King Olaf's Kinsman / A Story of the Last Saxon Struggle against the Danes in the Days of Ironside and Cnut

by Charles W. Whistler

That was much for the atheling to say, and heartily did I thank him. Yet I had grown to love Olaf my kinsman better than any other man, and I was glad to be with him, away from the court jealousies and strivings for place. There was little of that in Olaf's fleet, where all were old comrades, and had each long ago found the place that he could best fill.

So the levies marched on Gainsborough, and Olaf bided in the Thames and gathered ships and men till we had a fair fleet and a good force. Then came the news that Cnut and all his host had taken ship and fled from England without waiting to strike a blow at Ethelred, and our folk thought that this was victory for us. But Olaf rode down to the ships in haste, and took them down to Erith, while his land levies followed on the Kentish shore. For he thought it likely that Cnut did but leave Ethelred and his armies in Lindsey while he would land here unopposed.

Then came a fisher's boat with word that Cnut's great fleet was putting into Sandwich, but before we had planned to throw our force between him and London came the strange news that again he had left Kent and had sailed northwards.

We sailed then to Sandwich to learn what we might, sending two swift ships to watch if Cnut put into the Essex creeks. But at Sandwich we found the thanes whom Swein had held as hostages left, cruelly maimed in hand and face, with the message from Cnut that he would return.

"He may return," said Olaf, "but if all goes well he will find England ready for him. There is some trouble in Denmark or he would not leave us thus."

So now all that seemed to be on hand was to bring back the towns that were yet held by the Danish garrisons, the thingmen, to their rightful king, and to gather a fleet that would watch the coast against the return of Cnut. These things seemed not so hard, and our land would surely soon be secure.

Then began to creep into my mind a longing to be back in my own place again at Bures, to see the river and woods that I loved, and to take up the old quiet life that was half forgotten, but none the less sweet to remember after all this war and wearing trouble. But of all England, after Lindsey, East Anglia was the greatest Danish stronghold for those old reasons that I have spoken of, and it was likely that there would be more fighting there before Ethelred was owned than anywhere else. So I could not go back yet, but must wait for Earl Ulfkytel and his levies, who would surely make short work of the Danes there when their turn came. After that my lands would be my own again, and then--What wonder, after three years and more of warfare and the hard life of a warrior who had no home but in a court which was a camp--after exile in a strange land--with my new-found kinship with Olaf the viking--that what should be then had gone from my mind? Will any blame the warrior who did but remember his playfellow as part of a long-ago dream of lost peace, if he had forgotten what tie bound him to her? When I and little Hertha were betrothed it had been nought to us but a pleasant show wherein we had taken foremost parts--and across the gap of years of trouble so it seemed to me still whenever I recalled it. I remembered my confirmation at the good bishop's hands more plainly than that, for well I knew what I took on me at that time.

But the knowledge of what our betrothal meant would have grown up in our hearts had peace lasted. There had been none to mind me of it, or of her, and warfare fills up the whole mind of a man. I was brought up amid the scenes of camp and march and battle just at that time when a boy's mind is ready to be filled with aught, and, as he learns, the past slips away, for his real life has begun.

And these were strange days through which I had been. We grew old quickly amid all the cruel trouble of the hopeless fighting. As David, the holy king, grew from boy to man suddenly in his days, which seem so like ours when one hears them read of in Holy Writ, so it had been with Olaf--with Eadmund and Eadward his brother--so it would be with Cnut, and so it was with myself. I have often spoken with men who were rightly held as veteran warriors, and who yet had seen less warfare in ten years than we saw in those three. It was endless--unceasing--I would have none go through the like. I know not now how we bore it.

So I had forgotten Hertha, whether there is blame to me or not. But now, as I say, with the sudden slackening of warfare came to me the longing for rest. I would fain find my home again and my playmate, and all else that belonged to the past. But before I could do so there was work to be done, and I was content to look forward and wait.