“Why, Wilfrid, old comrade, how come you here?  I heard only of a West Saxon, and whether this is luck for you or not I do not know.”

“Good luck enough, I think,” I answered, with a great hand grip.  “I had not yet let myself wonder how long it would be before I saw home again.”

His face fell, and he looked doubtfully at me.

“I cannot take you home, Wilfrid; I am flying thence myself.  The Danish chief will set you ashore somewhere at his first chance, he says.”

“Why, what is amiss again?”

“The old jealousy, I suppose,” he answered grimly.  “As if a lad like myself was likely to try to overturn a throne!  Here had I hardly settled down in Mercia as a fighter of the Welsh and hanger-on of Offa’s court, when there come Bertric’s messengers, asking that I should be given up, and backing the demand with a request for closer alliance by marriage.  Offa, being an honest man, was for sending the message back unanswered.  But the queen had a mind for the match, and as I was in the way, it was plain to me that I must be out of it.  So I did not wait for Quendritha to remove me, but removed myself.”

“Alone?” I asked.

“Alone, and that hastily.  You do not know the lady of Mercia, or you would not ask.”

Now I thought to myself that in the last half hour I had learned more of that lady than even Ecgbert knew, and I felt that he was wise in time, if Thrond’s tale was true; which, indeed, I began to believe.  But it did not seem right to me that an atheling of Wessex should be alone, without so much as a housecarl to tend him and stand at his back at need.  I minded what my father taught me since I could learn.

“Here is your duty, son Wilfrid.  First to God; then to the king; then to the atheling, the king’s son, and then to father and mother; then to the shire reeve and the ealdorman, if so be that they are loyal; and then to helpless woman and friendless poor man.  But to the weak first of all, against whomsoever will wrong them, whether it be the king or myself.”

“Where will you go, atheling?” I asked, speaking low, for I had many things warring in my mind.

“I cannot tell yet.  I am an outcast.”

Then I knelt on the deck before him and made him take my hands between his own, and I said to him, while he tried to prevent me: 

“Whither you go I follow, to be your man in good or ill.  Little use I am, but some I may be; and at least the atheling of Wessex shall not say that none would follow him.”

“Wilfrid,” he cried, “I cannot suffer you to leave all for me.”

Then said Thorleif, who had been watching us in silence: 

“Take him, prince, for you will need him.  He has kept faith with us, though he might have escaped easily enough, because he thought his word withheld him.  And he has proved himself a man in battle with the waters, as I know well.  Let him go with you, and be glad of him.”