The king had already held his court, for some weeks, at Helsingborg. Marsk Oluffsen had returned from Jutland, where he had been fortunate enough to put an end to all disturbances by capturing the daring partizans, Niels Brock and Johan Papae, with some other friends of the archbishop's and the outlaws. The insurgents were led to the prison-tower at Flynderborg, but the stern Marsk Oluffsen was personally so incensed at these state prisoners, who had long plagued and defied him, that he thought no punishment was adequate to their deserts. At the present moment nothing was thought of at court but joy and festivity. The king's stepfather, Count Gerhard, had arrived from Nykioeping with his consort, the dowager queen Agnes. Next to the king himself no one seemed more to rejoice at his marriage than his politic and dignified mother. In her first unhappy marriage, Agnes, as Denmark's queen, had held that wedded happiness, among royal personages, was only the dream of visionaries. After the death of her unhappy consort she had sacrificed the title of queen, and changed this dream into truth and reality, in her own lot, under a humbler name. Amid her own happiness she had often thought, with uneasiness and regret, on having made a treaty, involving the future destiny of her children by their betrothal in early childhood, and now saw, with thankfulness, that a union, projected from motives of state policy, had grown into the natural tie of kindred hearts. It appeared that the brave Duke of Langeland had forgotten all former disputes with the king, at the treaty of Wordingborg, but his brother, Duke Valdemar of Slesvig, who had also been invited out of courtesy, had excused himself on plea of illness.