A Prince of Cornwall. Charles W. Whistler
"I cannot have a stranger pass my hall at this time in the evening, when it is too late to reach the town in safety. Here you must at least lodge for the night, or Eastdean will be shamed. Your voice tells me that you are a stranger--but maybe you have your men waiting for you at hand? There will be room for them also."
For there was that in the tones of the voice of this man which told my father that here he had no common wanderer.
"I am alone," my friend said. "But your men seek the little one even yet in the forest. Will you not call them in?"
My father looked at the man for a moment, and smiled.
"Ay, I forgot in my joy. They are well-nigh as anxious as I have been."
Then he took down the great horn that hung by the door, and wound the homing call that brings all within its hearing back to the hall, and its hoarse echoes went across the silent woods until it was answered by the other horns that passed on the message until the last sounds came but faintly to us. I heard men cheering also, for they knew by the token that all was well. My father had me in his arms all this time, standing in the door.
"There would have been sorrow enough had he been lost indeed," my father said. "He is the last of the old line, and the fathers of those men whom you hear have followed his fathers since the days of Ella. Come in, and they will thank you also. Where did you find him?"
Then as he turned and went into the hall the light flashed red on my jerkin suddenly, and he cried, "Here is blood on his clothing!--Is he hurt?"
"No," I said stoutly; "maybe it is the blood of the stoat I slew, or else it has come off the shepherd's sleeves. He hewed off the wolf's head and hung it on the tree."
Then my father understood what my peril had been--even that which he and all the village had feared for me, and his face paled, and he held out his hand to the man, drawing in his breath sharply.
"Woden!" he cried, "what is this, friend? Are you hurt, yourself? For the wolf must be slain ere his head can be hefted, as we say."
"No hurt to any but the wolf," the man said, smiling a little. "We did but meet with one who called the pack on us. So I even hung his head on a tree, that the pack when it came might stay to leap at it. They were all we had to fear, and maybe that saved us."
"I marvel that you are not even now in the tree, yourself--with the boy."
"Nay, but the frost is cruel, and he would have been sorely feared with the leaping and howls of the beasts. There were always trees at hand as we fled, if needs were to take to them. It was in my mind that it were best to try to get him home, or near it."
Then said my father, gripping the hand that met his: "There is more that I would say, but I cannot set thoughts into words well. Only, I know that I have a man before me. Tell me your name, that neither I nor the boy may ever forget it."
"Here, in the Saxon lands, men call me Owen the Briton," he answered simply.
"I thought your voice had somewhat of the Welsh tone," my father said. "And your English is of Mercia. I have heard that there are Britons in the fenland there."
"I am of West Wales, Thane, but I have bided long in Mercia."
Then came my old nurse, and there were words enough for the time. Her eyes were red with weeping, but it was all that my father could do to prevent her scolding me soundly then and there for the fright I had given her. But she set a great bowl of bread and milk before me, and the men began to come in at that time, and they stood in a ring round me and watched me eat it as if they had never seen me before, while my father spoke aside of the flight to Owen on the high place. But concerning his own story my father asked the stranger no more until he chose to open the matter himself.
After supper there was all the tale to be told, and when that was done the Welshman slept before the hall fire with the house-carles, but my father had me with him in the closed chamber beyond the high seat, for it seemed that he would not let me go beyond his sight again yet.
Now, that is how Owen came to me at first, and the first thing therefore that I owe to him is nothing less than life itself. And from that time we have been, as I have said, together in all things.
On the next morning my father made his guest take him back over the ground we had crossed together, for no fresh snow had fallen, and the footprints were plain to be followed almost from the gate of the hall stockade. So they came at last to the tree, and on it the head hung yet, but the body was clean gone. All round the tree the snow was reddened and trampled by the fierce beasts who leapt to reach the head, and the marks of their clawing was on the trunk, where they had tried to climb it. From the footmarks it seemed that there were eight or nine of them. Three great ones had left the head and followed us presently as far as the brook, half a mile away.
After that the two men went on to the place where Owen had found me, and there my father, judging from the dress and loneliness of the Briton that he might be able to help him somewhat, said:
"I do not know what your plans may be, but is there any reason why you should not bide here and help me tend the life you have kept for me?"
Then answered Owen: "You know nought of me, Thane. For all you ken, I may be but an outlaw who is fleeing from justice."
"Do I know nought about you? I think that last night and what I have seen today have told me much, and I have been held as a good judge of a man. If so be that you were an outlaw, which I do not think, what you have done is enough to inlaw you again with any honest man--even had you taken a life, for you have saved one. Did I know you were an outlaw I would see to your pardon. But maybe you are on a journey that may not be hindered?"
Now Owen was silent for a little, and there came a shadow over his face as he answered, slowly and with his eyes on the far sea:
"No man's man am I, and I am but drifting Westward again at random. Yet I can say in all truth, that I am no wanderer for ill reason in any wise. I will tell you, Thane, here and alone, that there are foes in my home for whose passing, in one way or another, I must needs wait. Even now I was on my way to Bosham, where they tell me are Western monks with whom I might bide for a time, if not altogether. I was lost in the forest last night."
Now my father saw that some heavy sorrow of no common sort lay beneath the quiet words of the man before him, and he forbore to ask him more. Also, he deemed that in the Welsh land he would surely rank as a thane, for his ways and words bespoke more than his dress would tell. Therefore he said:
"Wait here with us for a while at least. There will be no more welcome guest."
"Let me be of some use, rather," Owen answered. "If I bide with you, Thane, and I thank you for the offer, let it be as I have bided elsewhere from time to time--as one of the household, not as an idle guest, if it were but to help the woodmen in the forest."
"Why, that will be well. I need a forester, and it is plain that you are a master of woodcraft. Let it be so. Yet I must tell you one thing fairly, and that is, that I am what you would call a heathen. I know that you are a good Christian man, for I saw you sign your holy sign before you ate last night and this morning. Yet I do not hate Christians."
"I had heard that all Sussex was turned to the faith," Owen said.
"If one says that all the men have gone to market, one knows that here and there one is excepted for good reason. It is not for a thane of the line of Woden to give up the faith of his fathers idly. I do not know what may be in the days to come, but here in the Andredsweald some dozen of us will not leave the old gods. It was the bidding of Ethelwalch the king that we should do so, but that is not a matter wherein a king may meddle, as it seems to us."
"I do not know why I should not bide with you, Thane, if so be that there is no hindrance to my faith."
"That there will be none. Why, the most of my folk are Christian enough. And if a man of the Britons did not honour his old faith it would be as strange as if I honoured not that of my fathers. I have no quarrel with the faith of any man, either king or thrall."
"Then