A murmur of astonishment and admiration ran through both the ranks. She seemed to be a visitor from another world, so strange, so unexpected, and, at the same time, so beautiful was her appearance.
“Britons, brothers,” she cried, in a sweet but penetrating voice, which made itself heard through the throng, “what is this? Britons, brothers, have you forgotten what you are? Your masters have left you. You carry arms which have been forbidden to you for more than four hundred years, and must you first use them against your own countrymen? Have you no enemies abroad that you must look for them at home?”
A shriek of terror, followed by a wild war cry, which, though strange to many of the crowd, was only too familiar to the dwellers on the coast, gave a fearful emphasis to her words. The enemies from without were there.
Cedric, after making good his escape from the villa, as has been related, had nearly died of hunger on the shore to which he had managed to make his way. When he was almost at his last gasp, a Saxon galley had touched at the very spot to supply itself with water. Fortunately for him it was commanded by a kinsman of his own, who persuaded the crew—the Saxon adventurers had to be dealt with by persuasion rather than by command—to return home with their passenger. This probably saved his life; his mother, a skilful leech, whose fame was spread abroad among the dwellers on the coast, nursed him back into health. Still he had suffered long and much; and it was not till the summer was far advanced that he was allowed to join an expedition. His noble birth, his reputation for strength and courage, not a little enhanced, of course, by his late escape, and the personal fascination that he exercised on all about him, pointed him out, young as he was, for command.
Carna had been unceasingly in his thoughts since the day when he had last seen her. During the delirium of his illness her name had been continually on his lips, and one of the earliest confidences of his recovery was the story of his love for this Christian maiden of the west. His mother was touched by the story. The girl’s passionate desire for the welfare of the son that was dead (which she appreciated without comprehending its motive), and the very heroism which the son that was living had shown in defending her, combined to move her heart. That any living woman could resist the attraction of such a champion as her son, she did not believe for a moment, in spite of all that Cedric could say about the height of saintliness on which Carna stood; and by degrees the young chief himself found his worshipping devotion mingled with hopes that were very sweet to his heart.