“Then I was right,” said Godwine gleefully.  “I will warrant that you two wise heads would never have thought thereof.”

“Are you coming with us?” I asked him, for I did not care to have to find answers to many questions about our speech with Uldra, as things were.

“I am coming by sea presently with two ships,” he said.  “I shall wait till Bertric comes back, and so maybe shall have news of your queen to tell you.  He should not be long.  Relf goes back for the early hay time, he says, but I believe that he is tired of the sea.”

“I am no sailor, lord,” the thane said.

“As any of my crew will tell you,” Godwine said merrily.

“Never, Redwald, was any man so undone as Relf when there is a little sea on.  A common forest deer thief could tie him up.”

“I should have thanked one for slaying me at times,” said Relf grimly.  “I prefer solid ground to shifty deck planks.”

So whether it was love of home or loathing of sea that took him back to Penhurst, Relf and I left Godwine on the next morning; and at the nunnery door waited Uldra, looking bright and cheerful and greeting us gladly as we came.  And it seemed to me that her troubles had passed from her, and that she was indeed glad to be leaving the walls of the place that was so prison-like.

Now that was a fair and pleasant ride over the Downs and among the forest paths through Sussex, and I look back on it as the brightest time that I had had in all the long years of trouble.  The joy of going back to my old home at Bures had been clouded with the knowledge of loss, and with the sight of the trail of war.  But here were none of these things.

We rode with twenty housecarles of Relf’s behind us, and it was a new thing to me that I should see the wayside folk run out into the trackway to see us pass; that the farm thralls in the fields should but rise up, straightening stiffened backs and laughing, and stay their work for a moment to watch us; that no man who met us should ask with anxious face, “What news of the Danes?”

New it was, and most pleasant to Uldra also, for she had come through all the harried land, where the click of steel or the glint of armour had bidden the poor folk fly in terror, so that one rode through silent and deserted villages, and past farms where nought but the dogs told of life about the place.  And that was what I had seen over all England since Swein of Denmark landed, so long ago.  Men will hardly believe it now.  Relf could hardly believe us as we told him.  Yet today, were I to ride into an East Saxon village shouting “The Danes!” there are men who would cast down tools and all else that they were busied with, and clutch at the weapons that rust on the wall before thought could come to them.  For the terror of these years cannot pass from England yet while any man is alive who knew it.

Now there was another pleasure for me, and that was to watch Uldra growing brighter and happier day by day.  It was wonderful to me to see this, and with me she was ever frank and open, never wearying of speaking of our former journey and its troubles, for we could smile at them now.  And Relf grew very fond of her in those few days, as one might see.  Nor do I know how anyone could help doing so.  Even the rough housecarles would watch for a chance of doing some little service for her.