To right and left along the front of chapel and guest house were lines of the scarred housecarls who had followed Offa and won the land for him, bright with flashing helms and weapons; and close behind the group on the steps were some black-robed priests, who had a vested bishop in their midst.

So they waited while we dismounted, and then Ethelbert went forward alone toward the king and queen, carrying his helm in his hand, and with only a little golden circlet round his fair hair.  I mind that the bright sun flashed from it as he went till there seemed a halo round his head, like to the ring of light they paint round the heads of the saints in the churches.  And I thought that even Offa seemed less kingly than did he, though the great king was fully robed and wearing his crown.  I think he had on a white tunic with a broad golden hem, and a crimson cloak fastened on his shoulder with cross-shaped brooch, golden and gemmed, while his hose were of dark blue, cross-gartered with gold.

And then I must look at the queen, and I saw the most wonderfully beautiful lady who ever lived outside of a gleeman’s tale, so that hardly could Guinevere herself, King Arthur’s queen, have been more beautiful.  She was tall and yet not thin, and her golden hair fell in two long plaits almost to the ground over her pale green dress.  From her shoulders hung a cloak of deeper green, wondrously wrought with crimson and gold and silver, and fastened with golden brooches.  She also wore her crown; but even if she had not had it, none could mistake her for any but the queen among all the ladies who stood behind her, and they were of the noblest of that land.

I thought that the Princess Etheldrida would be there also, for beside the king was Ecgfrith the atheling; but she was not.  They say that she had some maidenly fear of meeting this husband of hers, who was to be, in the open court thus.

Now Offa smiled and came down the steps to meet Ethelbert, and set his hand on his shoulder and kissed him in a royal greeting, and so led him to the queen, who waited him with a still face, which at least had naught but friendliness in it.  One would say that it was such a look as a fond mother might well turn on the man who would take her loved daughter from her, not unwilling, but half doubting for her.  There seemed no look of ill, and none of guile, in her blue eyes as Ethelbert bent and kissed her hand; and she too bent and kissed his forehead.

And at that moment from my shoulder growled Erling, and his face was white and troubled: 

“Yonder is she!”

Then he shrank away behind me, and so took himself beyond her sight.  I did not see him again until the queen had left.

The words struck a sort of chill into me, and I looked more closely at the queen.  Maybe I was twenty paces from her, and one of many, so that she paid no heed to me.  And as I looked again I seemed to see pride, and mayhap cruelty, in the straight, thin lips and square, firm chin.  It was a face which would harden with little change, and the blue eyes would be naught but cold at any time.