"Fetch Offa the king," said a Mercian; "we had better tell him. No use in gaping here. We can swear that Ethelbert has not pa.s.sed out of these doors."

"No," said Selred quickly; "that were to wake the whole palace. Let us seek further into this.--Thanes, if aught has been done amiss to our king, we are all in danger."

The floor creaked under my foot again, and I looked back to it.

What I saw now made me start and call the others to me.

"See here!" I cried.

Round that clear s.p.a.ce where the chair had been was a saw cut newly made. It went through the flooring, so that the square was like a trapdoor. And it was uneven, as if it had been made in haste. Then I knew what must have been the meaning of the sounds we heard and thought nothing of--the creak, and the fall, and the stifled cry.

Sighard looked once, and then threw himself on his knees, drawing his stout seax as he did so.

"Have it up!" he said, with his teeth clenched, "have it up!"

Then a thought came to me, and I beckoned to Erling. It might be that armed men lurked under that trapdoor, and that our end was coming; but at least we would have fair play.

"Go and bar the door to the great hall," I told him. "We will have none else in here if there is a fight. Then see if you can get the door to the guest hall undone."

He nodded and went out. One of the Mercians asked sharply where he was going; but Sighard paid no heed to him, for he was trying to get his blade into the saw cut, and so raise the square of flooring.

"Thane," I said to the Mercian, staying him from following Erling, "he will shut the door to the hall, and let this thing be seen through in silence. Go you and watch at the door of Offa, for it has bided untended long enough."

He went out in haste, and Erling watched him there. I saw him sit down to the table whence he had risen at my coming, and set his head on his hands as if in despair. I had no fear that he would call Offa yet, or that Erling would suffer him to go to his comrades in the hall. The other two stayed and watched Sighard silently.

Now the old thane had his blade fast in the timber and lifted. The square of floor rose slowly at that corner, and one of the Mercians set his hand to it. Another lift, and the whole was coming up, for the boards had been fastened together with cross pieces underneath, doorwise. As it rose I heard the fall of props that had kept it in place, and I bade Sighard have a care. I feared it would let him through suddenly as these props fell; but it had been roughly hinged at one end with thongs. He rose, and he and the Mercian heaved on the door and threw it back.

Then below us gaped a black pit which seemed to go deep into the earth, and for a moment we shrank back from it as men must needs do when a depth is suddenly before them. Nor should I have wondered if thence the bright points of waiting spears had darted upward in our faces.

But there was nothing save a little cold draught of wind that blew into them from out of that pit, and we looked into it. I held the torch so that its flickering blaze went to the bottom, and as we saw what was there a groan came from us.

There was the great chair lying, overturned on its side as it may have fallen, but it was dragged back from under the door somewhat.

There were the cushions I had noted also--one lying on the stone floor of the pit, and the other on the seat of the chair. But there was no sign of the king--none but a stain of red on the cushions and on the floor, and on the blade of a sword which lay beside that terrible pool. And the sword was the king's own.

Then said Sighard, and his voice came hoa.r.s.e and broken:

"Our king is slain! Hounds of Mercians, tell us who has wrought this!"

One answered him from dry lips:

"We cannot tell. It is a shame on the house of Offa, and on the very name of Mercia. Kill us if you will, for we are niddering."

He plucked his sword from his belt and threw it on the floor. The thane who had gone into the council chamber was on his feet and staring at us through the open doors, and Erling was ready to fall on him if he cried out. But the third Mercian, whose name was Witred, did not lose his senses thus.

"True enough," he said, looking fearlessly at the angry group before him. "But it were better to follow this pa.s.sage and see if we may not overtake those who have been here.

"Bide here, paladin and priest, and keep our way back clear with my comrade yonder, and let us go quickly. If they slay us--maybe that is no loss, but at least we have done what we should."

Without another word Sighard leaped into that awesome pit, and Witred followed him. Then went our three thanes, and Selred and I stood alone in the room. I handed the torch down to the last man, and so saw that from the place where the chair was set a low stone-arched pa.s.sage led westward into darkness. It was some work of the old Romans, no doubt, for no Saxon ever made such stonework--strong and heavy as rock itself.

The light flashed from somewhat on the wall also, as it seemed, drawing my eyes to it.

"Yonder is a spear set," I said to the thane, as he took the light from me; "hand it to me."

He took it from where it rested against the wall and gave it me, turning at once to follow our comrades. Then I knew the spear well enough, for I had seen it over close to me once before. It was Gymbert's boar spear.

CHAPTER XII. HOW QUENDRITHA THE QUEEN HAD HER WILL.

Slowly the footfalls of our comrades died away down the low pa.s.sage, and then the last flicker of their torch pa.s.sed from the stone walls of that terrible pit, leaving Selred and myself alone in the cold moonlight. Out through the doors toward the council chamber I saw the Mercian thane, who had been watching us in silence, sit down at the table and set his head in his hands wearily; and I heard Erling try the bars of the door to the guest hall, and finding it impossible to open, after a while pa.s.s into the council chamber, and set himself against the great door once more.

After that there fell a dead silence over all the place, and it was uncanny. It seemed impossible that all men should sleep in peace in the palace where such a deed had been wrought at our feet. I had rather the rush and yell of the Welsh over these ramparts they hated than this stillness of coldly-planned treachery.

Nor should I have been surprised if at any moment I had heard the tramp of men who came to fall on us and end what had been begun, or the cries and din of arms which should tell that they had fallen on the sleeping thanes of Anglia in the guest hall. Anything was possible after what had been wrought already, and indeed it was hardly likely that the king should be slain and the servants let go free.

I think that the stillness and waiting for unknown doings thus went near to terrifying me. I know that I started at every sound, if it were but the crackling of the little fire in the council chamber, or the low challenge of one sentry to his fellow as the word which told all well pa.s.sed round the ramparts. Selred was on his knees, and I would not speak to disturb the prayers which we so sorely needed.

The time seemed long as we waited, but it could not have been much more than ten minutes before I heard the footfalls of our party as they returned by the pa.s.sage way. One by one they came out from under the arch, and I took the torch from Witred the Mercian, who came first as he had gone, and then helped them one by one to the room again from the pit. Their faces were white and hard set in the light, and Sighard seemed as a man broken and aged in a moment with trouble beyond his bearing. Then I knew that I had to hear the worst, and made ready for it. Witred the Mercian told it quietly.

"This pa.s.sage runs under the ramparts, and ends in a thicket on the steep by the river. I knew that there were old stones in that, but not one of us knew of the pa.s.sage. That end has been newly opened, and the tools with which it was done are there yet. A man sat by that entrance on guard outside, and as I came I spoke to him by name and told him who I was. Then he stayed, and we fell on him and bound him without giving him a chance to cry out. Whereon he told all, and it is an evil tale."

He paused, and wiped his forehead, looking round as if he would have any man but himself tell it; but none else spoke.

"Yesterday Gymbert's men sawed the floor through and made this trapdoor. Then they waited underneath, and the king fell, as they had expected, into the ready arms that waited him. There were Gymbert and half a dozen of his men. The cushion stayed his cry, and he was helpless. Yet he was very strong, and so Gymbert s.n.a.t.c.hed his own sword from his side and smote off his head. Out by the river they had a cart waiting, and they bore him away at speed.

We saw and followed the wheel tracks till we lost them, and could do no more. Then we bound and gagged the man, and have haled him halfway down the pa.s.sage till we need him again. That is all."

Then I said, with a cold wrath on me, "At whose orders was this done?"

The Mercian shook his head, glancing at his comrades. The other Mercian had come to hear from the council chamber.

"The man could not or would not tell; but I pray you think not that this is done by Offa. The one thing that the man begged us was that he might not be delivered to the king. And he said that Gymbert and his men would hide till Offa's wrath was past."

"There is but one other at whose word this could have been done," I said.

"Ay," said Witred, "I know. Yet Ethelbert was to be the bridegroom of our princess. Is it possible that Gymbert has looked so high, and would take him from his way?"

And at that one of the other Mercians answered bluntly:

"You speak of what is not possible, and you know it. Who but that one of whom we ken would have seen that those who wrought here with saw and axe were not disturbed? Let us say at once that the thing has been wrought by the hand of Quendritha, and have done with it.

Which of us does not know that she is capable of it, and has never dared say so yet till this minute?"

Then said Witred, "That is the truth, thanes. Now what will you, for the time goes on? This man said that it was thought that the deed would not be known till waking time in the morning. It is not midnight yet."

We looked at one another, for what was best we could not say. It was more than likely that the queen had planned against some too early discovery of the deed, and even now waited for any sign which should tell her to act. But for the staying of that man at the entrance, I have no doubt that by this time her men had been warned to fall on us. The gathering of the Welsh, and the open pa.s.sage into the heart of the palace, might be seeming proof that we had planned the downfall of Offa, and so short work with us.

Now one said that it were best to tell Offa straightway, but Selred and my comrades would not have that. We were not so sure in our own minds that he was guiltless in the matter; and at last Selred said that he would try to reach the guest hall and wake the other thanes and bring them here.