Wessex
land.

CHAPTER III. HOW KING INA'S FEAST WAS MARRED, AND OF A VOW TAKEN BY OSWALD.

At this time, when I take up my story again, I was two and twenty,
not very tall indeed, but square in the shoulder, and well able to
hold my own, at the least, with the athelings who were my comrades,
at the weapon play or any of our sports. It would have been my own
fault if I were not so, for there was no better warrior in all
Ina's following than Owen, and he taught me all I knew. And that
knowledge I had tested on the field more than once, for Ina had no
less trouble with his neighbours than any other king in England,
whether in matters of raiding to be stopped or tribute to be
enforced. Since I was too old to serve the queen as page any longer
I had been of his bodyguard, and where he went was not always the
safest place on a field for us who shielded him.

A court is always changing, as men come and go again to their own
places after some little service there, but Owen and I were of
those to whom the court was home altogether. Owen was the king's
marshal now, and I was in command of the house-carles, and had been
so for a year or more. It was no very heavy post, nor responsible
after all, for Ina's guard was the love of his people, and beyond
these warriors from the freemen who served as palace guard and
watch, were the athelings of the household, from whose number I had
been chosen for this post by right of longest service more than for
any other reason, as I think. I knew all the ins and outs of every
house where Ina went, and had nothing fresh to learn in the matter.
Still, if the men under me were few, the post had its own
privileges, and was always held to lead to somewhat higher, and I
was more than content therewith, for it kept me near Owen and the
king, whom I loved next to my foster father.

I do not think that by this time any one knew, save the king, that
I was not Owen's own son. I was wont to call him father always, and
I cannot be blamed, for he was foster father and godfather to me,
and well did he take the father's place to the orphan whom he had
saved. And I had forgotten Eastdean, save as one keeps a memory of
the home where one was a child. I never thought of it as a place
that should have been mine, for neither the king nor Owen ever
spoke to me concerning it. Sometimes, in remembrances of my father,
I would wonder into whose hands the manors had passed, but rather
in hopes that some day th