leet of
Swein, the Danish king, had been sighted off the Dunwich cliffs,
and once again the fear of the Danes was on our land.

And so it came to pass that I, Redwald, son of Siric, the Thane of
Bures, stood at the gate of our courtyard and watched my father and
our sturdy housecarles and freemen ride away down the hill and
across the winding Stour river to join the great levy at
Colchester. And when I had seen the last flash of arms sparkle from
among the copses beyond the bridge, I had looked on Siric, my
father, for the last time in this world, but no thought rose up in
my mind that this might be so.

Yet if I stand now where I stood on that day, and see by chance the
glimmer of bright arms through green boughs across the river, there
comes to me a rush of sadness that dulls the bright May sunshine
and the sparkle of the rippling water, and fills the soft May-time
wind with sounds of mourning. Now to me it seems that I was thus
sad at the time that is brought back to me. But I was not so. It is
only the weight of long years of remembrance of what should have
been had I known. At that parting I turned back into the hall
downcast, only because my father had thought me not yet strong
enough to ride beside him, and a little angry and hurt moreover,
for I was broad and strong for my sixteen years.

Little thought I that in years to come I should remember all of
that leave taking, even to the least thing that happened; but so it
is. No man may rightly be said to forget aught. All that he has
known and learnt is there, hidden up in his mind to come forth if
there is anything that shall call it again to light.

Now my father lies resting among nameless heroes who died for
England on Nacton Heath--I know not even which of the great mounds
it may be that holds his bones--but he fell before the flight began
when Thurketyl Mirehead played the craven. Neither victor nor
vanquished was he when his end came, but maybe that is the best end
for a warrior after all. Some must fall, and some may live to
boast, and some remain to mourn, but to give life for fatherland in
hottest strife is good. That is what my father would have wished
for himself, and I at least sorrow but for myself and not for him.

Now I have spoken of remembrance, and I will add this word--that
some things in a man's life can never be set aside from his memory.
Waking or sleeping they come back to him. Eight days after that
going of my father came such a time