There is some trouble in Denmark or he would not leave us thus." So now all that seemed to be on hand was to bring back the towns that were yet held by the Danish garrisons, the thingmen, to their rightful king, and to gather a fleet that would watch the coast against the return of Cnut.

These things seemed not so hard, and our land would surely soon be secure.
Then began to creep into my mind a longing to be back in my own place again at Bures, to see the river and woods that I loved, and to take up the old quiet life that was half forgotten, but none the less sweet to remember after all this war and wearing trouble.

But of all England, after Lindsey, East Anglia was the greatest Danish stronghold for those old reasons that I have spoken of, and it was likely that there would be more fighting there before Ethelred was owned than anywhere else.

So I could not go back yet, but must wait for Earl Ulfkytel and his levies, who would surely make short work of the Danes there when their turn came.

After that my lands would be my own again, and then--What wonder, after three years and more of warfare and the hard life of a warrior who had no home but in a court which was a camp--after exile in a strange land--with my new-found kinship with Olaf the viking--that what should be then had gone from my mind?
Will any blame the warrior who did but remember his playfellow as part of a long-ago dream of lost peace, if he had forgotten what tie bound him to her?
When I and little Hertha were betrothed it had been nought to us but a pleasant show wherein we had taken foremost parts--and across the gap of years of trouble so it seemed to me still whenever I recalled it.