“Then,” said the phlegmatic old Dane, “I will speak to the prior, or to the chamberlain, or to some other official; and as time presses, my Lord Abbat, thou wilt hold me excused if I go and do it at once!”
And thus saying, he left good Thurstan, and went to some of the monks who had been standing near enough to overhear every word that had been said since the Lord Abbat waxed warm. The envious prior was there, and being ever ready to give pain to his superior, he proposed that the chapter should be summoned on the instant. This being agreed to by the major part, the monks withdrew towards the chapter-house, the cunning and cool old Dane saying to some of them as they went thither, that he much feared that if any distaste or disappointment were given to Knut, he would take his fleet back to Danemarck and do nothing for the English. Short, therefore, was the chapter, and decisive the vote, notwithstanding the opposition of Thurstan and a few others: the shrine-boxes were again emptied, and the truly beggar-like amount of silver and gold was put into a silken purse to be carried to Lynn. So incensed was the bounteous Lord Abbat, who ever had a large heart and a scorn for mean and covetous things, that he almost vowed not to go back with the old Dane to salute his royal master, and be present at the delivery of such a gift; but he bethought him that if he went not the prior must go, and that if the prior went some evil might come of it. And so the right noble Abbat of Ely went down to Lynn, together with the exiled abbats of other houses and sundry lords from the Camp of Refuge, much wishing that the Lord of Brunn were with him to aid him in the conference.
As Thurstan landed at Lynn, where he expected to see the royal ship and a good part of its attendant fleet, he was mortified to find that there were no ships there except a few Lynn barques; and, upon going into the town, he was yet more disappointed and distressed by hearing, from some good Saxons who had come in from the hamlets on the coast, that the Danish fleet had sailed away to the northward, leaving only a few of the smaller barks at the anchorage near the Wash. Sharply did he question the old Dane as to these movements. The Dane said that it was possible the prince had run a little along the north coast to pick up news, and that it was quite certain he would soon be back. More than this he would not say, except that patience was a virtue. Some of our Saxons went almost mad with impatience; but on the next day they received intelligence that the fleet had returned to the anchorage off the chapel of our Ladie, and on the day next after that, Knut, with six of his largest ships, sailed up the Wash. In his run to the northward, if he had not picked up much news, he had picked up every English ship or barque that he found afloat, and he had plundered every defenceless village or township that lay near to that coast. He now cast his anchor a long way before he came to Lynn, and instead of proceeding to that good town to meet the English prelates and nobles, he sent up a messenger to summon them on board his own ship. At this the Abbat of Ely was much vexed and startled; and he said to himself, “Who shall tell me that this is not a plot, and that the Danes will not seize us and carry us off, or even deliver us up to the Normans?” but nearly all those who had accompanied him from Ely despaired of the salvation of England without Danish assistance, and were eager to go on ship-board and meet the prince in the way it pleased him to prescribe, and Thurstan grew ashamed of his fears and suspicions. Other good men, however, had their suspicions as well as the Lord Abbat; and when he embarked in the small Danish craft which had been left waiting for the envoy at Lynn, many trusty Saxons of the township and vicinage would absolutely go with him, and every bark or boat that could swim was crowded by the bold Lynn mariners, and rowed down to the Wash.
Knut, the son of the king of Danemarck, standing on his proud gilded ship, received the English prelates and chiefs with great stateliness, yet not without courtesy; and when the silken purse and the scrapings of the shrine-treasures had been presented to him (Thurstan blushing the while), he sat down with his jarls on one side of a long table, and the Englishmen sat down on the opposite side; and then the conference began. Unhapily for the English landsmen a summer storm began to blow at the same time, causing the royal ship to roll, and thus making them feel the terrible sickness of the sea. At this Thurstan almost wished that he had let the prior come, instead of coming himself. Knut, the prince, spoke first in a very few words, and then his jarls further propounded and explained his plan of the war. The Danes indeed had nearly all the talking to themselves, for not many of them understood what the English said, or had patience to hear it interpreted; the qualms and sickness of the English almost took away their power of speech, and, moreover, they very soon discovered that nothing they could say had any effect in altering the opinions and decisions of the predetermined Danes. It was grievous, they said that the English, who had been so rich, should now have so little money to share with their friends and deliverers! They hoped that the good prelates and lords would be able to hold out in the isle of Ely and throughout the fen country; and as they had held out so long, no doubt they could hold out longer. In the meanwhile they, their good allies the Danes, would divide their fleet, and scour all the coast, and sail up all the great rivers, for this would distract the attention of the Normans, would alarm them at one and the same time in many different and distant places, and infallibly compel them to recall their forces from Cam-bridge and Stamford, and to give up all premeditated attacks on the fen country.
“Aye,” said a sea-rover, whose yellow hair had grown as white as snow with excess of age, and whose sunken eye glistened at the memory of past adventures of that sort, “Aye, Saxons! we will sweep all this eastern coast from north to south and from south to north, as with a besom! We will sail or row our barks up every river that flows into the sea on this side of your island, and that hath keels on its waters or towns on its banks. Tweed, Tyne, and Humber, Trent, Orwell, Stour, and Thamesis, with all the rivers that run between them or into them, shall hear our war-cry as of yore!”
“But, alas!” said one of the Saxon lords, “who will suffer in this kind of war but the Saxons? The Normans have very few ships. The ships on the coast and on the rivers, and the townships and hamlets, are all English still, and cannot be seized or destroyed without ruin to us and the cause which the king of Danemarck hath engaged to support.”
The old sea-rover was silent, and the other Danes pretended not to understand what the Saxon lord said. Abbat Thurstan told the prince that of a surety the Saxons in the Camp of Refuge could continue to defend themselves; but that they could do still better if the Danes would spare them some arms and other warlike harness, and remain for a while in the Wash and in the rivers which empty themselves into it, in order to co-operate with the Saxons. Knut, who well knew that there was nothing to be picked up in those waters, shook his head, and said that his own plan was the best, and could not be altered; and that, touching the matter of arms and harness, he had none to spare, but that he would send over to the Netherlanders’ country and buy, if the Saxons would give him the money. Here the abbat and the Saxon lords were silent. But when Knut spoke of the great losses which the Danes had suffered in the foundering of their return fleet the year before,[[194]] Thurstan reddened and said, “The Jarl Osbiorn acted a traitorous part, and hath been treated as a traitor by his brother and king. That loss was the direct judgment of Heaven! The fleet was loaded with the spoils of England and with the money taken from the Norman for betraying the English! Prince, and jarls all! if ye be come to do as Osbiorn did last year, I say look to your fleet, and look to the health of your own souls!”
Hereupon Knut and his great chiefs began to cross themselves, and to make many promises and protestations; and then the prince called for wine and pledged the Lord Abbat of Ely and the other English lords, lay and ecclesiastic, severally: and when they had all drunk wine, he broke up the conference and dismissed them in a very unhappy state both of mind and of stomach, for the storm had increased, and the wine was sour and bad. The royal Dane hauled in his anchors and set sail to get out of the Wash and from among the dangerous sandbanks. As soon as the Saxon lords got ashore at Lynn, and free from their exceeding great sickness, Thurstan said that he greatly feared a woeful error had been committed in inviting the Danes back again, and that a short time would show that the Lord of Brunn had been quite right in recommending the Saxons to trust to their own arms and efforts for their independence; but those lords who had voted for the invitation said that it was clear the Danes would have come back whether they had been invited or not, and that it was equally clear that England could not be saved without the aid of some foreign nation. These lords also thought that a crowned king like Svend Estrithson would not break his royal word, and that the prince his son would not act like Osbiorn, albeit he might, in the ancient manner of the Danes, be too eager to scour the seas and rivers and capture whatever he might find, whether it belonged to friend or foe, to Saxon or to Norman. Yet, truth to say, these lords were far from feeling assured, and save one or two, that were afterwards proved to be false traitors in their hearts, they all returned to Ely sadder men than they were when they left it to go to meet Knut.
That which the white-headed sea-rover had said, and a great deal more than he uttered, speedily came to pass: north and south the English coast was plundered; and, ascending the many rivers in their lighter vessels and in their boats, the Danes went far into the interior of the country, pillaging, burning, and destroying, even as their forefathers had done in the heathenish times. Up the broad Humber they went until they got into the Yorkshire Ouse, and they would have gone on to the city of York, but that it was strongly garrisoned by Normans, and the whole country a desert—a desert which Osbiorn and his evil company had made in the preceding year. On the river Yare they went as high as the good city of Norwich, but they ventured not to attack the Normans in that place.[[195]] The Waveney, too, and the Ald they visited, nor left the poor Saxons there so much as a fishing-boat. Up the river Deeben as far as the wood bridge, where a pleasant town hath since risen; and between the pleasant, green-wooded banks of the Orwell, they sailed many a league. After ravaging the banks of the Stour, Knut collected all his ships together and then spread his sails on the smooth Medway and the broad Thamesis, going up the Thamesis almost to London; and then mooring his ships, and making a great show as though he intended to land an army and lay siege to the Tower of London, which the Normans were then busily enlarging and strengthening.
Not all the doings of the Danes, and the robberies and cruelties they committed upon poor defenceless Saxons, could be known in the Camp of Refuge; yet enough was known by the report of the country people to grieve every English heart in the camp, and to confirm the worst suspicions which Abbat Thurstan had conceived. On the other hand, it was made apparent that the Normans were greatly distracted by this new invasion, and that, while their vicomtes and knights and men-at-arms were marching in almost every other direction, none of them came near to the last asylum of Saxon liberty. In truth, the posts which had previously been drawn round the fen country were so far weakened that the Lord Hereward, who had again taken a direct and entire command in the Camp of Refuge, made several good sallies from the fens and brought back not a few Norman prisoners, together with good store of provision.