A Prince of Cornwall / A Story of Glastonbury and the West in the Days of Ina of Wessex

by Charles W. Whistler

Now at supper, presently, there was Dunwal, looking anxious, as I thought, but trying not to shew it. His daughter Mara was there also, and as it happened she sat next to me. I suppose the seneschal set her there as we had crossed from Dyfed together, unless she had asked it, or gone to that seat without asking. She was very pleasant, talking of the troubles of the voyage, and so went on to speak sadly enough of the greater trouble that had waited her.

"I am glad the king has kept us, however," she said. "I can be content with the court rather than with our wild Dartmoor, as you may guess. But all these things are too hard for me, and how any man can plot against so wonderful looking a prince as Owen passes me. I cannot but think that there is some mistake, and that my uncle has no hand in the affair. That will be proved ere long, I do believe."

I answered that indeed I hoped that it would prove so, and then asked for Morfed, the priest who had crossed with us, as I did not see him among the other clergy at the table. She told me that he had left them, on foot, at the gate of Watchet, making his way westward, as she believed. He had only joined their party for easier travelling in Dyfed.

Then she must needs ask me questions about Thorgils' song, and specially of Elfrida. I had no mind to tell her much, but it is hard to refuse to answer a lady who speaks in all friendly wise and pleasantly, so that I had to tell her much the same that I told Nona the princess, and began to wonder if every lady who had the chance would be as curious to know all about what story there was. And that was a true foreboding of mine, for so it was, until I grew used to it. But all this minded me of Nona and her warning, and I was half sorry that the priest had not come here, to be taken care of with Dunwal.

After that night we saw little of these two. Mara went to the house of Jago, and Dunwal kept to himself about the palace boundaries within the old ramparts, and seemed to shun notice. As for me, word went to Ina that all was well, and he sent a letter back to say that it would please him to know that I was with Owen for a time yet. So I bided with him, and for a time all went well, for we heard nought of Tregoz in any way, while another of his friends was taken and imprisoned in some western fortress of Gerent's. Nor were there any more attacks made on Owen, so that after a little while we went about, hunting and hawking, in all freedom, for danger seemed to have passed with the taking of Dunwal as hostage.

Then one day a guard from the gate brought me a folded paper, on which my name was written in a fair hand, saying that it had been left for me by a swineherd from the hill, who said that it was from some mass priest whom I knew. The guard had let the man go away, deeming that, of course, there was no need to keep him. Nor had they asked who the priest might be, as it was said that I knew him.

I took the letter idly and went to my stables with it in my hand, and opened and read it as I walked.

"To Oswald, son of Owen.--It is not good to sleep in the moonlight."

That was all it said, and there was no name at the end of it. I thought it foolish enough, for every one knows that the cold white light of the moon is held to be harmful for sleepers in the open air. But I was not in the way of sleeping out in this early season with its cold, though, of course, it was always possible that one might be belated on the hills and have to make a night in the heather of it when hunting on Exmoor or the Brendons. There was not much moon left now, either.

So I showed the note to Owen presently, and he puzzled over it, seeing that it could not have been sent for nothing. At last we both thought that whoever wrote it, or had it written, knew that some attack would be made on us with the next moon, when it would be likely that we might be riding homeward by its light with no care against foes. That might well be called "sleeping in the moonlight" as things were; and at all events we were warned in time. The trouble to me was that it seemed to say that danger was not all past.