Now every day brought fear to me that Ingvar’s host was on its way overseas to fall on us.  And this I told to Eadmund and the earl, who could not but listen to me.  Yet they said that the peace between us and the Danes was sure, and that even did they come we should be ready.  When I pressed them indeed, they sent round word to the sheriffs to be on the watch, and so were content.  For our king was ever a man of peace, hating the name of war and bloodshed, and only happy in seeing to the welfare of his people, giving them good laws, and keeping up the churches and religious houses so well that there were none better to be found than ours in all England.

This pleased me not altogether, for I knew now how well prepared for war the Danes were, and I would fain have had our men trained in arms as they.  But my one voice prevailed not at all, and after a while I went down to Reedham, and there bided with my mother and Eadgyth, very lonely and sad at heart in the place where I had looked for such happiness with my father and Lodbrok and Halfden at first, and now of late, for a few days, with Osritha, and Halfden in Lodbrok’s place.

For all this was past as a dream passes, and to me there seemed to hang over the land the shadow of the terrible raven banner, which Osritha had helped to work for Lodbrok and his host, in the days before she dreamed that it might be borne against a land she had cause to love.

Ever as the days went by I would seek the shipmen who came to Reedham on their way up the rivers, so that I might hear news from the Danish shore, where Osritha was thinking of me, till at last I heard from a Frisian that three kings had gathered a mighty host, and were even now on their way to England.

I asked the names of those three, and he told me, even as I had feared, that they were called Ingvar and Hubba and Halfden; and so I knew that the blow was falling, and that Ingvar had stirred up other chiefs to join him, and so when the host gathered at some great Thing, he and his brothers had been hailed kings over the mighty following that should do their bidding in the old Danish way.  For a Danish king is king over men, and land that he shall rule is not of necessity {xix}.

Again I warned Eadmund, and again he sent his messages to Ulfkytel the Earl and to the sheriffs, and for a few weeks the levies watched along the shore of the Wash; and then as no ships came, went home, grumbling, as is an East Anglian’s wont, and saying that they would not come out again for naught, either for king or earl.

Now after that I spent many a long hour in riding northward along the coast, watching for the sails of the fleet, and at other times I would sit on our little watch tower gazing over the northern sea, and fearing ever when the white wing of a gull flashed against the skyline that they were there.  And at last, as I sat dreaming and watching, one bright day, my heart gave a great leap, for far off to the northward were the sails of what were surely the first ships of the fleet.