Burning with revenge--for his own sister had fallen in the massacre on St. Brice's night--Sweyn returned to England the following year (1003). He landed in Devonshire, took Exeter by storm, and returned to his ships laden with the spoil. Then he sailed eastward, landed again and ravaged Dorset and Wiltshire. Here the ealdorman Elfric met him with a large English army; but when he saw the foe he fell sick, or feigned to be so; and then the old proverb came true, "When the general fails, the army quails." So the English looked on with fear and trembling, while Sweyn burnt Wilton and Salisbury, whence he returned to the sea laden with wealth and stained with blood; yet was not his revenge satisfied.
The following year East Anglia suffered as Wessex had suffered the year before. Ulfketyl, the ealdorman, gave them much money, hoping to buy peace from the merciless pagans. The result was as he might have expected. They took the money, laughing at his simplicity, and three weeks afterwards pillaged Thetford, and burnt it. Then Ulfketyl, who was a brave man, got an East Anglian army together, and fought the Danes, giving them the uncommon chastisement of a defeat, so that they escaped with difficulty to their ships.
The following year a famine so severe visited England, that even the Danes forebore to ravage so poor a land; but in 1006, the next year, they overspread Wessex like locusts. Here the action of our tale is resumed.
During this interval of four years in Aescendune there had been peace. Alfgar had been domesticated as one of the family, and was reported well of in all the neighbourhood. Diligent in the discharge of his religious duties, he was equally conspicuous in all warlike sports and exercises and in the chase, while he afforded much help to Elfwyn the thane in the management of the estate. In short, he had won his way to the hearts of all the family; and perhaps the report that he was the accepted suitor of the fair daughter of Aescendune, Ethelgiva, was not without foundation.
Ethelgiva was nearly his own age, and was a perfect type of that beauty which has ever distinguished the women of the Anglo-Saxon race. Her fair hair, untouched by artificial adornment, hung like a shower of gold around her shoulders, while her eyes were of that delicate blue which seemed to reflect the deep summer sky; but the sweet pensive expression of her face was that which attracted nearly all who knew her, and made her the object of general regard.
Bertric was now about sixteen--a handsome, attractive boy, full of life and fire, yet still possessing that devotion which Father Cuthbert had remarked in him as a boy of twelve. As the heir to the lands of Aescendune, and the only son, he would have been in much danger of being spoiled had he been less genuine and manly than he was. He and Alfgar were inseparable; they seemed to revive again the traditional love of Nisus and Euryalus, or Orestes and Pylades.
The famine, which had made Wessex too poor even to serve as a bait for the Danes, had also afflicted Mercia, but not nearly so severely, and the generosity of the family of Aescendune had been exerted to the utmost on behalf of the sufferers.
But the spring of the year 1006 bade fair to atone for the past. It was bright and balmy. May was just such a month as the poets love to sing, and June, rich in its promise of fruit, had passed when the events we are about to relate occurred. At this time there was some hope amongst the people that God had at length heard the petition breathed so often in the penitential wail of the Litany-- "From the cruelty of our pagan enemies, good Lord, deliver us"-- and they forgot that the massacre on St. Brice's night yet cried for vengeance.
It was a fine summer's evening towards the end of the month of July, and the sun was slowly setting behind the wood-crowned range of hills in the west, where the forest terminated the pastures of Aescendune; the cattle were returning to their stalls; the last load of hay was being transferred from the wain to the rick, and all things spoke of the calm and rest of a sweet night, fragrant with the breath of honeysuckle and wild brier, when nature herself seems to court luxurious repose.
The priory bell was tolling for compline, and thither many of the people, released from their labour, were wending their way. The Thane and his children, accompanied by Alfgar, paused on their homeward road, and when the drowsy tinkling ceased, deep silence seemed to fall over the landscape, while the night darkened--if darkness it could be called when the moonbeams succeeded to the fiercer light of the glowing orb of day.