Having seen this manner of submission to counsel not once or twice before, I put on a franklin's dress, and gave sword Foe's Bane into Eadward's keeping, and took a hunting spear instead, and went down into the town, leaving my party ten miles away in a nook of the wooded hills. The scarlet-cloaked Danish thingmen at the gates paid no heed to me, for it was market day, and many countryside people were going in and out. So I went to the marketplace, and sat down on a bench outside an inn with others and listened to all that I could, while I drank my ale and ate as did the rest. Some I talked with. There was little hatred of Cnut here, as I found. There was some change, too, in the ways of the thingmen, for it was not their plan here to make themselves hated and feared as in East Anglia. Then came a man whose face and walk were those of a seaman, and he sat down close to me, and I pushed the ale mug towards him, and we began to talk of his calling. He had come to Winchester to find some merchant who needed a ship, as it seemed, and he began, as a good sailor will, to praise his own vessel with little encouragement. I found out from him that Southampton Water was full of Danish vessels, and so I asked where his own lay. "In Bosham haven," he said. "Earl Wulfnoth will have no Danes in his land. I must get some safe conduct from the Danish folk here if I come into the Water. So being tired of doing nought I even rode up to this place to see if aught could be managed for a voyage." Now I thought that I was in luck's way, for from this man, who seemed honest enough, I could perhaps gain all I wanted. His ship was a great buss, fitted with a cabin fore and aft under the raised decks, and I could wish for no better chance than this might be. "Would you take passengers for Normandy instead of goods?" I asked him carelessly. "Aye, truly, and gladly if they could pay well." "Now I will tell you that I am Earl Wulfnoth's friend," I said, "and you may know that pay is safe, therefore. I was at Pevensea when Olaf the Thick, the viking, came there." He took my word for my friendship with the earl, and then I arranged for all things to be ready for us in a week's time. We had some rough country to cross before we came to Bosham, and I would not hurry over it. We wrangled over the price a little, as was fitting, for I would not seem too eager; but at last he said that he would depart on the morrow, and we shook hands and were satisfied. "Speak not of this matter, friend Bertric," I said, "or we may be waylaid by Danes off the haven's mouth." "Little fear of that, master," he laughed. "Our young Earl Godwine has beaten one or two ships already."