Now while this was going on I ended my spell of duty, and bethought me of Mord the chamberlain, and so went to Berthun and asked for him. He said that if I had any special business with Mord I might see him; and I said, truly enough, that my errand was special, having to do with friends of his; so it was not long before they took me to him. He was in a long room that was built on the side of the great hall, as it were, and I could hear the murmur of the voices of those who spoke at the Witan while I waited.
Now Mord was not so much changed as I, and at first he did not know me at all.
“Well, master housecarl, what may your message be, and from whom is it?” he said, without more than a glance at me.
“Why, there are some old friends of yours who are anxious to know if you have forgotten the feeling of a halter round your neck,” I said in good Danish.
Then, after one look, he knew me at once, and ran to me, and took my hand, and almost kissed me in his pleasure, for since I could handle an oar he had known me, and had taught me how to do that, moreover.
Then he called for wine and food; and we sat down together and had a long talk of the old days, and of how we had fared after he left, and of all else that came uppermost. And sorely he grieved at my father’s death, and at the trouble that was on us. The famine had not been so sore in the south, and pestilence had not been at all.
As for himself, he had been courtman, as we call the housecarls, at first, and so had risen to be chamberlain to the king, and now to the princess, and had been with her everywhere that Alsi had sent her since her father died.
“It was a good day for me, and wise was Grim when he bade me go to Ethelwald to seek service,” he said; “yet I would that I had seen him once more. I have never been to this place before, else I should have sought him.”
Now I was going to ask him about Havelok, but hardly knew how to begin. He saved me the trouble however, by speaking first.
“Who were the lady and the boy we had on board when we came to England?” he said. “I never heard, and maybe it was as well that I did not.”