“Send the leech Sigebert to us in the morning—he must report Elfric unwell—for he will hardly get up to hear Dunstan mumble mass.”
“Perhaps your royal highness had better rest also.”
“And bring suspicion upon us both? No,” said Edwy, “one will be enough to report ill at once; Dunstan is an old fox.”
Poor Elfric could hardly get to bed, and, almost for the first time since infancy, he laid himself down without one prayer. Edwy left him in the dark, and there he lay, his head throbbing, and a burning thirst seeming to consume him.
Long before morning he was very sick, and when the bell was sounded for the early mass it need hardly be said that he was unable to rise.
Sigebert the physician, who, like Redwald, was in the confidence of the future king, Edwy, came in to see him, and asked what was the matter.
“I suppose you have taken something that disagreed with you—too much fish perhaps.” (with a smile).
“I understand,” said the leech; “you will soon be better; meanwhile, I will account for your absence at chapel. Here, take this medicine; you will find it relieve you.”
And he gave Elfric a mixture which assuaged his burning thirst, and bathed his forehead with some powerful essence which refreshed him greatly, whereupon the leech departed.
Only an hour later, and Edred, hearing from the physician of Elfric’s sudden illness, came in to see the boy, whose bright cheerful face and merry disposition had greatly attracted him. This was hardest of all for Elfric to bear; he had to evade the kind questions of the king, and to hear expressions of sympathy which he felt he did not deserve.
More than once he felt inclined to tell all, but the fear of the prince restrained him, and also a sense of what he thought honour, for he would not betray his companion, and he could not confess his own guilt without implicating Edwy.
Poor boy! it would have been far better for him had he done so: he had taken his first step downward.
It becomes our painful duty to record that from the date of the feast, described in our last chapter, the character of poor Elfric underwent rapid deterioration. In the first place, the fact of his having yielded to the forbidden indulgence, and—as he felt—disgraced himself, gave Edwy, as the master of the secret, great power over him, and he never failed to use this power whenever he saw any inclination on the part of his vassal to throw off the servitude. It was not that he deliberately intended to injure Elfric, but he had come to regard virtue as either weakness or hypocrisy, at least such virtues as temperance, purity, or self restraint.