After that was a day or two more of feasting and hunting, and then the embassy would return.  I was sorry to part with Werbode, but I bade him carry back messages to Ecgbert, and in them I told him that I waited for the time when his message should best be spoken.  Werbode knew not what that meant, but did not trouble to ask.  He would give my message, and would also tell the atheling of the coming marriage.  I had no doubt that it would be understood well by him to whom it was sent.  At that time there were none of the Franks who knew or cared who Ecgbert was, save Carl; and if by chance my friend had spoken to any of these East Anglians of the Saxon leader under whom he had warred for Carl, the name of Ecgbert would mean naught to them.  A Wessex atheling has no honour in East Anglia, and I doubt whether it had ever been heard here.

On the day after the great ceremony I noticed that Erling went about somewhat silently, and I thought that he very likely had a wish to cross the sea with the Franks, and so make his way home by land from the Rhine mouth.  I asked him, therefore, if it was so, saying that I would give him money enough for all needs.

“It is not that, master,” he said; and when he called me master (which I had forbidden him, for he was more of a comrade, and I would not have him remember whence I took him), I knew that he was in earnest—­“not that, for I would not leave you; unless, indeed this means that you would have me go?”

“No, comrade, that I would not.  But you are downcast, and I thought that you might have the longing for home on you.  Well, what is it?”

“It is naught,” he said.

But so plain it was that somewhat was amiss that I pressed him, and at last he said that he would tell me if I would not be angry with him.  We were alone at the time, sitting on a great log in the corner of the courtyard, waiting for supper.

“Saw you aught strange about the robe which this young king had on yesterday, when you stood before him?” he asked first.  “You were close to him.”

“I did not notice anything beyond that it was wonderfully wrought with gold and colours.  The queen made it, they tell me.”

He sighed, and his face fell.

“I have heard that the Christian folk hold most precious such robes as are marked with the blood of one who has died for his faith.  Are you sure that this robe is not such an one?”

“I know it is not.  The queen made it new for the coronation.”

He was silent for a while, looking on the ground and shifting his foot in the dust, and some fear rose in my mind as to what he would tell me.

“Eh, well,” he said, sighing again, “mayhap the sun was in my eyes before I looked on him.”

“Is it the second sight again, Erling?” I asked in a low voice, for that was what I feared.

“Ay.  Methought I saw that royal robe all spotted with blood as he sat in it.”