I think the trouble in my voice was plain, for the lady deemed that there was some to be told.

“Where is she now?” she asked.  “I hope that no harm came to her when the evil Danes overran your land.”

“I know not where she may be, dear lady,” I said.  “We know that she was in safety after the first peril passed.  Now our land is in Danish hands, and I have no news from thence for four years.”

“There are many places here where one might hide well enough,” she said thoughtfully.  “I suppose her people could find the like in your country.  But it would be a dull life enough.”

Then I told her of Gunnhild the nurse and her wisdom, and said that none knew the land around Bures better than she, while she had friends everywhere.

“Then you may find your Hertha yet,” the lady said at last; and as she spoke Sexberga, of whom my mind was full, came into the hall.

“You speak sadly together,” she said, looking from one to the other, and noting that her mother’s wheel was idle.

“It is no happy tale that our friend has told me,” the lady said, and so told her all that she had learned from me.

Then Sexberga clasped her hands together, and said: 

“Shall I ever forget the time when we fled to Pevensea before the outlaws?  And to think of that terror—­if it had lasted for days and weeks—­and months maybe, as it would for your Hertha.  Could you in no way seek her, Redwald?”

She knew nothing of the ways of wartime and of the troubles which must come to men who are weapon bearers, and I tried to tell her how I could by no means have sought Hertha, and how, had that been possible, and had I found her, I could hardly have brought her even to London in safety.  I told her of good Bishop Elfheah and his death, and many more things, and yet she said: 

“I think you have been over long in seeking her.  And she has been in hiding for four years past!”

Now that was hardly fair, but what could she think else?  Yet in my mind was the certainty now that I might have had no easy task to win this kindly maiden, who so little cared that I was bound elsewhere.  Now I will not say that that altogether pleased me, for no man likes to learn that a fair maiden who is pleasant to his eyes has no like feeling for himself; which is nought but vanity after all.  So when I turned this over in my mind I knew that I ought to be glad that she cared nothing, for so was the less trouble in the end, and I found also that what a man ought to be is not the same always as what a man is.

So I made no answer, and Sexberga went on: 

“Now must you seek her as soon as you can, for that is your part as a good warrior—­a good knight, as Father Anselm will say when he hears thereof.”

“Surely I shall go back this spring with our earl,” I said.  “Then shall I find her, for she and her nurse will come back from their hiding when peace is sure.”