A King's Comrade: A Story of Old Hereford

by Charles W. Whistler

"Is that so?" I said gravely. "I will go and see."

With that I dived, and stayed under as long as I could, not being able to find the bottom after all.

And when I came up again the honest face of the franklin was white and his eyes stared in terror. So I laughed at him.

"I believe the pool is as deep as you say; but would seven feet of water be any safer?"

"Nay, master, but it would drown me. Yet come out, I do pray you. It gives me the cold terror to see you so overbold."

Then came Father Selred along the bank, and the man begged him to bid me leave the water; and so we both laughed at him, until the franklin waxed cross and went his way, saying that I was a fool for not biding in the shoal water up yonder by the great tree. I could walk across there waist deep, he said, grumbling.

Then I came out, and the father told me that the king would be here anon. We walked to and fro waiting for him, and presently he came with Hilda's father, Sighard, in attendance. The four of us sat down on the river bank, under the great tree of which the franklin had spoken, and watched the trout in the shallows till Ethelbert lay back with his arms under his head, and said that he was tired with the ride and would sleep.

He closed his eyes, and we went on talking in low voices for an hour or so while he slept. And then the horns rang from the distant camp to tell us that the evening meal was spread in the great pavilion. But the king did not hear them, and I looked doubtfully at him, wondering if he should be waked.

"Wilfrid," said Father Selred in a whisper, "surely the king dreams wondrous things. His face is as the face of a saint!"

And so indeed it was as he lay there in the evening light, and I wondered at him. There was no smile around his mouth, but stillness and, as it seemed, an awe of what he saw, most peaceful, so that I almost feared to look on him. The horns went again, soft and mellow in the distance from across the evening meadows. The kine heard them, and thought them the homing call, and so lifted their lazy heads and waded homeward through the grass.