A King's Comrade: A Story of Old Hereford

by Charles W. Whistler

Now Offa had turned angrily as he heard Sighard speak to the queen in no courteous wise, but Erling had not heeded his look or what wrath might light on him. Before he could say aught, and it was plain that he was going to speak angrily enough, Offa heard the first words of the Dane, and checked himself.

And when he had heard, he said in a cold voice, slowly, "So that tale is true after all. I can believe it now, though once I slew a man who told it me."

With that he turned on his heel and passed through the door and was gone, paying no more heed to the queen than to us. For a long moment she stood and glared at Erling, and I think that she remembered his face in some dim way, so that the old days came back to her, and with that remembrance the terror that had been in them. And as she stood there in the torchlight she seemed to have grown old of a sudden, and her face was gray and lined, while her long white hands worked as they fell at her side.

But not another word did she say, though her lips seemed to form somewhat, and in her eyes was written most terrible hate and anger. She took her gaze from Erling, for he did not shrink from it, and let it rest for a moment on Sighard with a meaning which made him pale as he thought of Hilda, who was yet in her hands, and so went from the room suddenly, and the door was closed after her from within.

Then said Witred the Mercian earnestly, "Friends, an you value your lives, get you hence while yet that passage is open. I am going with those who do go, for we who have seen and heard all this will not be suffered to live to tell it."

"It seems to me that Erling's tale is not new to some folk here," I said.

"It is an old tale with us, but we did not believe it. It had been well-nigh forgotten, for it was nowise safe to do so much as whisper it.

"But, thanes, did you mark the face of the king?"

"It was terrible," said Selred, shuddering: "it was as the face of the lost."

And then out in the courtyard the horns blew the morning call cheerily, and the hall buzzed in a moment with the rousing of the men who slept along its walls, and there reached us the sound of jest and laughter and shouts as they waked the heavy sleepers.