“Truly, you think that none can rule but yourself.  Let it be, my queen.  You will have a new pupil in statecraft in your son-in-law.”

So says Offa, half laughing, and yet with a doubt in his mind as to what the queen means.  Then he adds, for her face is cloudy: 

“Trouble not yourself over these matters which are of the years to come; today all is well.”

“Ay, today.  But when the time comes that Ethelbert knows his strength?  I will mind you that East Anglia has had a king ere this nigh as powerful as yourself.  He will have other teachers in king-craft besides ourselves.”

“Why, you speak as if you thought there would be danger to our realm from Ethelbert in the days to come?”

“So long as there is a young king there, who can tell?”

Then says Offa, “I am strong enough to take care of that.  Moreover, he will be our son-in-law.  I wit well that not so much as a mouse will stir in his court but you will know it;” and he laughs.

At that she says plainly in a low voice: 

“You have East Anglia in your hands.  If Ethelbert did not return thither, it is yours.”

Whereon Offa rises, and his face grows red with wrath.

“Hold your peace!” he says.  “What is this which you are hinting?  Far from me be the thought of the death of Ethelbert, in whatever way it may come.”

And so, maybe knowing only too well what lies behind the words of the queen, he goes his way, wrathful for the moment.  And presently he forgets it all, for the spell of his love for Quendritha is strong, and by this time he knows that her longing for power is apt to lead her too far, in word at least, sometimes.

But we knew naught of this.  It was learned long afterward from one to whom Offa told it, and I have set it here because it seems needful.

Nor can I tell, even if I would, how Ethelbert met Etheldrida, his promised bride.  We saw them both at the great feast to which we were set down in an hour or so, and the great roar of cheering which went up was enough to scare the watching Welshmen from the hills beyond the river, where all day long they wondered at the thronging folk around the palace, and set their arms in order, lest Offa should come against them across the ford of the host again.  Their camp fires were plain to be seen at night, for they were gathering in fear of him.

All the rest of that day we feasted; and such a feast as that I had never seen, nor do I suppose that any one of those present will ever see the like of it.  Three kings sat on the high place, for Ecgfrith reigned with his father; and there was the queen, and she who should be a queen before many days had gone by.  It was the word of all that those two, Ethelbert and the princess, were the most royal of all who were present, whether in word or in look, and in all the wide hall there was not one who did not hail the marriage with pleasure.  It was plain to be known that there was no plot laid by these honest Mercian nobles against their guest.  One feels aught of that sort in the air, as it were, and it holds back the tongues of men and makes their eyes restless.