Wulfric the Weapon Thane: A Story of the Danish Conquest of East Anglia

by Charles W. Whistler

So they laid open the cloak before me, and I knelt and looked. And there was indeed the head of Eadmund, seeming whole and fresh as when I had last seen him; and his looks were very peaceful, for on his face was still that smile with which he had greeted death at Raud's hands.

Then, seeing that, the rough Dane was fain to turn away and lean arms and face against a tree trunk, weeping as weeps a child that will not be comforted.

After a little I asked how they had found the head. And one of the villagers, speaking low and holding his cap in his hands as though in the church, answered me.

"When I came to a certain thicket, I heard a crying, as it were, and I turned aside and looked, and at first was sorely afraid, for yon great wolf held the head between his paws, whining over it as in grief. Then I called to the rest, and they came, running, and were afraid also till the good fathers came, to whom the wolf was gentle, suffering them to take that which he guarded. And lo! he follows us even now, as would a dog!"

So the man spoke, not having seen such a dog as mine before, for till more came with the host there were none like him in our land. I told him that it was but my own dog; yet for all that, I know that this tale of a wolf passed for the truth over all the land as it flew from mouth to mouth, so that soon I myself heard from one who knew me not very strange stories of that finding of ours.

Yet would that tale hardly be stranger than was the truth, that not one of the wild creatures, either beast or bird, had harmed our king's sacred head. And how it should be so preserved in that place I cannot tell, but I say what I saw. Yet his body was not so preserved in the place where we had hidden it.

These things are beyond me, nor can I tell all the thoughts that came into my mind as I looked into the face of the king whom I had loved, and who loved me.

Now would we take our treasure, as we must needs think it, to Hoxne, and the monks were about to lift it again. But Raud came forward very solemnly, begging that he might be allowed to bear it, "Because he would make what amends he might."

And I signed to the monks to suffer him to do so, and he took it. None else but I knew what part he had had with the other Danes in this matter, and the monks did but think him grieving for what his comrades had done.

So he bore it to Hoxne village, and we passed the place where the church had been. There, amid the blackened ruins of the walls and roof, stood the font of stone, fire reddened and chipped, yet with the cross graven on its eastward face plain to be seen. And to that place Raud led us, none staying him, yet all wondering.