The King's Sons
Fenn George Manville
English
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Below is a summary of The King's Sons
The King's Sons, by George Manville Fenn.
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This is a very short book, and it does not contain any of the usual
nail-biting Fenn-style situations. But it is very good at what it does,
which is to tell a story about King Ethelwulf of Wessex and his four
sons, each of whom in turn became King.
The story concentrates on the youngest of the sons, Alfred, who became
known as Alfred the Great during his reign. The four boys have a tutor,
Father Swythe, but only Alfred is interested in what the monk has to
teach. At this point we get a very interesting lesson on how the great
illustrated manuscripts were made, how the ink and the colours were
made, and how the pens and brushes were made.
Father Swythe later became Bishop of Winchester, and was known as
Swithun. He was canonised, and somehow there has grown a legend that if
it rains on Saint Swithun's day it will rain for forty days after that.
He is portrayed as rather a portly monk in this story, but his effigy in
Winchester Cathedral shows him as a very slight man. There is another
story about him which makes him out to be rather a small man, who
couldn't reach the key-hole of the cathedral, which obligingly slid down
for him. Anyway, the story is a good one, and you will enjoy it.
This website is called Athelstane, after Alfred's grandson, so we were
interested to transcribe this story. NH
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THE KING'S SONS, BY GEORGE MANVILLE FENN.
CHAPTER ONE.
SONS OF THE KING.
The sun shone down hotly on the hill-side, and that hill was one of a
range of smooth rolling downs that ought to have been called ups and
downs, from the way they seemed to rise and fall like the sea on a fine
calm day.
Not quite, for at such a time the sea looks as blue as the sky above it,
while here on this particular hot day, though the sky was as blue as a
sapphire stone, the hills were of a beautiful soft green, the grass
being short and soft, and as velvety as if Nature had been all over it
regularly with her own particular mowing-machine.
But the only mowing that had been done to that grass was by the cropping
teeth of the many flocks of sheep whose fleeces dotted the downs with
soft white where they nibbled away, watched by the shepherds in their
long smock frocks with turn-down collars and pleatings and gatherings on
breast and back, and slit up at the sides from the bottom so as to give
the men's legs room to move freely when they ran after a restive sheep
to hook him with the long crook they carried and bring him kicking and
struggling by hook or by crook to the grass.
It was just over a thousand years ago, and, in spite of all the changes
fashion has made, plenty of shepherds and farm labourers still wear the
simple old Saxon dress then worn by King Ethelwulf's serfs, though
without the girdle worn then.
There were four boys on the steepest slope of that hill-side--four
fair-haired, sun-browned, hearty-looking boys--and they wore smock
frocks, belted in at the waist, of fine, soft, woollen material, woven
out of the fleeces of the sheep; for they were King's sons, the sons of
the King whose flocks were feeding on the hill-side in Berkshire, where
he had his Court.
It was as peaceful there as it was soft and beautiful; for though news
came from time to time of the cruel acts of the fierce Norsemen who had
come across the sea in their great row and sailing galleys full of
fighting-men, they were far away from the King's home, so that Queen
Osburga felt no anxiety about her boys being out on the downs at play,
enjoying themselves and growing strong. This she loved to see; though,
being a very learned woman herself in days when noble people thought no
shame to have to say: "I cannot read or write," she sighed to find how
very little her four sons cared for such things as gave her delight.
They all loved to be out in the open air along with Cerda, the Saxon
jarl, one of the King's chief fighting-men, who urged them to learn how
to use the broadsword. After setting one of the men to make swords for
the boys--not of hard cutting steel, but of good tough ash-wood--and
then matching them two against two, he would sit and roar with laughter
at the blows they gave and took.
"Well done! At him again!" he cried. "Another wound; but it will not
bleed."
It was Cerda, too, who had bows and arrows made for the boys, whilst
King Ethelwulf would look on, sometimes smiling and sometimes sighing,
for he cared nothing for these things.
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