“Why, then,” said Ethelbert, “you and Wilfrid may laugh at me if you will; for I have dreamed a dream to set against yours, because I think it has a good meaning.  I thought that I was in a city, and that from its marketplace rose heavenward a great beam of light, like a pathway.  And so I would climb it, but I could not.  Then I had wings, and up it at last I sailed as a ship sails on the path of sunlight on an evening sea.  Surely that promises a happy journey for me.  Fear no more, therefore, my mother.”

Then we went from him, for state business called him, and I would take the queen across the garden to the bower door.  There was little ceremony in this quiet court, and no waiting ladies were biding her return outside.  And when we were alone there she turned to me, and her eyes were dim and pitiful.

“Friend,” she said, “yon beam of light led to heaven.  I do not know what it all means, but I fear—­I fear terribly.”

“Lady,” I said, “many a time I have known men who thought they had ill dreams on the night before a battle, and naught came of them.  I have forgotten to trouble myself much therewith.”

“Nay, but they are sent at times for our warning.”

“It may be so.  I should be foolish if I did not believe what wiser men than I tell me of their messages.  But if there is ill before the king, can it be anywise turned aside?  What if he were persuaded not to go?”

“Oh,” she said, with a little sob, “then his troth would be broken, and that in itself would bring ill.  It seems dark all round me.”

Then I said, for she was in sore distress: 

“Lady, I am a stranger and hardly known to you, but I am to ride with your son.  Will it be aught if I tell you that I will watch him as if he were my own atheling, and if need be die for him, with his own thanes?”

“It is much,” she said eagerly, “much; for in that court where I fear for him you will be a stranger, and may hear and note more than our folk, for if ill is plotted they may be careless of you.  I shall have less fear now that I may feel that one at least shares in my dread.  I do not know how to thank you for the promise.”

She set forth her hand to mine, and I bent and kissed it; but she pressed my great fingers as my own mother used to press them.  Then she said in a low voice: 

“I do not fear Offa, for he is noble in all he does.  I fear Quendritha.”

“I have heard that she is to be feared.  Can you tell me more of her?”

“You will see her as the fairest woman in all the land, and will but know her as the softest spoken.  Once or twice I have seen what looks may lie under that fair outward show, and I know that in her heart is the rage for power and ever more power, let it be what it may.  It goes ill with the lady of her train who shares a secret with her, if the secret is the lady’s.  I cannot think how harm may come to Ethelbert from her; but none know how it may not.  I pray you remember that.”