for I knew now how well prepared
for war the Danes were, and I would fain have had our men trained
in arms as they. But my one voice prevailed not at all, and after a
while I went down to Reedham, and there bided with my mother and
Eadgyth, very lonely and sad at heart in the place where I had
looked for such happiness with my father and Lodbrok and Halfden at
first, and now of late, for a few days, with Osritha, and Halfden
in Lodbrok's place.

For all this was past as a dream passes, and to me there seemed to
hang over the land the shadow of the terrible raven banner, which
Osritha had helped to work for Lodbrok and his host, in the days
before she dreamed that it might be borne against a land she had
cause to love.

Ever as the days went by I would seek the shipmen who came to
Reedham on their way up the rivers, so that I might hear news from
the Danish shore, where Osritha was thinking of me, till at last I
heard from a Frisian that three kings had gathered a mighty host,
and were even now on their way to England.

I asked the names of those three, and he told me, even as I had
feared, that they were called Ingvar and Hubba and Halfden; and so
I knew that the blow was falling, and that Ingvar had stirred up
other chiefs to join him, and so when the host gathered at some
great Thing, he and his brothers had been hailed kings over the
mighty following that should do their bidding in the old Danish
way. For a Danish king is king over men, and land that he shall
rule is not of necessity {xix}.

Again I warned Eadmund, and again he sent his messages to Ulfkytel
the Earl and to the sheriffs, and for a few weeks the levies
watched along the shore of the Wash; and then as no ships came,
went home, grumbling, as is an East Anglian's wont, and saying that
they would not come out again for naught, either for king or earl.

Now after that I spent many a long hour in riding northward along
the coast, watching for the sails of the fleet, a