Chapter 12
Anna’s death and burial AD 654Work was soon started on the new church at Ely, and Etheldreda returned to a normal diet and took her place at her husband’s side. But one day dark news reached them from her father’s kingdom. Penda had attacked again, skirting the southern reaches of the fenlands, storming the dykes across the Icknield Way and breaching the East Anglian defences that were under the control of Anna’s brother Ethelhere.
Tondbert called all the men he could reach together immediately and set off for the south, sending word to the more distant villages for help and putting Edgils in charge of those who were to follow on. Etheldreda tried to stop the thought, but could not, that it was Ethelhere’s treachery that had let the Mercians through. She had never trusted him.
