Historical Tales, Vol. 4 | Page 6

around on his handful of valiant followers.
"Let us face them!" he cried, in hot anger. "We are few, but we fight for our homes. Let us meet these baying hounds!"
"No, no," answered the wisest of his thanes. "It would be worse than rash, it would be madness. They are twenty--a hundred, mayhap--to our one. Let us fly now, that we may fight hereafter. All is not lost while our king is free, and we to aid him."
Alfred was quick to see the wisdom of this advice. He must bide his time. To strike now might be to lose all. To wait might be to gain all. He turned with a meaning look to his faithful thanes.
"In sooth, you speak well," he said. "The wisdom of the fox is now better than the courage of the lion. We must part here. The land for the time is the Danes'. We cannot hinder them. They will search homestead and woodland for me. Before a fortnight's end they will have swarmed over all Wessex, and Guthrum will be lord of the land. I admire that man; he is more than a barbarian, he knows the art of war. He shall learn yet that Alfred is his match. We must part."
"Part?" said the thanes, looking at him in doubt. "Wherefore?"
"I must seek safety alone and in disguise. There are not enough of you to help me; there are enough to betray me to suspicion. Go your ways, good friends. Save yourselves. We will meet again before many weeks to strike a blow for our country. But the time is not yet."
History speaks not from the depths of that woodland whither Alfred had fled with his thanes. We cannot say if just these words were spoken, but such was the purport of their discourse. They separated, the thanes and their followers to seek their homes; Alfred, disguised as a peasant, to thread field and forest on foot towards a place of retreat which he had fixed upon in his mind. Not even to the faithfulest of his thanes did he tell the secret of his abode. For the present it must be known to none but himself.
Meanwhile, the cavalry of Guthrum were raiding the country far and wide. Alfred had escaped, but England lay helpless in their grasp. News travelled slowly in those days. Everywhere the Saxons first learned of the war by hearing the battle-cry of the Danes. The land was overrun. England seemed lost. Its only hope of safety lay in a man who would not acknowledge defeat, a monarch who could bide his time.
The lonely journey of the king led him to the centre of Somersetshire. Here, at the confluence of the Tone and the Parret, was a small island, afterwards known as Ethelingay, or Prince's Island. Around it spread a wide morass, little likely to be crossed by his pursuers. Here, still disguised, the fugitive king sought a refuge from his foes.
For several months Alfred remained in this retreat, his place of refuge during part of the time being in the hut of a swineherd; and thereupon hangs a tale. Whether or not the worthy herdsman knew his king, certainly the weighty secret was not known to his wife. One day, while Alfred sat by the fire, his hands busy with his bow and arrows, his head mayhap busy with plans against the Danes, the good woman of the house was engaged in baking cakes on the hearth.
Having to leave the hut for a few minutes, she turned to her guest, and curtly bade him watch the cakes, to see that they did not get overdone.
"Trust me for that," he said.
She left the room. The cakes smoked on the hearth, yet he saw them not. The goodwife returned in a brief space, to find her guest buried in a deep study, and her cakes burned to a cinder.
"What!" she cried, with an outburst of termagant spleen, "I warrant you will be ready enough to eat them by-and-by, you idle dog! and yet you cannot watch them burning under your very eyes."
What the king said in reply the tradition which has preserved this pleasant tale fails to relate. Doubtless it needed some of the swineherd's eloquence to induce his irate wife to bake a fresh supply for their careless guest.
It had been Guthrum's main purpose, as we may be assured, in his rapid ride to Chippenham, to seize the king. In this he had failed; but the remainder of his project went successfully forward. Through Dorset, Berkshire, Wilts, and Hampshire rode his men, forcing the people everywhere to submit. The country was thinly settled, none knew the fate of the king, resistance would have been destruction, they bent before the storm, hoping by yielding to save their lives and some portion of