第45章 CHAPTER X: THE COMBAT(5)
On landing, Edmund soon learned that the Danes were everywhere masters, and that since the autumn nothing had been heard of the king, who was supposed to be somewhere in hiding.
In every village through which they passed they found evidence of the mastership of the Danes. Many of the houses were burnt or destroyed, the people were all dressed in the poorest garb, and their sad faces and listless mien told of the despair which everywhere prevailed. In every church the altars had been thrown down, the holy emblems and images destroyed, the monks and priests had fled across the sea or had been slain.
The Danish gods, Thor and Woden, had become the divinities of the land, and the Saxons, in whom Christianity had but recently supplanted the superstitions of paganism, were fast returning to the worship of the pagan gods. Edmund and his companions were shocked at the change. On reaching home they found that the ravages of the Danes had here been particularly severe, doubtless in revenge for the heavy loss which had been sustained by them in their attack upon Edmund's fortification. His own abode had been completely levelled to the ground, and the villages and farm-houses for the most part wholly destroyed. His people were lying in rude shelters which they had raised, but their condition was very much better than that of the people in general.
The news of Edmund's return spread like wildfire, and excited the most extreme joy among his people, who had long given him up for lost. He found to his delight that the Dragon had returned safely, and that she was laid up in her old hiding-place. The great amount of spoil with which she was loaded had enabled her crew largely to assist their friends, and it was this which had already raised the condition of the people above that of their neighbours. Houses were being gradually rebuilt, animals had been brought from districts which had been less ravaged by the Danes, and something approaching comfort was being rapidly restored.
Upon the day after Edmund's return Egbert arrived.
Feeling sure of Edmund's death he had taken no steps towards rebuilding the house, but was living a wild life in the woods, when the news reached him that Edmund had reappeared.
His own large share of the booty with that of Edmund he had buried, with the portion set aside for the king, in the wood near the spot where the Dragon was laid up.
They had passed up the Parrot at night unobserved by the Danes, and after taking the masts out of the Dragon, and dismantling her, they had laid her up in the hole near the river where she was built. There was little fear of her discovery there, for the Danes were for the most part gathered in winter quarters at the great camp near Chippenham.
Egbert's delight at the reappearance of Edmund was unbounded, for he loved him as a son, and it was a long time before their joy at the meeting was sufficiently calmed down to enable them to tell each other the events which had happened since they parted three months before. Egbert's narrative was indeed brief. He had remained two or three days off the coast of Norway in the lingering hope that Edmund might in some way have escaped death, and might yet come off and join him. At the end of a week this hope had faded, and he sailed for England. Being winter, but few Danish galleys were at sea, and he had encountered none from the time he set sail until he arrived off the coast at the mouth of the Parrot.
He had entered the river at night so as to be unseen by any in the village at its mouth, and had, after the Dragon was laid up, passed his time in the forest. Edmund's narration was much more lengthy, and Egbert was surprised indeed to find that his kinsman owed his freedom to the jarl whose vessel they had captured at the mouth of the Humber.