“Ay, too wise,” she said.  “I would hear simplicity.”

Then Ethelbert rose up and set his arm round his mother very gently, and said gravely: 

“Mother, know you not of what you have dreamed?  Even as you told it first to me, and now again, I seemed to be back on that day, not so long past, when we buried my father.  So it was in the church at that time, and it was the most terrible thing which you have known.

“Is it wonderful, Wilfrid, that it should come back thus in the night watches?”

“It is not wonderful,” I said.

“Lady, I think that the king is right.

“But, King Ethelbert, if I am to say my mind, I would put off the journey for the sake of the peace of the queen your mother.”

“And thereby offend Offa, and maybe hurt that little playmate of mine?  No, it cannot be.  And what should the dream be but that we say?”

Then the queen said plainly: 

“I fear for you, my son—­I fear Quendritha.  In the days gone by your wise father was wont to say that if ever danger came from Mercia to East Anglia, it would be by reason of her ambition and longing for power and width of realm.”

“Why, mother, then surely in gaining the East Anglian throne for her daughter she gains all she would.  And she is Offa’s queen, and in his court can be no danger to me or any man.  Presently you shall surely dream again, and that dream shall show you the old sorrow turned to joy, for you will have a fair daughter to drive away your loneliness.  She will be all you need, for I know that I can be of little help to you.  The dream was of the sorrow which is passing to make way for joy to come.”

Then the queen made shift to smile, and told him that she deemed that her fears might be foolish.  But to me it seemed that even as she had said, the thought of policy and state came first of necessity, setting aside such a vision as any simple thane would surely have thought held him from a journey he would take.  Indeed, many a one would have given it up for far less, for I have known men turn back when already started, because a harmless hare crossed their path or a lone magpie sat on a wayside tree.  Maybe I minded such like myself once, but service with Carl mended that.  If he bade a man do a thing, that man had to do it, omen or none.  Whereby I found that mostly these journey tokens, as one may call them, came to naught, and certainly I should not have done that if I had been able to mind them.  And yet I do not know if aught would turn a true lover from the way which leads him toward the lady of his choice.

“One thing only I do fear from this dream of yours, my mother,” the king said after a little while.  “Can it mean harm to Etheldrida?  Was it for her that the knell passed, and shall I find her gone from me?  It is many days since I heard from her or of her.”

Now when it came to that, I knew that nothing would stay the king, and so also did his mother.  Whereon she was eager as himself to say that the dream was but wrought of her sorrow.