"Nurse," she said, "I am in sore trouble about the dream. It bides with
me, and will not cease to puzzle me until I weary for some one to read
it plainly. I would that Queen Bertha's good chaplain were here, for I
might have been helped by him."
Then the nurse came back, quick to hear the sad tone in the voice of her
whom she had tended and loved since she was a child.
"Why, my pretty, have you been weeping?" she said. "There was naught in
a dream like that to fray you thus."
"Nay, but it has come to me that this place is altogether heathen; and
it may have come from the hand of Freya, the false fiend that they
worship as a goddess, so that I may be ready to wed a heathen. Is there
no Christian in all this place?"
"There are Welsh folk yet left in the marsh," said the nurse, pondering;
"and where there is a Briton there is a Christian, and there, also, will
be a hidden priest. But it would be as much as his life is worth to come
here, even could we find one."
Then Goldberga said, "Alsi is not altogether heathen. If I asked he
would surely grant this."
For she thought that she knew how to gain consent.
"If one can be found, and that is not likely. Well, then, I will ask
Berthun, who is good-natured enough, and most likely will not trouble
about a Christian coming here; and if so, we need not even ask Alsi.
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