One writer speaks of a hired assassin, and others lay the crime at the door of Cynethryth, Offa’s Queen, who is said to have insinuated that the marriage was only sought as a pretext to occupy the Mercian throne. Finding her lord’s courage not equal to the occasion, she herself arranged the end of Æthelberht. There is talk of a pit dug in his sleeping-chamber and a chair arranged thereover, which, with an appearance of luxurious comfort, lured him to his fate. The body was, according to one writer, privately buried on the bank of the river "Lugg," near Hereford. "On the night of his burial," says the Monkish Annalist, "a column of light, brighter than the sun, arose towards heaven"; and three nights afterwards the figure (or ghost) of King Æthelberht appeared to Brithfrid, a nobleman, and commanded him to convey the body to a place called "Stratus Waye," and to inter it near the monastery there. Guided by another column of light, Brithfrid, having placed the body and the head on a carriage, proceeded on his journey. The head fell from the vehicle, but having been discovered by a "blind man," to whom it miraculously communicated sight, was restored by him to the careless driver. Arrived at his place of destination, then called "Fernlega" or "Saltus Silicis," and which has since been termed Hereford, he there interred the body. Whatever the motive for the crime, there is ample evidence of Offa’s subsequent remorse. In atonement he built monasteries and churches, and is even said by some to have gone on a pilgrimage to Rome, though this rests on slight evidence. The miracles worked at the tomb of the murdered King were, according to Asser, so numerous and incredible that Offa, who had appropriated Æthelberht’s kingdom, was induced to send two bishops to Hereford to ascertain the truth of them, and it is generally agreed that about A.D. 825 Milfrid, who was Viceroy to the Mercian King Egbert after the death of Offa and of his son Egfrid, expended a large sum of money in building "_Ecclesiam egregiam, lapidea structura_" at Hereford, which he consecrated to the martyred monarch, and endowed with lands and enriched with ornaments.