We weighed carefully this matter, and we could not rid ourselves of the apprehension that Sigurd somehow was at the bottom of it, seeing that the bodes who bare these summonses were followers of the Jarl.
Personally, I was much averse to the project, being unable to see what good could come of it, in our present feeble and distracted state. But Oswald considered it desirable that we should obey this summons as loyal Saxons. Accordingly, a company of us, under the leadership of Oswald, started for this rendezvous amid the Lakes. We were compelled to use the utmost secrecy in our movements, and travel by night, as the Normans were still thickly posted throughout the north. It would certainly have been most dangerous to travel by day, even with so small a company as ours. We were practically but two days march from the place of rendezvous. So we started after nightfall on the first day, and, by steadily pressing on, we covered one-half the distance, arriving ere it was daylight at a place of refuge evidently well known to our leader, but which came as a revelation to me, for we came upon a band of Saxons near to an inlet of the sea, which ran into a thickly wooded headland. Here were a company of hardy men, partly fisherman, and partly traders and freebooters, who owned a vessel capable of carrying a considerable cargo; which bare sometimes Saxon refugees to foreign lands, at other times engaged in peaceful trading with distant ports, and had frequently been employed by armed bands of Saxons for the purpose of making swift descents upon their foes in various parts of the kingdom. From this source I found that wines and breadstuffs, as well as munitions of war, had systematically been supplied to the Saxon outlaws. I was told voyages were frequently made, not only to Ireland and Scotland, but even to ports on the Mediterranean sea.
Here we rested for the day, and at nightfall we went aboard this vessel; and, the wind being favourable, in a couple of hours they ran us across the bay of Morcam, landing us in sight of the Westmoreland hills, and certainly saving us more than a twenty miles' trudge. We were now within some eight miles of our destination, and still had the most of the night before us. Our sailor friends were able to tell us, also, that there was no encampment of Normans within many miles of our route; so we continued our march for an hour or two at a steady pace, without the slightest alarm or molestation. At last, our path lay through a narrow pass or defile in the mountains, and we were rapidly drawing near to the rendezvous. We now found it necessary to move with the utmost caution, for the path was rugged and narrow, and there was an eeriness about the place which was suggestive of anything uncanny. Huge boulders frequently confronted us, looming up out of the darkness so suddenly as quite to take my breath away. Oswald and I were a trifle ahead of the others, and were discussing to ourselves as to what could be the purpose of the Prince, in summoning at so unpropitious a time the Saxon witan.
"Does the Prince intend to take up arms, think you, my lord?" said I to Oswald.
"I expect little from the Atheling, Father, of that sort of thing. He is fickle, cowardly, and dissolute into the bargain. He dallied at the court of Malcolm at our last effort at York, until the cause was lost; and he sped him back again, and never stayed to strike a single blow. I am afraid some hare-brained purpose moves him, or some petty ambition which is unworthy of a prince, and which he will not back with any force of character, or any persistence. He will simply provoke a revolt which cannot be successful, whilst at the very first repulse he will vanish, and leave his unhappy followers to the relentless extermination policy of William."
"You have no faith in revolt, I think?"
"None whatever. It is absolutely hopeless. If we had but had a leader at York, brave and skilful as our last King Harold, and one who could have united us, the thing was half assured. But now Saxon graves hold prisoner for ever the flower of our people; and to attempt to offer an organised opposition to the Norman forces—why, it were sheer madness. The only two points in the kingdom where any show of resistance is made, is our own little colony, and in Lincolnshire, where Hereward still precariously holds out."
"But does not the Prince know this, think you? Or is he incapable of grasping the situation?"
"The Prince, I have already intimated, is not a factor worth considering for a moment. I very strongly suspect that Sigurd is at the bottom of this. He, I believe, has stirred the Prince up either to ambition or to jealousy, and I should not wonder if I were arraigned as traitor as a preliminary to some madcap exploit of Sigurd's. Do not be in the least surprised if this gathering ends in dire mischief and disunion."
"What is that?" we both exclaimed in a breath, as we saw the figure of a man dart from behind a huge boulder, and swiftly run along the pass ahead of us.