Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune

by A. D. Crake

and that butrecently he had stood in the relation of pupil to Dunstan, so that inhis zeal for Church and State, the abbot forgot the respect due to theking. He saw only the boy, and forgot the sovereign.

  The guests assembled in the banqueting hall had seen the desertion oftheir royal master with murmurs both loud and deep; but when they sawhim return escorted by Dunstan and Cynesige, their unanimous approvalshowed that in their eyes the churchmen had taken a proper step.

  Yet, although Edwy tried to make a show of having returned of his ownfree will, an innocent device at which his captors connived when theyentered the hall with him, the bitterest passions were rankling in hisheart, and he determined to take a terrible revenge, should it ever bein his power, upon Dunstan.

  There was comparatively little show of merriment during the rest of thefeast, and the noble company separated earlier than was usual on suchoccasions.

  "If this be the way King Edwy treats his guests," said the Earl ofMercia, "he will find scant loyalty north of the Thames."

  "Nor in East Anglia," said another.

  "There is another of the line of Cerdic living."

  "Yes, Edgar, his brother."

  "Dunstan and Cynesige brought him back with some difficulty, I'll bebound."

  "Yes; although he tried to smile, I saw the black frown hidden beneath."

  "He will take revenge for all this."

  "Upon whom?"

  "Why, upon Dunstan to be sure."

  "But how can he? Dunstan is too powerful for that."

  "Wait and see."

  Such was the general tone of the conversation, from which the sentimentsof the community might be inferred.

  Elfric went, as he had been bidden to do, at the conclusion of thefeast, to seek Edwy, and found him, it is needless to state, in atowering rage.

  "Elfric," he said, "am I a king? or did I dream I was crowned today?"

  "You certainly were."

  "And yet these insolent monks have dared to force me from the company ofElgiva to return to that sottish feast, and what is worse, I find theyhave dared to send her and her mother home under an escort, so that Icannot even apologise to them. As I live, if I am a king I will haverevenge."

  "I trust so, indeed," said Elfric, "they deserve death."

  "I would it were in my power to inflict it; but this accursed monk--Igo mad when I mention his name--is all too powerful. I believe Satanhelps him."

  "Still there may be ways, if you only wait till you can look around you."

  "There may indeed."

  "Only have patience; all will be in your hands some day."

  "And if it be in my power I will restore the worship of Woden and Thor,and burn every monk's nest in the land."

  "They were at least the gods of warriors."

  "Elfric, you will stand by me, will you not?"

  "With my life."

  "Come to the window, now; see the old sots departing. There a priest,there a thane, there an earl--all drunk, I do believe; don't you thinkso?"

  "Yes, yes," said Elfric, disregarding the testimony of both his eyesthat they were all perfectly sober.

  Just then his eye caught a very disagreeable object, and he turnedsomewhat pale.

  "What are you looking at?" said Edwy.

  "There is that old fox, Dunstan, talking with my father; he will learnthat I am here."

  "What does it matter?"

  "Only that he will easily persuade my father to take me home."

  "Then the commands of a king must outweigh those of a father. I haveheard Dunstan say a king is the father of all his people, and I commandyou to stay."

  "I want to stay with all my heart."

  "Then you shall, even if I have to make a pretence of detaining you byforce."

  The anticipations of Elfric were not far wrong. Dunstan had found outthe truth. He had sought out the old thane to condole with him upon thepain he supposed he must recently have inflicted by his letter.

  "I cannot express to you, my old friend and brother," he said, "thegreat pain with which I sent your poor boy Elfric home, but it was anecessity."

  "Sent him home?" said Ella.

  "Yes, at the time our lamented Edred died."

  "Sent him home!" repeated Ella, in such undisguised amazement thatDunstan soon perceived something was amiss, and in a few short minutesbecame possessed of the whole facts, while Ella learnt his son's disgrace.

  They conferred long and earnestly. The father's heart was sorelywounded, but he could not think that Elfric would resist his commands,and he promised to take him back at once to Aescendune, where he hopedall would soon be well--"soon, very soon," he said falteringly.

  So the old thane went to his lodgings, hard by the palace, where heawaited his son.

  Late in the evening Elfric arrived, his countenance flushed with wine:he had been seeking courage for the part he had to play in the wine cup.

  Long and painful, most painful, was the interview that followed.Hardened in his rebellion, the unhappy Elfric defied his father'sauthority and justified his sin, flatly refusing to return home, inwhich he pretended to be justified by "the duty a subject owed to hissovereign."

  Thus roused to energy, Ella solemnly adjured his boy to remember thestory of his uncle Oswald, and the sad fate he had met with. It was veryseldom indeed that Ella alluded to his unhappy brother, the story wastoo painful; but now that Elfric seemed to be commencing a similarcourse of disobedience, the example of the miserable outlaw came tooforcibly to his mind to be altogether suppressed.

  "Beware, my son," added Ella, "lest the curse which fell upon Oswaldfall upon you, and your younger brother succeed to your inheritance."

  "It is not a large one," said Elfric, "and in that case, the king whom Iserve will find me a better one."

  "Is it not written, 'Put not your trust in princes?' O my son, my son;you will bring my grey hairs with sorrow to the grave!"

  It was of no avail. The old thane arose in the morning with theintention of taking Elfric home even by force, such force as Dunstan hadused, if necessary, but found that the youth had disappeared in thenight; neither could he learn what had become of him, but he shrewdlyguessed that the young king could have told him.

  Broken-hearted by his son's cruel desertion, the thane of Aescendunereturned home alone.

  CHAPTER IX. GLASTONBURY ABBEY.

  Rich in historical associations and reputed sanctity, the abbey ofGlastonbury was the ecclesiastical centre of western England. Here grewthe holy thorn which Joseph of Arimathea had planted when, fatigued withtravel, he had struck his staff into the ground, and lo! a goodly tree;here was the holy well of which he had drunk, and where he baptized hisconverts, so that its waters became possessed of miraculous power toheal diseases.

  Here again were memorials, dear to the vanquished Welsh; for did notArthur, the great King Arthur, the hero of a thousand fights, thesubject of gleeman's melody and of the minstrel's praise, lie buriedhere? if indeed he were dead, and not spirited away by magic power.

  A Welsh population still existed around the abbey, for it was near theborders of West Wales, as a large portion of Devon and Cornwall was thencalled, and Exeter had not long become an English town. [xiv] Thelegends of Glastonbury were nearly all of that distant day when theSaxons and Angles had not yet discovered Britain, and she reposed safeunder the protection of mighty Rome; hence, it was the object ofpilgrimage and of deep veneration to all those of Celtic blood, whilethe English were unwilling to be behind in their veneration.

  Here, in the first year of the great English king Athelstane, Dunstanwas born, the son of Herstan and Kynedred, both persons of rank--a mandestined to influence the Anglo-Saxon race first in person and then inspirit for generations--the greatest man of his time, whether, as hiscontemporaries thought, mighty for good, or, as men of narrower mindshave thought, mighty for evil.

  In his early youth, Glastonbury lay, as it lies now, in ruin and decay;the Danes had ravaged it, and its holy walls were no longer eloquentwith prayer and praise.
Yet the old inhabitants still talked with regretof the departed glories of the fane; the pilgrim and the stranger stillvisited the consecrated well, hoping to gain strength from its healingwave, for the soil had been hallowed by the blood of martyrs and theholy lives of saints; here kings and nobles, laying aside theirgreatness, had retired to prepare for the long and endless home, and inthe calm seclusion of the cloister had found peace.

  Here the mind of the young Dunstan was moulded for his future work;here, weak in body, but precocious in intellect, he drew in, as if withhis vital breath, legend and tradition; here, from a body of Scottishmissionaries, or, as we should now call them, Irish,[xv]he learned with rapidity all that a boy could acquire of civil orecclesiastical lore, and both in Latin and