Ina would have us take a strong guard, and I
should bring them back, either with or without Owen, as things
went.
But little sleep had I that night, for I knew too well that from
henceforth my life and that of my foster father must lie apart, and
how far sundered we might be I could not tell. There was no love of
the Saxon in West Wales, nor of the Welshman in Wessex.
CHAPTER IV. HOW THE LADY ELFRIDA SPOKE WITH OSWALD, AND OF THE MEETING WITH
GERENT.
Gerent, the king of the West Welsh, as we called him, ruled over
all the land of Devon and Cornwall, from the fens of the Tone and
Parrett Rivers to the Land's End. Only those wide fens, across
which he could not go, had kept our great King Kenwalch from
pushing Wessex yet westward, and along their line had been our
frontier since his days until, not long before Ina came to the
throne, Kentwine crossed them to the north and cleared the
marauding Welsh of the Quantock hills and forests from the river to
the sea, setting honest Saxon franklins here and there in the
new-won land, to keep it for him. It was out of those deep wooded
hills that Morgan had come on the raid that ended so badly for his
brother and himself, for the wasted country was yet a sort of
no-man's land, where outlaws found easy harbourage, coming mostly
from the Welsh side.
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