Strange news came with Streone, though I had heard rumours thereof before, as I have said. It was true that Cnut was to wed Emma the queen; and they had, as it seemed, already been betrothed, at the advice of the three great jarls. Now she and the athelings her sons were back in Normandy, and one might see what the reason of this policy was, Not only was Duke Richard kept quiet, but also Cnut was stepfather to Eadward Atheling and his brothers. That meant that if Cnut won, they must needs suffer him to take the crown unopposed. And more than this, if Cnut must leave England alone presently, when Eadmund died he would claim the throne at once, either for himself or for one of these athelings as his under-king. For no man ever thought twice of Eadmund's brother Edwy, who was weak bodily, nor of his half brother, the other Edwy, whom we called "king of the churls," by reason of the low birth of his mother, for no thanes would follow him had he had the gift of leading. Cnut's fleet went from the Medway northward, and it was in the thoughts of all men that the end had come, and that he sought his own land at last. And that seemed the more certain to most because Streone had submitted, as if he knew that he had no further hope of honour from the Danish king. Presently, however, it was plain that his coming over was but part of the deepest plot that he had yet made. Suddenly, even as our levies dispersed in spite of all the king's entreaties, came the news that the Danish fleet had turned and was in the Crouch river in Essex, whence already the host had begun their march inland across Mercia in the old way. And so for the fifth time Eadmund strove to gather all England to him, and his summons was well obeyed. The thanes and their men gathered in haste, savage with hope deferred, and Cnut shrank back again to Ashingdon on the Crouch, and there built himself an earthwork on the south side of the river, while his ships lay on the further shore at Burnham, and in the anchorage, and along the mud below the earthworks, seeming countless. And there he waited for us, and there we knew that he meant to end the warfare in one great fight for mastery, with his ships behind him that he might go if he were at last obliged. And there, too, though we knew it not, he waited for Streone to give England into his hands. We were close on him when his main force fell back upon his earthworks, where they stand on the little hill above the river banks that men will call "Cnut's dune" {13} henceforward, in memory of what he won there. And Ulfkytel and I and the few East Anglians that we had were with the advance guard, and drove in the pickets that were between us and the hill. And then we knew that Cnut meant to stand and fight in the open, and we were glad, for out of his intrenchments poured his men, and we sent horsemen back to Eadmund to hurry on the main body of our forces.