The time wore on slowly. The Anglo-Saxon minstrels broke into coarse, jigging tunes; their fellows feasted more heartily when thus accompanied; beating time with wagging heads and shouting between their mouthfuls to the jerky numbers. The Celtic pipers joined in--the wild Hibernians adding their piercing note; the hounds followed with dismal howls. The smell of sheep-skin clothing was strangely mingled with the steam of the coarse feast. The great Bretwalda addressed Ethne suddenly. “And your warriors lady, I hope are ready to march with me at this week’s end?” In a moment she was upright, smiling. “Ah!” said she, “it is time we spent a minute in these troublesome matters. Our aid is ready at any moment against this villain, Ceawlin of Wessex. And the conditions I ask will not, I think, be hard!” The Bretwalda paused with his whittle in a mass of goats’ flesh. “The conditions!” he repeated. “The conditions!” “Yes, the conditions, my liege,” she said, still smiling. “Is it strange we ask aught in return?” “Aught in return!” again he repeated her words, “aught in return!”--half in contempt, half in anger. What right, he wondered, had women to do anything but stitch trews and bake bread, and lend a hand occasionally in battle? He went on eating his goats’ flesh. Ethne felt sick at heart. She took a draught of her favourite Greek wine. Then turned on him a smiling face. “You remember, O King, my conditions?” He said nothing--only looked, far off, through an arched opening past the dusk and blue of the low-lying forest to where the cattle strayed upon the hills; the hills that separated them from mountainous Cambria. Then he pointed silently to the heights with one hand, and with the other grasped his long rune-covered sword. “My lord?” she questioned, with paling lips but with an attempt at mirth. “Your gestures, I doubt not, are deemed most eloquent, but I would fain have speech as well!” “Those hills, lady,” he said, looking at her steadfastly, “are the chain wherewith you and your warriors are bound to me--this sword is the fate that awaits those who refuse to ally with me against Ceawlin of Wessex!” Ethne half rose to her feet. A fit of rage seized her which she could scarcely repress but she kept silent, although two vivid spots of colour suddenly showed on her white cheeks, and her eyes glittered strangely. Ethelbert helped himself to some virgin-honey from the board; and as he ate it continued to gaze on Ethne.