The wonderful palace of Sutton lies shunned and ruined.  After that which had been done there, Offa would live within its walls no longer, and it was deserted by all men.  Only, as the wind and rain wrought their will unchecked on the timbered halls, the thralls took what they would for huts and for firing, and slowly at first, and then apace, the palace sank to heaps of rotting rubbish, where the fox and the badger have their lairs, and the boar from the forest roots unscared.  Presently naught hut the ancient Roman earthworks will be left to tell that once it was a place of strength against the Briton.

And with bated breath the thralls tell of a white wolf which haunts the ruin from time to time, deeming it the witch queen herself, who may not leave the scene of her ill doing.

Now, for myself, I have but to say that for the sake of old days in the Frankish land I stand high in the honour of Ecgbert the king.  And yet it seems to me that greater honour still it is that I should have ridden across England on that strange wedding journey as the comrade of Ethelbert the king and saint.

Often I am asked to tell the story of that ride and all that came thereafter, for men say that they cannot learn it better than from me.  And so I have set all down here that men may read.  Yet, whether I write or not, I know well that forgotten Ethelbert can never be.

The end.