I went and asked her this, and she flushed with wounded pride, though I gave her my reasons and urged her peril.

“How shall it be told that Emma of Normandy was beholden to a nunnery for her handmaidens?” she said.

“It shall not be told, my queen,” I said stoutly.  “Men shall say that you gave protection to the holy women.”

Truly my wits were sharpened by sore need, for at once the queen agreed to this.  She loved power, and even this little use thereof pleased her.

“When can we go?” she asked.  “I long to see my own land again.”

“At nightfall, in two hours’ time,” I told her.

“It is well.  Be ready then,” she said.

She had persuaded herself, as I believe, that she arranged all things, and I was glad to have it so, for I had feared that I should have had trouble more than enough with her unreasoning pride.

So I told Elfric that his nuns could go, and he thanked me, laughing a little, with some thought of their journey here as I thought, and he added: 

“Aye, their dress protects them a little.  It is not as in the old days of heathen against Christian.  There is this to be said for Cnut, that he will have no monastery or nunnery harried if his orders are carried out.”

Then a thought came to me, and I wished that I could persuade our queen to take on herself and her maidens the convent dress.  She would not be the first royal lady of England who had worn it.  And I asked Elfric to persuade her to do so, for Emma’s great failing was love of queenship.

“If I know aught of our queen,” he said, “she wants to ride in state.”

“She does,” I answered.  “I think, father, that we have a troublous journey before us.  She will not believe but that she may ride as ever through the land.”

“You plan and I will argue,” the good man said, being ever light hearted.

So he went to the queen and spoke long with her, but she would in no wise ride out of London but as a queen, even as she had told me more than once.  There was nothing against that but that word might go to the Danish leaders that she was leaving the city.  Still, if we could get her to disguise herself thus when our guards left us it might be as well.  The Danes, did they seek her, would look for a larger party than ours, and would pay no heed to us, perhaps.

Now Olaf and my Colchester spearmen would be our guards even to the Surrey hills, for beyond them was not much fear of the Danes, who were advancing from Mercia, northward of the Thames.  Only in the towns were garrisons whom we must fear, for they sent out parties to raid the land for provender and plunder and to keep the poor folk from rising on them.

So it was my plan, and it seemed good to Elfric, to travel as a little party only.  So could we more easily escape notice, and take the byways, while an armed force, however small, would draw on us the notice of the Danes whose duty it was to watch against any gathering of English warriors.