"A lady?" said the voice which had spoken first. "Let her bid her men be still, and we will speak with her!"
Then Hilda answered very bravely, "So it shall be. Bid your men free us, and we shall harm none."
The leader spoke in Welsh, and his men fell back from us. Then he came to my side and asked what we did here so late. And as he spoke it came to me that the best thing to do would be to tell him the very truth. No more than himself were we friends of Offa and Quendritha.
"To tell the truth, we are flying from Sutton," I said. "We belonged to the train of Ethelbert of East Anglia."
"Why fly, then?"
"Have you heard nothing of what has been done?" I asked.
"No. We heard that there was a king with Offa; that is all."
Then I told him what our trouble was, and the men round me--for I spoke in Welsh, learned when I was a child from our thralls--understood me; and more than once I heard them speak low words of pity for the young king. They had no unfriendliness for East Anglia.
"Then that is all that the gathering was for?" asked the leader.
And then he suddenly seemed suspicious, and said sharply, with his hand on the neck of my horse: