"What has been done is your doing." "What mean you ?" she flashed on him with a terrible look.
Erling answered from where he stood with his back to the great door, "So you spoke in our old land on the day when our Jarl Hauk bade you confess the wrong you had done, before you were set adrift on the sea.

It had been better had he slain you, as some would have had him slay, if it were but for the saving of this." Now Offa had turned angrily as he heard Sighard speak to the queen in no courteous wise, but Erling had not heeded his look or what wrath might light on him.

Before he could say aught, and it was plain that he was going to speak angrily enough, Offa heard the first words of the Dane, and checked himself.
And when he had heard, he said in a cold voice, slowly, "So that tale is true after all.

I can believe it now, though once I slew a man who told it me." With that he turned on his heel and passed through the door and was gone, paying no more heed to the queen than to us.

For a long moment she stood and glared at Erling, and I think that she remembered his face in some dim way, so that the old days came back to her, and with that remembrance the terror that had been in them.
And as she stood there in the torchlight she seemed to have grown old of a sudden, and her face was gray and lined, while her long white hands worked as they fell at her side.
But not another word did she say, though her lips seemed to form somewhat, and in her eyes was written most terrible hate and anger.
She took her gaze from Erling, for he did not shrink from it, and let it rest for a moment on Sighard with a meaning which made him pale as he thought of Hilda, who was yet in her hands, and so went from the room suddenly, and the door was closed after her from within.
Then said Witred the Mercian earnestly, "Friends, an you value your lives, get you hence while yet that passage is open.