Plead for me--plead for me, O my son; for who is there in heaven or
earth that can plead so powerfully for me that am stained with your
blood!
Then, having finished her prayer, and wiped away all trace of tears and
painful emotions, she would summon her attendants and ride home, in
appearance and bearing still the Elfrida of her great days--the calm,
proud-faced, beautiful woman who was once Edgar's queen.
XI
The time had arrived when Elfrida was deprived of this her one relief
and consolation--her rides on the Downs and the exercise of her religion
at the temple of the Great Stones--when in the second winter of her
residence at Amesbury there fell a greater darkness than that of winter
on England, when the pirate kings of the north began once more to
frequent our shores, and the daily dreadful tale of battles and
massacres and burning of villages and monasteries was heard throughout
the kingdom. These invasions were at first confined to the eastern
counties, but the agitation, with movements of men and outbreaks of
lawlessness, were everywhere in the country, and the queen was warned
that it was no longer safe for her to go out on Salisbury Plain.
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