There followed one or two cries, fierce, but muffled almost to extinction, and a thud. The Queen put her face to the opening, and called, "Gymbert, is all done?" There was no reply. She bent low to listen. Then a piercing sound assailed her ears--the voice of a woman, shrieking again and again, with gruesome, mechanical regularity. Another moment, and Cynerith had reached the garden. The outer door of this wing, her private door, was open. Upon the threshold stood her youngest daughter, in night-rail and hooded cloak. Gymbert the Queen's thrall rushed at the Lady Ethelfrith, and tried to take hold of her. She fought and beat him off, and tottered, shrieking still, though more faintly, sobbing and moaning, down the few steep steps and towards the middle of the room, where lay a shapeless mass from which a pool of crimson was spreading slowly. A flickering lantern swung from a hook upon the wall. Others arrived upon the scene. First came old Edric; then Eadburh, with her mass of tawny hair about her face; then Offa, muttering hoarsely; and all the inhabitants of the palace thronged to learn what had befallen. Ethelfrith was seated upon the ground, holding Ethelbert's dissevered head in her arms, and she rocked herself to and fro, and chanted in a far-away tone. "Under the leaves, under the leaves, There saw I maidens seven!" She broke off short, and changed her tune. "Then He built Him a bridge of the beams of the sun, And over the water ran He; And the three wealthy wights they followed him after, And drowned they were all three!" "Come, canst thou riddle me my ridlass? "Yellow and green, Sharp and keen, Grows in the mene. The King cannot ride it, no more can the Queen." "No more can the Queen.... I must mind me to tell my mother that in two years and a little more her son will be lying dead and cold. How sister Eadburh will storm at what must follow--the fall of our proud house!... Heart's dearest, the sun is high in heaven. Why do ye not awake, my lord? Do ye not hear the lark singing? Ethelbert, there is blood all about thy hair--it is like a crown, Ethelbert!" Babbling thus and laughing, she was torn away: nor did she ever recover her reason, though she lived thereafter thirty years. Earl Sweyn the Nithing _Being the Chronicle of Winifred Ebba's daughter_ In the first year of King Hardicanute, on the sixth-and-twentieth day of May, feast of blessed Augustine, Algive, only child of Aldred, sometime thane of Berrington, became by oath-plight nun of the Order of blessed Benedict, before the altar of the Abbey-church of Leominster, lately builded and begun by Leofric the good Earl. By this means grew the hoard of the same holy house the richer by the half of her goods. The other half, and her land at Berrington eke, Athelstane her uncle kept for himself.