kindly for Godwine's
sake, he said, and his own liking for me also.

"I shall look for you at Pevensea yet. Come to me when things go
ill with you, and you shall be welcome."

I knew not if ever I should see Sussex again. But of this I was
sure now, that if fortune went with me presently, I would surely
seek Ailwin and tell him that I must be free, and so would seek
Uldra, and ask her to share what I might have to give her, if a
home should be mine again. I had thought much of this brave, quiet
maiden while I was chafing at doing nought in Wulfnoth's farmstead,
though I would not have stayed at Penhurst.

Now came a time when the victory was ours, and it seemed that at
last the strong hand had come. For men would follow Eadmund, and he
had the power of making them fight as he would. Yet there was
nothing that would keep our levies together. Had they done so we
had surely conquered, but it was ever the same. They fought and
dispersed, and all the work and loss was for nought. I think it
would have been the same with the Danish host had they been in
their own country; but here they must needs hold together, and Cnut
and his jarls wielded that mighty force as a man wields his sword.
Eadmund smote as a man who fells his enemy with a staff that breaks
in the smiting, so that he must needs seek another while his fallen
foe rises again, sword in hand.

But our men were called from home and fireside to fight, and when
they won and their own fields and houses were safe, they thought
they had done all, and went home again, at ease, and maybe boasting
overmuch.

We marched on London and relieved the city, driving the Danes in
flight to their ships. And Eadmund slept that night among a great
host; and in the morning the Wessex men were going home, and only
his own housecarles and the men who followed him from ruined Mercia
and East Anglia and Kent would bide around him. London could take
care of herself now. But Eadmund strove to gather them for one more
blow, and we had a great fight at Brentford, for the Danes had gone
up river, and we won. Yet the Danes turned on us when the ships
were reached, and we lost many men in the river, for they scattered
in their eagerness to plunder the ships that they thought were
already won, and so, without order or leaders, were driven to their
death in the swift water.

Then Wessex disbanded, and all the work of gathering our forces
must be done over again; and at once the Danes closed i